U.S. night raid harms Afghans’ trust

When blasts of gunfire woke Mohammad Shafik at 1 a.m., he was sure the attackers were Taliban or Al Qaeda, out to punish his family for its close ties with the Afghan government.

Huddled with nine close relatives in their mud-brick compound in eastern Khost province, he heard a man with an accent from the southern city of Kandahar -- the Taliban’s former stronghold -- order them to step into the icy winter night.

“Come out and be safe,” the man said.

Shafik’s father, Mohammad Jan, an official with the Agriculture Ministry, grabbed a gun.

“I told my father, ‘Don’t go out, it’s Al Qaeda ,’ ” Shafik, 23, said. “When he opened the door the shooting started. Bullets flew in through the windows and doors. I could hear in my father’s voice that he was injured.”

Shafik’s 13-year-old sister, Khadijah, rushed to her father’s aid, but just then an explosion blasted open the door, fatally wounding her. The father lay bleeding in the cold for hours. He was eventually evacuated but later died.

The family learned too late that the assailants weren’t militants hunting supporters of President Hamid Karzai’s government, but the U.S. military.

By the time the Dec. 12 raid on Darnami village was over, five civilians lay dead, including two men killed while running to repel what they thought was a Taliban attack. Each side had mistaken the other for the enemy, and another setback had been dealt to efforts to win public confidence as Taliban and Al Qaeda militants bounce back from their defeat by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

The dozens of U.S. soldiers in night-vision goggles who swarmed the area were acting on “reliable intelligence” that a terrorist subcommander, implicated in attacks at checkpoints along the Pakistan border, was inside, U.S.-led coalition spokesman Col. Tom Collins said.

But the intelligence appears to have been wrong. No terrorist was found, and no incriminating evidence. A month later the compound still bears the scars of the raid: bullet holes punched through mud walls, gaping openings where doors were blasted open.

The raid was “a mess-up,” said provincial Gov. Arsallah Jamal.

Of the five brothers living in the compound, four worked for the government, “and there is little reason to suspect them of being anti-government elements,” he told the Associated Press.

“In 4 1/2 years we have accomplished a lot and should not open doors to the enemy,” Jamal said. “This kind of operation is a serious setback.”

And not the first.

2006 saw a spike in violence in which 4,000 people died, more than 600 of them civilians killed by NATO or U.S. military action, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Going back as far as 2002, Karzai has publicly and repeatedly accused the U.S. of heavy-handedness in its counterterrorism operations. Last month the civilian death toll reduced him to tears in a public speech. The U.S. has said over the years that it has modified tactics to cut down on civilian deaths, but the toll has only grown as fighting has intensified.

Last year the Taliban also killed many civilians as it mounted a record number of suicide bombings and engaged thousands of U.S. and NATO forces sent into the militia’s former southern strongholds for the first time.

NATO forces are sworn to defend Afghanistan security and development, but they are overstretched and often resort to airstrikes on residential compounds where militants are thought to be hiding.

The alliance acknowledges that too many civilians died last year, and promises remedial action. That promise is sure to be tested in the spring when a renewed Taliban offensive is expected.

The U.S. military described the Darnami raid as a joint coalition-Afghan operation, part of an effort to build the capabilities of the country’s fledgling police and army. Family members say the soldiers were overwhelmingly American.

The governor pleaded for the U.S. to seek Afghan assistance before launching nighttime raids.

“This is our land. I’ve been asking with greater force, ‘Let us sit together, we know our Afghan brothers, we know our culture better,’ ” Jamal said. “With these operations we should not create more enemies. We are in a position to reduce mistakes.”

The Darnami raid gives graphic insight into such mistakes.

As Shafik and his family were hiding in their bathroom, on the other side of the compound, Shafik’s uncles also believed they were facing a Taliban attack.

One uncle, Afisullah, the director of the local municipality, says he grabbed a gun and fired three shots as a warning to other villagers. Sahebdine, 70, and his son, Taher Khan, 30, ran to the rescue with guns in hand, acting on a recent government appeal to act as neighborhood watches against the Taliban. They were killed.

One mud house over, another uncle, Safaras Jan, an official with Afghanistan’s intelligence service, stepped outdoors, also with gun in hand, and was immediately killed by a bullet to the head.

When finally persuaded that the attackers weren’t Taliban fighters posing as U.S. soldiers, Afisullah threw down his weapon.

He said an American soldier asked why he had fired on them, and he replied: “We work for the government; that’s why we thought it was Al Qaeda.” Then he went on: “Why are you coming to our house at night? We don’t even know who you are.”

In a country where militants often target government officials, the men’s reaction was no surprise, the governor said.

“It’s natural for them to think it’s Taliban or Al Qaeda. It’s natural if someone breaks into your house that the first thing you reach for is a Kalashnikov” rifle, he said. He added that the neighborhood-watch program had functioned successfully in three previous incidents in Khost province.

Jamal also noted that Afisullah was still alive, despite having fired his gun near the soldiers -- evidence the soldiers were not on a killing rampage.

Neither were they wearing kid gloves.

At Shafik’s house, soldiers dragged his wife, sisters and brothers out of the pitch-dark bathroom where they were cowering. Shafik’s 45-year-old mother, Zartellah, attempted to shield Shafik, her eldest son, from the soldiers.

“I was thinking that Al Qaeda had come. They killed my husband and my daughter, and now they are going to kill my son,” she said, her voice breaking.

Zartellah’s resistance earned her a beating. She said she was thrown to the floor and kicked at least 10 times, laying her up in bed for four days.

Collins said that everyone was removed from the buildings “per standard procedures.”

Shafik said he was punched, and five days later still bore two fading black eyes.

He said he pleaded with the soldiers in fluent English to look at his bank ID card and the American contacts he had stored in his cellphone.

Nearby, his father was shouting for help. He was bleeding from the midsection, and the family wanted to cover him with a blanket to ward off the cold. According to Shafik, the soldiers said no.

“My husband was crying, ‘Please help me,’ and for three hours they wouldn’t help him. If I knew that he was going to be killed I would have opened the door myself. The enemy hasn’t done such cruel things,” said Zartellah, who goes by one name.

As the men sat in the courtyard for hours, hooded and handcuffed, the soldiers searched for evidence of terrorist activity. They found none, but the family members say they stole more than $50,000 in gold and cash. They showed a reporter their empty jewelry boxes, ransacked personal items and a shattered television.

Collins said no belongings, weapons or money were taken from any of the compounds.

He said the coalition sincerely regretted the loss of the girl, but was less repentant about the adult males who died. He said coalition forces were fired on first and had to defend themselves. The coalition opened an investigation into the civilian deaths, but Jamal said almost a month later that he hadn’t seen any results.

Two days after the raid, hundreds of villagers blocked the region’s main highway to protest. Ahmad Massood, 30, a guard at the market in the nearby city of Khost, says such killings “happen all the time” and are fueling suspicion of the U.S. presence.

“If they do these cruel acts, they should go,” he said. “They say they’re here to rebuild, not to be tyrants.”

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Associated Press correspondent Amir Shah contributed to this report.