Task Force 373 - Death Squad

Another vignette from the Wikileaks logs: The top secret unit of U.S. Special Forces called Task Force 373 set out on June 17, 2007, in the Patika province of Aghanistan to purposely commit a war crime. Task force 373 is a death squad organized by the NATO coalition in Afghanistan to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial. Details of more than 2,000 alleged leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a “kill or capture” list, known as Jpel for Joint Prioritized Effects List.

On that occasion, the target was a man named Abu Laith al-Libi. Task Force 373 believed he was hiding in a remote village in Patika province. The unit was armed with a new weapon known as HIMARS — High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — a pod of six missiles on the back of a small truck.

According to Pentagon war logs recently released by WikiLeaks, TF 373’s plan was to launch five rockets at targets in the village of Nangar Khel where Libi was supposedly hiding and then send in ground troops. The rockets failed to find Libi but killed six men TF 373 claimed were Taliban fighters.

Then, when troops approached the rubble that was once a school, they recorded “initial assessment of 7 x NC KIA,” which translates as “seven non-combatants killed in action.” All of them were children. One of them was still alive: “The Med TM immediately cleared debris from the mouth and performed CPR.” After 20 minutes, the child died. (WikiLeaks War Logs quoted in The Guardian, July 25)

The U.S.-led coalition issued a press release claiming that troops “had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications that there were children inside the building.” The release also claimed that Taliban fighters, who supposedly were in the compound, had used the children as human shields.

The bodies of the six “Taliban” were in a completely different building than the school where the children were found. The release suggested that coalition forces had attacked the compound because of “nefarious activity” there, when the reality was they had gone there to kill or capture Libi.

The press release made no mention at all of Libi, nor of the failure of the mission (although that was revealed later by NBC News). Crucially, it failed to record that TF 373 had fired five rockets, destroying the school and other buildings and killing seven children, before anybody fired on them. This was a mission to murder.

The internal report was marked not only “secret” but also “Noforn,” that is, not to be shared with non-U.S. members of the coalition. The wording of the report was very specific: “The knowledge that TF 373 conducted a HIMARS strike must be protected.” And it was. That is, until the recent release of 91,000 secret Pentagon cables by a whistleblower inside the U.S. intelligence establishment courtesy of Wikileaks. Bless them.