Article in German journal "Stern"

[Fuchs]

This is a (my) translation of the first page of a Stern article of April 2nd.
"Stern" is one of the three major political weekly journals in Germany.
Circulation is about 950k, readership about 7.5 million.

Strategy of failure

The people in the town called him "Mr. Hassan", he had studied, was teacher at times - but for years he was cook in the guest house of the mayor and always provided hot tea or listened to his favourite cassettes in the atrium.
Most likely he would have liked that the new American president wants to send hundreds of new aid workers to Afghanistan, Hassan's home town of Imam Sahib far in the north belonged to the most peaceful towns in Afghanistan. there were no Taliban and the greatest concern was to get the spray car to fight the dust on the roads.

But Mr. Hassan is dead, just like Ahmad, the kinky Faktotum who washed cars all the time in the, the bodyguard and his cousin Sar-e-Pul, who was living there while searching for a job.
Victims of an assault at dawn. At about four o'clock on March 22nd came two Chinook helicopters and dismounted 60 soldiers of a U.S. special forces unit who blew up the gate to the compound of the mayor.
They shot Hassan and Ahmad in their beds, the puddle of blood still show their position, before the other three were executed as well. The face of one of the dead was almost irrecognizable afterwards. The bodyguard of the family pleaded for minutes that the Americans should not proceed, as women and children were in the next building.
Finally the soldiers killed him as well, took four guests as prisoners - and flew away.
None of those independently interviewed witnesses heard a shot fired with a Kalashnikov. Only the fizzle of the silenced rifles of the soldiers.

The press release of the next morning from the headquarter of OEF claimed that they eliminated a terror network, had asked civilians to leave the building, was then being shot upon and had killed five enemy fighters and confiscated numerous weapons.
Women and children would not have been in the attacked buildings.
A report, of which nothing was correct except the number of dead and the date.

It's not been the first time that something like this happened, but it was the first time that it happened in the German area of responsibility in Kunduz.
The airfield operated by the Germans had been used, but they didn't tell the Bundeswehr what they were about to do.
The U.S. terror searchers in Kabul meant that this was about the arrest of an Iraqi who was possibly courier for al-Qaida.
Yet, to kill the whole personnel of the local mayor for it and afterwards claim that it was a terror network?
(...)
"I have lived there myself for two and a half months in the guest house. Everybody can live there, because Imam Sahib has no hotel."
(...)
At the day after the assault more than 1,000 people from the whole north join for the mourning.

(...)
"We want no revenge" says the mayor, who escaped the shots in the next house: "We want clarification of facts! Justice!What shall we do with democracy and elections if it's allowed to simply kill us?"
Even in case that terrorists were indeed in the house, "the Americans could have encircled the house and knock."

The crowd comes the muttered question why nobody of the Bundeswehr has come to condole.

The next pages of the article are about rampant corruption, how a police chief steals the pay of his policemen, how a highway police chief is even worse ans actually that bad that police officers fear that many Afghans in the area would turn to the Taliban if the highway police chief became police chief of the town. Apparently not an unlikely prospect, as it was said that the highway police chief had already "removed" several competitors.
Oh, and the police chief was immune to prosecution because he's member of Karzai's tribe and friend with him as well.

Plus two more pages of the usual terrible stories about Afghanistan.

Contact me by PM if you want a scan of the translated page.
I attempted to translate as close as possible, bear with me if readability suffered.