WASHINGTON — The 14 or more Afghans killed by U.S. Army forces in a Jan. 23 commando raid were neither al-Qaida terrorists nor their Taliban supporters as first believed, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.
Providing the initial results of a military review of the raid on two compounds at Hazar Qadam, Rumsfeld defended the U.S. forces, arguing the Americans took aim only after being fired upon.
"Clearly, in retrospect, that's unfortunate," Rumsfeld said of the deaths. "On the other hand, one cannot fault the people who fired back in self-defense."
The commander of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks, ordered an investigation into the raid after the new Afghan government said some of those killed and captured were not enemy fighters but officials loyal to interim leader Hamid Karzai.
An unclassified executive summary of that investigation's results said 16 Afghans were killed in the raid. Rumsfeld had put the number at 14.
Several weeks ago, the Pentagon acknowledged that 27 people had been wrongly captured in the raid. They were released after being held and questioned following the raid.
Asked if the raid was a mistake, Rumsfeld said: "It is no mistake at all, if you're fired on, to fire back. We expect people to defend themselves."
Rumsfeld said Afghans inside one of the compounds approached by U.S. forces did not fire back and were taken into custody.
The executive summary obtained by The Associated Press said some Afghans at that compound did resist.
"Only those that shot at or clearly threatened U.S. forces were engaged, resulting in only two Afghanis killed," the report said.
At the second compound, an Afghan saw the approaching U.S. soldiers and alerted those inside, who began firing at the American troops, the report said. The U.S. soldiers returned fire, killing 14 at the second compound, the report said.
Some local Afghans had reported finding bodies with their hands bound with the plastic handcuffs U.S. troops use. Rumsfeld and the report said no one was bound and then shot. They said U.S. troops often bind the hands of people who are wounded to make sure they do not pose a threat.
Rumsfeld disputed the notion that an error had been made in the intelligence provided to U.S. forces before the raid. The information was gathered over several weeks by U.S. officials and was "persuasive and compelling," indicating that al-Qaida and Taliban might be inside the compounds, Rumsfeld said.
He said that to his knowledge, U.S. officials had relied on their own intelligence — not information provided by feuding local Afghan warlords — to determine that the compound might hold al-Qaida and Taliban.
Rumsfeld said American forces looking into the incident had determined the individuals killed and captured in the raid were Afghans associated with a local ruler.
The struggle to establish order and peace in post-Taliban Afghanistan, meanwhile, came up against a new test when gunmen opened fire on a British patrol in the capital, Kabul, and the British returned fire, a peacekeepers' spokesman said Thursday. It was the second such incident in less than a week.
Success in the quest for stability largely depends on whether the interim government can rein in the ethnic, tribal and personal rivalries that have riveted the Central Asian nation of 24 million people for more than two decades.
In northern Afghanistan thousands of Afghans were fleeing hunger, drought and violence, and Karzai moved Thursday to play down apparent rifts in his new government.
The French aid organization Doctors Without Borders issued an urgent appeal Thursday for more food aid in northern Afghanistan, saying malnutrition, mortality rates and the number of displaced people are all rising sharply.
The CIA, meanwhile, warned the seeds are present for renewed civil war.
Fierce competition among rival warlords raises the prospect of renewed civil war, although probably not in the near term, according to a classified Central Intelligence Agency analysis.
The classified report said that while much of the country has been fairly stable since the Taliban's fall from power, tensions between ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks in northern Afghanistan and in areas where no leader has emerged represent a danger, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will explore ways to shore up security in Afghanistan on a trip to Britain and Germany beginning this weekend, diplomatic sources said Thursday.
"The big question on his mind is how to deal with the wider security problem in Afghanistan. There is considerable concern that security is going to get worse, not better, in the months to come," said an envoy familiar with Annan's plans for the trip.
Thousands of ethnic Pashtuns are fleeing northern Afghanistan, claiming that anti-Taliban commanders have been inciting people to loot their homes and, in some cases, kill them, said U.N. spokesman Yusuf Hassan.
The French aid organization Doctors Without Borders issued an urgent appeal Thursday for more food aid in northern Afghanistan, saying malnutrition, mortality rates and the number of displaced people are all rising sharply.
The struggle to establish order and peace in post-Taliban Afghanistan came up against a new test when gunmen opened fire on a British patrol in the capital, Kabul, and the British returned fire, a peacekeepers' spokesman said Thursday. It was the second such incident in less than a week.
Success in the quest for stability largely depends on whether the interim government can rein in the ethnic, tribal and personal rivalries that have riveted the Central Asian nation of 24 million people for more than two decades.
The cohesion of the government itself came into question this week after interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai accused senior members of his own administration of assassinating aviation minister Abdul Rahman during a riot last week among would-be Islamic pilgrims at the Kabul airport.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Abdullah publicly disavowed Karzai's version of events, saying the angry mob, not government conspirators, killed Rahman. Both Karzai and Abdullah have sought to quell media speculation of a rift inside the government.
The Cabinet is "extremely united," Karzai told Associated Press Television News.
Yet he did not back away from his initial claim of a conspiracy in Rahman's killing.
"The investigation is going on. We know who did it," he said.
In recent days about 20,000 Afghans, mostly people fleeing drought, hunger and ethnic strife, have fled to Chaman, a crossing point on the Afghan-Pakistani border, said Hassan, the U.N. spokesman.
"It is a very disturbing picture of gross human rights violations," he said. Hassan did not give a breakdown of how many were fleeing ethnic tensions and how many were seeking food.
The Taliban, who were ousted from power last year, were dominated by Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group. The U.S.-backed northern alliance was largely Tajik and Uzbek.
People fleeing northern Afghanistan "say that commanders in those areas are instigating the locals to rob them and kill and harass the Pashtun population," Hassan said.
The United Nations has complained to the interim government, Hassan said, but "many of those areas are areas where there is no national authority."
Large parts of Afghanistan are controlled by local warlords. The national government has no army.
Fierce competition among rival warlords raises the prospect of renewed civil war, although probably not in the near term, according to a classified Central Intelligence Agency analysis.
The classified report said that while much of the country has been fairly stable since the Taliban's fall from power, tensions between ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks in northern Afghanistan and in areas where no leader has emerged represent a danger, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Rumsfeld disputed the notion that an error had been made in the intelligence provided to U.S. forces before the raid. The information was gathered over several weeks by U.S. officials and was "persuasive and compelling," indicating that al-Qaida and Taliban might be inside the compounds, Rumsfeld said.
He said that to his knowledge, U.S. officials had relied on their own intelligence — not information provided by feuding local Afghan warlords — to determine that the compound might hold al-Qaida and Taliban.
Rumsfeld said American forces looking into the incident had determined the individuals killed and captured in the raid were Afghans associated with a local ruler.
The raid on the two compounds took place about 60 miles north of Kandahar in the Hazar Qadam Valley village of Khas Uruzgan.
"My impression is that they did their jobs, and it is a difficult situation that they're dealing with, and they used good judgment throughout the process," Rumsfeld said of those involved in the incident.
None would be disciplined, he added.
"Why would there be? I can't imagine why there would be any," he said, adding at another point, "I don't think it is an error. I think it's just a fact that circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan are difficult."
Pentagon officials have said previously that the men inside the compound "were not wearing uniforms, were carrying weapons and they fired upon U.S. forces in uniform." One U.S. soldier suffered a bullet wound in the ankle during the operation.
Local Afghans say some of those killed were anti-Taliban forces loyal to Karzai, and that among those arrested were a police chief, his deputy and members of a district council.
U.S. forces said they found a large cache of weapons. Some Afghans say Taliban renegades were handing over weapons to the new government at the site.