36 slain in Taliban attack on work crew

[Swede]

Source: CNN

At least three dozen road workers in southeastern Afghanistan were killed early Thursday when Taliban forces attacked their camp, a local Afghan official said.

The incident took place in the Wazai Zadran district of Paktia province. The employees worked for a company doing construction on a highway between the cities of Gardez and Khost, a road used frequently by coalition and government forces.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, saying it objected to the use of the key highway by coalition forces.



Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/19/afghanistan.workers.abducted/

[maxsolomon]

1. Afghanis will turn out to protest these killings too, right?

End game: NATO will GTFO eventually, and the Taliban will take over the country again through ruthless terror and intimidation. Not to mention Wahhabi and/or Pakistani Military/ISI funding and logistics. Opium and Hashish will be exported. Women will be oppressed. Ignorance will reign.

The best that the West can hope for is a quarantine.

[Igel]

4. Of course.

1. The killings weren't done by perceived outsiders. Excuses will be made.

2. To protest is dangerous. It's only the nasty, infidel Americans who can be protested against with impunity; the good, virtuous, locals, if you protest against them, might kill your family or destroy your house. (It's part of what makes them good and virtuous, from what I understand. Not.)

3. To protest against the killing of family members is economically sound. If the two men killed were actual insurgents, then their family gets no cash; if their deaths are protested so that the US allows the claim that they weren't insurgents, then the family gets compensated for their loss. To protest against the Taliban merely nets you more loss (see (2) above).

In fact, it's possible that the work crew wasn't local, but from some other part of the country. Since jobs are virtually viewed as property, by hiring non-local workers the jobs would have been stolen from their rightful owners. Or perhaps there wasn't a sufficient kick-back to the Taliban or their supporters. Or maybe one of the workers was alleged to have looked longingly at a local man's daughter, failed to satisfy the man's "honor", and so the work crew was collectively punished.

Hard to know. But in an insurgency where the majority of civilians killed are killed by the insurgents, but only the Westerners get blamed for any deaths, you know that there's something a bit more important than mere lives at stake.

[Fuddnik]

2. Budget cuts forced us to stop paying protection money to the Taliban.

[Robb]

3. Five-hour gun battle. There's some missing pieces to this story.

Foreign company? Chinese? They're doing a lot of road-building... also no mention of who the company's guards were, whether national forces or local (or imported) private security. Pretty long firefight for locals.