WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the United States on Friday for failing to cooperate fully with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers, while the identity of the US soldier implicated in the shootings was disclosed.
A US official identified the American soldier as Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who was being sent to Fort Leavenworth army base in Kansas to be held in maximum security detention. Bales, a 38-year-old married father of two children, has not yet been charged in the incident.
Karzai questioned whether only one US soldier could have been responsible for a massacre that took so many lives.
A series of blunders by the United States, including the killings in Kandahar province last Sunday and the inadvertent burning of copies of the Quran at a Nato base last month, has further strained already tense relations between the countries.
“This has been going on for too long. You have heard me before. It is by all means the end of the rope here,” Karzai told reporters at the heavily fortified presidential palace. Flanked by senior officials, a tired and sometimes angry Karzai listened to village elders and the families of victims of the massacre at the start of an expected two days of talks to discuss the killings.
“The army chief has just reported that the Afghan investigation team did not receive the cooperation that they expected from the United States,” Karzai said. “Therefore these are all questions that we'll be raising, and raising very loudly, and raising very clearly.”
Some at the meeting shouted, some demanded answers, but all said they wanted any soldiers involved punished.
“I don't want any compensation. I don't want money, I don't want a trip to Mecca, I don't want a house. I want nothing. But what I absolutely want is the punishment of the Americans. This is my demand, my demand, my demand and my demand,” said one villager, whose brother was killed in the night-time slaughter.
Karzai appeared to back the belief of the villagers, and many other Afghans, including the country's parliament, that one gunman acting alone could not have killed so many people, and in different locations some distance apart.
“They believe it's not possible for one person to do that. In (one) family, in four rooms people were killed, women and children were killed, and they were all brought together in one room and then put on fire. That one man cannot do,” Karzai said.
DEFENSE STRATEGY Bales is expected to face justice under US military rules, but it is not clear where any trial would take place.
Seattle attorney John Henry Browne told Reuters that post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, would likely be part of the defense of the four-tour veteran. The soldier's military unit is based south of Tacoma, Washington.
“It is commonly used in military defense,” he said, calling it a mitigating factor. Browne has said the soldier was unhappy about returning to combat after being wounded twice in Iraq.
He also said the soldier had witnessed a serious injury to a comrade the day before the massacre. “One leg was blown off,”
Browne said, and the soldier was nearby.
At a news conference on Thursday, Browne described his client as “an exemplary soldier” who was upset at having to do a fourth tour of duty in a war zone and was likely suffering from stress after seeing colleagues wounded.
An unnamed US official had told The New York Times the killings were a result of “a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues - he just snapped.”
But Browne said on CNN that marital problems were “totally bogus.” He said his client has a “very strong marriage and frankly we're all taking offense at that.”
Furious Afghans and lawmakers have demanded that the soldier be tried in Afghanistan, but despite those calls, the US staff sergeant was flown out to Kuwait on Wednesday and then back to the United States.
Seeking to placate the Afghan leader, US President Barack Obama called Karzai to reaffirm plans for Afghan forces to take a lead in combat operations next year and assume full responsibility for security across Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
A White House summary of their phone call on Friday showed that Washington was determined to stick to the current timetable for the security transition and US troop withdrawal for now.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the two men “were very much on the same page” despite Karzai's demand on Thursday for the handover of security to Afghan police and soldiers by 2013, a year ahead of schedule.
It was Obama's second call with Karzai this week, rare for a US president who has had a sometimes testy relationship with his Afghan counterpart and has often kept him at arm's length.
Carney said Obama called Karzai to congratulate him on the birth of a daughter and they took the opportunity to reaffirm a commitment to the current plans for US withdrawal.
“The two leaders also affirmed that they share the goal of building capable Afghan security forces and strengthening Afghan sovereignty so that Afghans are increasingly in charge of their own security, with the lead for combat operations shifting to Afghan forces, with US forces in support, in 2013,” he said.
The White House said they discussed Karzai's “longstanding concerns regarding night raids and house searches” and agreed to talk further about his concerns about Nato troops in Afghan villages.
On Thursday Karzai called for Nato troops to leave Afghan villages and confine themselves to major bases, underscoring fury over the massacre and clouding US plans to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
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