Afghanistan 'like a human abattoir'
Allan Woods, CanWest News Service Published: Saturday, October 14, 2006
http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=c3891785-e9bd-4f61-9d56-f7b676668487
OTTAWA -- Canadian troops pelted with rocks by hostile Afghans, French soldiers disemboweled by Taliban fighters, and paratroopers soiling themselves at the thought of facing fierce enemy fire.
Increasingly, these are the accounts that are emerging from southern Afghanistan and they are not coming through official channels, nor through the newspaper reports and television broadcasts of the Canadian, British and U.S. forces who fight under the NATO banner in the war-torn country.
Those reports are governed by a contract that restricts the movements of journalists and the types of information that can be reported from Afghanistan. Unlike the official accounts, those from soldiers are the descriptions that the government does not want Canadians to see. They come directly from the soldiers in the field who have relayed the grisly details of combat through Internet postings and e-mails to friends and family back home.
They detail some of the fiercest fighting that soldiers have encountered in the country, and the stark horrors of combat.
"We headed off to what can only be described as the Wild West," one Canadian artillery officer wrote of a July 6 mission in Helmand province in support of a company of British soldiers under attack from Taliban fighters. The Brits had been reduced to boiling river water to drink after a failed air drop of supplies that ended up in the hands of the Taliban.
"When we arrived in Sangin, the locals began throwing rocks and anything they could at us. This was not a friendly place. We pushed into the district centre and, during the last few hundred metres, we began receiving mortar fire."
The accounts are both shocking and compelling for their casual retelling of the realities of combat. They are inspired as much by a desire to share the excitement and danger of pitched battles that often escape the witness of the media as by frustration when that coverage does occur.
But as death tolls mount these personal accounts are increasingly becoming a release valve for the growing frustrations of soldiers who find themselves facing a tougher, more resilient enemy in a hostile land where Taliban fighters on dirt bikes carry weapons in one hand and their children in the other.
"There have been some terrible incidents," one soldier told Britain's Daily Mail in an e-mail interview. "It is horrible to kill a kid. Nothing could prepare you for it."
Another e-mail obtained by the newspaper paints a horrific picture of British soldiers soiling themselves with fear and suffering mental trauma because of the threats they face on the ground. The troops were flown into combat on a Chinook helicopter to rescue Afghan troops and French special forces, but found dead bodies strewn across the battlefield and gun fire directed at their helicopter.
"The scene was like a human abattoir. We fought off the Taliban but were too late to save the French guys. All of us were shaking when we were flown back to base. One of the Afghan survivors said the French had been tied up, then gutted alive by the Taliban. It was one of the most shocking things I had ever heard."
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Allan Woods, CanWest News Service Published: Saturday, October 14, 2006
http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=c3891785-e9bd-4f61-9d56-f7b676668487
OTTAWA -- Canadian troops pelted with rocks by hostile Afghans, French soldiers disemboweled by Taliban fighters, and paratroopers soiling themselves at the thought of facing fierce enemy fire.
Increasingly, these are the accounts that are emerging from southern Afghanistan and they are not coming through official channels, nor through the newspaper reports and television broadcasts of the Canadian, British and U.S. forces who fight under the NATO banner in the war-torn country.
Those reports are governed by a contract that restricts the movements of journalists and the types of information that can be reported from Afghanistan. Unlike the official accounts, those from soldiers are the descriptions that the government does not want Canadians to see. They come directly from the soldiers in the field who have relayed the grisly details of combat through Internet postings and e-mails to friends and family back home.
They detail some of the fiercest fighting that soldiers have encountered in the country, and the stark horrors of combat.
"We headed off to what can only be described as the Wild West," one Canadian artillery officer wrote of a July 6 mission in Helmand province in support of a company of British soldiers under attack from Taliban fighters. The Brits had been reduced to boiling river water to drink after a failed air drop of supplies that ended up in the hands of the Taliban.
"When we arrived in Sangin, the locals began throwing rocks and anything they could at us. This was not a friendly place. We pushed into the district centre and, during the last few hundred metres, we began receiving mortar fire."
The accounts are both shocking and compelling for their casual retelling of the realities of combat. They are inspired as much by a desire to share the excitement and danger of pitched battles that often escape the witness of the media as by frustration when that coverage does occur.
But as death tolls mount these personal accounts are increasingly becoming a release valve for the growing frustrations of soldiers who find themselves facing a tougher, more resilient enemy in a hostile land where Taliban fighters on dirt bikes carry weapons in one hand and their children in the other.
"There have been some terrible incidents," one soldier told Britain's Daily Mail in an e-mail interview. "It is horrible to kill a kid. Nothing could prepare you for it."
Another e-mail obtained by the newspaper paints a horrific picture of British soldiers soiling themselves with fear and suffering mental trauma because of the threats they face on the ground. The troops were flown into combat on a Chinook helicopter to rescue Afghan troops and French special forces, but found dead bodies strewn across the battlefield and gun fire directed at their helicopter.
"The scene was like a human abattoir. We fought off the Taliban but were too late to save the French guys. All of us were shaking when we were flown back to base. One of the Afghan survivors said the French had been tied up, then gutted alive by the Taliban. It was one of the most shocking things I had ever heard."
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