Author: Abu Raef
Colonialism (19th part)
Attack on Abdul Aziz’s house in Shash Abeh, Khashrood
British criminal soldiers, in continuation of their attacks and war crimes, this time attacked a house in “Shash Abe” village of “Khashroud” district of Nimruz province and martyred an innocent couple and seriously injured their two children.
In the evening of August 6, 2012, Abdul Aziz’s family had their last collective dinner. That night was the 18th night of Ramadan, the holy month in which Muslims fast and worship more than other months. On that day, everything went normally, each family member was busy with his assigned tasks. Hussain, the son of Abdul Aziz, who had a simple and ordinary shop, opened it, his wife Ruqiya was busy with household chores with her two children, and one of the neighbors had slaughtered a goat to prepare the food for Iftar.
On that day, Abdul Aziz’s family hosted two unknown guests and entertained them. Hosting uninvited guests in Afghanistan is a normal and longstanding tradition. After sunset, two guests were given food and they ate their food separately. They left at ten o’clock without any special incident.
That night, the weather was hot, and the family ate outside. After eating dinner, Abdul Aziz, who was tired from his daily work, got up and said he was going to sleep. Hussain’s family also made arrangements for rest. Hossein had two children, Imran, three years old, and his brother Bilal, one and a half years old. The two children, now grown up, do not remember anything about the events of that night; they only remember that their father dragged their mattresses into the yard; because the warmth of the air in the room was suffocating, and they had fallen asleep under the stars with their parents for the last time.
At that time, in 2012, more than a decade has passed since the beginning of the occupation of Afghanistan and the beginning of the invasion of the United States and its allies. The special forces of the main countries of the international alliance known as NATO were regularly conducting deliberate detention operations, also known as “kill/capture missions.” These forces usually flew in airplanes after dark and raided people’s houses for false reasons. Night operations of the British forces were usually carried out by the SAS (Special Air Service), which were highly respected special units of the British Army and Royal Navy.
But the British people were not aware that these forces are engaged in killing innocent people and oppressing them, and these reports were sent to the British army centers many times. One of these raids and “kill/capture” attacks took place in the house of Abdul Aziz’s family in Khashrood district of Nimroz province. Around three in the morning, British military planes arrived from the dark midday sky and landed outside the village. Special forces landed on the ground and moved towards the family’s sleeping area. Abdul Aziz woke up with the first bullet shot, and within a few minutes, foreign soldiers were in his room and pushed him to the ground, handcuffed him, and blindfolded him.
Abdul Aziz says: I asked them to let me go to the place where my son and daughter-in-law and their children were sleeping. I could hear my two daughters screaming for help. No one was helping them. I could not do anything for my children. There was chaos in this country house. According to Abdul Aziz, foreign soldiers blindfolded him, beat him, and interrogated him. He said the foreign soldiers were asking him about the guests who had come to the house earlier that day. He was kept inside with his eyes closed during that time.
At the same time, the special forces went to Abdul Aziz’s neighbor’s house. A man without a wife named Lal Mohammad lived there with his six sons and three daughters. One of Lal Mohammad’s sons, named Mohammad, told the BBC investigation team that the attackers took him and his brothers out and detained them.
As soon as the foreign occupying forces left the village, it was several hours later that Abdul Aziz was able to remove his blindfold and go to the place where Hussain, Ruqiya, and their two children were sleeping in the morning light. Abdul Aziz says that when I went there, I saw blood everywhere; sheets and mattresses were stained with blood. According to the members of both families who saw the bodies of Hussain and his wife Ruqiya, both of them were hit by a bullet in the head. Imran and Bilal’s bed was bloody, but they were not there.
Muhammad, who was previously dragged from his house by the aggressors, returned to his house after the aggressors left; the last time he saw in this house that the foreign forces had captured his brothers, he said that his brother Muhammad Wali, 26 years old, and Mohammad Juma, 28 years old, were found inside the house, with Mohammad Juma killed by a bullet in the head.
Other family members said the two had been shot in the head at close range, and an image of Mohammed Wali’s body, seen by the investigative team, appeared to show a wound on his head. The account Muhammad provides appears to reflect a trend of killings that had already raised suspicions among senior Special Forces officers. “I swear to God, my brothers were farmers; they worked from morning to night,” he told the research team. They had no connection with anyone. They were killed for no reason.
According to the family of Abdul Aziz, whose son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren were martyred and wounded in this deadly attack, these young parents were martyred in their bed; it is not known whether they woke up before the martyrdom or not. At first, the family considered Imran and Bilal dead, but these children were taken outside by the aggressors. One-year-old Bilal was hit by a bullet in the face and shoulder, and three-year-old Imran was wounded by a bullet in the abdomen. Interestingly, this deadly military attack was never reported to the British Military Police, and no one outside the British Special Forces was investigated. The officer who was responsible for this attack has said that there is no evidence to prove a war crime, and the conditions of the operation justify the use of lethal force! He said: “The laws of engagement have been properly followed, despite the occasional tragic events that are unfortunately inevitable during war.”
These justifications of the aggressor officer, while there were no weapons in the house of Abdul Aziz and his son and wife, as well as the family of Muhammad, and no report was submitted by the British Ministry of Defense on this matter. Another former special force officer, who was in the Sheshabe region at the time of this attack, said: Instead of going into the depth of what happened and correcting criminal behavior, CIRs become a way to clear an incident of any wrongdoing.
In the same morning, planes took the injured Bilal and Imran to the military base. They took Hussain’s little brother, Rahmatullah, who was 12 years old. He says when they opened my eyes, I saw my nephews. Three-year-old Imran was awake and crying.
He asked me for water, but I had no water. Imran spent a period of treatment apart from his family, finally, they transferred him and left him in the hands of Abdul Aziz and their grandmother Mahbibi. They don’t remember anything about that night now, but early on when they got home, he would start screaming in his sleep and walk around the house during the night.
Imran is now 13 years old and has a long surgical scar on the front of his torso, a scar on the left side of his abdomen, and more scar tissue on his lower back. There are still some shrapnel left inside his body. Bilal is eleven years old.
As a result of being hit by a bullet that hit his left eye a millimeter away, a wound can be seen on his face, and there is a wound on his shoulder that was hit by another bullet. They don’t talk much about their parents. They have no memory of Hussain and Ruqiya who were martyred in this attack. Imran said: I wish our parents were with us today so that we could go to the city and enjoy it like other children.
This family is poor and has limited access to medical services and is in dire need of assistance. Ruqiya, Hussain’s wife, was the memorizer of the Holy Quran, and Hussain provided the income and expenses of the house. But after their martyrdom, Abdul Aziz was forced to work and generate income in his old age.
