This government is not in any sense an ally of the United States. We should get all of our troops out of Afghanistan immediately. Actually, that should have been done years ago.
“Afghan govt offers 2009 AFP photo as ‘evidence’ of 2014 airstrike,” by Ben Sheppard for AFP, January 26 (thanks to Lookmann):
The presidential palace gave journalists a dossier compiled by a fact-finding team sent by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to Parwan province to gather evidence on the airstrike on January 15.
Among the 14 photographs in the dossier is an AFP image taken on September 4, 2009 of a funeral in Kunduz province after a US airstrike that destroyed two fuel tankers, killing at least 70 civilians.
“We are taking this issue very seriously to find out who put this photograph in the dossier, which was made by several government departments,” Aimal Faizi, spokesman for President Karzai, told AFP.
“There is no lack of evidence about the operation from at least ten other photos and matching video in the dossier, as well as from the families and survivors.”
Faizi did not deny the photograph was misrepresented, but he accused The New York Times, which first investigated the error, of running a “politically motivated story to undermine general opinion about this incident”.
“The truth is there — that there were civilian casualties, houses were destroyed and that this was a unilateral operation and not in cooperation with local authorities,” he said.
The New York Times on Sunday added that some of the material in the dossier was posted on a Taliban website two days before the government began handing it out.
It also raised questions over the authenticity of at least one other photograph in the dossier.
Karzai and the US-led NATO coalition both confirm there were civilian casualties in the joint Afghan-US operation on Taliban-held villages in Parwan province.
NATO said “several” civilians died during the 24-hour operation, without giving details, while Karzai backed the investigation team’s conclusion that 12 civilians died.
Parwan governor Basir Salangi told AFP last week that six civilians had died and he accused the head of the investigation team, MP Abdul Satar Khawasi, of being a “treacherous liar” for exaggerating the death toll.
Civilian casualties have been one of the most sensitive issues of the 13-year military intervention in Afghanistan, and Karzai has often used misguided airstrikes to berate foreign countries and stir public anger.
He has focused on the Parwan deaths to castigate Washington as ties between the two allies fray badly over stalled negotiations on a deal to allow some US troops to remain in the country after 2014.
He has also angered western diplomats by drawing parallels between the Parwan casualties and a Taliban attack on a restaurant in Kabul on January 17 in which 21 people, including 13 foreigners, were killed.
At a government-organised press conference in Kabul on Sunday, families of the civilian victims of the Parwan operation denied that the photograph was from 2009 and insisted it was of a funeral after the attack 10 days ago.
Also on Sunday, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a military bus in Kabul killing two military officers and two civilians, while a roadside bomb in Helmand province killed six civilians.

Mo-Blows says
The Afghans have proven themselves time and time again to be the most duplicitous and unworthy of so called ” Allies”.
Pull out of that shit hole and cut off all aid and military contracts .
Let them resume their proud barbaric tribal 7th century practices and fall further and further behind the civilized world.
They simply are not worth another drop of blood being spilled to try and elevate these cavemen above the primitive existence they seem to so enjoy.
They don’t want it.
mortimer says
Backward, barbaric, savage, illiterate, misogynistic, xenophobic, tribal, clannish, paranoid, uncivilized, insincere, venal, crafty, severely inbred.
Andy says
Mortimer and Mo-blows covered it already. I have nothing to add.
gravenimage says
Afghan government offers 2009 AFP photo as “evidence” of 2014 U.S. airstrike
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And why, exactly, do we even pretend that Karzai is an ally?
More:
The New York Times on Sunday added that some of the material in the dossier was posted on a Taliban website two days before the government began handing it out.
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More of their playing footsie with the Taliban—of course, this is further muddled because *we* are trying to “negotiate” with the Taliban, as well…
The sooner we are out of Afghanistan, the better.
Tzipporah says
Is this why we are in Afganistan? I got this off the Internet
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-is-worth-waging-afghanistan-s-vast-reserves-of-minerals-and-natural-gas/19769
In addition to its vast mineral and gas reserves, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the World’s supply of opium which is used to produce grade 4 heroin.
US military bases in Afghanistan are also intent upon protecting the multibillion narcotics trade. Narcotics, at present, constitutes the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy.
The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year.
“The highest concentration of NATO servicemen in Afghanistan is being accompanied with the highest concentration of opium poppy, …. That situation causes doubts about the anti-terrorist mission and leads to the conclusion about catastrophic consequences of the eight-year stay [of coalition forces] in Afghanistan,” (Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov, January 2010)
Our politicians should all be required to be tested for drugs and mental health!!
gravenimage says
Tzipporah wrote:
Is this why we are in Afganistan? I got this off the Internet
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-is-worth-waging-afghanistan-s-vast-reserves-of-minerals-and-natural-gas/19769
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*No*. We initially went into Afghanistan to take out the Taliban who were offering bin Laden haven. After that, we foolishly got caught up in attempting to ‘nation build’.
The fact is that we have lost *billions* in Afghanistan—we aren’t making money off any natural resources there.
More:
In addition to its vast mineral and gas reserves, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the World’s supply of opium which is used to produce grade 4 heroin.
US military bases in Afghanistan are also intent upon protecting the multibillion narcotics trade.
The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year.
………………………………………..
What absolute crap. The Taliban is using this to fund Jihad. The idea that the Americans are there to support the narco-trade is base calumny.
Also, the heroin trade in Afghanistan predates 1979 by centuries.
That you are posting Russian propaganda here is simply ludicrous.
fair_dinkum says
not surprised. childlike in their ignorance.