'The innocent are always caught up'
Updated on 24 June 2009
Photo journalist Guy Smallman visits the Afghan village Granai in which a US air strike killed 140 civilians earlier this year, the highest number of civilian casualties since the Afghanistan conflict began.
Seven-year-old Noria let another piercing scream. The pain was constant and came in waves. Every hour or so she would start crying again. The entire left hand side of her body was a patchwork of weeping bandages. There was no air conditioning in the suffocating burns unit.
Her only comfort was her father who dutifully sat by her bedside constantly fanning her face and gently wiping away the tears when they came.
We were in the main hospital in Herat City and Noria had been here with her two sisters for 20 days now. Her doctor had told me that when she had arrived her wounds were open and infected. Since then she had endured two skin graft operations and she was now slowly recovering.
Her younger siblings's injuries were less serious though they would be here for a long time to come. All were victims of the same incident. A series of air strikes which had killed their mother along with 146 other people, in May earlier this year.
The now infamous bombing of Granai village on 4 May in Farah province has seen the highest number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan since the conflict began in 2001. It triggered a riot in nearby Farah City and angry demonstrations in Kabul.
Noria's father, Said Barkat, was a lorry driver and had taken his family to visit his wife's mother in the village on the day of the slaughter. He described how the bombing had started near the village at 7pm.
This was over an hour after a fierce battle between American soldiers and the Taliban had ended a few kilometres away. The fighting had lasted all afternoon and could be heard from the village. 
Photographs taken by Guy Smallman, Granai, Afghanistan
The strikes started a mile away and then began inside the village itself. A large crowd of people leaving the Mosque after evening prayers were attacked by helicopters. In their panic the survivors and other people from around 10 to 15 families had run for cover to the other side of the village and gathered in a single area.
"Immediately the helicopter came and dropped a bomb right into the middle of them. The Americans war is with just the Taliban, why do they kill the innocent?"
His three daughters were among just seven survivors from that group. His wife was one of the 68 lives that were lost in an instant.
Innocent
The following morning in a suburb of Farah city, I was sat with the father of my most trusted contact in Afghanistan. A former Mujahadeen he was uneasy about my plans to visit the village, even suggesting that I should ware a Burka to avoid being spotted by the wrong people or their sympathisers.
Overhead jet fighters screamed across the sky in a constant stream. He explained that Italian NATO forces had a large group of fighters surrounded a few miles away.
Two of the Taliban's commanders had been killed along with over a hundred of their foot soldiers. I expressed my hope that no civilians were trapped with them.
"The innocent are always caught up these operations," came his reply.
[My guide] was uneasy about my plans to visit the village, even suggesting that I should ware a Burka to avoid being spotted by the wrong people or their sympathisers.
Before long a close friend of my contact arrived. He was from the village and was to be my guide. A tribal elder, he had extensive local knowledge of Granai and the surrounding area. After a discussion about many things (most of all my safety) we got into his car.
Heading out of the city onto the main road there were few other vehicles to be seen. Every few miles we would slow down to navigate around Police check points. They were not really checking anything. Not once was our battered Toyota stopped. The Afghan cops, some of them just teenage boys, remained behind their sand bags nervously peering down the sites of heavy machine guns.
After 40 kilometres we left the road and hit an uneven track without altering our speed. My translator and I were thrown around the back seat as the car bumped over the potholes. Twice I hit my head on the ceiling.
We were told that this area called Bala Baluk was at the centre of the resistance to the Russians in Farah province over a decade ago. There were a few people working the fields either side of the track. Decaying agricultural machinery stood idle by the roadside. We passed at least one partially destroyed Soviet Armoured Personnel Carrier from the 'holy war' of the 1980s.
We pulled over about a mile from the edge of the village to view the place where the bombing had begun. My guide told us that this was the closest that the Taliban had come to Granai as they had retreated.
Inside Garai
Here was a partially destroyed farm house with two large craters next to it. The fighters had briefly regrouped here before melting back into the maze of ditches and trees in the surrounding countryside. The first bombs had landed here an hour and a half later.
We continued our journey. Ten minutes later we stopped at the end of the track by a continuous sprawl of uneven sand coloured walls and buildings.
Photographs taken by Guy Smallman, Granai, Afghanistan
My guide gave instructions on how I was to conduct myself in the village. We would only stay for a short time, just long enough for me to photograph the areas destroyed by the strikes. My face would remain obscured by my scarf and I was not to speak. Our visit was under the full glare of the midday sun when most people would be either eating or sleeping inside the windowless buildings. The heat was unbearable.
Leaving the car it was easy to see why NATO forces find these villages so impenetrable. The narrow mud walled streets twisted and turned like an unpredictable rabbit warren. Constantly leading to new arteries and the occasional dead end. Impossible to navigate if you were an outsider. Perfect for ambush if you were local.
The silence was overpowering. Every other rural area I had visited had always been a symphony of bird song and insect noises. Here there was no wind or any other sound. Just a deathly hush broken only by the sound of our sandals on the dusty path.
