SIX YEARS after the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, the Army has another heinous atrocity on its hands in Afghanistan. It has charged five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division with killing three innocent Afghan civilians earlier this year. Moreover, the Army has to answer for the fact that a member of the soldiers’ platoon contacted his father in the United States about his concerns after the first killing and the father did all he could to alert the Army to what had happened — to no avail. The Army must proceed with court hearings, but it should also investigate why the father’s initial warning did not set off an inquiry that could have kept the second and third killings from occurring.
Accusations of such shootings for sport are deeply damaging to US interests in Afghanistan. The military has made one of its highest priorities in the war the protection of civilian life. The Taliban, guilty of far more civilian killings than US and other NATO forces, will doubtless make propaganda hay of the shootings. Still, the Army cannot shrink from prosecuting the cases.
The details in the charging documents are shocking. The soldiers are alleged on three occasions to have detonated their own grenades as a pretext for shooting at civilians, including a Muslim cleric. The soldiers are also accused of dismembering and photographing corpses. After the first incident in January, a member of the platoon who disapproved but feared for his safety if he notified anyone in his unit, reached out to his father, a Marine veteran in Florida. The father’s attempts to notify the Army inspector general, its Criminal Investigation Division, his son’s stateside base, and Florida Senator Bill Nelson all came to naught.
Army officials finally learned about the shootings while they were investigating the unit for drug use. By that time, two more Afghan civilians were dead, and the Army accused the whistle-blower, Adam Winfield, in one of the killings. He claimed he was ordered to fire on a civilian but shot high. His Facebook communications with his father and logs of his father’s futile telephone calls for help will be strong evidence in his defense — and against the Army’s ability to respond effectively to a call that should have gone straight to the Pentagon.
