The first person to die in the assault was Commander Dawood, 43, a long-serving, popular and highly-trained policeman who had recently been promoted to head of intelligence in one of Paktia’s most volatile districts. His brother, Saranwal Zahir, was a prosecutor in Ahmadabad district. He was killed while he stood in a doorway trying to protest their innocence.

Three women crouching in a hallway behind him were hit by the same volley of fire. Bibi Shirin, 22, had four children under the age of 5. Bibi Saleha, 37, had 11 children. Both of them, according to their relatives, were pregnant. They were killed instantly.

According to journalist Jerome Starkey, writing for The Times UK, at first no one claimed responsibility for the killings. A US official in Kabul refused to identify the force involved, citing "utmost national and strategic security interests".

A subsequent Times investigation revealed that the gunmen were U.S. military and Afghan police conducting a raid directed at suspected Taliban insurgents.  More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were U.S. and Afghan gunmen.

In a statement after the raid titled "Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery", NATO claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies "tied up, gagged and killed" in a room. In its initial statement it also said: "Several insurgents engaged the joint force in a fire fight and were killed." The investigation suggests that those claims are either willfully false or, at best, misleading.

NATO officials continued to brief journalists in Kabul last week that the women were victims of an "honor" killing. However, they did not explain why the bodies would have been kept in the house overnight, against Islamic custom, nor why the family had invited 25 guests to celebrate the naming of a newborn child the same evening. Rear Admiral Greg Smith, NATO’s director of communications in Kabul, denied that there had been any attempt at a cover-up.

Starkey’s reporting forcefully rebutted this claim. Instead of simply retracting their story, however, NATO went so far as to attempt to damage Starkey’s credibility by telling other Kabul-based journalists that they had proof he’d misquoted ISAF spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith in an interview. When Starkey demanded a copy of the recording, NATO initially ignored him and eventually admitted that no recording existed.

Local elders delivered $2,000 in compensation from the occupying authorities for each of the five victims to the head of the family, Haji Sharabuddin, after protests brought Gardez, the capital of Paktia, to a halt. He refused the money, responding "I don’t want money. I want justice. All our family, we now don’t care about our lives. We will all do suicide attacks and [the whole province] will support us."

Under Gen. Stanley McChrystal, NATO’s made a big show of apologizing early and often when civilians are killed in broad daylight. But Starkey’s reporting and ISAF’s reaction to it shows that their natural inclination to escape accountability remains strong and operative when they think they can get away with violent mistakes under the cover of darkness.

Regardless of the details, it is probably not a good idea to fight a "war on terror" by terrorizing the population and giving locals an incentive to do suicide attacks. Nice job, NATO - if the goal in Afghanistan is perpetual war.

For more details on this incident, please check out this video produced by Rethink Afghanistan.

Addendum: (Mar27 1334 hrs) Apparently there are some glitches in accessing the UK Times Online through the hyperlinks above. If you attempted to read them and got a "404 error" please go directly to Jerome Starkey's web site. All of the above articles referenced are available there.