San Diego Union-Tribune

October 10, 2001

Injured Afghan man thrust into media spotlight
    Taliban supporters attempting to 'prove' the toll on civilians

By MARCUS STERN 
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE 

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- The injured Afghan has not said a public word. But even as Muhammed Raza lies silent in a hospital bed in Peshawar, his story is being loudly touted to dozens of Western reporters by Taliban supporters trying to "prove" that the allied airstrike in neighboring Afghanistan struck more than military targets.

Raza, 35, stared vacantly at the ceiling above Bed 9 in the emergency center at the Hyat Abad medical complex yesterday, while a small group of Afghan tribesmen and a larger corps of foreign reporters and photographers surrounded him.

The bearded man with dry lips and dirty dressings on either side of his neck remained silent. But family members around him said he had been injured Sunday night outside his house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, during the first wave of missile strikes there.

The prospect of an Afghan civilian claiming to be injured during a U.S. or British missile attack was a powerful magnet drawing the foreign media to the hospital.

Pakistan's support for the attacks on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban party is being tested day by day. The number of civilian casualties is seen as a key factor in whether the public continues to stand behind the government's policy of supporting the international coalition and its military action.

The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said from Islamabad yesterday that civilians have died in the attacks, including four U.N. workers.

Raza, with an IV in his left wrist, was too weak to speak for himself, the men around him said. So two of them, each identifying himself as a cousin, told Raza's story.

Unfortunately, the stories differed starkly on key points, and the two men declined to sit together to clarify the differences.

Ali Ahmad Jabbar Khel said Raza was not the only person injured when a missile hit near his home. Also injured, Ahmad said, were an 8-year-old son and one of Raza's two wives. He said others also had been injured, putting the number variously at 33, 35 and 40.

Elsewhere in the hallway outside the hospital room, Raees Mazloom Yar Jabbar Khel, the other cousin, insisted that only Raza had been injured in the attack. No wife or son had been injured, he said.

When asked why his story differed from the other cousin, Mazloom Yar shrugged and said the other man was lying.

Mazloom Yar said Raza had been returning by cab from a visit with relatives in the town of Hasarak, Afghanistan, on Sunday. The cab pulled up to the front of his house about the same time the first wave of attacks was being launched. Raza's house is about a half-mile from the Jalalabad Air Base.

As Raza walked toward his front door a missile struck nearby and two pieces of shrapnel or debris struck him in the neck. He was taken to Jalalabad hospital and then driven by taxi across the border, a six-hour drive, to the Hyat Abad hospital in Peshawar, Mazloom Yar said.

Mazloom Yar, who described himself as a 35-year-old businessman, said he believed the missile that injured Raza was intended to strike the air base a half-mile from the house. The base is used by the Taliban and could have been a military target, he said.

He sniffed at claims that the United States and Britain were hitting only military targets.

"They're not God," he said. "They can't pinpoint targets."

Both cousins expressed admiration for the Taliban although neither would say outright that he was a member of the Taliban or a supporter.

"The Taliban is my brother and if they die, I die," Mazloom Yar said.

"I believe Muslims all over the world need to join together to get rid of all the Americans and Europeans in Afghanistan," he added.

He said he had been enjoying the missile attack just after dusk Sunday, until his cousin was hurt. He described the sight of tracers, flares and anti-aircraft fire against a midnight blue sky.

But Mazloom Yar, who said he had been a mujahedeen commander during the resistance against occupying Soviet military forces in the 1980s, expressed disdain for the strike he observed Sunday night from his Khosh Gumbat neighborhood in Jalalabad.

"Compared to what the Russians did, it was nothing," he said.