# CAN General to Lead Probe Kunduz Fuel Truck Attack



## The Bread Guy (8 Sep 2009)

This, from ISAF (PDF of ISAF bio of MGEN Sullivan attached):


> ISAF Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal has appointed Maj. Gen. C.S. Sullivan to lead the Joint Investigation Board conducting a formal investigation into the Sept. 3 air strike in Kunduz.
> 
> Sullivan is a Canadian officer who serves as the ISAF Air Component Element Director and the Deputy Director of Joint Operations. The board also will include a U.S. Air Force officer, a German officer, and a legal advisor. The board will coordinate with the Afghan investigation team, formed by Afghanistan President Karzai.
> 
> ...



More from the Canadian Press and CTV.ca.

_- edited to clarify General's role in subject line -_


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## tomahawk6 (8 Sep 2009)

German inaction in the north has contributed to the area's increased instability.In fact not going outside the wire has created a new health issue for the Army called tour induced obesity.

We see this issue crop up with this airstrike on the tankers. The German commander feared an attack on his PRT. Rather than deploy a ground force to investigate he ordered an airstrike that killed anywhere from 60-90 people including civilians.The Germans afraid the AO wasnt safe sent over a UAV instead of going in on the ground which was required. By the time a ground force got into the area all the bodies were gone and so was the chance to see if bad guys had been killed or a mix of civilians and bad guys.

German elections are a few months away and I almost hope they pull their troops out so that ISAF can fill the void - it will probably mean more US troops but if the Germans operate as they have been we will be there sooner than later.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009090502832.html

HAJI SAKHI DEDBY, Afghanistan, Sept. 5 -- To the German commander, it seemed to be a fortuitous target: More than 100 Taliban insurgents were gathering around two hijacked fuel tankers that had become stuck in the mud near this small farming village. 

The grainy live video transmitted from an American F-15E fighter jet circling overhead, which was projected on a screen in a German tactical operations center four miles north of here, showed numerous black dots around the trucks -- each of them a thermal image of a human but without enough detail to confirm whether they were carrying weapons. An Afghan informant was on the phone with an intelligence officer at the center, however, insisting that everybody at the site was an insurgent, according to an account that German officers here provided to NATO officials. 

Based largely on that informant's assessment, the commander ordered a 500-pound, satellite-guided bomb to be dropped on each truck early Friday. The vehicles exploded in a fireball that lit up the night sky for miles, incinerating many of those standing nearby. 

A NATO fact-finding team estimated Saturday that about 125 people were killed in the bombing, at least two dozen of whom -- but perhaps many more -- were not insurgents. To the team, which is trying to sort out this complicated incident, mindful that the fallout could further sap public support in Afghanistan for NATO's security mission here, the target appeared to be far less clear-cut than it had to the Germans. 

One survivor, convalescing from abdominal wounds at a hospital in the nearby city of Kunduz, said he went to the site because he thought he could get free fuel. Another patient, a 10-year-old boy with shrapnel in his left leg, said he went to gawk, against his father's advice. In Kabul, the Afghan capital, relatives of two severely burned survivors being treated at an intensive-care unit said Taliban fighters forced dozens of villagers to assist in moving the bogged-down tankers. 

"They came to everyone's house asking for help," said Mirajuddin, a shopkeeper who lost six of his cousins in the bombing -- none of whom, he said, was an insurgent. "They started beating people and pointing guns. They said, 'Bring your tractors and help us.' What could we do?" 

None of the survivors and the relatives dispute that some Taliban fighters were at the scene. But just how many remains unclear, as does the number of civilians. And because many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and others were buried in the hours after the explosion, it may be impossible to ascertain. 

The decision to bomb the tankers based largely on a single human intelligence source appears to violate the spirit of a tactical directive aimed at reducing civilian casualties that was recently issued by U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new commander of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The directive states that NATO forces cannot bomb residential buildings based on a sole source of information and that troops must establish a "pattern of life" to ensure that no civilians are in the target area. Although the directive does not apply to airstrikes in the open, NATO officials said it is McChrystal's intent for those standards to apply to all uses of air power, except when troops are in imminent danger. 

McChrystal's advisers allowed a Washington Post reporter to travel with a NATO fact-finding team and attend its otherwise closed-door meetings with German troops and Afghan officials. Portions of this account are based on those discussions. 

