Support for compensating innocent Afghan
victims grows
It was 6 oclock on a mid-autumn morning last year when a
bomb hit Roala Sahibdads house, located in the Qula Khater neighborhood
of Kabul, Afghanistan. Her husband and oldest son were at the mosque, but she
and three of the children -- Fareshta, Sadjia and Ali Sajad -- were home.
Roalas husband returned to find his house totally destroyed, his wife
bleeding from the head and only one of the children, 3-year-old Sadija, still
alive. Roala spent 12 days in the hospital and then moved into her
brothers house, where she has been living for the past eight months.
Bygones are bygones, she said. But she wants to have a
home where she can raise her 3-year-old, who still cries a lot, she said.
Roala was one of several women who told her story during a meeting
last month at Kabul Hospital between American religious leaders and family
members of victims of U.S. bombing. Seven Catholics were part of the 19-member
delegation, including Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit; David
Robinson, president of Pax Christi USA; and Marie Dennis with Maryknolls
Office for Global Concerns. The event was part of an ongoing effort to
emphasize the need for compensation of innocent Afghan war victims.
Initiated last January, the campaign for an Afghan Victims Fund is
spearheaded by Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights
organization, and a group of relatives of Sept. 11 victims known as Peaceful
Tomorrows. Both groups say such a fund would provide badly needed help to
people in dire conditions while improving the United States image
internationally.
Members of Peaceful Tomorrows have visited Afghanistan twice and
met with family members of U.S. bombing victims. Rita Lasar, whose brother Abe
Zelmonowitz died in the World Trade Center, visited Kabul last January.
Ever since I returned from Afghanistan and saw the devastation there and
met with families who, like I, lost loved ones, we have been trying to get
Congress to establish an Afghan Victims Fund, Lasar said.
Unfortunately, it seems that all we are creating is more Afghan
victims.
Last months U.S. air attack on an Afghan wedding party in
the village of Kakarak, which killed 40 civilians and injured 100, provided new
impetus to the call for U.S. humanitarian aid to victims. At a mid-July news
conference in Washington, Medea Benjamin, founding director of Global Exchange,
urged the government to assist bombing victims and respond to compensation
claims already submitted.
A State Department spokesman said the U.S. government is not going
to give money to family members of the victims from Kakarak, located in Uruzgan
province. But we are providing assistance to inhabitants of the area
affected, through the U.S. Agency for International Development for
educational and agricultural development in Uruzgan, he told NCR.
Major Ted Wadsworth, spokesman for the Department of Defense, said
he was unaware of the call for an Afghan Victims Fund, but said the Department
of Defense is engaged in an inter-agency discussion on the issue of
whether or not to provide compensations.
It is a well-established principle of international law that
nations are not liable to compensate civilians killed in the normal conduct of
war, Wadsworth said.
Calls for creating an Afghan Victims Fund seem to be gaining
popular support. According to a June poll by Zogby International, 69 percent of
Americans believe the United States should aid Afghan war victims as a gesture
of goodwill. Forty members of Congress signed a letter May 29 endorsing the
allocation of $20 million dollars for an Afghan Victims Fund in next
years budget.
Global Exchange proposes that the U.S. government give $10,000 to
each Afghan who has lost a family member or property, or is in need of medical
care because of U.S. bombing. A conservative estimate of 2,000 civilian deaths
from the war puts the total for the recommended fund at $20 million,
approximately two-thirds the cost for one day of bombing.
-- Claire Schaeffer-Duffy
National Catholic Reporter, August 2,
2002
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