I wouldn’t like to be doing PR for the Pentagon or the US State Department in the Middle East today (or tomorrow)…Evangelical Christian soldiers at Bagram air base in Afghanistan have been busted with bibles translated into Pashtun and are caught on tape being urged to be “witnesses for Jesus” despite very clear (and severe) anti-proselytising rules. General Order Number 1 from the U.S. military’s Central Command forbids active duty troops – including all those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – from trying to convert people to their religion. It’s considered a crime in many Muslim countries, and most severely so in Afghanistan.

From Alternet:

New video evidence has surfaced showing that U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military’s top chaplain in the country to “hunt people for Jesus” as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population. Soldiers also have imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan. What’s more, the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge U.S. base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the U.S. military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners.

In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him.”

“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.

“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”

Ouch. American global headache no.123521357.

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