NATO challenged over Kabul raid that killed two guards

A bullet hole in the window of Tiger International, a Kabul armored car company targeted on Christmas Eve.


NATO challenged over Kabul raid that killed two guards
By Dion Nissenbaum and Hashim Shukoor | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sunday, December 26, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — The international Special Forces military team that targeted a Kabul office complex on Christmas Eve day thought they were thwarting a holiday season plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy.

But the pre-dawn raid that left two security guards dead found no explosives, no plot and no evidence that the building’s occupants — an Afghan armored car firm that has been working with the U.S. military for nearly a decade — were scheming to attack American diplomats.

Instead, the operation brought the issue of night raids directly into the Afghan capital as the country’s Interior Ministry Sunday accused U.S-led forces of flouting the law and company officials challenged NATO’s version of events.

“I asked them ‘What do we tell the families?’” Nawid Shah Sakhizada, vice president of Tiger International, the Afghan company at the center of the questionable raid, told McClatchy Newspapers on Sunday.

“I told them ‘you did not kill two cows. You killed two human beings,’” said Sakhizada, who was in the office during the confrontation. “We have to answer to the families.”