NRO

Collateral Nonsense

“A Taliban commander later said that Mullah Omar had given them permission to kill for two hours, but they had killed for two days.”

November 7, 2001 2:50 p.m. It is hard to imagine a starker demonstration of the bankruptcy of "international opinion" than the current handwringing over collateral damage from the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan. The Afghan civilian casualties — which may be in the dozens or, if you believe the Taliban, in the hundreds — are taken as an indictment of the U.S. campaign, a sign that we are no better than the terrorists (the Washington Post has a long front-page piece today detailing such nonsensical views from around the world).

The idea behind this sort of thinking is that everything is our fault: We started the war, and therefore everything bad that comes from it is our responsibility. Of course, it's the other way around: They started the war, and the inevitable unfortunate consequences — such as civilian casualties — are on the heads of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. But critics of the U.S. campaign have trouble grasping this, because they have trouble ever recognizing the perfidy of our enemies.

To the extent this view holds in the West, it is essentially a suicidal impulse. Followed to its logical conclusion, it would make it impossible for us ever to defend ourselves and ever to fight for a flawed, but morally superior goal against an evil enemy — because the evil of our enemy never actually registers with anyone. This is what happened in Vietnam, when Western outrage was focused on U.S. napalm runs rather than on the murderous and oppressive character of our enemy. The same thinking is beginning to take hold now, which is why President Bush yesterday desperately tried to remind the Europeans of the nature of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

If anything, President Bush was too soft. The Taliban are the Khmer Rouge in turbans, evil and ignorance meeting in a toxic stew to destroy a nation. Let's put aside the Taliban's years-long war against U.N. humanitarian aid, their efforts now to use civilians as shields, their use of mosques to hide their weapons — and dwell instead, as a way to focus the mind, on the particular, on just one instance of the Taliban in action.

In his indispensable book, Taliban, Ahmed Rashid describes what happened after the Taliban took back the town of Mazar-e Sharif in 1998, after having lost it the year before: "What followed was another brutal massacre, genocidal in its ferocity, as the Taliban took revenge on their losses the previous year. A Taliban commander later said that Mullah Omar had given them permission to kill for two hours, but they had killed for two days. The Taliban went on a killing frenzy, driving their pickups up and down the narrow streets of Mazar shooting to the left and right and killing everything that moved — shop owners, cart pullers, women and children shoppers and even goats and donkeys."

This is the Taliban we are supposed to spare during the month of Ramadan, for religious (!) reasons. Rashid continues: "Contrary to all injunctions of Islam, which demands immediate burial, bodies were left to rot on the streets. 'They were shooting without warning at everybody who happened to be on the street, without discriminating between men, women and children. Soon the streets were covered with dead bodies and blood. No one was allowed to bury the corpses for the first six days. Dogs were eating human flesh and going mad and soon the smell became intolerable,' said a male Tajik who managed to escape the massacre."

The Persian-speaking Hazara, who are also Shiites and therefore hated by the Sunni Taliban, had dealt the Taliban their initial setback in Mazar. Rashid continues: "As people ran for shelter to their homes, Taliban soldiers barged in and massacred Hazara households wholesale. 'People were shot three times on the spot, one bullet in the head, one in the chest and one in the testicles. Those who survived buried their dead in their gardens. Women were raped,' said the same witness. 'When the Taliban stormed into our house they shot my husband and two brothers dead on the spot. Each was shot three times and then their throats were slit in the halal way,' said a 40-year-old Tajik widow."

The Taliban had guides to take them to the homes of Hazara, but decided not to be so discriminating. Rashid: "[T]he Taliban were out of control and arbitrary killings continued, even of those who were not Hazaras. 'I saw that a young Tajik boy had been killed — the Talib was still standing there and the father was crying. "Why have you killed my son? We are Tajiks." The Talib responded, "Why didn't you say so?" And the father said, "Did you ask that I could answer?"'"

Sometimes the Taliban were more deliberate about their killing: "Thousands of Hazaras were taken to Mazar jail and when it was full, they were dumped in containers which were locked and the prisoners allowed to suffocate. Some containers were taken to the Dasht-e-Laili desert outside Mazar and the inmates massacred there — in direct retaliation for the similar treatment meted out to the Taliban in 1997. 'They brought three containers from Mazar to Shiberghan. When they opened the door of one truck, only three persons were alive. About 300 were dead. The three were taken to the jail. I could see all this from where I was sitting,' said another witness."

And, finally, the Taliban tried to be thorough: "As tens of thousands of civilians tried to escape Mazar by foot in long columns over the next few days, the Taliban killed dozens more in aerial bombardments."

This is our enemy. This is the regime that is now garnering international sympathy by complaining of civilian casualties. This is the army we are supposed to stop bombing for a full month. This is the Taliban. If we can't bomb them with alacrity and a good, clean conscience, we can't bomb anyone.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2001