Echoes from the blast

(Previously: Tic tic tic...)

From Afghanistan, conflicting reports on why the civilians were there:

One survivor, convalescing from abdominal wounds at a hospital in the nearby city of Kunduz, said he went to the site because he thought he could get free fuel. Another patient, a 10-year-old boy with shrapnel in his left leg, said he went to gawk, against his father's advice. In Kabul, the Afghan capital, relatives of two severely burned survivors being treated at an intensive-care unit said Taliban fighters forced dozens of villagers to assist in moving the bogged-down tankers.

"They came to everyone's house asking for help," said Mirajuddin, a shopkeeper who lost six of his cousins in the bombing -- none of whom, he said, was an insurgent. "They started beating people and pointing guns. They said, 'Bring your tractors and help us.' What could we do?"

I recognize that the carefully controlled and disciplined employment of force entails risks to our troops - and we must work to mitigate that risk wherever possible. But excessive use of force resulting in an alienated population will produce far greater risks. We must understand this reality at every level in our force.

I expect leaders at all levels to scrutinize and limit the use of force like close air support (CAS) against residential compounds and other locations likely to produce civilian casualties in accordance with this guidance.

The grainy live video transmitted from an American F-15E fighter jet circling overhead, which was projected on a screen in a German tactical operations center four miles north of here, showed numerous black dots around the trucks -- each of them a thermal image of a human but without enough detail to confirm whether they were carrying weapons. An Afghan informant was on the phone with an intelligence officer at the center, however, insisting that everybody at the site was an insurgent, according to an account that German officers here provided to NATO officials.

Based largely on that informant's assessment, the commander ordered a 500-pound, satellite-guided bomb to be dropped on each truck early Friday. The vehicles exploded in a fireball that lit up the night sky for miles, incinerating many of those standing nearby.

Meanwhile, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, the top U.S. and NATO spokesman in the country, said German troops let too many hours pass before visiting the site of the bombing Friday.

He explained that it's important to hold the ground after a strike and determine what happened before the enemy comes out with its own version of events.

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, visited the site Saturday where two charred trucks and yellow gas cans sat on a riverbed. He asked a top commander in Regional Command North about the response time.

"Why didn't RC-North come here quicker?" McChrystal asked Col. Georg Klein, the commander of the German base in Kunduz.

"I can honestly say it was a mistake," Klein answered, in a discussion witnessed by an Associated Press reporter.

On Sunday, Smith said that in McChrystal's judgment the response time "was probably longer than it should have been."

For the defense, the New York Times:

The German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, on Sunday defended the call for an airstrike. "We had clear information that the Taliban had seized the fuel trucks about six kilometers away from our base in order to launch an attack against our soldiers in Kunduz," he told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "I cannot comprehend how some can so quickly criticize the military action without knowing what the situation was or the background information."

By the way; the air strike overshadowed what was likely the biggest German post-WW2 ground fight, it happened just hours later.

That whole day was a quite black day for the Taliban up north, they lost dozens of fighters and could likely not bear several more such days at all.

On Saturday, morning four German soldiers were injured in the same area after a suicide bomber blew himself in a car. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, while its spokesman Sabuillah Mudschahid seemed to make a connection between Friday's tanker attack and Saturday's car bomb, saying the attacker came from Char Darah.

Other English language German news reports on the investigation here and here and here (and an interesting look at the upcoming election here).

But at Registan, Josh Foust notes "This is not the first time the German posture in Kunduz has been astoundingly counterproductive" - and provides details concluding with "Germany's near-criminal negligence in Afghanistan must come to an end".

As for the Afghan locals response, back to the Washington Post. Once on the scene, General McChrystal spoke with them:

McChrystal began expressing sympathy "for anyone who has been hurt or killed."

The council chairman, Ahmadullah Wardak, cut him off. He wanted to talk about the deteriorating security situation in Kunduz, where Taliban activity has increased significantly in recent months. NATO forces in the area, he told the fact-finding team before McChrystal arrived, need to be acting "more strongly" in the area.

Andrew Exum:

Why, one has a right to ask, did the Germans not deploy a QRF or Ground Assault Convoy to recover the fuel trucks when they were stolen? Even after the trucks became stuck the Germans decided to instead engage with an F-15. And they wonder why or how civilians are killed? If you read between the lines in Rajiv's report, you'll note the way in which he highlights the Germans' reluctance to move outside the wire. (McChrystal eventually ignores the Germans and travels to the bomb site, which the Germans thought too dangerous to visit.)
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I cannot even begin to imagine how frustrated General McChrystal is right now. Frustrated with Col. Georg Klein, the commander who called in the air strike, and frustrated that the Germans cannot be relied upon to regain control of Kunduz and Baghlan Provinces when he so badly needs more ISAF units in the east and west that he surely cannot spare any for the north.

In a troubling side note to this story, reports of a missing NY Times reporter are beginning to appear - though not in western media. Afghan sources claim he has been captured by the Taliban in the area. Stephen Farrell was covering the aftermath of the airstrike, the last word on his whereabouts (though there's no mention of his disappearance) is in the NY Times At War blog:

Stephen Farrell, a New York Times reporter and chief "At War" blogger, made it to the site and reported several civilian casualties, including injured young boys he spoke with at the local hospital.

The blog recently published this enigmatic post.