The incident has generated intense disquiet among Afghans, many of whom say military operations since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001 have resulted in an unacceptably high number of civilian casualties. Local media reports have been filled with people alleging -- some with little proof -- that scores of civilians were killed in the airstrike. 

Aware that another mass civilian casualty incident could further diminish public support for the multinational mission to combat the Taliban, McChrystal sought to handle this case differently from his predecessors. The morning after the bombing, as Afghan television and radio stations began airing reports about it, he dispatched the team of senior officers to the area. 

His headquarters had only a six-line situation report from the Germans. The team's assignment was to figure out what had occurred and to help him communicate a forthright message to the Afghan public with the hope that owning up to a potential mistake quickly could 

When the seven team members arrived in the northern city of Kunduz on Friday afternoon, their first order of business was to head to the bombing site. It was just four miles south of the airport where they landed. 

But the German commander, Col. Georg Klein, urged them not to go. Residents were angry, he said, and German forces had been attacked a few hours earlier. "There's a likelihood we'll be shot at," he said. 

Klein also deemed a visit to the hospital to be too dangerous. Instead, the officers traveled to the nearby headquarters of the Kunduz province reconstruction team, home to about 1,000 German troops responsible for security and rebuilding operations in the area. There the team members settled into a small octagonal room for a series of briefings from Klein and his subordinates. 

Without a chance to talk to survivors, they would not be able to determine that day whether the German claims that no civilians were killed were accurate. The consequence was that NATO would have to continue issuing tentative statements promising a thorough investigation, while plenty of Afghans were taking to the airwaves to describe what they had seen. 

But the briefings proved to be more valuable -- and alarming -- than the team had expected. 

Klein told the team, led by British Air Commodore Paddy Teakle, the NATO mission's director of air operations, that he had asked a U.S. B-1B bomber flying over northern Afghanistan to search for two fuel trucks that had been hijacked Thursday evening. The bomber located the trucks, which by then were stuck on a small island in the middle of the Kunduz River, shortly after midnight Friday. The B-1 crew reported seeing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms among some of the people at the site, Klein said. 

After 10 minutes over the site, the bomber left to refuel. Klein summoned a new warplane, declaring the incident an imminent threat. 

"My feeling was that if we let them get away with these tankers, they will prepare them to attack police stations or even the PRT," or provincial reconstruction team, he said. 

Twenty minutes later, two F-15E Strike Eagles arrived. A video camera pod beamed live images to Klein's command center. He and his troops could see the trucks -- and scores of people around them. 

His intelligence chief had spoken to an Afghan source who insisted that everyone at the site was an insurgent. The description of the scene the source provided was similar to what Klein was seeing beamed from the F-15. 

"The whole story matched 100 percent," Klein said. 

But there was no way to tell whether the dots on the screen were insurgents, as the source maintained. 

"We heard there was a tanker and everyone was going to collect free fuel, so I went with them," said Mohammed Shafiullah, the 10-year-old with the leg wound. He rode a donkey from his village and took in the scene from the western riverbank. 

He probably would not have been alive had the airstrike coordinator at Klein's command center not rejected the F-15 pilot's recommendation to use 2,000-pound bombs on the trucks, which would have created far wider devastation. Instead, the coordinator demanded that 500-pound GBU-38 bombs be used. 

Klein ordered the strike about 2:30 a.m. Two minutes later, the bombs had hit their targets. 

Inside the command center, the screen showed a huge mushroom cloud enveloping the island. A few black dots -- survivors -- could be seen scurrying away. But most of the 100 or so dots that had been on the screen were gone. 

To those on the riverbank, the island, which is about 30 yards wide and 150 yards long, appeared to be consumed by fire. Nearby residents ran to the scene to look for relatives and extricate survivors. 

"Everyone was panicked," said Mirajuddin, the man who lost six cousins. "It was a horrible night." 

Instead of sending troops to the scene for an assessment of casualties -- as McChrystal's directive requires -- the Germans waited until morning to send an unmanned aircraft over the site to take photographs. The first German troops did not arrive at the scene until noon Friday. By then, all the bodies had been removed. 

Mirajuddin said he and his relatives found the bodies of only three of his cousins. He buried them that morning in the same grave, he said. 

On Friday night, though, his story, and those of others in the area, were unknown to the fact-finding team. The Germans were still insisting that only insurgents were targeted. Even so, members of the team came to believe that there almost certainly had been civilian casualties. 

