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| Mohammed Aman and Mohammed Anwar |
Ismail Aman set out from Kabul last week to join his family in nearby Wardak province for the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Next day Aman lay bleeding in his family guest room, alongside two of his brothers, all shot dead by U.S. special forces who were on the hunt for 'a Taliban leader'. Their deaths sparked a vitriolic anti-American protest and generated a backlash against the dramatic spike in special forces raids, which have become a crucial element of President Barack Obama's strategy in Afghanistan. NATO officials admitted this week that special forces are taking part in 1,000 operations in Afghanistan each month, a threefold increase over last year. Omid Ali, 21, said his school friend Aman had nothing to do with the Taliban . "I want to say to President Obama: Afghanistan doesn't have hostility towards foreign forces, but, these mistakes, that is how they will be defeated in Afghanistan."
'Standard Raid'
American military officials said that Aman's shooting was no mistake. The 25-year-old student was shot as he was 'reaching for an AK-47' when the U.S. special forces team burst into the tiny guest room where he was sleeping with his brothers at the family compound, according to an account of the raid provided by the American military. As far as the U.S. military perspective is concerned, the raid followed the standard procedures:
But the military force produced no weapons from the compound. In its initial news release on the operation, the U.S.-led military coalition said the assault forces had apprehended a key Taliban commander at a nearby compound.
"This capture will severely degrade Taliban operations in the Tangi and Shehkabad district," U.S.Army Col. Rafael Torres, a spokesman for the military coalition, said the day after the raid. "Now one less criminal is on the streets endangering Afghan civilians with his indiscriminate IED attacks," a reference to improvised explosive devices, as the military calls homemade bombs. Now, however, NATO military officials say they aren't even certain they have the right man.
"Although initially we believed we captured an insurgent commander at one of the compounds, we have not been able to definitively determine that person's identity," said oneNATO official who discussed the operation only on the condition that he not be identified, because of the sensitivity of the secret operations.
The Aman family's account differs on the most significant points.
Relatives said that Ismail Aman and 23-year-old Buranullah, an earth studies major at Kabul University, had returned from Kabul that morning to celebrate Ramadan with their family. After dinner, relatives said, Ismail and Buranullah studied for exams in the guest room. Around 1:30 a.m., U.S. soldiers burst through the door and started firing, said Wahidullah, 13, who said he was sleeping in the room with his three older brothers. Wahidullah said he heard no call to come outside before the shooting started. U.S. military officials said this week that Wahidullah wasn't in the room and couldn't have known what happened during the shooting.
Photographs of the compound, which the family provided and the U.S. military verified, show three distinct bloodstains on the floor where the brothers were killed. The U.S. military said all three brothers "showed hostile intent towards the assault force." After killing the first brother, the military said, the assault force attempted to get the other two to come out peacefully before it shot them in succession as they tried to grab the weapon. It was only after confronting the brothers in the guest room, said family members who were in the compound that night, that the assault force called in Pashto for people to come out.
One of those interrogated during the raid was Mohammed Aman, a 29-year-old brother who was sleeping in another part of the house. While Mohammed Aman's hands were cuffed and a hood was over his face, he said, his Afghan interrogator slapped him while asking him about Taliban leaders in the village. "They asked me, 'Who are the Taliban sleeping in your room?'" Mohammad Aman said during an interview in Kabul before a memorial service for his brothers.
When the soldiers said that they'd found a weapon in the compound, Aman told his interrogator to show it to him. The soldiers never produced the gun, he said. The brothers' shootings unleashed a protest in the area. Hundreds of Afghans blocked the main road as they shouted anti-American slogans.
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