Marine tape reaction sets Taliban fighters against commanders

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have been enraged by a video which shows U.S. marines urinating on three corpses, believed to be insurgents, and some say they do not understand their leadership's relatively measured response to the tape.

News of the clip spread fast across Afghanistan, even though only a minority of people have electricity and the internet is restricted to a tiny urban elite.

Radio can reach remote militants and villagers and mobile phones are used by many Afghans, on both sides of the war, for storing and sharing videos even in remote areas with little communications infrastructure.

"I heard from some friends about this shameful act of the U.S. forces but could not see it at first," said one militant who called himself Qari Babar, explaining that a Pashto-language radio broadcast first alerted him to the tape's existence.

The video, posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four Marines in camouflage combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: "Have a nice day, buddy." Another makes a lewd joke.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned the video, describing the men's actions as "inhuman" and calling for an investigation. U.S. and NATO military commanders condemned the actions of the men, and Pentagon has acted quickly to respond to the video, in a bid to limit the fallout.

Although a Taliban spokesman criticized it last week, he said it would not harm nascent efforts to broker peace talks.

For some insurgents, their leadership's muted response to the Marines' actions was unwelcome, particularly after reports the Taliban had agreed to open a political office in Qatar to ease possible negotiation with the United States and allies.

"Our leaders overlooked this degrading and inhumane act of American soldiers because they are interested in peace talks," said Mullah Mohammad Gul, a local Taliban commander in southern Helmand province, where the video is believed to have been made.

"Our duty is to defend our sacred religion and our people and we will keep fighting, no matter what."

Insurgent fighters in other parts of the country said the video could undermine discipline and push foot soldiers to ignore orders from higher ranked fighters.

"Until now, we were following guidelines and principles laid down by our senior commanders for us to follow while fighting," said Babar, active in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province.

Young insurgents might ignore orders in future, he added.

U.S. General John Allen, who commands international troops in Afghanistan, accused the Taliban's one-eyed leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, this week of having "lost all control" of his frontline fighters after several suicide bombings in the restive south killed almost 20 people, mostly civilians.

Babar said he watched the video with around 70 fighters, and said it shocked them even though previous cases of abuse by foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, including the murder of innocent civilians, had been well publicized.

"Every one is now desperately trying to find U.S. soldiers to take revenge for the desecration of the bodies," he added.

HATE WILL GROW

Several commanders also thought the Marines' actions would also help bolster the group's standing with the rural Afghans they fight among.

"It helps us to win the support and sympathy of the Afghan people," Abdul Basit, who fights in eastern Khost province where insurgents have a strong presence, told Reuters.

"You see now the entire nation, even so many people in the government and armed forces, have turned against them because of the atrocities," Basit said.

Basit added that they had been advised by their leaders not to kill their prisoners and spies but after seeing the video, many of them might not control themselves in future.

In the southern town of Marjah, a part of Helmand that has seen heavy fighting and was the centre of a U.S.-led campaign to displace the Taliban in early 2010, another commander agreed.

"It is good that such video has emerged which showed Americans' inhumane acts," Mullah Abdullah told Reuters by satellite phone. He disagreed it would sap discipline, and instead saw a groundswell of greater support.

"From now on, hate against the foreign troops will grow in the hearts of every Muslim, especially in Afghanistan."

(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR, writing by Emma Graham-Harrison)

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Panetta in Iraq to see officials, commanders (AP)

BAGHDAD – From one war front to another Sunday, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta hopped from a U.S. outpost in Afghanistan's southern desert to Baghdad, where he sought to encourage Iraqi leaders to decide soon whether they want a residual American military force beyond year's end.

He refused to say whether the Obama administration wants the extension, but he expressed concern at a spike in U.S. deaths caused by what American officials believe are sophisticated explosive devices made in Iran.

Panetta prepared for talks Monday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other senior members of a government politically divided more than a year after national elections. Iraq has gone that long without defense or interior ministers, whose departments are responsible for the military and police.

The approximately 46,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq are to depart by the end of 2011 under an agreement negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration, which went to war in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein's government.