In Kabul, McChrystal issued a taped message: "I take this possible loss of life or injury to innocent Afghans very seriously." 

Unexpected Support


At midday Saturday, after visiting the hospital and flying over the bombing site in a helicopter, the team met with two local officials. The NATO officers were expecting anger and calls for compensation. What they received was a totally unanticipated sort of criticism. 

"I don't agree with the rumor that there were a lot of civilian casualties," said one key local official, who said he did not want to be named because he fears Taliban retribution. "Who goes out at 2 in the morning for fuel? These were bad people, and this was a good operation." 

A few hours later, McChrystal arrived at the reconstruction team's base in Kunduz. A group of leaders from the area, including the chairman of the provincial council and the police chief, were there to meet him. So, too, were members of an investigative team dispatched by President Hamid Karzai. 

McChrystal began expressing sympathy "for anyone who has been hurt or killed." 

The council chairman, Ahmadullah Wardak, cut him off. He wanted to talk about the deteriorating security situation in Kunduz, where Taliban activity has increased significantly in recent months. NATO forces in the area, he told the fact-finding team before McChrystal arrived, need to be acting "more strongly" in the area. 

His concern is shared by some officials at the NATO mission headquarters, who contend that German troops in Kunduz have not been confronting the rise in Taliban activity with enough ground patrols and comprehensive counterinsurgency tactics. 

"If we do three more operations like was done the other night, stability will come to Kunduz," Wardak told McChrystal. "If people do not want to live in peace and harmony, that's not our fault." 

McChrystal seemed to be caught off guard. 

"We've been too nice to the thugs," Wardak continued. 

As McChrystal drove to the bombing site -- defying German suggestions that the area was too dangerous -- one senior NATO official noted that the lack of opposition from local officials, despite relatively clear evidence that some civilians were killed, could help to de-escalate tensions. 

"We got real lucky here," the official said. 

But McChrystal still had a message to deliver. Even if the Afghan officials were not angry, he certainly did not seem pleased. 

After fording the muddy river to see the bombing site -- getting his pants wet up to his knees -- he addressed a small group of journalists at the reconstruction team headquarters and said it was "clear there were some civilians harmed at that site." He said NATO would fully investigate the incident. 

"It's a serious event that's going to be a test of whether we are willing to be transparent and whether we are willing to show that we are going to protect the Afghan people," he said.


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## The Bread Guy (8 Sep 2009)

..., including a list of names, ages and occupations of the "martyred", so most of the work's been done, right?   :  More shiggles here (24 page - 12 Google English, 12 Arabic - PDF version of Taliban's lies report at non-terrorist site).



> (Google English translation) Abstract:  *The report showed that the numbers above undoubtedly signed a heinous crime against humanity, and the humanitarian catastrophe in Kunduz province, targeting the entire civilian Afghans, and the International Laws and United Nations publication, and the Geneva Conventions expressly complete information about such a war crimes and murder of the year.*  If it is truly recognized by the United Nations, and the Department of Amnesty and Human Rights, the Organization of Islamic Conference, the so-called Bamajama civil rights in the world right, and the greatness of human blood, or gives them importance, will prove false sincerity in this incident, although Hack international judges who render decisions Arrest and bring in the murder case, possible public in Darfur, they are not questioning the war criminals in a Kunduz, or at least estimate does not take a stand against them, better for them rather than beating the drums of international justice not feel shame and modesty.


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## tomahawk6 (8 Sep 2009)

This is the reason to go back to the site of an airstrike afterwards to assess first hand casualties and if they were bad guys or civilians. Going back after the bodies have been taken away leaves ISAF open to charges of targeting civilians.


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## The Bread Guy (9 Sep 2009)

....on their Voice of Jihad English page (PDF also available at non-terrorist site here).  Their big claim:  it was done with white phosphorus...


> .... Contrarily to the claims that the victims have been burnt up in the flames of the fuels of  the tankers or as a result of bomb explosions, in fact, the victims have been burnt in the flames of the bombs and  other explosives. The witness says they saw flaming fire from the jets descending to the ground which in two cases scorched a ground of 100 square meters. They say the tankers were not hit directly from the planes but the fuel tankers caught fire from the flames of the bombs thrown from the jet fighters. The ground has been baked with flames. There is no cavity or crater to show the impact of the bombs strike.  The victims say a bad- smelling matter glued  to their bodies which they felt to be burning all their flesh down to bones. A father of two sons, who died after the air raid, said his sons had lost mental balance before dying. These are the same symptoms seen in victims of Bala Blok, Farah province. Later, doctors in Bala Blok said the symptoms of the victims were the result of the use of white phosphorus ....



