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Recently, US Defense Minister Leon Panetta announced
that the US sergeant, who had killed 16 civilians in the Afghan province
of Kandahar, might be executed.
The US is calling
this tragedy “an isolated accident which won’t change the US’s resolute
decision to defend the Afghan people”. However, the Afghan people seem
to have another opinion. All over Afghanistan, people are holding
anti-US rallies and burning US flags and effigies of Obama. Many people,
both Americans and Afghans, might have been trying hard to bring peace
to Afghanistan – but their efforts were annulled in a flash by a crime
committed by one sergeant.
True, it would be wrong to
say that before this incident, the relations between Afghans and the
international military contingent in their country were ideal. One may
remember the besiegement of the US embassy in Kabul after a US pastor
had publically burnt several copies of the Koran, or rather frequent
cases when servicemen of the newly-formed Afghan army killed their US
instructors.
However, the Kandahar tragedy took place
on a background of passions heated as never before. Several days before
it, a group of Afghans incidentally witnessed how certain US servicemen
burned several dozens of copies of the Koran. In response, the whole of
Afghanistan was gripped by protests, and there have even been cases of
violence.
And now, a new incident. While the US top politicians
were racking their brains on how to stop the Afghans’ wreath, a
38-year-old US sergeant shot dead 7 Afghan adult civilians and 9
children who, at the moment, were peacefully sleeping in their houses.
After that, it has become much harder to believe Barack Obama’s and
David Cameron’s assurances that the NATO contingent will leave
Afghanistan in 2013.
However, despite what Mr.
Panetta is saying, there are grounds to doubt that the murderer sergeant
will be executed. Judging by the results of similar cases that happened
during the numerous military conflicts in which the US was involved,
even the fact that the criminal is trialed by a military tribunal is not
a guarantee that he will be executed.
But even if the US makes this sergeant, whose name is still kept unrevealed, a scapegoat, this would hardly solve all problems.
According to the Reuters’ report, the criminal had a
serious brain injury when he served in Iraq in 2010. Later, he underwent
medical treatment at the Lewis-McChord military base in the US for some
time. Finally, doctors announced him fit for further military service,
and he was sent to Afghanistan.
In 2010, the Stars
and Stripes newspaper, which is edited by the US Defense Ministry,
called the Lewis-McChord base in Afghanistan the most scandalous US
military base. The reason was that in 2010, four US soldiers, who had
been sent to Afghanistan from this base, killed several Afghan civilians
and kept parts of their bodies as if they were souvenirs.
One
year later, another scandal broke out at the same base. Doctors who
worked there were found incompetent of diagnosing brain injuries and
mental problems.
According to a report by the ABC
news agency, the sergeant who killed the civilians in Kandahar had been
serving in the army for 11 years. Before being sent to Afghanistan, he
was sent to Iraq 3 times. Despite his multiple complaints that he was
not getting on well with his comrades-in-arms, his doctors found him
sane enough to serve in such hotspots as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another
sergeant who has served in Iraq for a long time and is now stationed at
the Lewis-McChord base, called Gonzales, says that his commanders do
not pay any attention to mental problems that the soldiers might have.
It
should also be mentioned that when US Private Bradley Manning was
trialed for passing some secret information over to the WikiLeaks
website, his commanders also said that they had noticed from the very
beginning that he was most likely mentally unstable. Still, despite
that, Manning continued to serve as an intelligence officer.
However,
even if the Kandahar murderer is really abnormal, the tragedy cannot be
called altogether incidental. Letting an abnormal person serve in a
place pregnant with conflicts is just more evidence of the incompetence
of the US military commanders.
In a country pregnant
with conflicts, any small mistake of the US commandment may have
irremediable consequences. The more mistakes the Americans make in
Afghanistan, the stronger the anti-US sentiments in that country become –
and this is only playing into the hands of the Taliban. Thus, it is
probably too early for the international military contingent to leave
Afghanistan right now. Who knows what chaos may start there if the
Taliban is not restrained by anyone.
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Sources: The Voice of Russia
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