Karzai Flips Out on Rep. Rohrabacher Jason Ditz, May 22, 2012 Print This | Share This | Comment In an interview today on CNN, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was asked about reports that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R – CA) is banned from entering Afghanistan. Karzai confirmed the ban, and went on to say that: “A [...]
, May 22, 2012 Print This | Share This Following in the rich history of fake endings to wars during the Obama Administration’s first term, the US and other NATO member nations are loudly hyping their endorsement of a transition pact, which is being presented as an “irreversible pullout” of occupation forces. [...]
A bulldozer dumps a load of trash into a burn pit just 300 yards from the runway at Bagram Airfield, January 2012. An Army memo from 2011 found the burn pit is associated with “long-term” health effects on soldiers at Bagram.Photo: U.S. Army Leaked Memo: Afghan ‘Burn Pit’ Could Wreck Troops’ Hearts, Lungs By Spencer [...]
Kenny MacAskill said an inquiry is a matter for the courts. Picture: Jane Barlow By GARETH ROSE Published on Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:00 A SERIES of high-profile figures have backed calls for an inquiry into the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing. War correspondent Kate Adie, social [...]
Seepage and Suffering: Obama’s Civil War Scenario for Afghanistan WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD TUESDAY, 22 MAY 2012 16:37 “The winds in Chicago Have torn me to shreds; Reality has always Had too many heads.” – Bob Dylan, “Cold Irons Bound” So now we know the grand plan of the Peace [...]
Afghanistan: exit with no strategy The least one can expect of a president who prolonged Afghan suffering by ordering a surge of troops to finish the job, is that he has something that could be dignified with the name of an exit strategy It is disingenuous to claim, as Barack Obama did [...]
Afghans learning the skills of stone-working in the Bamiyan valley, where the Taliban blew up two giant buddhas in 2001. Under perfectly carved niches that once held dozens of small buddha statues, the purposeful tap of chisel on stone echoed over the Bamiyan valley for the first time in centuries. Twelve young Afghans had gathered [...]
Ties between the United States and Pakistan have been severely strained over the past year [Reuters] Pakistan has confirmed its president will attend a summit of NATO leaders this weekend in Chicago as negotiations with US to reopen supply lines into Afghanistan continues. Nadeem Hotiana, a Pakistani embassy spokesman in Washington, said on Tuesday that Asif Ali Zardari [...]
General John Allen could become the fourth US and Nato commander to leave Kabul early. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters Afghanistan is confident the US will stump up billions of extra dollars for its army and police on top of the main chunk of a $4.1bn (£2.6bn) annual budget that is expected to be sealed at a Nato summit [...]
More than a decade after the Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan, the plight of the country’s women remains dire, with threats and attacks by insurgents on women leaders, schoolgirls, and girls’ schools, and harassment of women for “moral crimes” such as running away from forced marriages or [...]
An Afghan Okinawa By The Afghan Peace Volunteers http://warisacrime.org/content/afghan-okinawa There is no U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014. We are ordinary Afghans wishing for peace, and we have eyes and ears and feelings of love and despair, so please read on. The Washington Post, in reporting the recent signing of the “U.S. Afghan Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement“, stated [...]
President Obama has said he wants to ‘finish the job we started in Afghanistan’ [GALLO/GETTY] President Obama has been of two minds towards Afghanistan since the outset of his presidency. In December 2009, en route to tripling the US military presence there, he declared that US military forces would begin to withdraw from the country in 18 [...]
US Admits Killing Innocent Afghan Family in Airstrike The incident did not come to light until the governor in Helmand Province made a public accusation by John Glaser, May 07, 2012 Print This | Share This The U.S. military has claimed responsibility for an airstrike that killed six innocent members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan and pledged a [...]
Afghanistan: Obama’s ‘dumb’ war Mon May 7, 2012 1:9PM GMT Hamid Javadi U.S. President Barack Obama addressing the American public from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan on May 1 Since taking office as president of the United States, Barack Obama made the war inAfghanistan his own war. He called the occupation of Iraq ”a dumb war”, but in Afghanistan he approved [...]
President Barack Obama arriving in Afghanistan on his May 1 trip to sign a new strategic accord with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. (White House photo by Pete Souza)The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasize transition to Afghan responsibility and an end [...]
Obama Misleads on Afghanistan, Claims Victory and Promises Withdrawal The war has not only failed, it will continue for another decade by John Glaser, May 05, 2012 Print This | Share This In his weekly address, President Obama promised to withdraw U.S. troops by the end of 2014 and to start wasting money here at home, instead of [...]
. Britain: Germany Needs to ‘Get Over WW2,’ Fight in More Wars ‘Huge Potential’ for Germany to Fight Massive Wars by Jason Ditz, May 02, 2012 Print This | Share This Speaking today in Berlin, Britain’s Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said he believesGermany has a [...]
