I stepped down into the cold, muddy water, balanced myself for a moment, and proceeded as the group followed behind and we waded the shallow river to reach the sandbar. As we neared the site, the air hung with a strong, acrid odor of gasoline and burned rubber. Everything was charred. The heat of the fire had melted tires and stripped the trucks of everything but the metal—the frames, tanks, and seat springs in the cabs. Milk containers, brought by Afghans to store the gas, lay on the sand, as did what looked like human hair. There were no bodies. After the flames had died down, the dead had been collected by locals from nearby villages, from which the victims had apparently come when the Taliban invited them to come get free fuel. Few Afghans summoned by the Taliban in the middle of the night would have dared say no. It was clear that, when struck, the trucks had been firmly mired in the mud and could not have presented the immediate security threat the commander had felt they did when ordering the strike.
From the incident site, we visited injured civilians in a very rudimentary local hospital. One young man of about sixteen was badly burned, a bitter reminder of the paratroopers I’d watched suffer back in 1994 at Fort Bragg. The staff and families were stoic and not confrontational. They were doing their best to keep the sheets clean and sterile. It was an atmosphere of quiet tragedy.
Before going to the site of the strike, we’d met in a conference room at RC-North with a group of some fifteen local leaders gathered to provide their thoughts about the situation. Interestingly, they were strongly supportive of the air strike, and the group expressed satisfaction that direct action had finally been taken against the Taliban threat in their area. Kabir Sekander, one of my cultural advisers, was there to translate when one of the elders spoke. Even with a skilled translator like Kabir, communication was always challenging, but today their message was clear.
“We need these kinds of operations to tell the opposition that ‘we mean business,’ that ‘the people are fed up with you,’” the elder said. “The people are hostages in the hand of this opposition; the people do not want to participate; they’re forced to participate in these kind of activities. But the people want to live in peace and harmony, so we have to have some of these kinds of operations like we did last night. We have to do these things, so people can live in harmony.”
Their views were unusual for the aftermath of such a grisly civilian casualty incident. Usually, we heard outrage. But I wasn’t surprised, as I suspected the leaders whom the regional command had invited to meet with us were not broadly representative of all the people in the area. Moreover, I knew they were caught in a particularly tough position: For years, the north, around Kunduz, had remained quiet. But insurgents had been steadily gaining power in the area. Many there wanted NATO to target the Taliban more aggressively. I believed the elders had shrewdly calculated that anything less than effusive support would reduce our willingness to conduct operations against the feared Taliban.
The elders complained that the media was focusing on the air strike—an event that I knew had been a tragic mistake with potentially far-reaching consequences in Kunduz and in Kabul—not the insurgents’ use of suicide bombings.
“Tashakur,” I thanked them, and turned to Kabir. “Also, please convey that I agree with him that the actions of insurgents on things like suicide bombs are terrible and in no way compare to how we operate.” I continued: “And what I want to do is to partner with the Afghan people to protect the Afghan people, so I am here today to ensure that we are operating in a way that is truly protecting the Afghan people from all threats.”
That evening, as we headed back to Kabul, I decided to do two things. I directed a general officer to lead an investigation of the incident. I wanted to take quick action; we had a moral responsibility to do so. Also, on the advice of my cultural advisers—Kabir and Abdullah Amini—I recorded a statement of sympathy and issued an apology to the Afghan people for broadcast on local television. Dedicated Afghan Americans who had joined ISAF in 2006, Kabir and Abdullah had worked for the previous two ISAF commanders. I was soon glad I took their advice, and came to rely on their ability to parse interactions I had with Afghans for revealing cues I overlooked. Despite some western concerns and criticism over potentially accepting culpability for the incident before an investigation was complete, the television statement was the right move. Afghans typically knew the reality of incidents like this before we did and thought our sluggishness in acknowledging their loss was disrespectful.