“I feel very angry, but I don’t want anything from the U.S. military. God will hold them accountable,” said Khalid Ahmad, a 20-year-old pharmacist who survived the U.S. bombing of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on Oct. 3.
“The Taliban had already taken control of all areas in Kunduz except the MSF Hospital and the airport. I felt I could still serve the patients safely because neither the Afghan/U.S. military forces nor the Taliban would bother us. At least, they’re not supposed to,” he said.
He paused imperceptibly.
“As a neutral humanitarian service, we treat everyone alike — as patients needing help. We recognize everyone as a human being.”
The actions of the U.S. military elicit the same contempt from Khalid and many ordinary Afghans as do the actions of the Taliban or ISIS.
Khalid was a little wary when Zuhal, Hoor, and I were introduced to him in a ward of Emergency Hospital in Kabul, where he has been recuperating from a U.S. shrapnel injury to his spine that nearly killed him.
But, immediately, I saw his care for others.
“I was sleeping when the bombing began at about 2 a.m. I went to see what was happening, and to my horror, I saw that the ICU was on fire, the flames appearing to shoot 10 meters up into the night sky. Some patients were burning in their beds,” he said.
“I took off, and just as I reached the gate, with one foot outside the gate and one foot inside the hospital compound, shrapnel hit me on my back. I lost power in both legs, and fell. I was desperate to call my family.
“My colleagues and I had taken out the batteries from our cell phones because the U.S. military has a way of tracking and target-killing people by picking up their cell phone signals. With one good arm, somehow, I pulled out my phone and inserted its battery.
“I was petrified.”
I wish there were a global conversation about the failure of the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians and health facilities. In 2003, the European Council in Brussels estimated that since 1990, almost 4 million people have died in wars — 90 percent of whom were civilians.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres declared in a June 2015 press release that, “We are witnessing a paradigm change… It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace.”
Passively accepting the Pentagon’s confessional report of “human error’’ that resulted in the killing of 31 staff and patients in the Kunduz Hospital bombing allowed the U.S. and other militaries to continue breaching laws and conventions with impunity, like in Yemen right now.
The International Committee of the Red Cross reported in October that nearly 100 hospitals in Yemen had been attacked since March 2015. As recently as Dec. 2, Khalid’s haunting story repeated itself in Taiz, Yemen, where an MSF clinic was attacked by the Saudi coalition forces, prompting Karline Kleijer, MSF operational manager for Yemen, to say that every nation backing the Yemen war, including the U.S., must answer for the Yemen MSF clinic bombing.
“I’ve had five surgical operations so far,” Khalid said, his voice fading off a little.
“And I needed two liters of blood in all.”
Khalid was exhausted. I understood from working in Afghanistan over the past years of a worsening war that his exhaustion wasn’t just physical.
“I’m angry. The U.S. military is killing us just because they want to be the empire of the world.”
Khalid asked why we wanted to take his photograph. His question reminded me of what we as individuals can do: taking and seeing his photo in this article isn’t going to be enough.
He steadied himself in the chair, placed his urine bag out of the camera’s view,
Then he said, with full dignity, “I want my story to be heard.”
Dr. Hakim, a medical doctor from Singapore, has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for the past 10 years. He is the 2012 recipient of the International Pfeffer Peace Prize.
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