Dirty Wars (147 page)
Authors: Jeremy Scahill
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The author in Gardez, Afghanistan, walking with survivors of a deadly US night raid conducted in February 2010. Two pregnant women were killed, along with an Afghan police commander and several others.
Afghan police commander Mohammed Daoud Sharabuddin (fourth from the left) standing with American soldiers. Daoud was killed by US Special Operations Forces in a night raid based on faulty intelligence. He had long fought the Taliban and had been trained by the US.
Afghan forces who accompanied McRaven offered to sacrifice a sheep to ask for forgiveness for the deaths caused by the night raid.
Admiral William McRaven, then JSOC commander, visited Gardez, Afghanistan, in March 2010, a month after a botched US night raid.
Hajji Sharabuddin, whose family members were killed in the night raid in Gardez, holds a picture of his two sons who died in the raid. “I don't accept their apology,” he said. “Americans not only destroyed my house, they destroyed my family.”
Mohamed Afrah Qanyare was one of the first Somali warlords contracted by the CIA after 9/11 to hunt down people on the US kill list. “America knows war,” he said. “They are war masters.”
The Mogadishu Cathedral, built in 1928 when Somalia was under Italian colonial rule, now lies in ruins. Since 2002, US-backed warlords have battled Islamic militias for control of Somalia.
Somali warlord Yusuf Mohammed Siad, known as “Indha Adde” (White Eyes), controls large sections of Mogadishu. Once an ally of al Qaeda, he now fights on the US side against al Shabab. “If we capture a foreigner, we execute them so that others will see we have no mercy,” he said.
The author on the front lines near Mogadishu's Bakaara market in June 2011.
Dr. Nasser Awlaki at his home in Sana'a, Yemen. After his son, US citizen Anwar Awlaki, was put on the kill list, he filed a lawsuit in an effort to save his son's life. He wrote a personal letter to President Obama asking him to “reconsider your order to killâ¦my son.”
Nasser Awlaki holding his first son, Anwar, who was born in New Mexico in 1971. Anwar “was an all-American boy,” he said.