Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

ROBERT STEELE: General Dostom is accused of the being directly responsible for the Dasht-i-Leili massacre aka container massacre that has been hugely overblown — as well as civilian collateral damage over time — and this remains a sore point with many Pashtuns and of course those that also consider themselves Taliban. What is your understanding?

ROBERT YOUNG PELTON: I was there for all this and have told many journos (NYTimes, Newsweek, BBC etc)  that they are full of shit since they use second hand sourcing and constantly avoid using my first hand testimony since I was in the prison, saw the containers unloaded, took real time photos, notes etc. I also was there with Doran when his doco on Dostum got cancelled by the BBC and he had to make a “massacre” doco, first with British then American troops…using second hand footage and testimony. I have already gathered all the facts at: www.generaldostum.com, see especially the Conflict & Controvery section including the detailed timeline inclusive of photographs. I have been out of touch but this is a long beaten horse started by Atta [Muhammad Nur] with the eager ear of the State Dept flunkies. They wanted to minimize the threat of Dostum to promote Karzai. Ghani was no where near all this but the Pansjiris love to spread this bullshit before every election. One also has to be aware that there are Massoud groupies in the journo world that hate Dostom blindly and have been caught fabricating stories.