Their conclusion?


> The above report substantiates that a most deplorable act of crime and atrocity has  taken place in Kunduz province in which  Afghan civilians have been targeted. The Charter of the United Nation, principles of the Amnesty International and the Geneva Conventions clearly oppose such crimes. If the United Nation, the Amnesty International  and other human rights entities, the Islamic Conference and  finally the so-called civilized world respect the value of the blood of a human being, their sincerity and commitment will be put to  test  following this horrendous event. *If the judges sitting in the Hague tribunal do not summon the perpetrators  of this event to question them, or at least do not show reaction in the shape of condemnation against this event, then  what face will they have  to raise the voice of prosecuting  perpetrators of  crimes of humanity. *Ostensibly, they issue summons time and again  to bring to  book those who are involved in crimes of humanity. The event in Kunduz will prove that  whether the world entities of human rights are sincerely working for the protections of human rights or they only raise empty slogans.



_- edited to add white phosphorus allegation from official English version - _


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## Edward Campbell (9 Sep 2009)

This issue, especially German reaction to MGen Sullivan's conclusions, is more likely to split NATO than are the Canadian and Dutch withdrawals from the Afghanistan mission.


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## PuckChaser (9 Sep 2009)

I really think its time to just send the Germans home. As grateful as they have been with the Leo2 tanks, Fig11 targets mounted on RC Cars would patrol further out of their FOBs, and have less caveats attached than the Germans do.


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## tomahawk6 (9 Sep 2009)

Now McChrystal has banned alcohol because he couldnt get ahold of senior officers after the airstrike.


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## Edward Campbell (9 Sep 2009)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> I really think its time to just send the Germans home. As grateful as they have been with the Leo2 tanks, Fig11 targets mounted on RC Cars would patrol further out of their FOBs, and have less caveats attached than the Germans do.




And it is precisely that reaction, which is widely held by some (many?) *leaders* in Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA, that might drive a huge wedge into NATO.

If the Germans feel *excluded* then they, and the French, may decide to create a new European _alliance_ – in addition to NATO - with much more limited aims. Such an alliance will be popular because it will allow other Europeans to do less and spend less.

Such an *exclusive*, rather explicitly anti-American alliance *might* prompt the US to consider the _Anglosphere_ plus. That would be a good thing, if done correctly.


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## tomahawk6 (9 Sep 2009)

The Germans are going to be even more less reliable in the future. I can envision a scenario where Germany sells out the Baltic states and Poland as they did in the 30's with their pact with Russia. Germany's achilles heel is natural gas which they have become dependent on Russia since they have begun closing down their nuclear electric plants.


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## Journeyman (9 Sep 2009)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Now McChrystal has banned alcohol because he couldnt get ahold of senior officers after the airstrike.


During a couple of days I spent up in Kabul (so far removed from the war, it's considered "in-theatre R&R"), I had a talk with the Canadian Contingent RSM. He said his greatest problem was trying to figure out how to deal with NCOs drinking more than their 2 beer/day, when they could watch one particular Cdn Colonel and another CWO getting loaded practically every night.


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## time expired (10 Sep 2009)

I can not believe how rapidly this scandalous story has disappeared from
the MSM here in Germany.Even the opposition parties,after a couple of
calls for the resignation of the Defence Minister,have gone completely
quiet on this issue.
Kundus province,the German AOR,is dominated by the Taliban which leads
me to wonder if the Germans at the local or a much higher level have a
sort of non aggression pact with the Taliban.This would explain the silence
here in Germany and if true would explain the them calling on the "fighting
soldiers" to do their dirty work for them,air strike on highjacked trucks and
rescue of American journo.
If anyone needs an example of the redundancy of NATO I cannot think better 
one,it seems to me to be going the way of the UN well on the road to total
irrelevance.
                      Regards


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## mariomike (10 Sep 2009)

Journeyman said:
			
		

> During a couple of days I spent up in Kabul (so far removed from the war, it's considered "in-theatre R&R"), I had a talk with the Canadian Contingent RSM. He said his greatest problem was trying to figure out how to deal with NCOs drinking more than their 2 beer/day, when they could watch one particular Cdn Colonel and another CWO getting loaded practically every night.



