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04-08-2023, 07:34 PM
BY RIAZAT BUTT, MARTHA MENDOZA, CLAIRE GALOFARO AND JULIET LINDERMAN
Updated 12:05 PM GMT+8, August 4, 2023
The Afghan villager was afraid the American soldiers might come.
......
At the first sound of gunshots, he yelled for his wife and 10 children to take cover. His young daughter grabbed her sleeping infant sister off the bed. Their mud compound exploded, and a blast sent a huge shock through the home.
“My small sister fell away from my arms,” the girl, now a teenager, whispered, so quietly she could barely be heard above the breeze. “The wind blew her out of my hands.”
......
Today, what exactly happened that night is at the center of a bitter international custody dispute over an orphaned baby found amid the rubble. The high-profile legal battle pits an Afghan family against an American one
......
The Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross determined that the baby belonged to this Afghan villager.
......
However, a U.S. Marine attorney, Maj. Joshua Mast, believed he should get the girl instead. He insists that the child is the stateless orphan of foreign fighters who were living in an al-Qaida compound
......
Were it not for this little girl, now 4 years old, the events that began on the night of September 5, 2019, in this remote, impoverished region might have remained locked away among clandestine stories of the thousands of raids the American and Afghan militaries carried out during the long war. But once-secret documents, now filed in court records, reveal details that thrust this raid into an ongoing controversy over who the military killed when they blew down walls in the middle of the night in Afghanistan, if those people were fighters or civilians, and whether the military ever tried to find out.
......
The Mast family has submitted a summary of the raid in a federal court case ...... The summary describes how as many as six enemy fighters were killed and possibly one civilian. The only child the document mentions is the injured baby.
But survivors and villagers who pulled bodies from the rubble told The Associated Press that more than 20 people were killed that night. Among them were this local farmer, his wife and five of their children, ages 4 to 15. The villagers said that after the raid, they also found four more of the farmer’s children — three girls and a boy — covered in dirt, crying amid flames and ruins.
......
The Defense Department estimates 48,000 Afghan civilians were killed and at least 75,000 injured between 2001 and 2021, though the agency acknowledges the true toll is likely significantly higher.
......
The girl who dropped her baby sister is tormented by ghosts.
......
She could speak perfectly before the soldiers came that night, but now she stutters.
“My life is sad, my heart is sad, and I miss my parents,” she said. “I see this attack every night….it comes to me in my dreams.”
Much better to read long article at: https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-r...904dfd9a81
Updated 12:05 PM GMT+8, August 4, 2023
The Afghan villager was afraid the American soldiers might come.
......
At the first sound of gunshots, he yelled for his wife and 10 children to take cover. His young daughter grabbed her sleeping infant sister off the bed. Their mud compound exploded, and a blast sent a huge shock through the home.
“My small sister fell away from my arms,” the girl, now a teenager, whispered, so quietly she could barely be heard above the breeze. “The wind blew her out of my hands.”
......
Today, what exactly happened that night is at the center of a bitter international custody dispute over an orphaned baby found amid the rubble. The high-profile legal battle pits an Afghan family against an American one
......
The Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross determined that the baby belonged to this Afghan villager.
......
However, a U.S. Marine attorney, Maj. Joshua Mast, believed he should get the girl instead. He insists that the child is the stateless orphan of foreign fighters who were living in an al-Qaida compound
......
Were it not for this little girl, now 4 years old, the events that began on the night of September 5, 2019, in this remote, impoverished region might have remained locked away among clandestine stories of the thousands of raids the American and Afghan militaries carried out during the long war. But once-secret documents, now filed in court records, reveal details that thrust this raid into an ongoing controversy over who the military killed when they blew down walls in the middle of the night in Afghanistan, if those people were fighters or civilians, and whether the military ever tried to find out.
......
The Mast family has submitted a summary of the raid in a federal court case ...... The summary describes how as many as six enemy fighters were killed and possibly one civilian. The only child the document mentions is the injured baby.
But survivors and villagers who pulled bodies from the rubble told The Associated Press that more than 20 people were killed that night. Among them were this local farmer, his wife and five of their children, ages 4 to 15. The villagers said that after the raid, they also found four more of the farmer’s children — three girls and a boy — covered in dirt, crying amid flames and ruins.
......
The Defense Department estimates 48,000 Afghan civilians were killed and at least 75,000 injured between 2001 and 2021, though the agency acknowledges the true toll is likely significantly higher.
......
The girl who dropped her baby sister is tormented by ghosts.
......
She could speak perfectly before the soldiers came that night, but now she stutters.
“My life is sad, my heart is sad, and I miss my parents,” she said. “I see this attack every night….it comes to me in my dreams.”
Much better to read long article at: https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-r...904dfd9a81
