President Karzai casts doubts on US version of Afghan village massacre
President says US has not co-operated with his investigations and he questions whether there was only one attacker
The President of Afghanistan warned he was frustrated over western killings of civilians, as he accused the US of obstructing an Afghan investigation into the massacre of 16 civilians last Sunday.
At a meeting with the investigation team and family members of the victims, most of them women and children, Hamid Karzai asked the army chief of staff to investigate villagers' claims that there was more than one attacker contradicting the official US version of events. He also confirmed a demand made on Thursday that foreign forces leave Afghan villages.
"This has been going on for too long. You have heard me before, therefore, it is by all means the end of the rope here," he said of the killings, which he described as the latest of "hundreds" of such incidents nationwide. "This form of activity, this behaviour, cannot be tolerated." he said.
Karzai has always been outspoken about civilian deaths at the hands of foreign troops. But the latest broadside comes as his financial and military backers are grappling with the implosion of their strategy for Afghanistan. His words are likely to put more strain on the relationship between Washington and Kabul that some feel is already in crisis.
His call for an investigation into whether more than one person was behind the massacre implies that he does not trust the US military or political hierarchy to tell the truth about the killings.
"On the question of the account of the one person, supposedly, who has done this, the story of the village elders [in the Panjwai district of southern Kandahar province] and the affected people is entirely different. They believe it is not possible for one person to do that," Karzai told journalists after the meeting.
Many people in Afghanistan believe the US staff sergeant detained over the shootings did not act alone. "When I saw my wife's body, her hand had been cut off. This was not the work of one person," a man from a family who lost 11 members told the meeting. "Helicopters were over the village
we have witnesses that saw it was more than one person," he added, although, like all those who testified, he did not personally witness the attack.
Western military officials have said helicopters were sent to pick up the injured. Groups of soldiers seen later in the village were a search party sent out when the killer's absence was noticed, they said, and surveillance video backed up the conclusion there was a single killer.
Karzai said his investigators did not find the US surveillance video they were shown convincing. The army chief of staff reported to the meeting that a key US commander had not returned his calls while he was investigating the attack.
"The Afghan investigation team did not receive the co-operation that they expected from the United States, therefore these are all questions that [we] will be raising, and raising very loudly and raising very clearly," Karzai said, referring to whether the killer acted alone.
Afghans were weary of killings by foreign troops after "hundreds" of civilian casualty incidents, he told the meeting, a point he underlined when he told US President Barack Obama in a morning phone call that his call for foreign forces to leave Afghan villages was serious.
Rural settlements are not centres of terrorism, he added; the West should look instead to neighbouring countries, while Afghans could sort out their own disagreements.
The White House said later that during the conversation the two leaders "agreed to further discuss concerns voiced by President Karzai about the presence of foreign troops in Afghan villages".
If troops retreat to major bases and end patrols, as Karzai has demanded, it would mean an end to the western military approach in Afghanistan. Hopes of progress towards a political settlement were also dented by a Taliban announcement on Thursday that the group is suspending peace negotiations with the US.
Karzai and the Panjwai villagers also dismissed reports that before the shooting spree, the father of two had suffered some kind of breakdown. The New York Times quoted an unnamed US official saying he may have "snapped" after drinking alcohol illicitly.
"They said he was a madman, but how can a madman go out from headquarters? Why didn't he kill his friends there?" one village elder, who did not give his name, asked Karzai.
The lawyer for the staff sergeant accused of the killings said he is a decorated survivor from three tours of duty in Iraq. The Seattle attorney John Henry Browne said the soldier believed he would not return to a tour of duty before being sent to Afghanistan.
Originally from the US Midwest, the soldier had been injured twice in Iraq, and was loath to go to Afghanistan, Browne said. The day before the killings, he witnessed a friend having his leg blown off.
The staff sergeant was due to arrive at a detention facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, last night from Kuwait.
