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AP. 7 April 2002. Bombing Victims Gather in Kabul. KABUL -- Most came from rubble-strewn corners of this city -- bowed women hidden under veils, whose shoulders shook as they told their stories; vacant-faced men who pressed their pleading letters into the hands of whoever happened by. The gathering of civilian victims from the American bombing campaign also drew Afghans from distant villages, including a father and 8-year-old daughter who alone survived in an extended family of 18 when their two houses were struck in November. About two dozen such survivors were brought together by the U.S.-based advocacy group Global Exchange in Kabul last week for psychological counseling sessions at a city hospital. On Sunday, 60 survivors held a rally at the gates of the U.S. Embassy. "Those who suffered are all angry and sad. They're saying, `We weren't in a military area, or near a checkpoint. Why did the Americans bomb us?'" said Baz Mohammad, one of 10 Afghans who surveyed areas of Afghanistan for Global Exchange in search of civilian victims of the bombing campaign, which began last October as the United States waged war to bring down the Taliban government. The limited survey, in eight of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, has produced about 450 claims for compensation. About half of them involve loss of life, said Marla Ruzicka, the Global Exchange representative in Kabul. No official count has been made, but some estimates of the number of civilians killed by American bombing range in the low thousands. Pentagon officials said repeatedly during the bombing that any civilian deaths were the result of unavoidable "collateral damage" from attacks on military targets, or were people killed by bombs that went astray. The U.S. Embassy has told the Global Exchange activists to submit such claims to the embassy, "but they never let us know the status of the claims," complained Ruzicka. The advocacy group suggests the United States should pay $10,000 per family to rebuild homes and compensate for the loss of breadwinners' and others' lives. The Republican leader of a U.S. congressional delegation visiting Kabul last week was asked by reporters about compensation for Afghan bombing victims. "We will support it in Congress as a legitimate cost of doing business," that is, waging war, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California [!!]. The facts were recounted calmly by 8-year-old Amina, the girl who came to Kabul with her father from the northern district of Khanabad. She was alone in the kitchen making tea when a bomb struck, killing her five brothers, two sisters, mother and grandmother elsewhere in the house, she said. As she ran toward her uncle's house next door, a second bomb hit there, killing all seven inside. She was wide-eyed and strong-voiced as she told of the Nov. 18 bombing. But her father, the man who had to bury his family's dismembered pieces in a common grave, was unable to talk about it. Baz Mohammad, the surveyor for Global Exchange, was asked why the site might have been bombed. "Who knows?" he said. "Their house was six miles from the front lines." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