Every spare patch of ground and the surrounding fields had the remnants of this year's opium harvest. The pods, which were now bone dry, all sported the meticulous cuts used to extract the resin from within.
My translator asked if the opium farming was possible because the village was beyond the governments reach? Our guide replied: "There is no work here except growing opium. It does not make much profit these days."
We were told that there were many parts of the village and surrounding area affected by the bombardment. We were to visit the two areas where the greatest loss of life had occurred.
The main village Mosque was in ruins. Its dome was still intact with the speakers used to announce the call to prayer hanging limply from the roof. The area immediately around it was a mass of rubble and craters. Every building in the vicinity was completely demolished. Trees were broken in two by the force of the explosions.
It had been dusk when the attack had come. A large crowd of people had been here in the garden after evening prayers. From the size of the area destroyed it was clear that there had been nowhere for them to run to escape the carnage.
Photographs taken by Guy Smallman, Granai, Afghanistan
'All the people in this place are sick'
After a while we were gradually joined by a few local children. They were very different from the other kids I encountered on my travels in this country.
Usually the site of my camera would send a group of Afghan minors into a frenzy of excited grinning of posing as they struggled to get into the centre of the frame. These by comparison seemed sedated and aloof from their surroundings and each other.
They were neither entertained nor intimidated by my presence. Their tired eyes registered little or no emotion as they stared right through me to a place in the middle distance.
They slowly followed us as we continued our tour. Sapped of all their energy and enthusiasm not once did they run ahead of us and they barely spoke at all. I could only imagine the scenes that haunted them.
The more I looked the clearer it became that we were standing on the disintegrated remains of peoples lives.
Moving on we crossed through a field to reach the other side of the village. As we neared its edge our guide stopped us and pointed to the trees.
"All the people in this place are sick. Something was spread by the bombs into this area. Some people ate berries and they got sick. Blood came from their mouths and their lips turned black. They are all in the hospitals."
From a distance our final destination in the village looked like a piece of open waste ground. As we got closer the outlines of where the houses had once been became apparent. Items of clothing and broken crockery were strewn amongst the debris. I spotted a prayer mat and then a mattress. Other personal items included a hair brush and various items of furniture.
The more I looked the clearer it became that we were standing on the disintegrated remains of peoples lives.
This was the place where people had gathered after the attack on the Mosque. It was here that little Noria and here sisters were so horribly injured. I was amazed that anyone had survived at all.
Our guide told us: "The people were afraid. About 10 to 15 families gathered in the same place to be safe together. This was in the evening and it was dark."
He referred to a small helicopter with no pilot that made a "zzzzzz" sound. He was clearly describing a drone. Somewhere deep inside the US Army's military machine the drone's operator had probably been sat behind a laptop looking through its cameras. The people must have appeared as a group of heat signatures. The bombs had landed in the middle of the group.
Our guide pointed to different parts of the area.
"My cousins, my sister, my nephews and also my nieces were all killed in this place. About 13 or 14 people related to my sister were killed here. I found my nephews body recently over there. Just yesterday a farmer found another body over there.
"There was a woman here. A head here. Some legs here and other body parts. They were all burned. You wouldn't be able to know who was who exactly. We just knew some of them by their clothes, faces or some other signs.
"The bomb that the Americans used in this place; maybe it is not been used anywhere in the world before?"
'Like a prison'
Leaving the village we took a detour and drove up to a windswept hill overlooking the area. Up here there was a welcome breeze and the birds were singing again.
The cemetery was as old as the village with traditional Muslim graves stretching as far as the eye could see. Each was marked with a pile of stones the length of an adult or child.
Photographs taken by Guy Smallman, Granai, Afghanistan
I started counting the fresh ones but gave up when I had reached just over 70. They were not in any kind of order or rows, so keeping track was just impossible in such limited time.
Our guide showed us the resting place of his sister and her children. He then took us to a place at the far end of the cemetery where one enormous grave stretched over 50 metres across.
"This is the grave that almost 55 people are buried in because their bodies are in pieces."
Back in Farah City my contact's father was visibly relieved by my safe return. We sat in his reception room with my guide gulping fresh mango juice to rehydrate after our sun baked assignment.
I asked my guide if there had ever been any fighting or bombing in the village before the day of the massacre. He replied that there had recently been some fighting in a place nearby called Shirwan. But this was the first and only time that the war had come to Granai.
I asked him how the village had fared during the war with the Russians? He said: "When the Russians were here this area was involved with fighting and bombing but never anything like this.
"I do not remember anything like this operation happening before. Nor do our elderly people remember anything happening like this. So many innocent people and Muslims being killed in this way."
When asked if this event could be of benefit to the Taliban he replied: "With this situation going on, the people are becoming more separate from the government.
"However they will not necessarily join the Taliban. They hate the Taliban also. These are poor people. They keep themselves to themselves and they are not interested in other people's lives. They hate the government, they hate the Americans and they hate to live in this place. We think that this country is like a prison for us."
