POSTED APRIL 1, 2002 (updated July 2, 2003)--
Between October 10 and December 20, 2001, U.S. bombs and missiles fell upon nine different mosques in Afghanistan, killing at least 120 innocent Afghan civilians. Mosques were hit in the provinces of Nangarhar, Kunduz, Herat, Kandahar and Paktia. The Pentagon admitted to only two 'mistakes'— one occuring on October 21 and another on November 16 in which two guided bombs went 'astray.' Witnesses in Jalalabad spoke of the Sultanpur mosque being hit during prayer time, on October 10, killing the 17 people inside.¹

In the bombing of the Qalae Shater mosque, the bomb fell over 300 feet off target [a group of parked military vehicles]. In the attack on the agricultural village of Ishaq Sulaiman outside Herat, eight or nine bombs fell near a mosque, over half a kilometer from their target, killing 20 civilians and injuring another eight as they were emerging from early evening prayers.² The mosque in the Kandahar suburb of Lungar was damaged in an attack by an AC-130 gunship.³

The mosque in eastern Kandahar was struck as part of an attack on a government building. At 10 PM on November 16 a U.S. fighter jet delivered a 500 lb. laser-guided bomb upon the Light of Koran mosque-madrassa in the outskirts of Khost, as part of an air attack seeking to assassinate a senior Taliban military leader.⁴ The Asmani Kilai mosque and 10 houses were damaged in the major U.S. bombing attack upon a convoy of elders travelling from Khost to Kabul which killed 65 civilians.⁵ The U.S. bombing attack upon the village of Mashikhel [Paktia] was inspired by reports from a local warlord seeking revenge upon an adversary.⁶ The noon-time raid killed 10 civilians and wounded another 12.

U.S. military planners and U.S. pilots are 'revealed' to have taken no particular caution to avoid hitting places of Muslim worship. For the mainstream media and the U.S. government, just as there are bodies worthy of being counted [in the cases of Milosevic's misdeeds in Kosovo, or Sadam Hussein's misdeeds in Kurdistan, or Arafat's misdeeds in Israel] and others not worthy of such consideration [in Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan], it appears that some engaged in prayer are simply unfortunate 'collateral damage' to be quickly forgotten if even noticed at all. One can only imagine the righteous indignation, lines of newsprint, hours of television talking-head outrage, and political verbiage were 'the enemy' to hit a Christian church [as has recently occurred with the Protestant International Church in Pakistan].

*The mosque in Qalae Shater, two gardens and 54 homes were finally cleared of cluster bomblets in late November by United Nations mine clearance operatives [LAT 12/1/01].

**Sixty-three people were killed in the mosque, including about half of whom were Arab nationals.

Abbreviations: FP = Frontier Post [Peshawar]; HT = Hindustan Times; Pak. Obs. = Pakistan Observer; smh = Sydney Morning Herald; AFP = Agence France-Presse; LAT = Los Angeles Times.

Footnotes

1. Richard Lloyd Parry, "Witnesses Confirm That Dozens Were Killed in Bombing," The Independent [October 13, 2001], at: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=99268

2. "US Cluster Bombs Kill Civilians," One News nzoom.com [October 26, 2001], at : http://onenews.nzoom.com/news_detail/0,1227,63993-1-9.00.html .

3. "Taleban Defiant Amid Kandahar Ruins," Indiainfo.com [October 31, 2001], at : http://news.indiainfo.com/2001/10/31/31kandahar.html

4. I have written about this campaign to assassinate Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani at : http://www.cursor.org/stories/jalaluddin.htm .

5. I have written about the Asmani Kilai bombing attack at : http://www.cursor.org/stories/ontarget.htm .

6. Christopher Johnson, "Afghani Businessman Says Warlord Told the US Army His Family Had Ties to Al-Qaeda, Resulting in Bombing Attack," Straight Goods [January 17, 2002].