22 People Killed by U.S. Airstrike on Hospital in Afghanistan

By Kathy Kelly

Before the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing in Iraq, a group of activists living in Baghdad would regularly go to city sites that were crucial for maintaining health and well-being in Baghdad. These sites included hospitals, electrical facilities, water purification plants, and schools. The activists would then string large vinyl banners between the trees outside these buildings that read: “To Bomb This Site Would Be A War Crime.”  At the time, we encouraged people in U.S. cities to do the same, trying to build empathy for people trapped in Iraq, anticipating a terrible aerial bombing.

Tragically, sadly, the banners must again condemn war crimes, this time echoing international outcry because in an hour of airstrikes [on October 3rd], the U.S. repeatedly bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, a facility that served the fifth largest city in Afghanistan and the surrounding region.

Notification Seemingly Ignored

U.S./NATO forces carried out the airstrike at about 2 a.m. on October 3. Doctors Without Borders had already notified the U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces of their geographical (GPS) coordinates to clarify that their compound, the size of a football field, was a hospital.  When the first bombs hit, medical staff immediately phoned NATO headquarters to report the strike on its facility and yet strikes continued at 15-minute intervals until 3:15 a.m., killing 22 people. Twelve of the dead were medical staff; 10 were patients, and three of the patients were children. At least 37 more people were injured.  One survivor said that the first section of the hospital hit was the Intensive Care Unit.

“Patients were burning in their beds,” said one nurse, an eyewitness to the ICU attack. “There are no words for how terrible it was.”  The U.S. airstrikes continued, even after the Doctors Without Borders officials had notified the U.S., NATO and Afghan military that the warplanes were attacking the hospital.

Taliban forces do not have air power, and the Afghan Air Force fleet is subordinate to the U.S., so it was patently clear that the U.S. had committed a war crime.

Investigations and Apologies

The U.S. military has said that the matter is under investigation.  They have offered yet another in an endless train of somber apologies. They say that they are feeling families’ pain, but will likely excuse involved decision makers, just as they have in the past.

Doctors Without Borders has demanded a transparent, independent investigation, assembled by a legitimate international body and without direct involvement by the U.S. or by any other warring party in the Afghan conflict—in other words, normal proper judicial protocol.  If such an investigation occurs and is able to confirm that this was a deliberate or else a murderously neglectful war crime, how many Americans will ever learn of the verdict?

One investigation the U.S. has failed to carry out would tell it how much Kunduz needed this hospital. The U.S. could investigate SIGAR reports (“Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction”) numbering Afghanistan’s “U.S.-funded health care facilities,” allegedly funded through USAID, which cannot even be located. There are 189 alleged locations at whose coordinates there are demonstrably no buildings within 400 feet. In their June 25 letter they astoundingly write, “My office’s initial analysis of USAID data and geospatial imagery has led us to question whether USAID has accurate location information for 510—nearly 80 percent—of the 641 health care facilities funded by the PCH program.” It notes that six of the “Afghan” facilities are actually located in Pakistan, six in Tajikistan, and one in the Mediterranean Sea.

It seems we have created yet another ghost hospital, not out of thin air this time but from the walls of a desperately needed facility, which are now charred rubble, from which the bodies of staff and patients have been exhumed. With the hospital lost to a terrified community, the ghosts of this attack are, again, beyond anyone’s ability to number.  In the week leading up to this attack, its staff had treated 345 wounded people, 59 of them children.

Now the region has no hospital at all and the people have nowhere to go.

Brute Force of the U.S. “Warlords”

The U.S. has long shown itself the most formidable warlord fighting in Afghanistan, setting an example of brute force that frightens rural people who wonder to whom they can turn for protection.  In July of 2015, U.S. bomber jets attacked an Afghan army facility in the Logar Province, killing 10 soldiers. The Pentagon said this incident would likewise be under investigation.  No public conclusion of the investigation seems ever to have been issued.  There is not always even an apology.

This was a massacre, whether one of carelessness or of hate.   One way to join the outcry against it, demanding not just an inquiry, but also an end to all U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, would be to assemble in front of health care facilities, hospitals or trauma units, carrying signage that says, “To Bomb This Place Would Be a War Crime.” Invite hospital personnel to join the assembly, notify local media, and hold an additional sign that says, “The Same Is True in Afghanistan.”

We should affirm the Afghans’ right to medical care and safety. The U.S. should offer investigators unimpeded access to the decision makers in this attack and pay to reconstruct the hospital with reparations for suffering caused throughout these fourteen years of war and cruelly manufactured chaos. Finally, and for the sake of future generations, we should take hold of our runaway empire and make it a nation we can restrain from committing the fathomlessly obscene atrocity that is war.Φ

This article first appeared on Telesur.

Kathy Kelly, syndicated by PeaceVoice, co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). While in Afghanistan, she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers  (ourjourneytosmile.com).