‘Govt trying to prove my 4-year-old son, brother as Taliban’

ASADABAD (Pajhwok): His four-year-old son and a student brother were killed in a US drone strike back in 2013, but the incident is yet to be investigated, a resident of eastern Kunar province said on Sunday.

The drone strike on April, 05, 2013 killed 14 people and injured a minor girl as the unmanned aircraft fired missiles at a civilian vehicle in Quru area of Watapur district, recalled Naqibullah, who lost his son and a 25-year-old brother to the strike.  He said parents and a brother of the injured girl were also killed in the strike.

His brother, Abdul Wahid, was a student at the Kunar Teacher Training Collage and his son, Amir, was just four when they were killed.

“I took my son to Asadabad for treatment and sent him with my brother in a vehicle to our village and I stayed in the city,” he said.

Naqibullah, who was also a student at the Accounting Institute in Asadabad, said he called home to know whether his brother and son had reached home or not. “I was told both have been killed in the bombardment.”

“I could not bear the news, I lost senses. All the moments I had spent with my brother and son would come to my mind and tears from my eyes would not stop,” he said.

Naqibullah got married 10 years ago and Amir was the firstborn into his family and responsibility of looking after his brother’s family also fell on his shoulders.

“I pay as much attention as I can, but I cannot give them the love their father gave to his children,” he said of his brother’s children. His nephew, Hilal, always asks him about his father, but Naqibullah has no answer.

“From whom should I ask who killed my brother and why,” he said, adding that no one had so far investigated the incident.

Naqibullah claimed the government had been trying to prove his small son and brother as Taliban without any evidence.”Were my student brother and minor son Taliban?”

He said he tried to approach former president Hamid Karzai but then Kunar Governor Shujaul Mulk Jalala assured him that a delegation from Kabul was coming to Kunar for investigation. But three years on, no one came.”  “No one except journalists asked me about the incident,” he said.

Naqibullah supports his parents and four children and wife of his slain brother in addition to his own wife and six children. “The government has so far offered us nothing.”

“ I also went to the district headquarters for assistance, but the district chief, Syed Zaiwar Shah Pacha, told me they could not help me,” he said.

He said the International Relief and Development (IRD) had assisted him with some basic equipment and other daily-use items.

He asked the Afghan government and international forces to thoroughly investigate the drone strike and question some officials of Watapur district why they were calling his son and brother as Taliban fighters.

myn/ma