THE FARMER'S TALE
Riazullah from Chapria Marnu spoke next. Fifteen days previously, three famers in Riazullah's area had been working to irrigate their wheat field. It was early afternoon, about 3:30 p.m. One of the men was only eighteen - he had been married for five months. The other two farmers were in their mid-forties. Their names were Shams Ulrahman, Khadeem and Miragah, and Miragah's two little daughters were with them.
Eleven NATO tanks arrived. One tank fired missiles which killed the three men and the two little girls. "What can we do?" asked Riazullah. "We are caught between the Taliban and the internationals. Our local government does not help us."
THE
STORY OF U.S./NATO OCCUPATION
" All of us keep asking why the internationals kill us," said Jamaludeen. "One reason seems to be that they don't differentiate between people. The soldiers fear any bearded Afghan who wears a turban and traditional clothes. But why would they kill children? It seems they have a mission. They are told to go and get the Taliban. When they go out in their planes and their tanks and their helicopters, they need to be killing, and then they can report that they have completed their mission."
These are the stories being told here. NATO and its constituent nations may have other accounts to give of themselves, but they aren't telling them very convincingly, or well. The stories told by bomb blasts or by shouting home-invading soldiers drown out other competing sentiments and seem to represent all that the U.S./NATO occupiers ever came here to say. We who live in countries that support NATO, that tolerate this occupation, bear responsibility to hear the tales told by Afghans who are trapped by our war of choice. These tales are part of our history now, and this history isn't popular in Afghanistan. It doesn't play well when the U.S. and NATO forces state that we came here because of terrorism, because of a toll in lost civilian lives already exceeded in Afghanistan during just the first three months of a decade-long war -- that we came in pious concern over precious stories that should not be cut short.
Photo caption: Twelve children killed in the Kunar province, April 2013
Photo credit: Namatullah Karyab for The New York Times(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).