The Economic Times: The secret talks between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban to end the conflict in the country—that were “showing promise”—seem to have hit a dead end, with a revelation that the militant leader at the other end of the table was an imposter. Full story ...
The Tribune Democrat: Our present wars are not against terrorists. Iraq was clearly not a terrorist threat (or any threat to the United States), although the Bush administration tried to confuse us on this. Initiating a war against the then-ruling Taliban in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was not the right way to oppose al-Qaida, the group responsible for the terrorist bombing. Full story ...
The Guardian: Acute care for the troops most seriously injured in Afghanistan is costing the government more than 500,000 Pound every week, figures suggest. The military wards at the Birmingham NHS foundation trust receive over 2m Pound every month from the Ministry of Defence to care for the dozens of troops who need the most specialised trauma care. Full story ...
ABC News: Compass Integrated Security Solutions is owned by Peter McCosker, the son of former Australian cricket player Rick McCosker. Compass provided convoy guards for a food and fuel supplier in Afghanistan. The Armed Services Committee report last month alleged the company hired untrained guards and paid an Afghan major-general to recruit guards from the army. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: The United States is now spending nearly half a billion dollars a year in an attempt to establish the “rule of law” in Afghanistan. The central problem, according to the report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), is that corruption in Afghanistan is so widespread and entrenched that it severely undermines any effort to establish confidence in government institutions. Full story ...
ANSWER Coalition: Borrowing a page from its infamous “pacification” effort in South Vietnam, where peasant villages were napalmed and burned to the ground to “save them from the communists,” the Obama-ordered surge in Afghanistan has been secretly blowing up thousands of homes and leveling portions of the Afghan countryside. Full story ...
The Guardian: Thousands of protesters have marched through London against the war in Afghanistan as as Nato leaders agreed a strategy to withdraw their troops from the country. The demonstration, which organisers said was 10,000-strong, came as the prime minister, David Cameron, said the withdrawal of British combat troops from Afghanistan by 2015 was a “firm deadline” that would be met. Full story ...
Once Upon a Time...: There is one aspect of this Washington Post article that I fear will be appreciated by very few people. Before I get to that, let’s set out the basic facts... Full story ...
IRIN: NATO and the Afghan government must stop using local militias against the Taliban; the poorly trained forces are doing more harm than good, and risk causing a new civil war, say 29 local and international NGOs in a message to NATO leaders ahead of their Lisbon summit on 19-20 November. Full story ...
AFP: More Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan than support it, a new poll showed Thursday, the latest sign of waning public backing for the US-led mission. The Quinnipiac University poll also found a large majority of Americans want to see an end to the ban on gays serving openly in the military, including voters with a family member in uniform. Full story ...
Indiana Daily Student: It was pushed back by the Taliban, but now, some experts say it’s making a comeback. It’s something so controversial that most Afghans refuse to talk about it or to even acknowledge its existence. It’s 1 a.m. in northern Afghanistan, and a group of armed, powerful older men are gathered around a very young boy dressed in women’s clothing with fake breasts and bells around his ankles. Full story ...
The New York Times: “Why did you burn yourself?” asks the doctor. “If I threw myself from a building, I’d break an arm or a leg, but I wanted to die,” Halima answers. “That’s why I set myself on fire. I thought I would die instantly.” As an answer it is more how than why, but it is enough for Dr. Arif Jalali, the senior surgeon ... Full story ...
Xinhua: Afghanistan remains the country most affected by international terrorism, a UN official said here on Monday. Despite progress on the political, social and economic fronts, the terrorist activities of the Taliban, Al-Qaida and other extremist groups continue to be the main challenge to Afghanistan' s security, reconstruction and development, Afghanistan's UN Ambassador Zahir Tanin told a Security Council meeting. Full story ...
The Register Guard: The panel’s co-chairmen, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, identify $100 billion in defense cuts that could be made in 2015. That would be too little and too late, but what’s almost revolutionary is the notion that if we’re ever to get this nation back on sound economic footing, we have to cut what Dwight Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” down to size. Full story ...
The First Post: At the Badam Bagh women’s prison in Kabul, home to 150 female inmates and 70 of their children, the chief warden, Lt Col Zarafshan, lowers her voice. “Because of my pain, my hurt and my sense of injustice, I am telling you this,” she says. “If we had a good justice system only about ten of these women would be in prison.” A recent UN report stated that at least half of women imprisoned in Afghanistan are there for moral crimes. Zarafshan puts the proportion a lot higher. Full story ...
