Afghanistan – U.S. Special Forces Commit Drive-By Murder

A recent video mashup provided by some U.S. Special Force soldiers in Afghanistan seems to show evidence of a warcrime.

A military truck passes a civilian truck on a paved road at normal traveling speed. A soldier fires directly and intentionally at the driver of the civilian truck without any discernible reason.

This is the relevant two second long cut (repeated 5 times) from a private video mix of scenes taken during the last few months in Afghanistan.

The whole video is 3:09 minutes long and mostly a mashup of juvenile behaving soldiers wasting lots of ammunition on invisible entities in the Afghan landscape. The scene above is from 19 to 21 seconds into the video. Detailed screenshots are below. The whole clip was available on Youtube on January 7. The account which originally posted it and the original video have since been deleted.

There were a total of two videos under the account. The first, relevant one, had the original title:

“Happy Few Ordnance Symphony Combat Footage Afghanistan EXPLICIT (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED)”

under the URL “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlNoiW94JdE“. The original description of the video was:

“Video mashup to Kendrick Lamar’s HUMBLE featuring Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan in the most recent combat footage to date against ISIS in 2017.”

A request to that URL now brings up a standard Youtube text: “This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed their YouTube account.”

A copy of that video is also available under the Facebook account of Engage Armament LLC with a “courtesy of Happy Few” link to the Facebook account https://www.facebook.com/happyfewco/. The copy was posted on January 4 and has currently 2,823,190 “views” and over 30,600 “likes”. Another copy is available under the Facebook account of Almanaque Militar posted on January 7 with currently 5.7k “views”. That post also links back to the Happy Few Co Facebook account. Several other sides seem to have posted copies of the same video.

The second video of Happy Few Company on Youtube was the one minute long “Happy Few Year Special Operations in Afghanistan Doing Work Helmet Cam Combat Footage” under the URL “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzi61iPdCko”. It also no longer available.

Unlisted copies of both videos have now been uploaded here and here.

It is the first video that includes the truck scene.

At 19 sec:

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The man wearing the camera on the left side of his helmet rides on top of a military truck (likely a M-ATV). On the left is an open turret mounted on the truck, on the right we see the part of the man holding a rifle M1014 semi-automatic, 12-gauge shotgun with an effective range of 36.5 meters. He wears black gloves. The military truck he is riding on quickly overtakes a civilian white truck on a paved road. The speed of the military truck is an estimated 70 km/h (45 mph), the white truck is driving at some 60 km/h (37 mph). It behaves normally sticking to the right side of the road. Notice that the white truck’s windows are undamaged. On the upper right above the white truck we see some red and blue structure.

At 20 sec:

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The military truck is further overtaking the white truck. The driver of the white truck is visible. He has his left hand on the steering wheel and seems to look straight ahead. The right hand is not visible. The gun points directly at the driver.

A split second later:

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The window of the white truck is smashed right in the line where the gun was just pointed and the driver inside of the truck.

Another split second later:

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The smashed window has crumbled further. The military truck overtakes the white truck.

At 21 seconds:

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The military truck has overtaken the white truck. The shooter has moved the shotgun to the left and upwards. The white truck has continued on its course. The red-blue structure behind it is visible. It is a two story building with the first story painted white and the second story with red columns and blue walls (or windows?). The peculiar building will help to identify the location of the incident.

Here the video makes a hard cut to unrelated scenes. Given the speed of the truck the shot driver -if not outright killed- will have had little chance to bring it to a secure halt.

When one watches the scene documented in the pictures above a gun shot is heard and the weapon in the picture recoils in the very moment the white truck’s window smashes. A puff of gun smoke is visible. It is obvious that this was a hit-to-kill shot by the man wearing the camera on the civilian driver of the white truck.

The uploader of the video on Youtube used the moniker Happy Few Company. An Instagram account under the Happy Few Company moniker still has the video though it is split into four parts. It was uploaded on December 28, 2017 and includes the white truck scene.

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The top page of the account (https://www.instagram.com/happyfewcompany/) describes the owner as:

Happy Few Special Operations Veteran Owned and Operated Apparel Company *apparel and website will be up very soon. Stand by, we appreciate your patience*

 

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The soldier in the official photo in the second row right is deceased. According to the Washington Post:

Army Sgt. 1st Class Mihail Golin, 34, was killed in Nangarhar province’s Achin district, an area in which U.S. forces have been combating both the Islamic State and the Taliban.

Golin was a Special Forces weapons sergeant with 10th Special Forces Group, of Fort Bragg, N.C., the U.S. Army Special Operations Command said in a news release Wednesday.

This might give a hint in the group involved in the video production. (h/t Andreas in comments)

The Facebook account with a similar Happy Few moniker is available but the video is not, or no longer, posted on that page.

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On the Facebook page we find a link to HappyFewCo.com which is a shopping site “under construction”. The domain was anonymously registered at Twocows Domains Inc on December 16 2017. A @happyfewco Twitter account was registered in December 2017 but has had no interaction.

There is no direct information on who is behind the Happy Few Company accounts or who took the scenes mashed up in that video. The footage seems to be genuine. The relevant civil and military authorities should have no problem to find out who the poster of the original video is. That person can surely help to identify the original videographer(s) and from there the place and time of the incident and the gunman in question. This picture of an unknown soldier, which is the end scene of the video, might also help to identify the culprit. It also gives a (sarcastic) hint of his motive.

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Source: Moon of Alabama

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