Asking even a few thousand to stay longer carries political risk leaders in both countries.

A signature pledge of President Barack Obama 2008 election campaign was to get the U.S. out of Iraq. For Iraqis fed up with violence, a longer U.S. presence looks like a formula for further strife.

The Associated Press reported on July 5 that the White House is offering to keep up to 10,000 troops in Iraq next year, despite opposition from key Democrats who demand that Obama bring home the troops as promised.

Panetta spent Sunday afternoon at Camp Dwyer, a dust-choked U.S. outpost in southern Afghanistan. He pinned Purple Heart medals on two Marines, had lunch with young officers, got a glimpse at an Army Black Hawk medevac unit and quizzed an Afghan army officer on commanding a unit that specializes in detecting land mines and roadside bombs.

The 73-year-old Panetta, on the job since July 1 after 2 1/2 years heading the CIA, appeared to hold up well under the intense heat. But at one point he seemed to lose track of his latest job switch. In a pep talk to a group of Marines, he said he has always valued public service, from his time in the Army in the 1960s to eight terms as a congressman and his years in the Clinton White House, "and now as director of the CIA."

At issue in Baghdad is whether the Iraqi government will request that the U.S. negotiate a troop extension. The scheduled departure of virtually all U.S. troops by Dec. 31 will leave the country with significant gaps in its ability to defend its own airspace and borders.

Panetta's predecessor at the Pentagon, Robert Gates, visited Iraq in April to push for an early decision and make clear that Washington believes an extension is in both countries' interest.

Panetta, however, seemed less willing to commit to a residual force.

Speaking to reporters before boarding his plane for the flight to Iraq from Camp Dwyer in southern Afghanistan, Panetta was asked whether he intended to encourage the Iraqis to request an extension.

"I'll encourage them to make a decision" about what they want, he replied, leaving open the question of what the White House would accept.

Panetta said he thinks U.S. should consider any Iraqi request and he said Obama "feels we ought to consider it as well." Obama has said repeatedly over the past year that he is responsibly ending the Iraq war and bringing U.S. troops home this year.

Panetta said he also intended to urge Iraqi leaders to do more to go after Shiite militia groups that are using Iranian-supplied weapons to step up attacks on U.S. troops. The U.S. death toll of 15 in June was the highest for any month in the past two years, Panetta said.

"That has concerned us," he said, adding that Iraqi Shiite militiamen using Iranian weapons need to be targeted more aggressively. Pentagon officials believe the Iranians are providing more arms, such as airborne makeshift "lob bombs" and explosively formed projectiles, to give the impression of driving U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Panetta came to his new job with links to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if he was not directly involved in military strategy.

He visited both countries during his CIA tenure. Both wars have an unusually heavy intelligence component, with U.S. special operations teams taking on al-Qaida and other insurgents.

One concern about the plan to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of this year is that Iraq's intelligence services are not yet up to the task of adequately supporting counterterrorism forces.

Panetta was a member of the Iraq Study Group, created by Congress in 2006 to consider a better way forward in a war that was spiraling out of control at the time. Coincidentally, Panetta served on the group with Gates until Gates quit because he was picked to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

Panetta signed off on the group's final report, which concluded that it was time to get all U.S. ground combat brigades out of Iraq, leaving troops to train the Iraqi army and to undertake strikes against al-Qaida cells.

President George W. Bush took a decidedly different course, ordering troop reinforcements to Iraq as part of a new strategy that is widely credited for turning around the war.

The U.S. military reported that a service member was killed Sunday in southern Iraq and that the matter was under investigation.

___

Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

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Khmer Rouge commanders go on trial in Cambodia (Reuters)

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – The four most senior surviving members of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime went on trial for war crimes on Monday, three decades after their "year zero" revolution marked one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.

The defendants, all now elderly and infirm, were among the inner circle of the late Pol Pot, the French-educated architect of the Khmer Rouge's ultra-Maoist "Killing Fields" revolution that killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians from 1975-1979.