US-Afghan Pact Won’t End War or Night Raids by Gareth Porter, May 03, 2012 Print This | Share This The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” [.pdf] agreement with Afghanistan and the memorandums of understanding (MOU) accompanying it emphasize transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war. [...]
Obama in Afghanistan to Sign Deal to Continue War Through 2024 President Sneaks Into Country to Sign Document, Bypasses Congress by Jason Ditz, May 01, 2012 Print This | Share This Months of “not quite public” Obama Administration efforts to negotiate a still-secret pact to ensure that US troops will [...]
Leaving Afghanistan by Staying By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/leaving-afghanistan-staying Is staying in Afghanistan OK with you as long as we call it leaving? President Obama has signed an agreement with President Karzai to keep a major U.S. military presence in Afghanistan (currently about three times the [...]
Why I Refused to Return to Fight in Afghanistan’s Brutal Occupation The Taliban clearly has broad support from Afghan people. Conscientious objection is a right and obligation in a failed war By Joe Glenton April 27, 2012 “The Guardian” – – Recent attacks in Kabul confirm the occupation is falling to pieces. [...]
Nick Turse, Memory Failure at the Pentagon Posted by Nick Turse at 8:50am, April 24, 2012. Call it a mantra, a litany, or a to-don’t list, but the drip, drip, drip of Afghan disaster and the gross-out acts accompanying it have already resulted in one of those classic fill-you-in paragraphs that reporters hang [...]
Dec. 19, 2001 — Marine Lt. Ronald Reed of Virginia waits inside his fighting position on the perimeter of the bombed-out airport in Kandahar. More than eleven years later, an end to the disaster that is the US war in Afghanistan is nowhere in sight. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) Drip, Drip, Drip: [...]
Text of AP Story on Afghanistan Agreement Translated into Human By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/text-ap-story-afghanistan-agreement-translated-human Here’s an Associated Press story on an agreement for another decade of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, an agreement between two governments that do not represent their peoples, a story that was clearly translated from the [...]
Much like what is currently happening in Afghanistan, the Tet Offensive of 1968 served as an exemplar of a war that could not be won [AP] San Pedro, CA - As I first heard about coordinated attacks in the heart of Kabul and three other locations across Afghanistan last Sunday, my thoughts turned immediately to the [...]
These are but a few reports on the chameleon attitudes and thoughts of the unelected PM of Australia, Julia Gillard. At least what she seems to be taking as a jaunt in the Afghan photos has caught up with even this princess of poor ideas and even worse decisions. After shedding a sufficient [...]
Still killed and killing in the lost Afghanistan War By Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition Afghans for Peace say end the war now April 20, 2012 – Has anyone told the media that the NATO forces are losing the war in Afghanistan? The capital city, Kabul, supposedly the safest place in the country was faced [...]
Photo: AFP Pulitzer-Winning Image Source Of Pride, Nightmares For Afghan Photographer Mustafa Sarwar, Abubakar Siddique |From RFE/RL “In the blink of an eye, Tarana‘s surrounding’s were filled with blood. The dead and injured bodies of her relatives surrounded her,” Massoud Hossaini recalls. Tarana stands erect amid the dead and injured at her feet, her blood-stained hands opened [...]
Afghan Screams Aren’t Heard by Kathy Kelly and Hakim http://warisacrime.org/content/afghan-screams-aren%E2%80%99t-heard Last weekend, in Kabul, Afghan Peace Volunteer friends huddled in the back room of their simple home. With a digital camera, glimpses and sounds of their experiences were captured, as warfare erupted three blocks away. Two Afghan youth taking refuge together with the Afghan [...]
The recent decision by the Taliban and one of its allies to withdraw from peace talks with Washington underlines the train wreck the U.S. is headed for in Afghanistan. Indeed, for an administration touted as sophisticated and intelligent, virtually every decision the White House has made vis-à-vis Afghanistan has been a disaster. On Mar. 15 [...]
AfPak: Mutiny on the Bounty By Eric Walberg – CairoKabul was cast into chaos Sunday as the Taliban began their spring offensive with attacks on US, British, German and Russian embassies, NATO headquarters, Camp Eggers, a hotel, President Karzai’s palace compound and parliament. “These are coordinated attacks that went just [...]
Open Wounds by Abby Zimet With more grotesque news out of Afghanistan, a look at the gritty reality of the war on the ground by a doctor running a Marine Corps combat aid station – the horrific injuries, the impossible choices, and, most of all, the blood. Warning: disturbing. “Young Americans are still losing legs, hands, eyes, testicles; still [...]
The publication of the photos by the LA Times comes at a sensitive time for US-Afghan relations. Graphic photos published in an American newspaper show US soldiers posing with the mangled bodies of suspected Afghan suicide bombers. Senior US and NATO officials moved quickly to condemn the pictures even before they were published on Wednesday by [...]
The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has promised an inquiry into the photos. Photograph: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images The US president, Barack Obama, has called for an investigation into a series of photographs that appear to show American soldiers posing with the bodies of dead Afghans, the White House said on Wednesday. The most [...]
