The Kandahar Massacre: Anatomy of a Massacre (Dateline SBS Austrailia) EXCLUSIVE insight, hear the truth from the survivors

Anatomy of a Massacre
Dateline SBS Australia
Information Clearing House

What really happened on the night of March 11 when 17 Afghan civilians were massacred in Kandahar province?

Many Afghans, including some of the survivors that night, believe more than one U.S. soldier was present in the two villages where the killings took place.

With unprecedented access to Afghan military investigators, Yalda Hakim travels to the villages where the massacre took place and interviews survivors of the attack, as well as Afghan guards at the US military base that housed the alleged gunman.

US soldier Robert Bales is in custody, facing charges of mass murder, but Afghan investigators suspect there may have been at least one other killer involved.

INTERVIEW WITH YALDA - Yalda Hakim explains to SBS Radio's World News Australia how she was able to get such unprecedented access to the massacre investigation.

Posted March 30, 2012


http://youtu.be/gnueG4I7Q9g

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The U.S. pays $50,000/person for Kandahar Massacre victims...at least its a significant boost from the $2,000 they usually pay

Afghans: US paid $50,000 per shooting spree death
AP News
By MIRWAIS KHAN
Mar 25, 7:17 AM (ET)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - The United States has paid $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S. soldier in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official and a community elder said Sunday.

The families of the dead received the money Saturday at the governor's office, said Kandahar provincial council member Agha Lalai. Each wounded person received $11,000, Lalai said. Community elder Jan Agha confirmed the same figures.

They were told that the money came from U.S. President Barack Obama, Lalai said.
A U.S. official confirmed that compensation had been paid but declined to discuss exact amounts, saying only that it reflected the devastating nature of the incident. The official spoke anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

A spokesman for NATO and U.S. forces declined to confirm or deny the payments, saying that while coalition members often make compensation payments, they are usually kept private.
"As the settlement of claims is in most cases a sensitive topic for those who have suffered loss, it is usually a matter of agreement that the terms of the settlement remain confidential," Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of sneaking out of his base before dawn on March 11 then creeping into houses in two nearby villages and opening fire on sleeping families within.
It was not immediately clear how much money had been paid out in all. Afghan officials and villagers have counted 16 dead - 12 in the village of Balandi and four in neighboring Alkozai - and six wounded. The U.S. military has charged Bales with 17 murders without explaining the discrepancy.

The 38-year-old soldier is accused of using his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, to kill four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, then burning some of the bodies. The ages of the children were not disclosed in the charge sheet.

The families had previously received smaller compensation payments from Afghan officials - $2,000 for each death and $1,000 for each person wounded.

Families of the dead declined to comment on any payments by U.S. officials on Sunday, but some of them said the previous day that they were less concerned with monetary payments than with seeing the perpetrator punished.

On Saturday, a bomb exploded in the south of the country as a foot patrol of Afghan and NATO forces was passing by the previous day, killing nine Afghans and one international service member, officials said.

The group was patrolling through Arghandab district in Kandahar province late Saturday when it was caught in the blast, said Shah Mohammad, the district administrator. Arghandab is a farming region just outside Kandahar city that has long been a bed-down area for Taliban insurgents. It was one of a number of communities around Kandahar city that were targeted in a 2010 sweep to oust the insurgency from the area.

The Afghan dead included one soldier, three police officers, four members of the Afghan "local police" - a government-sponsored militia force - and one translator, Mohammad said.

NATO reported earlier Sunday that one of its service members was killed in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on Saturday but did not provide additional details. It was not clear if this referred to the same incident, as NATO usually waits for individual coalition nations to confirm the details of deaths of their troops.

Is Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales a fall guy for the Kandahar Massacre? There certainly is more to the story than meets the eye

Massacre Cover-Up: The Beginning of the End for the US in Afghanistan?

Patrick Henningsen
Infowars.com
March 23, 2012

We are told that the US military have their man.

