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December 4, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ABC News via Global Research: As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama's description Tuesday of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country. Full news...
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December 3, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A senior British military commander says roads in Afghanistan were safer when the Taliban ran the country. Maj. Gen. Nick Carter told the BBC on Thursday that before the 2001 invasion, women could travel alone in the southern part of Afghanistan. He says "you could put your daughter on a bus in Kabul sure in the knowledge that she would get in one piece to Kandahar." Full news...
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December 1, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
MichaelMoore.com: Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused former President George W. Bush of “intentionally” letting Osama bin Laden escape during the American invasion of Afghanistan. “Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away,” Hinchey said during an interview on MSNBC. Full news...
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November 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Sri Lanka Guardian: It is now very clear that the US and NATO have achieved nothing of substance in their adventure into Afghanistan and are sinking in the quagmire deeper every day. The US now desperately needs an exit strategy that looks like a win for two reasons: First its reputation as a mighty military power that can’t be beaten, and especially by tribal clansmen. Second if it withdraws empty-handed, how does it explain the rising number of troop deaths and the billions that are still being poured into a narco-state that is corrupt, in the middle of an economic down-turn at home. Full news...
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November 25, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
EricMargolis.com: Truth is war’s first casualty. The Afghan War’s biggest untruth is, `we’ve got to fight terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home.’ Politicians and generals keep using this canard to justify a war they can’t otherwise explain or justify. Many North Americans still buy this lie because they believe the 9/11 attacks came directly from the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida and Taliban movements. Full news...
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November 24, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries, but three decades of war and an increasingly brutal Islamist insurgency have left it rich in martyrs and the misery their deaths leave behind. In little more than three months, in Kabul alone, devastating suicide attacks have killed around 100 people. About 300 people have been injured. Full news...
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November 22, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Sixty civilians were killed and 102 others wounded in various violence-related incidents over the past one week, the Ministry of Interior has said. Most of the civilian casualties occurred in volatile southern provinces of Ghazni, Helmand and Kandahar as a result of roadside bombs, rocket attacks, ambushes and suicide attacks, the ministry added. Full news...
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November 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort. In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. Full news...
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November 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Democracy Now!: In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack. Full news...
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November 11, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Warlords helped drive the Russians from Afghanistan, then shelled Kabul into ruins in a bloody civil war after the Soviets left. Now they are back in positions of power, in part because the U.S. relied on them in 2001 to help oust the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Hamid Karzai later reached out to them to shore up his own power base as America turned its attention to Iraq after the Taliban's rout. Full news...
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November 10, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
South Asia News: A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while television footage showed Taliban insurgents sorting and transporting what appeared to be US military ammunition sized by militants in two remote outposts in October. The US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the US military said in a statement without giving more details. Full news...
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November 5, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FPIF: As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production. The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production. Full news...
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November 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Foreign Policy In Focus: While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war. Full news...
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November 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TruthDig: The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. Full news...
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October 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Amnesty International: The German government should immediately launch a credible, transparent investigation into a 4 September airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed scores of people, many of them civilians, AI said on Thursday. ... Village elders provided AI a list of 83 people killed in the incident who the elders identified as having no affiliation with the Taliban. Full news...
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October 23, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RIA Novosti: Afghan regions controlled by the Northern Alliance serve as a bridgehead for drug-trafficking to Russia, a top Russian drug control official said on Friday. "In the fight against the Taliban, the U.S. has used the Northern Alliance forces, which we are supporting even now," Viktor Ivanov, director of the Federal Drugs Control Service, said at a meeting at the General Staff Academy. Full news...
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October 22, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Afghan opium is unleashing a "devastating" impact across the world, according to a new UN report, funding the Taliban and other terror groups and killing thousands in consumer countries. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade that is worth some 65 billion dollars (43 billion euros), feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually, the report said. Full news...
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October 20, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Ahmad Wali died in a bomb blast in Kandahar city on 25 August and Samim was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul on 15 September. Both men left grieving families with little capacity to cope on their own. “We could not afford to pay the rent so we left our old home and have moved into a small room outside the city,” said Samim’s eldest son, Arif. “My children cannot go to school any more because we cannot afford their education,” said Wali’s widow, Pashtana. Full news...
