The attack on the small village of Azizabad last August marked a low-point in US-Afghani relations. American aircraft pounded the mud-walled village, killing dozens of civilians in the process. At the time the US Air Force contended they were carrying out operations against Taliban insurgents, that the death toll was only about three-dozen, and that only a handful of those killed were civilians (the US has since upped the civilian casualty count to 33, still far shy of the Afghan estimate).
But in March, and Afghani court sentenced Mohammed Nader, an elder from a neighboring village, to death for passing false information onto American forces about Taliban militants using Azizabad as a base, prompting the fatal air strikes. And this is only the tip of a murky battle between the villages of Kalask and Azizabad with the United States military stuck firmly in the middle.
According to the Channel 4 report, a feud between the two villages erupted over jobs at a United States military base in nearby Shindand. In addition to the air raid against Azizabad last August, the US also got involved after an ambush by Kalask men killed a man from Azizabad, and started a fight between the two villages that was broken up by US and Afghan Army forces. One Azizabad man was taken away in a US-led convoy. Several hours later he turned up dead, his body allegedly showing signs of torture. Local authorities wanted three Afghanis working with the US troops turned over for questioning, a move the US military has so far blocked.
A spokesman for the US Central Command in Afghanistan refused to comment on the Channel 4 report.
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