I travel a lot in Ontario in between my workplace and the city where my family is. This usually includes standing for one or two salats on the way. I have traveled in midnight to noon to evening, pretty much in every hour of the day at one point or another. Often I'm alone but sometimes I have traveled with coworkers (men in 20s and early 30s), children or my parents.
I keep a thick cardboard as musallah so I'm not bothered by snow/dirt/mud/bugs. In darkness I ensure I'm lit and visible. Every time I position myself so I can spot approaching animals or suspicious persons. And thus I feel good having everything covered.
This is why I could empathize reading the below incident so well. I realize that shaitan had gotten to me and I have been taking convenience, security and life for granted.
Nearly three miles above the rugged hills of central Afghanistan, American eyes silently tracked two SUVs and a pickup truck as they snaked down a dirt road in the predawn darkness.
The vehicles, packed with people, were 31/2 miles from a dozen U.S. special operations soldiers who had been dropped into the area hours earlier to root out insurgents. The convoy was closing in on them.
At 6:15 a.m., just before the sun crested the mountains, the convoy halted.
“We have 18 pax [passengers] dismounted and spreading out at this time,” an Air Force pilot said from a cramped control room at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, 7,000 miles away. He was flying a Predator drone remotely using a joystick, watching its live video transmissions from the Afghan sky and radioing his crew and the unit on the ground.
The Afghans unfolded what looked like blankets and kneeled. “They’re praying. They are praying,” said the Predator’s camera operator, seated near the pilot.
By now, the Predator crew was sure that the men were Taliban. “This is definitely it, this is their force,” the cameraman said. “Praying? I mean, seriously, that’s what they do.”
“They’re going to do something nefarious,” the crew’s intelligence coordinator chimed in.
At 6:22 a.m., the drone pilot radioed an update: “All ... are finishing up praying and rallying up near all three vehicles at this time.”
The cameraman watched the men climb back into the vehicles.
“Oh, sweet target,” he said.
--
None of those Afghans was an insurgent. They were men, women and children going about their business, unaware that a unit of U.S. soldiers was just a few miles away, and that teams of U.S. military pilots, camera operators and video screeners had taken them for a group of Taliban fighters.
Source. The families of the dead received less than my monthly salary, the survivors got even less. If you see the date of the article, this happened before they made their rules even more relaxed, including killing people for having a radio or something like a radio.
[link] [comments]
from Islam https://ift.tt/3kzowas
Post A Comment:
0 comments so far,add yours