August 29-30
A U.S. drone strike west of the Kabul airport killed 10 members of Emal Ahmadi’s family, including seven children. The attack was in retaliation for the ISIS-K bombing, but it mistakenly took innocents. Emal’s brother Zemari was killed. Emal looked at me with tears in his eyes. I grabbed his hand and apologized. It was a useless gesture, but I didn’t know what else to do, and it had come after so many days of death.
I looked around at the wreckage. The family car battered and blackened. I asked for a shovel. I dug and recovered an orange object later identified as the pneumatic accumulator, part of a U.S. Hellfire missile. We were the first ones to find it. I saw firsthand what gets explained away in news conferences, where official stories often reshape reality.
The funeral for the Ahmadis came quickly. The Afghan custom is for burials to take place within 24 hours. No women are allowed.
More than 200 men and boys attended. They stood in rows, faced Kabul’s airport and folded their arms to pray. I knelt near a coffin. I wanted to keep small, to not interfere with the mourning, but to tell the story. Jet fighters circled overhead, and at once, as if on cue, the mourners looked up. The sky was clear and blue, but the sounds of jet engines drowned out the wails and sobs until the men around the freshly dug graves finished their work and returned to their homes for another night of worry.
The U.S. would call the drone strike a “tragic mistake.” But the Pentagon decided no American troops would be punished. Emal Ahmadi would wonder how it could be that a family could die and no one be held accountable. I would visit Emal weeks later. The charred remains of the car were still in the family compound. The house was quiet.
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December 31, 2021 at 07:06PM
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A Times journalist's diary and photos inside the fall of Afghanistan - Los Angeles Times
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