Any comments. You get tickled when you read reports about European nations banning Muslim headgear etc. Are you tickled with this one?
Afghans outraged over alleged U.S. burning of bodies
October 21, 2005
BY DANIEL COONEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Muslim clerics expressed outrage Thursday and warned of a possible violent anti-U.S. backlash from TV footage that appears to show U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters.
"Abu Ghraib ruined the reputation of the Americans in Iraq, and to me, this is even worse," said Faiz Mohammed, a top cleric in northern Kunduz province. "This is against Islam. ... There will be very, very dangerous consequences from this."
Cremating bodies is banned under Islam.
President Hamid Karzai ordered an inquiry, and the U.S. military said the Army Criminal Investigation Command was looking into the matter.
"This alleged action is repugnant to our common values," Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, operational commander of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, said.
Worried about the potential for anti-U.S. feelings, the State Department said it instructed U.S. embassies around the world to tell local governments that the reported abuse didn't reflect U.S. values.
In Afghanistan, anger was evident in the streets.
"If they continue to carry out such actions against us, our people will change their policy and react with the same policy against them," said Mehrajuddin of Kabul, who like many Afghans uses only one name.
Another man in the capital, Zahidullah, said the report was similar to those of atrocities committed by Soviet troops, who were driven out of Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade of occupation. He said the same could happen to U.S. forces.
"Their future will be like the Russians," Zahidullah said.
Australia's SBS TV network broadcast the video purportedly showing soldiers burning the bodies of two suspected Taliban fighters in hills outside Gonbaz village in the southern Shah Wali Kot district -- an area of Taliban activity considered by local security forces as too dangerous to venture into unless accompanied by U.S. troops.
The network said the video was taken by freelance journalist Stephen Dupont. Dupont, who told the Associated Press he was embedded with the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, said the burnings happened Oct. 1. He told SBS that U.S. soldiers in a psychological operations unit later broadcast taunting messages aimed at the village, which was believed to be harboring Taliban fighters.
Said Dupont: "They deliberately wanted to incite that much anger from the Taliban so the Taliban could attack them. ... That's the only way they can find them."
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