Yes, the Afghans Hate Us
Gilles Dorronsoro
The National Interest
[U.S. soldiers in Bravo Company stationed near Kandahar in a war game they were playing took it upon themselves to kill an unarmed Afghanistan boy. The Kill team did this January 15th 2010. Gul Mudin, a young teenager, lived in the village of La Mohammad Kalay, Afghanistan. Sworn statements have two soldiers Corporal Jeremy Morlock and Private First Class Andrew Holmes engaged in staging the killing so that it would appear that the US soldiers had been under attack. The statements read that they ordered the boy to stand still, then they tossed a grenade at him and opened fire with their weapons while they remained behind a mud wall. The dead body of the boy, Gul Mudin is seen here lying by the wall where he was killed. - The WE!]
Along the road between Jalalabad and Asadabad, two cities in eastern Afghanistan, an American truck is broken down as Afghan vehicles approach. A U.S. soldier steps out to stop oncoming traffic and begins to scream obscenities and, with his rifle butt, hit cars (including mine) that don’t move back fast enough. This will block the road for almost an hour and brew distrust and even hatred between American troops and the local population. Isolated incident? Unfortunately no.
Afghans say that this is just one minor incident in a series of more serious events. Nine children were recently shot down from an American helicopter in Kunar province after the pilot mistakenly thought they were insurgents. And shortly before I witnessed tensions mounting on the roadside, more than sixty civilians were killed in a coalition bombing.
Far from being contained to a specific area, the rejection of foreigners and international troops is pervasive across Afghanistan. This is a major problem for the coalition. A few outrageously manipulated polls notwithstanding, Afghans obviously see the coalition as an occupying force. With war crimes committed by some rogue U.S. troops and vile pictures of American servicemen smiling near the bodies of dead civilians still circulating widely via mobile phone—even to the most remote Afghan villages—the credibility of the coalition is destroyed.