Talk:Battle of Qala-i-Jangi

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BetacommandBot 00:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Something unclear
In the section 'The battle' the 4th paragraph from the end states "They were joined by four more Special Forces..." Does this mean Special Forces units, squads, teams or something else? This should probably be cleared up to avoid confusion. --Hydraton31 (talk) 22:12, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Number of prisoners?
Where do you come up with "300"? at the time and in all other places other than here, number of 600+ prisoners been used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.231.217.247 (talk) 12:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I see 300 to 500 in the sources cited. Please cite references when you make statements like this.  +sj  +  13:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Title
as of now, "Battle of Qala-i-Jangi". However, this doesnt match with the reality, that it was a prisoner uprising, and then a massacre, NOT A LEGIMATE BATTLE. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.154.204.152 (talk) 00:52, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

What is a "legitimate battle"? Why shouldn't a conflict which began with a prisoner uprising, and ended with heavy casualties (massacre is incorrect, as they were still resisting) be called a battle? While, according to the laws of war, it was indeed illegitimate for the prisoners to engage in acts of violence after they had surrendered, this means their actions are illegitimate, not the description of the conflict as a battle.


 * IP user 91.XXXXXX is a revisionist of enviable capasity. True or false? --83.108.30.25 (talk) 23:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

cn
I added some cn tags to unreferenced assertions in the section entitled "the battle".

This version of the incident is inconsistent with the accounts offered by the captives who survived the incident who testified at the their Guantanamo administrative reviews. The captives who survived offered either the perspective of those who were still imprisoned in the basement dungeon when shooting and explosions broke out. Or the offered the perspective of those who had been stripped, searched, bound with handcuffs, and made to kneel in the fort's central courtyard.

If the account that is central to the section entitled "the battle" is correct, and men near Spann suddenly rose up and attacked him, then either none of his attackers survived, or they didn't testify. This aspect of the current account is inconsistent with the testimony that the captives were made to exit the prison, one at a time, strip, undergo a search, and were then handcuffed, and lead to the place in the courtyard where they were made to kneel.

If this were true then none of the men near Spann could have attacked him with hidden weapons. And with their hands bound they couldn't have engaged him in hand to hand combat.

Several of the survivors who had been bound, and made to kneel, described being made to wait, for hours, kneeling in the courtyard, before shooting broke out. Of course, if you are cold, tired, hungry and terrified then fifteen minutes might seem like hours. These captives described being shot, seeing their nearby fellow captives shot and killed, soon after the firing broke out. They described surviving by playing dead, and then crawling into the basement.

One survivor described waiting, in a line, to undergo his search, when there was firing, or an explosion, which lead to a panic among those waiting to exit. He described the exit getting jammed by panicced men, pushing and shoving to get out. He said he was about thirty guys from the front of the line, so he decided to look to see if he could find another exit. He had turned and started to walk away, when there was an explosion, right in the doorway, that killed the 29 men ahead of him, and left his back riddled with shrapnel. He said he was delirious for most of his stay in the basement. He said he survived because other survivors gave him water. He said he survived the flooding because he was relatively tall, and shorter men had drowned.

Captives described greedy Northern Alliance militiamen driving around Konduz, and seizing every military age man they could find, and sticking them in trucks to take to the Americans for a bounty. The Americans were paying $5000 for every Afghan the militiamen claimed was a Taliban, and $10,000 for every foreigner the militiamen claimed was al Qaeda. The Americans were paying a bounty for every captured rifle too.

So wily militiamen were clearing their armories of old or busted rifles, by offering them as evidence the random civilians they rounded up were fighters.

One Guantanamo captive, who was not present during the battle offered very illuminating testimony. He was a Pakistani truck driver. He admitted he had been employed by the Taliban, as a truck driver, but on a mercenary basis -- piece work. And, when the Taliban fell, he accept gigs from Northern Alliance militia leaders. His last gig was to deliver captives to Qali-Jangi.

His account confirmed the other captives account that the proof they were fighters was that the militia-men would throw in a pile of old, unloaded AK-47s, claiming these were the weapons they were captured with.

He said weapons were piled in his truck. Then men he saw randomly being grabbed were thrown in his truck. He described a chaotic scene when he arrived at the castle on his last delivery. There was a traffic jam. Captives were being lined up, to be presented, one at a time, to some Americans -- presumably the guy who was killed, and the CIA officer who survived. There was a pile of weapons where the trucks were unloaded. But with all the confusion and hysteria during the unloading of his truck the weapons were left on board.

As he drove away a truck with some militia-men started chasing his truck, to get at his weapons. He stopped when they started shooting. But then a second truck, with rival militia-men, started shooting at the first group of militia-men, because they too wanted to confiscate the weapons, his truck, and presumably turn him in to the Americans as an "enemy combatant" too.

During the firefight he was able to slip away. But he was captured later that day by the first farmer he asked for help, who locked him up for a few weeks in a hut, and then turned him in to US forces for a bounty himself.

If you believe his account it explains how the camp came to be so crowded the guards were unable to prevent the small group who were actual jihadists from starting an uprising. The militia-men were greedy. They stuffed the camp so full there were too many men to control. If the captives were transported in open trucks, with (unloaded) weapons in the bottom, and they were unloaded so quickly that trucks were being directed away still loaded with weapons, it explains how any dedicated jihadists among the captives were able to smuggle in weapons. Even if the weapons the militiamen were claiming their captives were carrying were broken, rusty, unloaded, I presume an experienced guy could field strip off a piece of metal, like the rod used to clean the barrel, that could be turned into enough of a weapon to attack an unwary guard.

If the truck driver's account of rival squads of Northern Alliance militiamen engaging in firefights over a couple of thousand dollars worth of weapons, then this strongly suggests that the Northern Alliance soldiers were completely untrained and undisciplined. Do you think General Dostum would claim the casualties of the firefight over the guns in the truck were really killed during the prison riot? Alternatively, is it possible that unskilled, undisciplined soldiers may have killed many other militiamen simply through unskilled, hyperexcited, hysterical weapons use?

If you look at Huey Long you will see something common. Long had a dozen bodyguards, trigger-happy bodyguards. Who started to blaze away when they thought Long was being attacked. Long was accidentally killed by trigger-happy, excitable bodyguards, who were poor marksmen. According to some accounts an attack on CIA officer Spann was the first event in the uprising. How likely is it that Spann, like Huey Long, was killed by excitable poor marksmen who meant to kill his attackers?

I suggest this alternate, conflicting account also should be covered. Geo Swan (talk) 02:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

That would indeed be an interesting story, but at the moment, it is entirely hearsay. Can you please add some citations for any (preferably all) of these allegations? And I find it depressing and disturbing (not to mention symptomatic of our times, unquestioningly "rooting for the underdog" whoever they are) that you automatically find the accounts of enemy fighters to be more reliable than independent (German) journalists - who captured the event on camera! According to the information you have given (which I accept may be completely false) these participants had a vested interest in telling American interrogators that they were "innocent bystanders" and that they were subject to human rights abuses by the Northern Alliance, as this would expedite their release, hopefully with a nice big payout and a lucrative book deal to look forward to. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.143.146.112 (talk) 14:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

question
The Battle of Qala-i-Jangi (Also wrongly referred to as the Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif) Should this be The Battle of Qala-i-Jangi (Wrongly referred to as the Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif)? Also makes it seem as though Qala=-i-Jangi is a wrong name. Libertarianrule (talk) 17:33, 27 March 2011 (UTC)