Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death (earlier title: Massacre at Mazar) is a 2002 documentary by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran and award winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi about alleged war crimes committed under General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan ally of the United States, and the American military against Afghans resisting the US & Allied forces. The resisting Afghans who had surrendered to Dostum's troops after the November 2001 siege of Kunduz, were transported to Sheberghan prison, as per American directives, in sealed containers. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds or thousands of them died during and after transit. Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death takes you on a journey to show you how it all happened and presents testimony from interviewees stating that American military personnel were present at and complicit in the horrific and intended mass killings of Afghans - the incident which is now known as the Dasht-i-Leili massacre.

A short early version of the documentary was shown to the European and German Parliaments in June 2002, causing widespread concern in Europe. Against protests from the United States government, the completed documentary was aired on National Television Networks of many countries, including Germany, Britain, Italy and Australia. The documentary was not screened or aired in the US and there was a complete media blackout about it within the US. Later, based on a leaked UN Memo, a Newsweek report in August 2002 confirmed some of the details about Doran's documentary, as well as the presence of mass graves in the Dasht-i-Leili desert. However, even then, Newsweek made no mention of such a documentary having been made and released in other countries but, not in the US due to Government ban on it.

SYNOPSIS

In late 2001, after the siege of Kunduz by the US & Allied forces, around 8,000 Taliban fighters, including Chechens, Pakistanis and Uzbeks as well as suspected members of Al-Qaeda, surrendered to the forces of Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a US ally in the war in Afghanistan. The documentary recounts that several hundred of the prisoners (surrendered Afghan fighters), among them an American named John Walker Lindh, were taken to Qala-i-Jangi, a fort near Mazar-i-Sharif, where they staged a bloody uprising which took several days to quell.  Recorded just hours before he was killed, the documentary shows footage of Walker Lindh's interrogation by CIA man Johnny Micheal Spann. The documentary vividly describes how the remaining 7,500-8,000 prisoners were loaded onto sealed containers and transported to Sheberghan prison. The journey was to last several days; many of the prisoners did not survive it, without food, water or ventilation to breath, they died enroute.

The film shows an interview with a commander, who was one of the chief negotiators of the surrender. In his interview he states that several thousand of the soldiers who surrendered are now unaccounted for. He says the prisoners had given themselves up on the understanding that they would be allowed to go home if they gave up their weapons or – in the case of Al-Qaeda members and foreign fighters – that they would be treated in accordance with UN conventions.

Afghan witnesses in the documentary, with their faces and voices digitally disguised, recount, in harrowing and graphic detail, how the surrendered prisoners met their death. The witnesses state the sealed containers held 200 to 300 men each, even though the maximum capacity did not permit even half the number. They say that when the suffocated men in the containers began crying out for air and water, American soldiers shot holes into the sides of the containers, killing several Afghans inside.

A soldier is asked in the documentary: "You specifically shot holes into containers? Who gave you those orders?" He replies:

"The commanders ordered me to hit the containers to make holes for ventilation and because of that some of the prisoners were killed."

A truck driver says that half of the people he transported in a container were dead upon arrival. An Afghan taxi driver tells Doran of a visit to a petrol station:

"At the time they were taking prisoners from Qaala Zeini to Scheberghan. I went to fill my car with petrol. I smelled something strange and asked the petrol attendant where the smell was coming from. He said 'look behind you', and there were trucks with containers fixed on them. I was surprised. I saw something very strange. Blood was leaking from the containers – they were full of dead bodies."

Reports from survivors of the transports speak of bound men, locked up in the containers for several days without food or drink, having resorted to licking the sweat of each other's bodies, even biting into other prisoners' bodies in their desperation to obtain fluids from any source. The documentary quotes what a former Afghan soldier told a Pakistani newspaper, while describing what he experienced when the containers were opened:

"I shall never forget the sensation as long as I live. It was the most revolting and powerful stench you can imagine: a mixture of feces  urine, blood, vomit, and rotting flesh. It was a smell to make you forget all other smells you have experienced in your life."

Another driver states that he was asked to drive his truck, carrying a container with about 300 men, into the desert; he says those who had not died of asphyxiation were shot, in the presence of 30 or 40 U.S. soldiers watching the mass shooting. The driver put the number of containers he saw in the desert at 25 to 30, could be more but, not less. Several of the interviewed people claim that US personnel were aware of what was happening to the prisoners after their arrival at Sheberghan, and some even played an active role in the torture and murder of prisoners.

Najibullah Quraishi, an award winning Afghan journalist, states in the documentary that he saw a video showing American Special Forces personnel observing the dumping of bodies into mass graves in the desert; he says that as he was copying the tape, he was attacked and nearly beaten to death. The film shows Quraishi after his recovery from the beating and receiving the Rory Peck Award in London for his camera work in Mazar-i-Sharif.

The documentary concludes by saying that several witnesses to the events, including some of those who participated in the making of the documentary, had since been killed.

The Afghan Massacre - Documentary