The Fire at Chardarah
Returns of an image search for "Chardarah," show very few photographs representing the aftermath of a NATO bombing which killed about 100 civilians on September 11, 2009. Only one photograph, as far as I know, shows one of the the burning fuel-tankers where villagers from Chardarah were retrieving fuel when it exploded.
This was a one-day story in the United States, and the first page of Google web returns for "Chardarah" mostly links to my diaries on several political websites, so it may be fair to say that I paid more attention to the fire at Chardarah than anyone else on the internet, at least in English.
Why?
My father was in and out of a VA hospital almost all the time at the end of his life, and the nurses pushed me out in the hall whenever they performed "procedures" which weren't appropriate for a child to see. So I met other veterans of other wars there, too, and one of the most impressive to me was a very old ex-cabbie who had joined up for WWII at the already advanced age of about 40.
He had served as a 7th Army pool driver all the way from Sicily to Alsace, and somehow survived almost all imaginable injuries... shrapnel, bullet-wounds, broken bones, and burns... and one day I asked him one of those questions that only children ask.
"What hurt the most?"
"Compared to the burns," he said, "everything else was just a tickle."
Just a tickle! They gave him so much morphine for the burns that he was unconscious almost all the time for a couple of weeks, but still, he said, "I could feel it in my dreams."
Anyone within the first radius around a large petroleum explosion like the fire at Chardarah is simply blown to bits, and literally nothing remains of them. A little farther out you may find something like charcoal, then fragments recognizable as flesh. Eventually you pass beyond the radius where everyone must have died almost instantly, and move into a rainbow from blue to red heat, where people survived for an hour, or a week, or until today, mutilated and tormented.
I can feel it in my dreams.
Beautifully written. Thanks, RR. :-)
October 14, 2009 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can't say the words. Maybe later.
October 14, 2009 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
A tragic accident, I,m sure. Collateral damage happens. Sad, but freedom has its price.
Coastal dwellers used to sometimes put up lights in places to lure ships onto the rocks so that they could salvage the wreckage. If the ship owners had been able to they would have surely sent a drone to kill everyone on the beach who was going for their goods. This would be partly for retribution but also to warn all who heard about it not to try it again.
It is possible that the villagers took part in the original attack on the tanker, likely that they knew it was coming and didn't do anything to stop it or tell anyone on "our side" so that the attack could be stopped. If either case is true, or was perceived to be, then it is not at all inconceivable that the choice was consciously made somewhere remote from the incident and from risk to attack them both as retribution and as a warning. No one who made the decision or carried out the action had ever to get close enough to see and feel the results. People are people but charred babies stay in your dreams longer.
War makes some people into fucking monsters who can do this sort of thing and others into the kind that can ignore it. Americans seem to be mostly in the latter group.
The cure? Stop dreaming.
October 14, 2009 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it possible? Really? Wow, talk about dreaming!
As they say: All is fair in love and war.
October 14, 2009 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cold, lulu; very cold.
October 14, 2009 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wendy, Usually, when commenting verbally on a subject like this I cannot keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I make people angry. When writing, as in this case, I apparently did not make the sarcasm of the first sentence clear enough. I did intend to say and possibly illustrate how cold the decisions in combat can be and combat that takes as little emotional involvement as a video game can easily be more so.
Gasket, My example of people luring ships onto the rocks so as to steal the cargo is historically accurate and that was between people who had no connection other than one group had valuable cargo and the other wanted it. They were willing to kill strangers who had done nothing to them. In the incident in question the people obviously wanted fuel vary badly and at least some of them may have had hard feelings toward Americans. They may [emphasis on may] have even been as cold blooded as the NATO forces who attacked the crowd. They are all humans, so all are part of a flawed group. I don't know if they cooperated or took part in the original attack on the tanker but I am confident that such things have happened.
When my platoon walked through a village in Viet Nam and every villager's apparent reaction ranged from indifferent to friendly and then just outside of the village someone stepped on a land mine our reaction was to believe that they knew the location of that mine and could have saved a buddy's legs by warning us. We may have been wrong, no doubt often were, but that is how we thought and how you likely would have, too. Many would have gladly bombed the village if they though that setting an example would have prevented a recurrence.
I was trying to point out that this might have been much worse than collateral damage, it may have been deliberate.
When I said that the cure was to stop dreaming I meant that that was the cure for the person having the nightmares.
October 14, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not a fan of sarcasm, I guess, precisely because it is so hard to discern. Thanks for the attempt at explanation. the 'freedom has its price' idea; I've lived too long to know that we can mean really different things by it. So many who send soldiers to war pay no price at all; others pay too much on both sides of the wars.
October 14, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Collateral Damage"....scary Orwellian World we live in.
October 14, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Powerful. Sickening. Inspirational.
Thanks.
October 14, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
"...move into a rainbow of blue to red heat where people lived an hour, or a week..."
The suffering, so much worse than the death.
I have heard it said that nurses don't survive for long on burn units. I can feel why that is.
A remarkable diary, ruta.
October 14, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is important we feel the actions made in our name, even in our dreams. You've provided a better picture then any photograph and we need to see this.
October 14, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good one, RR. Thanks.
October 14, 2009 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know it ain't too popular but I've said it before. You're a good man Rootie.
Thanks.
October 14, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE58Q08H20090929
Interestingly, only one type of civilian casualty is criticized by certain posters around here. Selective outrage that supports a desired political statement is the best kind I guess.Yeah ... collateral damage is all over the place. 10 children in that incident. And it's far from the most deadly conducted recently. Of course, I guess if the civilians are the actual targets, it is sort of hard to call the damage "collateral".
October 14, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Burns are just as horrifying when caused by Taliban bombers, and the Taliban often use petrol as a component to kill, maim and burn people. Fuel is also necessary for Taliban vehicles, whether the vehicles are for suicide bombings or to transport them to some girls school to terrorize, throw acid on or kill students or teachers.
The victims of the Taliban bombers look and smell the same as these did in death. The pain is no less for those who cling to life as burn victims of petrol based IEDs or VBIEDs. The destruction of the tanker may have saved other lives albeit in a unjustified, deadly and indiscriminate manner.
October 14, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
To even suggest that there is any modifying case to be made that such a horror is somehow made more acceptable out of concern that the victims MIGHT have harbored ill thoughts and intent toward us is abominable.
To be certain, each and every one of those parents/brothers/people who were there that day and survived; or who witnessed this; or who took into their home a relative who is forever crippled and mangled from this attack - please be certain that most assuredly EVERY one of them now harbor ill thoughts and intent toward us who committed this act. What do we do now? Invite them all to a meeting and send another tanker and drone to finish it off?
October 15, 2009 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Story is expanded in this piece from Politics Daily:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/09/24/afghanistan-how-the-kunduz-air-strike-shapes-the-debate/
Reporting by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad of the Guardian included. Dated Sept 24, not a dead story.
October 14, 2009 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
The story by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad linked from Politics Daily is actually dated September 11, and I quoted from it the next day in my first blog about Chandarah, and also in this diary, the diary above your thoughtless and inaccurate comment about how the story has been "expanded."
But thanks for pretending that you care enough to get anything right about it, even though you don't.
October 15, 2009 12:04 AM | Reply | Permalink