US says Australia not leaving Afghan early AAPApril 18, 2012, 3:04 am A senior US defence official is insisting that Australia remains a solid combat partner in Afghanistan and is not pulling out early. The official says that Australia’s plans to gradually turn over frontline fighting in strategic Uruzgan province to Afghans [...]
Afghan police on patrol after the Taliban‘s co-ordinated assault in Kabul, Nangarhar, Logar and Paktia provinces. Photograph: Pajhwok Afghan News/Demotix/Corbis Afghanistan: an illusion exposed Taliban attacks on Kabul are further proof that the west’s vision for Afghanistan was a fantasy link to article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/16/afghanistan-western-naivety-kabul-attacks For months after the allied invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there were no Taliban [...]
The recent decision by the Taliban and one of its allies to withdraw from peace talks with Washington underlines the train wreck the U.S. is headed for in Afghanistan. Indeed, for an administration touted as sophisticated and intelligent, virtually every decision the White House has made, vis-a-vis Afghanistan, has been a disaster. On Mar. [...]
David Petraeus, A Threat to CIA Analysis Thursday, 28 April 2011 09:35By Ray McGovern, Consortium News | Op-Ed The news that President Barack Obama has picked Gen. David Petraeus to be CIA director raises troubling questions, including whether the commander most associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will tolerate objective [...]
Dilip Hiro, How to Trump a Superpower Posted by Dilip Hiro at 9:03am, April 17, 2012. Chalk it up to the genuine strangeness of our second Afghan War. Americans, according to the latest polls, are turning against the conflict in ever greater numbers, yet it’s remarkable how little — beyond a few obvious, sensational events – they [...]
Afghan police were left to pick up the pieces after a devastating series of Taliban attacks across the country [AFP] Doha, Qatar - In one of the first official US reactions to the attacks against Kabul and cities across eastern Afghanistan last weekend, Ryan C Crocker, US ambassador to Afghanistan, said: “The Taliban are really good [...]
We thank you for your love and your hands and feet, in organizing for the upcoming Chicago protests! Protesting NATO in Chicago will be too Late for Afghanistan by Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Dear friends of ordinary 99 percent Afghans, In these killing days, we in Afghanistan do not expect the interests of people to triumph [...]
How NATO Dehumanizes Us Categories:Afghanistan http://vcnv.org/how-nato-dehumanizes-us by Jerica Arents When we finally stepped off the helicopter and greeted the mountains of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, I was exhausted. A full day and a half after our departure, my eyelids were heavy and I was hoping, desperately, for a cup of warm, life-giving [...]
Ground Zero in New York City. (Photo: Karen Blumberg / Flickr)The endless war on terror in South Asia – with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, India, France, Germany, Spain, all players - must seem like a senseless maze to the people forced to live with daily random violence in this region. In [...]
GETTY IMAGES 4 MONTHS AGONEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 02: Members of the New York City chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and dozens of other uniformed veterans known as ‘Veterans of the 99%’ prepare to march from VietnamVeterans Plaza to Zucotti Park where the Occupy Wall Street movement is centered on November 2, 2011 in New York City. The [...]
The Massacre of the Afghan 17 and the Obama Cover-Up By James Petras March 27, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — The March 11 Massacre of the 17 Afghan citizens, including at least nine children and four women, raises many fundamental issues about the nature of a colonial war, the practices of a [...]
Costs of a policy of profligacy with foreign lives By HIROAKI SATO NEW YORK — In the early hours of March 11, Sunday, a U.S. soldier went on a rampage in a village in Panjway, southwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan. He went from one mud house to another, shot, stabbed, and burned 16 [...]
This is the latest in a string of attacks on western soldiers by armed fighters in Afghan uniform [EPA] In two separate instances, three NATOsoldiers have been killed by local security forces in Afghanistan.In the south, a gunman in an Afghan army uniform killed two British soldiers in a military base in Helmand province, NATO’s International [...]
Afghanistan Crimes: Absolving Higher-Ups By Stephen Lendman - Posted on 25 March 2012 Afghanistan Crimes: Absolving Higher-Ups by Stephen Lendman Murder anywhere is bad enough. Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert Jackson called preemptive aggressive war killing “the supreme international crime against peace.” Convicted Nazi war criminals were hanged. American ones keep killing with impunity. On [...]
US soldiers from Comanche Troop, 3rd Squadron 4th Cavalry wait for a helicopter to ferry them to another base at Forward Operating Base Connolly in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan March 10, 2012. (Reuters/Erik De Castro) Afghan killing spree suspected to occur in two stages Published today (updated) 25/03/2012 09:35 WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The US [...]
Western countries scramble for Afghan exits By Fozil Mashrab TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – As international forces prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Western countries are already in talks with Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors to bring their troops and military equipment back home. The Pakistani route and the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) running through [...]
