KABUL, 21 October 2005 — Muslim religious leaders expressed outrage yesterday at television footage that purportedly shows US soldiers burning the bodies of two Taleban fighters to taunt other militants and warned of a possible violent anti-American backlash.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the alleged desecration and ordered an immediate independent probe. The operational commander of the US military in Afghanistan, which has launched its own criminal investigation, said the allegations, if true, would be “repugnant.”
One Muslim leader compared the video to photographs of US troops abusing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. “Abu Ghraib ruined the reputation of the Americans in Iraq and to me this is even worse,” said Faiz Mohammed, a top cleric in northern Kunduz province. “This is against Islam. Afghans will be shocked by this news. It is so humiliating. There will be very, very dangerous consequences from this.”
The last anti-American riots in Afghanistan were in May. They killed 15 people and were sparked by a magazine story — since retracted — that alleged US abuse of the Qur’an, at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
Australia’s SBS television network broadcast the video that purportedly shows US soldiers burning the bodies of the suspected Taleban fighters in the hills outside the southern village of Gonbaz, Shah Wali Kot district — an area plagued by Taleban activity. The network said the video was taken by a freelance journalist, Stephen Dupont, who told the AP he was embedded with the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade. Dupont said the burnings happened Oct. 1.
In the video, which was seen by the AP, two soldiers who spoke with American accents later broadcast taunting messages that SBS television said targeted the village, which was believed to be harboring Taleban fighters.
“They deliberately wanted to incite that much anger from the Taleban so the Taleban could attack them. ... That’s the only way they can find them,” Dupont told SBS.
The US military said the Army Criminal Investigation Division had launched a probe into “the burning of dead enemy combatant bodies under inappropriate circumstances.” “This alleged action is repugnant to our common values,” Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya said in a statement from the US base in Bagram.
“From our point of view, these are very serious allegations, and if true, very troublesome,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.
He said that an investigation would be held “and if there is, in fact, wrongdoing that was found, then those who are responsible for that wrongdoing will be held to account.”
The Afghan Defense Ministry launched its own investigation, Karzai’s spokesman, Karim Rahimi, said.
“We strongly condemn any disrespect to human bodies regardless of whether they are those of enemies or friends,” he told The Associated Press.