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October 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Mirror.co.uk News: Afghan warlords were bribed to prevent attacks on Italy's troops, a Taliban commander alleged yesterday. Mohammed Ishmayel said the two groups agreed not to attack each other after tens of thousands of dollars were paid to Taliban chiefs. Ishmayel said the deal was sealed in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul. France took control of the apparently low-risk area last year, where only one Italian had died in the previous year. Full news...
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October 16, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ANI: Even as the Pakistan Army is all prepared and waits for a nod from the government to launch an all out offensive in South Waziristan, the Taliban’s stronghold, many inside the Canadian government who deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan issues are suspicious of Islamabad’s efforts. They believe that Pakistan’s Army and intelligence (the Inter Services Intelligence) are far more concerned with countering India, than taking on the real enemy, which poses an existential threat to the country itself. Full news...
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October 12, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ANI: The amazing success with which the one-eyed Taliban chief Mullah Omar has managed to regroup the banned organization after initial set backs, has raised questions whether the Taliban’s strategy is capable enough of thwarting the US campaign, or whether it was receiving strategic support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Full news...
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October 8, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Indian Express: A suicide bomber on Thursday blew up his car outside the compound of the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital killing at least 12 people and leaving 83 wounded, including three ITBP jawans, in a fiery blast that had all the hallmarks of Taliban. The powerful blast blew up the mission watch tower, destroyed vehicles and left a trail of death and destruction with Indian Ambassador Jayant Prasad saying, "Indian Embassy was the target." Full news...
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October 7, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Des Moines Register: On Saturday, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made a visit to Clive, flanked by a phalanx of U.S.-government supplied secret servicemen. In a lavish private reception, a senator, congressman and former governor welcomed the former military general, who seized power in a 1999 coup and resigned under pressure last year. On Tuesday, with no security forces in tow, a young Afghan woman who goes by the pseudonym Zoya slipped into Des Moines to speak at a public library. Full news...
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September 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
OpEdNews: After eight long years, the so-called “good war” in Afghanistan has become the “unpopular and high cost war”—and it is becoming a quagmire.General Stanley McChrystal recently requested an additional 45,000 troops for Afghanistan, on top of the 21,000 additional troops sent earlier this year. If honored, this request would bring the total number of troops stationed in Afghanistan to approximately 100,000. Even that large number would be less than what the non-public portion of the McChrystal report states as necessary to “win” the war – 500,000 troops. Full news...
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September 29, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: AT least 30 civilians were killed when a bus hit a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan in an attack blamed on the Taliban, the interior ministry said. The dead included 10 children and seven women, the ministry said, revising an earlier toll from the local governor's office. "Thirty people were killed," the ministry said in a statement, adding that 39 others were wounded. Full news...
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September 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A Taliban ambush on a highway left six truckers dead, and a roadside bomb killed another six Afghans in a crowded van, the government said Monday — the latest sign that insurgent violence is spreading across the countryside. Afghanistan's civilian death toll has risen alongside that of U.S. and international forces this summer to more than 1,500 this year — three-quarters of them at the hands of militants, according to a recent U.N. report. Full news...
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September 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PTI: Parts of ISI are supporting Taliban and protecting their chief Mullah Omar and other militant leaders in Pakistan's Quetta city, where US officials have discussed sending commandos to capture or kill the terrorists, a media report said on Sunday. The US is threatening to launch air strikes against Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan, 'The Sunday Times' reported. Full news...
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September 24, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Seventeen-year-old Nowruz was celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid with his father, mother and 11-year-old sister when 50 Taliban gunmen attacked their home with rockets and gunfire and killed him. The Taliban's target on Tuesday night was Nowruz's father Esmatullah, a police commander whose job had obliged him to move his family to the mainly Pashtun Guzara district of western Afghanistan's mainly stable Herat province. Full news...
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September 23, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN (translated by RAWA): Eight civilians are killed and four others wounded in the air strike by foreign troops, a number of residents from the Marja district of Helmand province are claiming... Another resident named Norullah from the same district told PAN that there were no Taliban near this village but the armed Taliban from the nearby village had fired on helicopters. Full news...
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September 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FT.com: Nato forces are losing ground against the insurgency in Afghanistan. Afghans look as though they will continue to be led by a corrupt and warlord-influenced government, of doubtful legitimacy after the flawed and still inconclusive recent elections. As casualties mount and spread, a backlash is building in allied countries against a war their citizens increasingly see as both pointless and doomed. Full news...
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