Dressed in casual clothes, "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former President Khieu Samphan, ex-Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, a former social affairs minister, showed no emotion as opening statements to the U.N.-backed tribunal were read before a packed auditorium in proceedings screened on national television.

Almost a quarter of Cambodia's population were wiped out under the Khmer Rouge through torture, execution, starvation and exhaustion. Virtually every Cambodian alive today lost family and many want to know why.

"I lost three children, my father and husband," said Som Hoeun, a 66-year old villager from the southern province of Kompong Speu as she queued up to get into the court.

She said it was worth the wait to see Pol Pot's top cadres brought to book: "No matter what how long it has been, I'm always hopeful there will be justice."

The four are charged with committing crimes against humanity and genocide and accused of a litany of crimes under both international and Cambodian laws, including murder, enslavement, religious and political persecution, inhumane treatment and unlawful imprisonment.

All four defendants are expected to enter not guilty pleas. "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, died in 1998.

The opening exchanges centred on Ieng Sary's move to have his case thrown out for double jeopardy. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a court created by Vietnamese invaders in 1979 and pardoned by Cambodia's then King Norodom Sihanouk in 1996.

"An individual cannot be tried twice for a crime that a court already acquitted or convicted him for," his lawyer, Ang Udom, said. "Bringing Ieng Sary to trial again is a violation."

The pardon for Ieng Sary came as part of a peace deal after he and his followers broke with the Khmer Rouge.

But co-prosecutor Chea Leang said his original trial, hastily arranged by Vietnam and held over five days, "was not a standard of justice." She said Ieng Sary was now indicted for different offences and should not try to evade justice.

UNEXPLAINED EVENTS

Except for Khieu Samphan, none of the defendants have shown willingness to cooperate and there are concerns Cambodians will be deprived of the chance to hear first-hand accounts of the motivation and ideology that fueled an unrelenting killing spree by one of the world's most enigmatic regimes.

The closest any of the former cadres have come to disclosure is seen in an award-winning documentary film yet to be released in Cambodia entitled "Enemies of the People," in which Nuon Chea, during six years of recorded interviews with a journalist, admitted those seen as threats to the party line were "corrected" at the behest of the regime.

The filmmakers have said they would not hand over tapes if asked by the court, although material shown in the film can be used by prosecutors once in the public domain.

Wearing dark sunglasses, a ski hat and sweatshirt, Nuon Chea, 84, complained he was in poor health and was too cold and left the courtroom moments after the proceedings began.

He was later joined by Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who also cited health reasons. Their lawyers requested future proceedings be held over video link.

The court has handed down just one sentence, a 35-year jail term, commuted to 19 years, for Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, over the deaths of more than 14,000 people at the notorious S-21 prison. Prison chief Duch has appealed.

His sentence was seen by many Cambodians as too lenient and an unexplained decision this month by judges not to pursue a third case, believed to involve two former military commanders, has prompted resignations by court staff and outrage from rights groups complaining of interference by Cambodia's government and United Nations inaction.

Many Cambodians fear the old leftist leaders will not live long enough to be tried and the case is a crucial test of whether the multi-million dollar Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid international-led tribunal created in 2005, can really deliver justice.

Ou Virak, President of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the start of the second case was a "cathartic moment" that he hoped would help comfort survivors.

The crimes "remain ingrained in Cambodia's collective psyche. I hope that this trial ... provides all victims with some sense of justice, however delayed that justice may be," Ou Virak said in a statement.

Sentences handed down by the tribunal can range from a minimum five years to a maximum of life in prison. There is no death penalty in Cambodia.

Another villager queuing to get in to the court, Sem Hoen, said she lost four family members under the Khmer Rouge.

"I want them to confess. People won't stay calm if they don't say what happened," she said. "Justice is very important."

But justice might elude Cambodia. Cases have moved at a snail's pace in the ECCC its processes are extremely bureaucratic. The defendants are old and in poor health and some might die before a verdict is delivered by the ECCC, which estimates its spending will reach $150 million by year-end.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rogue cadre, has shown his disdain for the court and last year told U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon that further indictments were "not allowed."

(Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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