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| Image retrieved from Reuters. |
Right before the pine-nut harvest season started in Afghanistan, the governor of the country's eastern Nangarhar province received a letter guaranteeing the people that they were going to recruit 200 laborers and children to help them pluck the dry fruit during the harvest. This letter came from villagers in the Wazir Tangi area and the purpose of it was to help protect the laborers from getting caught in between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and Islamic State fighters controlled by the jihadists.
Hours after the laborers worked in the fields, a drone struck the site, ruining their days of work and killing and injuring plenty of civilians. This violence shocked the locals because of how confident they were in the promises proposed by the letter. They participated in protests, carrying dead bodies to the provincial capital, Jalalabad, the day following the attack in hopes of the U.S. regretting their actions.
Although this drone strike destroyed harvesting and killed innocent lives, that was not the initial intention of the strike by the United States. The U.S. had the intention of destroying the hideouts of Islamic State fighters, not ruining pine-nut harvesting season.
This attack has not only increased the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, but has only added to the number of air strikes that the country has suffered from in the past, according to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
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