The Murder of an Afghan Village

The massacre at Granai is the latest incident in a string of similar attacks by occupation forces that have claimed thousands of innocent lives. Neither the US military nor their allies plan to stop targeting villages. And the US commander who gave the orders to bomb the sleepy village in western Afghanistan has not been disciplined.

Photojournalist Guy Smallman is the only Western reporter to visit the village that was devastated by a US air attack. He questions the conclusion of the investigation into the incident by the US military.

On the evening of 4 May the people of Granai, a village in Farah province in western Afghanistan, attended evening prayers in their local mosque. It had been a long day. Many families had spent over six hours sheltering from a battle some three kilometres away between Taliban insurgents and US forces and their Afghan allies.

Fighting lasted all afternoon and only ended after US warplanes strafed Taliban positions. The battle had finished an hour and a half before the villagers began to gather in the garden of the mosque. It was dark and things had returned to normal. More