arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

US killed 67 Pak POWs in school bombing

By Rahimullah Yusufzai

PESHAWAR: With details of the shocking massacre of pro-Taliban prisoners of war in Mazar-i-Sharif still coming in, there are now unconfirmed reports that about 67 Pakistani Taliban captured in Kunduz were jailed in a school by Northern Alliance troops and then bombed to death by US warplanes.

Informed sources told The News that none of the Pakistani Taliban, who had earlier surrendered to the victorious Northern Alliance forces as part of the deal brokered by Taliban commanders Mulla Mohammad Fazil and Mulla Noorullah Noori with Uzbek warlord Abdul Rasheed Dostum, survived the bombardment. There are also reports that the number of those killed in this incident could be more than 67.

Families of the Pakistani Taliban, who belonged to all four provinces of the country as well as Azad Kashmir, have been desperately trying to seek information about the fate of their near and dear ones. Most of them have approached the militant groups that have been dispatching Pakistani volunteers to Afghanistan since the beginning of the Afghan "Jihad" in 1979-80. But these groups are not in a position to offer any help now that their Taliban allies have lost almost all territory held by them in northern, western and eastern Afghanistan and retreated to their Kandahar stronghold.

If the reports of death of 67 Pakistani Taliban following their surrender in Kunduz are true, it could be part of a calculated policy to get rid of all non-Afghans who once fought as part of the Taliban army. This was a pattern first implemented in Mazar-i-Sharif and repeated in other cities snatched from the Taliban control. The Americans, still seething with revenge after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington and proud of their superior, high-tech air power, have readily obliged any requests by the Northern Alliance to bomb targets ranging from Taliban frontlines to their supply routes. Bombing forts and schools stuffed with surrendered pro-Taliban fighters must have been a new experience but this nasty job, as reports by foreign correspondents suggest, was also accomplished with professional acumen. Time correspondent Alex Perry has provided gripping details as to how troops loyal to Dostum and his allied commanders Ustad Atta Mohammad, an ethnic Tajik, and Ustad Mohaqqiq, a Shia Hazara, stormed and burnt the Sultan Raziya girls school in southeast Mazar-i-Sharif after its fall on November 9 and massacred about 100 Pakistani Taliban. He wrote that these Pakistanis wanted to surrender but could not do so owing to the unusual circumstances prevailing in the fallen city at that time. The school was bombed by US warplanes as if it was a military target. Several hundred other Taliban, mostly Pakistanis, were also killed or captured subsequently in the city. About 200, made prisoner by Mohaqqiq's Hezb-i-Wahdat fighters, were still unaccounted for and could have been summarily executed. The Shia Hazaras, claiming to have been persecuted by the Taliban, were said to be the most ruthless in avenging themselves. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had earlier said that their staff had collected between 400 to 600 bodies in Mazar-i-Sharif and buried them in mass graves.

This carnage had taken place before the massacre of over 500 pro-Taliban prisoners in the Qala-i-Jangi near Mazar-i-Sharif. What happened in the fort is still a matter of conjecture but new reports of prisoners shot dead in the head with their hands tied to their backs suggest that there is more to it than what meets the eye.

The US jet fighters were again pressed into service and the fort was heavily bombed to obliterate anyone inside the vast ramparts of this 19th century mud-built fort. One had heard about prisoners of war being executed or starved to death but this was probably the first time that they were bombed and strafed from the air and blown into pieces by artillery fire from the ground. The Amnesty International deserves praise for demanding a probe into the incident at a time when no country or organisation is ready to criticise the US for the massacre of prisoners of war whose crime had to be determined and proved in a court of law. Even Pakistan, which has lost hundreds of its citizens in the US-led attack on Afghanistan, has failed to forcefully demand justice for its Jihadis who were a product of Islamabad's proactive Afghan and Kashmir policies. The New York-based Human Right Watch too called for a humane treatment of surrendered or captured prisoners. But it also wanted two Taliban commanders -- Mulla Fazil and Mulla Dadullah -- to be investigated for their alleged role in serious violation of international law, including war crimes, committed during the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif and Bamiyan earlier to the Taliban. If the Human Rights Watch was fair and impartial, it would also have demanded a proper inquiry into the massacre of pro-Taliban prisoners in Mazar-i-Sharif, Qala-i-Jangi and Kunduz. In particular, it should have called for a probe into the role of the US forces, Dostum, Ustad Atta, Mohaqqiq and others in perpetrating such horrible war crimes.