IRIN: Ali Ahmad, the sole breadwinner of an extended family in Kabul, has to decide whether to buy firewood to keep his children warm in winter or food to save them from hunger. “Everything is expensive… wheat flour, ghee, sugar, fuel and wood and I cannot afford them,” he complained. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: It was another day on the rocky hillside, as archaeologists and laborers dug out statues of Buddha and excavated a sprawling 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery. A Chinese woman in slacks, carrying an umbrella against the Afghan sun, politely inquired about their progress. Full story ...
...ould be supplying building material for much of the country, generating cash and jobs and improving the lives of some of the world’s poorest people. Instead, the Ghori Cement Factory and the nearby Karkar Coal Mine have become symbols of the corruption, nepotism and mismanagement that pervade President Hamid Karzai’s government.... Full story ...
The National Forum: It is estimated that one littoral combat ship costs $613 million. According to World Bank figures, that sum would be enough to educate 6.8 million children in Afghanistan for nine years - or we could buy one warship. Which investment would do more to strengthen Afghanistan and Afghan civil society? The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom have estimated that $287 billion dollars has been spent on the war in Afghanistan. Senator Cameron provided us with some of the forward estimates, and they are breathtaking. This translates to a $300,000 cash payment to everyone in Afghanistan for the price of the deployment and the war - or, incidentally, a cheque for $13,400 for every Australian. Full story ...
The Age: THE plight of women in Afghanistan is no excuse for Western “occupation” of the country, a leading Afghan opponent of the war and former MP has declared. Malalai Joya - the youngest woman elected to the Afghanistan Parliament, in 2004, who then faced death threats for her outspoken criticism of tribal warlords - said the image of Afghan women was being unfairly used to justify the foreign presence. Full story ...
The Vancouver Sun: We should have known it was too good to be true. Harper’s many, many repetitions of his government’s commitment to get all the troops out by July 2011 are well known. I think he may actually have meant it because by these repeated statements he framed the issue so strongly that all Canadians expected – and supported – the withdrawal. Full story ...
AFP: The economic downturn and the trauma of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed more US veterans to suicide, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said Thursday. As Americans across the United States and around the world celebrated the contributions of men and women in uniform on Veterans Day, Shinseki outlined a sobering picture for the approximately 23 million veterans in the United States. Full story ...
Global Post: The U.S. military has destroyed hundreds of Afghan civilian homes, farm houses, walls, trees and plowed through fields and buildings using explosives and bulldozers in war-torn Zhari district, a practice that has begun to anger Afghan villagers. The much anticipated third phase of the Kandahar campaign, called Operation Dragon Strike, has U.S. troops from the 2nd brigade, 101st Airbor Full story ...
The Canadian Press: Essa Mohammad was tending to his family’s flock of sheep in Kandahar’s Arghandab district this summer when a sudden bang and flash of light knocked him unconscious. When the 12-year-old boy woke up several days later, he was missing his right leg, left arm and right eye — the toll taken by an improvised explosive device planted by insurgents. Full story ...
IRIN: The International Criminal Court (ICC) should start investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by various warring groups in Afghanistan since 2002 to help end a culture of impunity, says Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Full story ...
CNN: Armed men burned down a girls’ primary school in eastern Afghanistan Monday night, an act that also destroyed hundreds of Qurans, a government official said Tuesday. Ministry of Education spokesman Asif Nang tells CNN that the Sangar girls’ primary school, located in the Alengar district of Laghman province, was destroyed. Full story ...
VOA: Afghanistan's independent human rights commission has criticized Australia's decision to train with militiamen reportedly loyal to an Afghan warlord. The six men have been in Australia to instruct the country's special forces in how to tackle the Taliban insurgency. Full story ...
AFP: The Afghan government has dropped corruption charges against a top aide to President Hamid Karzai who was indicted by a US-backed taskforce for taking a bribe, an official said on Tuesday. Mohammad Zia Salehi, a senior official in Karzai's National Security Council, was arrested by the Major Crimes Task Force... Full story ...
IRIN: Afghanistan has climbed over a dozen places up the annual UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) - from 181 out of 182 countries in 2009, to 155 out of 169 this year. Described as a human development indicator, the HDI "measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living." Full story ...
IWPR: Until recently, bus driver Ustad Toryalai said that there were plenty of passengers looking to travel between Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. But over the last six months, Toryalai said, traffic has declined dramatically, with passengers refusing to travel at night and even hesitant to make the trip during daylight hours because of the possibility of attacks by the Taliban. Full story ...
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