It bears a macabre similarity to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. On August 29, a US drone strike killed seven children and three other civilians in Kabul. Now a top American military officer, General McKenzie, has admitted that it was ‘a tragic mistake’ resulting from human and technical errors, as the real target were IS-Khorasan terrorists. The killing of 10 innocent civilians seems to be in retaliation for the August 26 IS suicide bombing at Kabul airport which left a total of 183 people, including 13 US soldiers, dead and more than 150 others injured.
Then the US general had defended the drone strike as having been carried out in self-defence. It is both tragic and ironic that among the 10 civilians killed none was in any manner connected with IS. Justifying the action, the American general says that on August 29, US forces had tracked a white Toyota Corolla vehicle for eight hours suspecting that it was carrying IS activists who were planning to attack various places in the Afghan capital, including Kabul airport. But the US intelligence’s whole exercise resulted in a human tragedy. The New York Times later reported that the targeted vehicle was carrying water canisters.
This puts a serious question mark on the capabilities of US intelligence operatives. The botched drone strike also confirms that the decision on the withdrawal of US occupation forces from Afghanistan was taken in haste. The US defense secretary and the Pentagon have apologised to the families of those killed in the drone strike. General McKenzie has said that the American government intends to pay reparation to the affected families.
The killing of unarmed and innocent civilians is a crime against humanity and those responsible for the incident should stand trial, and if found guilty, should be punished accordingly in order to prevent such ‘collateral damage’ in future. Sadly enough, the US government is silent on this issue. Is the reason for the ‘mysterious’ silence of the US authorities is that ‘it is only others who commit crime’? If the guilty go unpunished, killing of unarmed non-combatants in My Lai and Kabul will go on happening.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 20th, 2021.
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