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This Thursday, humanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) released an internal assessment of airstrikes by United States military on its hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
It has been a month since the attack, in which 30 people died, including 13 of MSF’s staff members.
The report runs into 13 pages and is harrowingly rich in detail.
Sample this: as immobile patients burnt in their beds, waves of multiple, precise and sustained airstrikes continued. An MSF nurse who tried to escape was covered in blood from head to toe, with his left arm hanging from a small piece of tissue. He suffered an amputation and was also bleeding from his left eye. As "concentrated volleys" of explosions raged on, the few who could run, and did try to reach to safety, were shot at and murdered.
But, this is not a rant about those who died. It is also not about MSF’s indomitable spirit — we already know that. They won a Nobel for it, after all. As you expect from Nobel winners, they got to work almost right away.
Immediately after the airstrikes, MSF's medical team (those who lived) began life-saving medical treatment on the wounded in makeshift operating tables — working on office desks and kitchen tables.
Not that it was necessary, but MSF in its report has presented a chronological review of the events leading up to, during, and immediately after the airstrikes — in what clearly seems like an attempt by the organization to try and comprehend the tragedy, before they start reconciling with reality and start asking questions.
The internal assessment report is a difficult read — which is probably why we must read it, choke in anger and ask the same, fundamental question: "why?"
It has been a month since the devastating attack and the United States government is yet to provide a concrete explanation as to how this could have happened on their watch.
The internal assessment said the airstrikes lasted for an hour and fifteen minutes, during which panicked MSF doctors made six phone calls and sent 12 text messages, trying to reach Afghan and US government officials.
Sitting in India, I am in no way affected by these developments. By which I mean, this is not my beat and it is perfectly acceptable for me to not react viscerally to deaths in far away Kunduz. I am too inconsequential a voice, in a country with no stake and little say in the conflict. Yet, I must outrage. So, must you.
This rant is essential because without pressure from civil society — including every journalist in every corner of the world — a truly impartial investigation into the tragic event seems highly unlikely.
Look at the math: 140 people were inside the Kunduz Hospital compound the night of the attack — only 20 of them were wounded Taliban. How is risking 120 lives as ‘collateral damage’ worth the 20 Taliban lives- assuming, unreasonably, of course, that the 20 Taliban lives were for the US military’s taking?
Lastly, this point is an obvious one: even wars have rules. One of the rules, that humanity has agreed upon, in one of its saner moments is that hospitals are protected even during a war. There are clearly laid out rules, under the Geneva Convention, which protect the wounded, the sick, the aid workers and the combatants alike- without discrimination.
Keeping their end of the bargain, in the week leading up to the airstrikes, as fighting intensified in the area, MSF decided that their patients remove all military identification or clothing when they are admitted to the hospital — a standard practice to reduce possible tensions within the hospital.
No one inside the hospital had any weapons at the time of the attack. They were sitting ducks. To unashamedly and mercilessly break those rules is just one more murder added to the list of already dead, of humanity.
After waiting for a month to get answers, MSF did the only thing they could do, which is to go public with a torturous account of the suffering inflicted upon people who could not defend themselves to begin with. Despite unanimous, universal condemnation, powerful voices and global leaders have been silent on the demand for an independent investigation into the Kunduz bombing.
The real tragedy is that MSF is not baying for blood; they don’t want revenge. All they want to know is the reason why the hospital should have come under attack at all. Four years ago, MSF sat down with all parties involved in the conflict and negotiated an agreement where the hospital would be protected. Why did they lose the protection?
Under this very agreement, those 13 members of MSF staff who died that night were sent in with the promise that no harm would come to them. MSF goes in to clean up the mess the rest of humanity creates, be it war crimes, genocides or nations hit by the Ebola virus. Their volunteers go in where none of us would dare to tread. That we let them burn and then went silent after initial shock and dismay at the development cannot be an acceptable reaction.
Which is why, sitting in India, I must outrage at the United States government, which owes them, and the rest of us, an answer. And a clean, unconditional apology to go with it.
