Raferty
U.S. bombing of Red Cross in Kabul.
Wed Oct 31 20:08:29 2001


Introductory Note: There has been much news coverage of the U.S. bombing -
twice! - of Red Cross humanitarian warehouses in Kabul. Afghanistan.

Yet, while Pentagon spokesmen such as Gen. Richard Myers and Donald Rumsfeld
have been interviewed and widely quoted, we have seen only one interview with a
Red Cross spokesmen; that was on Canadian TV.

The general thrust of media coverage is that the Red Cross was hit because it is
right next to some military facilities, or even that its warehouses had been
taken over by the Taliban.

So on 31 October I called Red Cross headquarters in Geneva and spoke to two
officials.

Please feel free to repost or reprint the following interview in any media,
giving credit to www.tenc.net, and without altering the text.

Here is the transcript.
-- JI

Jared Israel: The warehouses that have been bombed, are they in an isolated area
or are there many other warehouses right there?

Christoph Luedi: We had this warehouse which is our compound on its own with
these buildings inside and a wall around. So it is separate.

Jared Israel: You have a wall around?

Christoph Luedi: Yeah, it's five buildings; the compound has a wall around; it's
a compound on its own. At least two of the buildings had a red cross on the top.
There are three buildings in a row and then there are two; they are very close
together. As far as we know, one building is still intact. One has been hit in
the first bombardment. Two have been hit in the second and the other caught
fire.

Jared Israel: There is a news story from CNBC [29 October], they say:

"Also, there was an interesting case on Friday where the US--American warplanes
hit a Red Cross food warehouse twice. Now initially, it was said that that was
hit by mistake. However today, senior military officials tell us that that Red
Cross warehouse was hit on purpose because it was seized by the Taliban, who was
stealing all that food. Ron."

Is that a true statement or false?

Christoph Luedi: This we can confirm is not correct because we started four days
before the bombardment to distribute food out of these warehouses to
disabled-headed families, a distribution which started on Tuesday and should
have been ongoing until Sunday. This distribution was notified to the Americans
especially in light of, because we distributed to different districts and this
leads to a massing of people and we wanted to keep them [the Americans] informed
that the massing people was linked to our distributions.

Jared Israel: And that involved the massing of people to receive the food?

Christoph Luedi: But not around the warehouses. We load it on trucks the day
before. We load it, and then we bring it to the different districts in Kabul
where we distribute. So we gave a plan of distribution to the Americans, we say,
"On Tuesday the distribution is in this district, District 1, these and these
are the distribution spots, on Wednesday these and these districts and so many
beneficiaries, on Thursday, on Saturday and on Sunday." And this is where they
get this information.

But we were using this food through our own channels. That means we had the
control over this warehouse. The only thing there was security around the
building, our own security and an extremely limited number from the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to give us protection because after the first bombing we were
afraid of looting so we had to negotiate. So we said OK, we want to do a
distribution but we need to keep this material. And the Taliban said, OK, fair
enough, that's your warehouse.

[At this point Mr. Luedi consulted with another gentleman nearby; this was John
Wurt, a Red Cross specialist in logistics.]

Christoph Luedi: He [i.e., Mr. Wurt] is logistician who visits regularly and he
has a clear picture. As I said it is a compound; you go through a gate. The
compound is quite big. We used it for jogging. And he confirms that it is fairly
alone [i.e., isolated].

Jared Israel: Could I talk to him for a sec? Is that OK?

John Wurt: Hello.

Jared Israel: Hi. So, there's a fair amount of space between the wall around the
compound and the other buildings in the general area?

John Wurt: As I remember there aren't buildings around in the general area.
There's kind of a residential area as you go down the road to the compound and
then there's nothing much around as I remember and then you go through the gate
into the compound and basically it's open field all around.

Jared Israel: So this is really a Red Cross compound; this isn't a complex of
warehouses that the Red Cross has some food in?

John Wurt: No, no, no, we had the whole compound. There's a series of, I think
there was five chambers, some food some non-food, then we had some other
material stored in containerized material that wasn't stuff we were using on a
regular basis. But nobody else's stuff was in our compound. It was solely for
the use of the Red Cross.

Jared Israel: The Red Cross has a policy of non-discrimination, right? You give
out the food irrelevant of whose people are getting it, based on need?

Christoph Luedi: Yeah, sure.

Jared Israel: Do you think they [the U.S. command] object to that?

Christoph Luedi: I will not speculate on the reasons why this happened because I
don't have the information and that's not my job. Our job is to try and continue
our work within Afghanistan.

Jared Israel: OK. But you do have this non-discrimination policy. That is a true
statement?

Christoph Luedi: OK, but humanitarian work should be that, not only of the Red
Cross but also of others.

Jared Israel: But that is not always true, right?

Christoph Luedi: Probably not but I will not judge others. But we work together
in a conflict with all parties to the conflict, and we are in contact with the
Americans; we are in contact with the Taliban, with Northern Alliance, with
Pakistan, to discuss what we are doing, why we are doing it and remind them of
their obligations within the international humanitarian law. That's our job that
we have to do with all parties.

Jared Israel: Thank you for speaking to me.



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