Sounds like "Do as I say, not as I do."


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## The Bread Guy (19 Sep 2009)

More help from the Taliban's internal investigation section:  they say the Brits killed the Afghan interpreter/fixer with the rescued British journalist:


> British commandos raided a house in the area and killed Sultan Munadi while saving his British friend Stephen Farrel. The media union will  reasonably not have doubts about Munadis having been killed by the British soldiers.  Munadis family members and all the people present in the area say that they have evidences on hand that he was killed by the British soldiers. There are reports by BBC and New York Times and other credible media outlets, exposing such story.


More here at the Taliban site, or here (PDF version of statement at non-terrorist site).


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## The Bread Guy (23 Dec 2009)

"Kundus-Affäre:  Das geheime Protokoll der Bombennacht" ("Kunduz affair:  The secret protocol of the bomb night")
Steffen Hebestreit, www.fr-online.de, 23 Dec 09
Original in German - Google English translation


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## pbi (6 Jan 2010)

Sadly I have to agree with tomahawk6 here: the Germans of today are not Rommel's army: very far from it. Their well-intentioned de-Nazification and anti-militarism of the 1950s and 60s meant that the only incentive they had for a truly capable warfighting army was home defense against the Red Hordes. That gave us the Bundesheere we all knew and respected in the 70s and 80s. When the hordes  "went away" (big quotation marks), so did much of the imperative to have a warfighting ethos. What we have today is an Army very much like the Cdn Army of the early 90s: few if any of its members, particularly its senior officers,  have ever been in combat operations, and it has an excessive focus on low-intensity UN-type ops.

Based on what I saw during my tour in 2004-2005 in Bagram, I have no trouble believing that the Germans (and the Afghans they are supposed to be securing) are reaping today what was sowed years ago by a very risk-averse, almost passive approach to security in the German AO. Their biggest focus, in my opinion, was always their own force protection: I felt this was also true about their Roto in KMNB. They were not patrolling much at night (if at all) and as a result could not really have been dominating the terrain. Combine that with the huge unpopularity of the Afghan mission in Germany, and the stress placed on German national will by the casualties they suffered (ie: nine dead in a bus bombing in Kabul).

This passive "soft" approach might have worked ("might"...) with the "old North" but with increased infiltration by Taleban into previously secure Nothern areas, it is just a liability. 

The common sense measures that Tomahawk6 and others have suggested (and I'm sure Gen McChrystal intended) would be more likely to occur to with commanders in armies with more of an aggressive ethos. What we saw were, in my opinion, the actions of leaders who were out of their operational depth and probably hamstrung by national policies. Unless things have changed, there should still be an airmobile QRF in the North that could have intervened on the ground, or at least got there sooner. Unfortunately this plays right into the enemy's hands and has probably undone months or years of other good work.

Cheers


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## The Bread Guy (13 Apr 2010)

This from PAK media:


> Survivors and relatives of the victims of a German-ordered NATO air strike in northern Afghanistan gathered on Tuesday to demand compensation from German troops.
> (....)
> Around 50 people, some of them relatives of the dead and some who were wounded in the raid, gathered outside the human rights commission in the provincial capital of northern Kunduz, demanding compensation and that those who carried out the raid be put on trial. The incident happened north of Kunduz city.
> 
> ...


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## SeanNewman (13 Apr 2010)

mariomike said:
			
		

> Sounds like "Do as I say, not as I do."



That's not universal by any means, though.  The OCs and CSMs getting sent over now (at least what I saw on TF 3-08) were some of the best leaders and command teams you could imagine if you could create the perfect leaders from spare parts.


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## Strike (14 Apr 2010)

> when they could watch *one particular* Cdn Colonel and another CWO



No one said it was universal.

As to the article in question, seems a manner of trying to use a Western method (money) to deal with an Eastern problem.  Where the heck are these people going to spend that money?  They would be much better served getting food, shelter, medical and education supplied to them for their compensation.  The German government was willing to spend $4.36 million?  Great!  Buy what they need and set up the education centres so these people, especially those with disabilities, can move ahead!

Yes, yes.  I know it's not that simple.  The point is, we can't use Western solutions out here.  Won't work.


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