Talk:Dasht-i-Leili massacre/Archive 1

The white-washing of this article is disturbing.
Can we please look at all of the evidence fairly before drawing hasty conclusions one way or the other? For instance, I hope people would at least have the decency to watch the documentary on this before denying it ever happened. Here are some relevant links:


 * "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death" - the movie itself (Democracy Now!)
 * Interview on the film with Jamie Doran - May 26th, 2003 (Democracy Now!)
 * Preliminary Assessment of Alleged Mass Gravesites in the Area of Mazar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan - January 16-21 and February 7-14, 2002 (Physicians for Human Rights)
 * 'US Had Role in Taleban Prisoner Deaths' - June 14, 2002 (The Scotsman)
 * US Afghan allies committed massacre - March 21, 2004 (The Observer/UK)

I will edit this and add more as I find more, but alas, I don't have time to finish this project tonight.--GD 10:05, 2 September 2004 (UTC)


 * The only whitewashing of the article was the work done before. I saw the documentary, and like most pieces of agitprop, it has quite a few "moving" images and anonymous "eyewitness" accounts, but nothing more than that. The Physicians for Human Rights reports does not back up Dorans claims of 3000 Talibans killed outside the jail. It does find many mass graves in the area, but also concludes that many of these graves are years old.


 * And then there is the issue of Robert Young Pelton, an actual eyewitness to all the events. I realize that we cannot take DOD talking points at face value, but what about Pelton? TDC 16:39, 2 September 2004 (UTC)

Regardless of our individual takes on this article, it ought to be rewritten so as not to be a debate between Doran and Pelton, especially as there are variety of other observers now available. Also notable is the progress (or lack thereof), and the repeated intimidation of witnesses to the events by Dostum's forum. The Guardian even quotes a survivor (see articles below), so let's make this about the events, not a debate between two western journalists.

--Carwil 20:25, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * "The Death Convoy of Afghanistan," NEWSWEEK investigation by Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman (With Donatella Lorch in Washington, Karen Breslau in San Francisco and Stryker McGuire in London), Aug 26 '02.
 * Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, "Reporter bullied over alleged war crimes video", IWPR, 10/11/04.
 * Rory McCarthy, "US Afghan ally 'tortured witnesses to his war crimes'," The Guardian, November 18, 2002


 * But it should also be said that the only eye witness to these events who has nothing at stake, Pelton, has gone on record to deny the charges. All other eyewitnesses are Taliban fighter, whose motives and testimony is "colored" at best. TDC 20:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Restructuring
I've restructured the article, to narrate the massacre, while not avoiding the controversy. Those more critical of the narrative should qualify witness statements where they think they are unlikely to be true. The tipping point for me is that one of Dostum's commanders testifies to the mass deaths. Carwil 19:43, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Propaganda

This page is neither informative or balanced but used to perpetuate one of the myths of the war. There are plenty of official statements from Dostum, the DoD and there are plenty of accusations (mostly generated by Physicans for Human Rights) that have generated the Doran doco, the Newsweek story and the NYTimes coverage. Much of the FOIA information is actually the State Dept commenting on the above news coverage which is then used by PHR as evidence created a do loop of rumor, not fact. The facts as I know them are around 250 prisoners died. They were put in containers for security reasons and the weather (it was freezing, not hot) and their is a virulent Pashtun and Tajik agenda (along with State Dept) to bring this up just before elections in Afghanistan. Based on what I saw and what I know one arab commander put prisoners in containers at Qali Zaini at night and there may have been a number of prisoners that suffocated. They were buried in Dashti Leilli. What is missing from this discussion is Dostum also wants those bodies exhumed since thousands of afghans killed by the taliban and Abdul Malik Pahlawan are buried at that site. Something that clearly shows this topic is political not scientific or informational. For the record I was there, took plenty of notes and pictures. There were also plenty of other journalists, doctors, U.S soldiers and civilians. Yet these stories use bizarre tales of sweating, shooting, blood pouring out etc etc with not one single named witness to refute their silly stories.

Anyone could have killed as many taliban or al qaeda as they chose at that time (as the Americans and Afghans were doing with gusto) but somehow the one person who negotiated a surrender is accused of being a war criminal. Go figure.

If we are to examine massacres in Afghanistan they must be apolitical and scientific not promotional or supporting desperate attempts to generate tabloid publicity. Lets hope the Wikipedia editors slash this back to facts and not hsyteria.

- RYP —Preceding unsigned comment added by RYP (talk • contribs) 19:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

survivor's accounts?
I read an account, from a survivor. He did say that Dostum's forces did fire into the tightly packed containers, killing many of captives, but the bullet holes prevented him from suffocating. I read it over a year ago. I will try to remember where, and incorporate it. -- Geo Swan 14:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

POV tag
Care to elaborate on your concerns?--Carwil 05:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

POV tag
The article needs of rewrite to be NPOV with RS, not DemocracyNow and other activist source. I totaly want an investigation and truth on this, and Ami war criminals in Hague, my personal view point is not important, Wiki needs have reliable source and activist web sites and programs is not RS. RetroS1mone  talk  00:57, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You seem to be misunderstanding our WP:NPOV and WP:V policies, as well as our WP:RS guideline. Do you have any specific criticism about the text of the article? If not, I'll be removing the tag. Dlabtot (talk) 17:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Dasht-i-Leili massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090718205011/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2001/12/11/international/asia/11JAIL.html to http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/international/asia/11JAIL.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:09, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Dasht-i-Leili massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticlePrint/22393
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090422060348/http://www.mcclatchydc.com:80/227/story/57649.html to http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/57649.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 06:49, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on Dasht-i-Leili massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=qw1020329461747B212
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040826194008/http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20030204 to http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20030204
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090805052345/http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/7/13/obama_calls_for_probe_into_2001 to http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/7/13/obama_calls_for_probe_into_2001
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090805052345/http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/7/13/obama_calls_for_probe_into_2001 to http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/7/13/obama_calls_for_probe_into_2001
 * Added archive http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20040112223857/http%3A//www.acftv.com/archive/article.asp?archive_id%3D1 to http://www.acftv.com/archive/article.asp?archive_id=1
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040826194008/http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20030204 to http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20030204
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/57649.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:42, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Unnecessary archiving
It seems to me that the talk pages have been archived for no good reason - they're not that long, and issues remain unaddressed. There is at least one unreliable source in the article (reference 28 is blatantly POV YouTube video) and the article seems to lack final resolution. Is anybody watching this article? I ran across it doing general research into the Afghan War (2001-present). TreacherousWays (talk) 17:16, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Journalist Robert Young Pelton, who was an eyewitness and is briefly cited in the article, insists this "bizarre" story "is false" in a 2018 article
http://dangerousmagazine.com/2018/01/20/general-dostum-12-strong-legend-heavy-d-boys/ n--SNAAAAKE!! (talk) 19:09, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Also, "In late 2001, around 8,000 Taliban fighters, including Chechens," - certainly not "including Chechens" as there were never any and this is only a meme. (https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/1185888.html etc.) SNAAAAKE!! (talk) 19:19, 26 May 2019 (UTC)