Lower Babur

Lower Babur is a village in the Arghandab District of Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan that was destroyed by American military forces in October and November 2010.[1]

In the Autumn of 2010, the United States Army launched Operation Dragon Strike in Kandahar as a part of U.S. President Barack Obama's broader troop surge strategy in Afghanistan.[2] After experiencing high casualties in Arghandab, Lt. Col. David S. Flynn of the American 1-320th field artillery, a part of the 101st Airborne Division, ordered villagers in some villages to diffuse IEDs or leave their villages, which would be destroyed by aerial bombardment.[citation needed] Flynn maintained that villagers knew the location of IEDs;[citation needed] some villagers later stated that they would coordinate with insurgents to travel safely along certain paths at certain hours of the day.[3]

Flynn later explained that the villages were empty of people and full of IEDs,[4] a claim repeated by The New York Times.[5] Villagers near Lower Babur disputed this account during interviews with IPS, explaining that they had evacuated their homes prior to the American offensive, but returned regularly to tend to their properties.[3][6]

Few media sources describe the destruction of Lower Babur specifically.[1] Arghandab District governor Shah Muhammed Ahmadi reported that 6 villages had been destroyed, with his assent and the agreement of their inhabitants.[5] In April 2011, Bob Strong of Reuters reported that "a walk through what was once the village of lower Babur revealed a narrow strip of rubble surrounded by orchards and forest on both sides, testimony to the force of U.S. bombing."[7] Strong noted that the village mosque had been rebuilt.[7] In August 2011, Sean Martin reported that 20 small houses had been "rebuilt" by the "Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team." Afghans had not yet moved back into their village.[8]

  1. ^ a b Ackerman, Spencer: ‘Why I Flattened Three Afghan Villages’. Wired Magazine, 1 February 2011.
  2. ^ Hastings, Deborah, "Operation Dragon Strike: Battle for Kandahar Begins Archived 2012-10-04 at the Wayback Machine, AOL News, 27 September 2010.
  3. ^ a b Noori, Shah and Gareth Porter, "Kabul: Afghan villagers dispute U.S. Rationale for bombing Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine." The Madison Times, 2 March 2011.
  4. ^ Flynn, David, "I Acted After a Great Deal of Deliberative Planning." Thomas Rick's Foreign Policy Blog, 24 January 2011.
  5. ^ a b Norland, Rod and Taimoor Shah: NATO is Razing Booby-Trapped Afghan Homes. The New York Times, 16 November 2010.
  6. ^ Porter, Gareth: Kandahar gains come with "brutal" tactics. Asia Times, 21 December 2010.
  7. ^ a b Strong, Bob, U.S. troops await Taliban in south Afghan valley, Reuters, 12 April 2011.
  8. ^ Martin, Sean, Kandahar PRT engineers perform site assessment at lower Babur Village rebuild, Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System, 17 August 2011.