[Aware of the
inflammatory potential, Mr. Panetta telephoned Mr. Karzai to assure him that an
investigation was under way and that those responsible would be punished. Mr.
Panetta told the Afghan leader that “the conduct depicted in the footage is
utterly deplorable, and that it does not reflect the standards or values
American troops are sworn to uphold,” said George Little, the Pentagon
spokesman.]
By Graham Bowley And Matthew Rosenberg
 |
Reuters
A still image from a video posted online that appeared
to show Marines urinating on dead bodies.
|
KABUL, Afghanistan — A video showing four United States Marines urinating on three
dead Taliban fighters provoked anger and
condemnation on Thursday in Afghanistan and around the world, raising fears in
Washington that the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a
particularly delicate moment in the decade-old Afghan war.
The Obama administration
is struggling to keep the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on its side as it carefully
tries to open talks with the Taliban. Yet the video showing such a desecration
— a possible war crime — is likely to weaken the American position with both.
The Taliban and Mr. Karzai each pointed to the images as evidence of American
brutality, a message with broad appeal in Afghanistan, where word of the video
was slowly spreading on Thursday.
Senior military
officials in Kabul and at the Pentagon confirmed that the video was authentic
and that they had identified the Marines as members of the Third Battalion,
Second Marines, which completed a tour of Afghanistan this fall before
returning to its base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The officials did not release the
Marines’ names but said one wore a corporal’s uniform.
Pentagon officials said
the video had been made between March and September 2011, when the Marine
battalion was stationed in Helmand Province, a strategic Taliban heartland and
a center of the opium poppy trade. The officials said that they did not know
the precise location shown in the video but that it had probably been made in
the northern part of the province, where the battalion had been operating.
Seven of the approximately 1,000 Marines in the battalion were killed during
the seven-month deployment.
Pentagon officials said
that as far as they knew, all four Marines were still on active duty.
Even before the
authenticity of the video had been confirmed, expressions of outrage and
contrition by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton and other top officials left no doubt that they regarded it as
real.
Aware of the
inflammatory potential, Mr. Panetta telephoned Mr. Karzai to assure him that an
investigation was under way and that those responsible would be punished. Mr.
Panetta told the Afghan leader that “the conduct depicted in the footage is
utterly deplorable, and that it does not reflect the standards or values
American troops are sworn to uphold,” said George Little, the Pentagon
spokesman.
The video showed the
four Marines, in their distinctive sand-colored camouflage, urinating over the
three bodies — one covered in blood. One Marine says, “Have a great day,
buddy.”
The Taliban initially
indicated that the video would not undermine the push toward talks, saying that
they saw it as just more evidence of what they said was American brutality and
arrogance.
But later on Thursday,
in an official statement, the Taliban dropped references to the talks and
emphasized the brutality message. “We strongly condemn the inhuman act of wild
American soldiers, as ever, and consider this act in contradiction with all
human and ethical norms,” the statement said.
Mr. Karzai said that he
was deeply disturbed and that he had asked the Americans to punish the
perpetrators severely. “This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and
condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” he said.
American officials
reacted remorsefully throughout the day on Thursday in their damage-control
effort. The American-led coalition in Afghanistan and the United States Embassy
in Kabul offered separate condemnations. Coalition officials said in a
statement that the behavior displayed in the video “dishonors the sacrifices
and core values of every service member representing the 50 nations of the
coalition.”
Mrs. Clinton expressed
what she called “total dismay.”
“It is absolutely
inconsistent with American values and the standards we expect from our military
personnel,” she said in Washington, adding that anyone involved “must be held
fully accountable.”
Mr. Panetta said in
Washington that he had ordered the Marines and Gen. John R. Allen, a Marine
Corps officer who commands coalition forces in Afghanistan, to investigate
immediately.
The video, posted on public video-sharing Web sites
including LiveLeak and YouTube, began ricocheting around international news Web
sites on Wednesday.
Whether the American
condemnations will mollify the anger of Afghans remains unclear. But for those
who had seen the video, the images appeared to deepen their dislike of the
United States, which is widely seen as an occupier here.
“The Taliban sometimes
commit such harsh acts, but it was enough just to kill them and not to degrade
or humiliate their dead bodies,” said Jawad, a university student in Kabul who
gave only one name.
Hajji Ahmad Fareed, a
former member of Parliament, said the images confirmed to him that America was
against Islam. The Americans “will never be friends with us and never bring
peace,” he said. Americans have urinated “on our holy Koran,” he said, and have
now done so “on the bodies of our Muslims.”
Mr. Fareed was referring
to an erroneous report in Newsweek in 2005 that American soldiers at the prison
in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had thrown a Koran into a toilet. The report prompted
protests and riots in many parts of the Muslim world. The worst was in
Afghanistan, where at least 17 people were killed.
Last year, protests
erupted in Afghanistan over the burning of a Koran at a Florida church. Several
people were killed, including seven United Nations staff members in
Mazar-i-Sharif.
American officials in
Afghanistan have also struggled to overcome the fallout from a rogue group of
American soldiers who in 2010 killed three Afghan civilians for sport in a
series of crimes. The soldier accused of being the ringleader of the group,
whose members patrolled roads and small villages near Kandahar, was convicted
of three counts of murder by an American military panel in November.
The actions of the
Marines in the video could amount to a violation of the Geneva
Conventions, which require that the bodies of those killed in war be
treated honorably.
While the images largely
dominated the news in Afghanistan on Thursday, the Taliban’s campaign of
assassinations continued when a suicide car bomber killed the governor of a
district in the southern province of Kandahar.
The district governor,
Said Fazluddin Agha, was riding home after work when his armored vehicle was
hit by an attacker in a Suzuki packed with explosives, said Zalmai Ayoubi, a
spokesman for the governor of Kandahar. Two of his sons were also killed, and
nine police officers and one civilian were wounded. Mr. Agha was the target of
an assassination attempt two years ago.
Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Bumiller
and John H. Cushman Jr. from Washington; Sangar Rahimi, Sharifullah Sahak and
Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul; an employee of The New York Times from Kandahar,
Afghanistan; and J. David Goodman from New York.
