Dasht-i-Leili massacre
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The Dasht-i-Leili massacre occurred in December 2001 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan where between 250 and 3000 (depending on sources) Taliban prisoners were shot and/or suffocated to death in metal truck containers, while being transferred by U.S. and Northern Alliance soldiers from Kunduz to Sheberghan prison in Afghanistan.
The controversy surrounds the accounts of two individuals, filmmaker Jamie Doran and writer Robert Young Pelton who was traveling with the U.S. Special Forces attached to Abdul Rashid Dostum’s forces. Doran blames Dostum’s forces for the deaths of the Taliban prisoners. Pelton, on the other hand, completely disputes Doran’s claims.
Doran’s documentary Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death documents the evidence based largely on the work of award-winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who says he has seen video evidence of the survivors of the convoy being executed in the desert under supervision of US soldiers, but claims the video was stolen from him. Doran himself admitted in an interview with Stefan Steinberg that he in fact had absolutely no evidence that American troops were involved in the alleged shootings [1] (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/dora-j17.shtml), but believes his sources as to the validity of the massacre charges. Doran claims that Dostum is keeping the video under wraps to blackmail the United States into keeping him in power, although he has no evidence for this claim.
Pelton traveled to Afghanistan about a month before Dasht-i-Leili, while on assignment for National Geographic and CNN. He says that Dostum went out of his way, even defying the U.S., to ensure the safety of the roughly 10,000 Taliban fighters who surrendered in and around Kunduz. "We (the U.S. and Northern Alliance) could have wiped out every Talib on earth and no one would have cared," Pelton says. "There is no cover-up because nothing happened." Pelton’s dispute with Doran is that he is accusing the Green Berets of war crimes murder without any direct evidence. Pelton also says that if Doran will provide him with pictures or video of any US soldier shooting any unarmed Taliban prisoner, that Pelton would personally identify that soldier. [2] (http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20030204) He also observed and photographed US Special Force’s medics performing first aid on the wounded Taliban forces.
Pelton concedes that roughly 250 Taliban soldiers did suffocate to death but believes that the confinement was necessary because many of the Taliban forces were still armed and could not be trusted. Pelton argues that any bodies outside of the 250 Taliban fighters who did die, are likely to be some of the estimated 2,000 Talibs allegedly shot by commander Taliban commander Abdul Malik in 1997 and/or the 10,000 people of the Hazara tribe killed under Taliban rule.
The Vermont-based Physicians for Human Rights has tried to unearth evidence of Doran's allegations in Mazar, but haven't haven't found any [3] (http://www.phrusa.org/research/afghanistan/report_graves.html).
External link
- Robert Young Pelton responds to Dasht-i-Leili story (http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20030204)
- Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death (http://www.acftv.com/archive/article.asp?archive_id=1) by Jamie Doran.
- Interview on the film with Jamie Doran (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/26/1632226&mode=thread&tid=25)