In Afghanistan a New Photo Scandal

Images from two separate 2010 instances in which soldiers were photographed, smug and mocking, next to dismembered corpses of suicide bombers. The Pentagon has tried to stop the spread of these photos, but The Los Angeles Times has published them. Obama, Panetta, and NATO’s condemnation: “We hope there are no reprisals.”*

They posed next to the dismembered bodies as trophies— here an arm, there a bloody hand—smiling, impeccable in their Marine Corps uniforms, soldiers who should be the pride of a nation. The latest American shame jumps out from a past that will not go away: the photos are from 2010 but it’s only now that The Los Angeles Times has published them after the Pentagon’s latest attempt, in secret negotiations with the newspaper, to avoid yet another shock.

It’s the photography of the other face of the daily horror of a war that, after more than ten years, the West leads more and more wearily. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has condemned the action and hopes that there will be no consequences that affect the safety of NATO troops. But the photos come in the aftermath of an extraordinary joint attack in Kabul that has brought the Taliban back into action. The insurgents particularly wanted to avenge the latest humiliations: the absurd massacre by the Sergeant who killed 17 civilians in his rampage, the burning of the Koran “by mistake” in front of the Bagram prison, and those other absolutely scandalous photos of other conscious-less Marines caught urinating on the corpses of slain guerrillas. These episodes led Barack Obama to apologize to appease the anger of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but the question remains: now what? Obama has ordered an investigation and stated that the perpetrators “of this reprehensible act” should be punished. Even Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has spoken of “foolish”, “unacceptable behavior.” These are condemnations and investigations that probably never would have happened if the pictures had remained secret.

The photos show soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division stationed in the province of Zabol, in February 2010. The soldiers had the task of doing what is usually done in these gruesome cases, taking fingerprints and doing digital iris scans to identify the suicide bomber that had been blown up. But having finished the work, someone came up with the idea of documenting what had happened with a few photos: with Afghan police colleagues nearby, there was a smile on the soldier’s lips as he posed between the bloody legs of a suicide bomber’s corpse. Unfortunately this was not an isolated incident. A few months later, the same platoon gave an encore after the inspection of another body of a fighter, who this time, among other things, had accidentally blown himself up. But that’s not all. To embellish the scene, someone asked a soldier to pose next to the corpse and the words “Zombie Hunter,” the title of the pulp bestseller.

The Army, of course, opened an investigation. But only after a “warning” from The Los Angeles Times that they’d received the photos thanks to a Marine who broke the wall of silence. There is no end to the shame, but fortunately neither is there an end to the courage of those who wound up down there risking their lives for all of us in a war which, at this point, is without a cause.

*Editor’s Note: the original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.