The Country Where Nothing Happened

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the bombing of Afghanistan. As I've written about the 9/11 mass murder, it is only fair I write about the Afghan victims. More civilians were killed in the bombing of Afghanistan than 9/11. But what makes this tragedy unheard of is because the victims weren't priveleged Westerners or whites or Americans. This is both advantageous and disadvantageous; advantageous because their country is not in a positition to practise hubris and go about warning and carpet-bombing the United States (which is a good thing from a human perspective), and disadvantageous because their lives count for nothing. Noam Chomsky wrote:

There had been no interest in this before September 11, or even in the month that followed. A week after the bombing began, the president reiterated that U.S. forces “would attack Afghanistan ‘for as long as it takes’ to destroy the Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, but he offered to reconsider the military assault on Afghanistan if the country’s ruling Taliban would surrender Mr. bin Laden”; “If you cough him up and his people today, then we’ll reconsider what we are doing to your country,” the president declared: “You still have a second chance.”

John Pilger, the great journalist, who gave us the harrowing truth Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq on the criminal economic sanctions imposed on the people of Iraq by the brutal leaders of the United States and Britain, records the life of one such victim of war in his documentary on the "war on terror" called Breaking the Silence, an Afghan lady named Orifa who lost most of her family, including her husband. A five hundred pound destroyed her modern stone house. No flag or vigils for them. And as Orifa sits with her fearful children outside, homeless and cold, no one will talk about her. May Allah raise the meek like Orifa to the highest heaven on the Last Day and reunite them with their families and may He reunite the 9/11 dead with their missing families.

The following is the lyrics to the song The Village Where Nothing Happened by protest singer David Rovics based on actual events described by Richard Lloyd Parry about the fate of an Afghan town called Kama Ado:

The Army commander spooke to the media
He said, "This is a nation of laws
"We do not target civilians
"And we only bomb with cause"
And he said as he looked into the camera
With a cold, bone-chilling stare
"As for the village of Kama Ado
"Nothing happened there"

In the village where nothing happened
Most people had risen from bed
Women were preparing to cook
And make sure every mouth would be fed
Just before the beginning of Ramadan
Water was set out to boil
Little fires were heating tin kettles
Upon the dry Afghan soil

In the village where nothing happened
Children played in the street
Men were bending in prayer
Some with no shoes on their feet
It was another day like so many
That had gone down before
And nobody told Kama Ado
Just what lay in store

In the village where nothing happened
Nobody knew
That this place would be changed forever
By an American B-52
The bombs fell all around them
So many a deafening blast
And the people of Kama Ado
Learned that life can end so fast

In the village where nothing happened
The houses collapsed in the morn
Not one terrorist died there
But maybe some were born
In the village of Kama Ado
There are no underground caves
There's just rubble and dust and craters
And 115 new graves