US drone massacre in Afghanistan

Jacob Crosse

A US drone attack Wednesday evening in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border hit farm workers resting after a day’s labor, killing at least 30 people and injuring 40 more, all civilians. Many more are reported missing. Unverified reports say the number of dead is significantly higher.

The bloody attack has all the earmarks of a deliberate massacre.

At a joint press conference Friday with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Trump made no mention of the drone atrocity and was not asked about it by reporters. However, he took the occasion to reiterate his previous threat to kill millions of Afghans, saying he could easily “win” the war that way.

After initially denying involvement, US military officials on Thursday confirmed that the drone attack was carried out by US forces, not Afghan troops as originally reported.

The US carried out the attack on the workers despite the fact that village elders had sent a letter to the Nangarhar provincial governor, Shah Mahmood Miakhel, on September 7, explaining that approximately 200 workers would be in the region on September 18, the day of the attack, picking and shelling pine nuts.

According to Reuters, over 150 workers were sleeping in tents when at least one US Predator drone fired an AGM-114 (Hellfire) missile on their encampment.

Amongst the sleeping group were day laborers, farmers and children from local villages looking to earn some money picking pine nuts. After spending all day in the heavily forested mountains harvesting the dry fruit, the tired group lit several bonfires and pitched five large tents to bed down for the evening.

Malik Rahat Gul, a town elder from the region, told Reuters over the phone that the exhausted workers were either sitting or lying down at the time of the attack. Despite no visible signs of terrorist activity, Gul said it was clear that the drone had “targeted them.”

On Thursday, a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Sonny Leggett, sought to justify the wanton murder of civilians by stating that the operation was meant to kill “Da’esh terrorists in Nangarhar.” He then sought to pin the blame for the mass killing on the Taliban and ISIS, saying they had a history of “hiding behind civilians” and frequently used “dishonest claims of noncombatant casualties as propaganda weapons.”