US military courts handed down their judgment to Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales - 17 counts of murder for the massacre of innocent Afghans. Bales, 38, will be formally charged today. Another lone gunman charged, and we are told that this horror story is meant to end there, with ‘closure’ for all sides.

The said slaughter of defenseless Afghan civilians was the worst of its kind since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001. It comes just weeks after copies of the Koran were burned at a US military base, an event which set off mass riots across the country.

Sgt. Bales could be a fall guy for this incident, and clearly he possesses a suitable back story necessary to pin the entire incident on one man – uses antidepressant pharmaceuticals as well as a chequered ‘stressful’ financial history – all of which paints the picture of ‘a soldier on the edge’, snapping in the line of duty. A nice clean, open and shut case.

Predictably, and asking no questions, the US mainstream corporate media has marched to the beat of the US military press department, relying solely on military reporting of the incident and dutifully ignoring multiple other reports coming out of Afghanistan, reports which point to a very different conclusion.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has gone on record, slamming the US military of not cooperating with a team he appointed to investigate the killings. Considering Karzai serves as President at the pleasure of Washington and its NATO allies, his remarks on this matter make it all the more compelling.

The reality outside of the US military’s press office points towards something completely different – a revenge attack involving a conspiracy numbering at least 10 US soldiers who left the US base in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, gunning down nine children, four men and three women on the morning of March 11 in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai. AP reports confirmed as much yesterday:

     In accounts to The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials, the residents 
     allege that US troops lined up men from the village of Mokhoyan(in Afghanistan) against 
     a wall after the bombing on either March 7 or 8, and told them they would pay a price for 
     the attack.

The appeal of the lone gunman theory has always been popular with Americans and the US media, and in this case, the rest of the world are meant to swallow an implausible story that a single US soldier single-handedly walked off the base, visiting not one, but two villages, carrying out his solo slaughter going home to home, and then proceeded to set fire to some of the victims’ bodies.

The awkward, official US military account of events only furthers speculation of a cover-up on the part of the US military, a cover-up which is now being steered by a White House who quite understandably – but not excusably – is at pains to come clean on yet another military scandal with a public suffering from conflict fatigue...

(click here to read the full article)

Afghan villagers in Kandahar were told 'they would pay' before massacre occurred killing 16

Afghan villagers told they would pay for bomb days ahead of massacre of 16
The Australian/AP
AP March 21, 2012 8:48AM

Panjwai district tribal elder Ghulam Rasool is convinced that the  

killing of 16 villagers in Afghanistan were an act of revenge 

for a roadside bomb attack on American forces in the same 

area a few days before. Source: AP 

RESIDENTS of an Afghan village near where an American soldier is alleged to have killed 16 civilians are convinced that the slayings were in retaliation for a roadside bomb attack on US forces in the same area a few days earlier.

In accounts to The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials, the residents allege that US troops lined up men from the village of Mokhoyan against a wall after the bombing on either March 7 or 8, and told them they would pay a price for the attack.

The lawyer for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who is accused in the March 11 killings of the 16 civilians, has said that his client was upset because a buddy had lost a leg in an explosion on March 9.

It's unclear if the bombing cited by lawyer John Henry Browne was the same as the one described by the villagers that prompted the alleged threats. After a meeting at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Mr Browne said Sgt Bales told him a roadside bomb blew off the leg of one of his friends two days before the shootings occurred.

A spokesman for the US military declined to give any information on the bombing or even confirm that it occurred, citing the investigation of the shootings. He also declined to comment on the allegation that US troops threatened retaliation.

...Mr Karzai's investigative team is not convinced that one soldier could have single-handedly left his base, walked to the two villages, and carried out the killings and set fire to some of the victims' bodies. The US military has said that even though its investigation is continuing, everything currently points to one shooter...

(click here to read the full article)

Read "The Kandahar Massacre" by MA Niazi, The Nation