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Category: Afghanistan

  • The Unlearnt Lessons Of 9/11, Twenty Years Out

    Twenty years after 9/11, America is less safe, a deeply troubled country, ravaged by COVID, racism, inequality, extreme weather from global warming and political strife. Its political leaders have embraced an Orwellian approach to the truth in which war is peace and large segments of our society are polarized by widely divergent concepts of reality.

    On the afternoon of 9/11, with the American media joining with the leaders of the two major parties in banging the drum for war, I wrote one of the first statements calling for America to seek peace instead, to not turn our cries of grief into a call for war. Eventually, many joined with early voices such as those of the Green Party and the War Resisters League in warning that peace and freedom both at home and abroad would be undermined if the United States went to war instead of participating in international criminal prosecution of this crime against humanity.

    The post The Unlearnt Lessons Of 9/11, Twenty Years Out appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The UK claims some wars were moral missions. But it doesn’t count how many it kills.

    UK governments often claim their wars and occupations have a moral element. And the Iraq, Afghanistan and Libyan wars were no different.

    But a recent Freedom of Information request by the research charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) calls that claim into question. The charity has discovered that the UK military doesn’t even keep a count of the civilians it kills.

    In a new blog, AOAV’s Murray Jones reported that the MOD had said the information was “not held”.

    Only data on the deaths of non-UK civilians employed by the military was offered. Reportedly, 38 died between 2015 and 2021.

    Contested figures

    Actual figures of civilian deaths from UK military action are hard to pin down. As AOAV points out, some official estimates seem very odd.

    In the air war against ISIS, according to MOD figures, only a single civilian died.

    The MOD has been repeatedly challenged over its claim that its bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria (Op SHADER) has killed and injured an estimated 4,315 enemies, but only resulted in one civilian casualty between September 2014 and January 2021.

    AOAV also argues that due to the bombing in cities, a figure of zero civilian casualties seems optimistic.

    It’s highly likely that civilian deaths have been under-reported, as 1,000 targets were hit by the RAF during its bombing campaign in the cities of Raqqa and Mosul.

    Self denial

    AOAV previously revealed that the Royal Air Force does not always keep count of the amount of bombs it uses in areas filled with civilians.

    In August, AOAV revealed that the RAF does not keep a specific record of how many bombs they have dropped on populated areas, raising questions over how they are measuring civilian harm.

    The organisation suggested under-reporting may be due to the UK’s very high threshold of evidence for civilian deaths. While the US relies on a “balance of probabilities approach”, the UK requires “hard fact” totally innocent deaths.

    In their new article, AOAV cited Chris Cole, director of Drone Wars UK, who described the MOD approach as:

    A kind of internal structural self-denial, where it has become seemingly impossible for the MoD even to accept that civilian casualties have occurred.

    We may never know the true cost in innocent civilian lives. But it seems that the UK’s claims to be a humanitarian force in the world are, at best, massively optimistic.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Corporal Steve Follows.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Biden claims ‘success’ while resistance grows inside Afghanistan

    In the aftermath of the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan and Taliban takeover, big challenges lie ahead, as political factions jockey for power and  generations of educated young people, particularly women, seek their place in a country free of foreign occupation, writes Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Afghanistan: Women walk for democracy against fascist Taliban

    In response to the repressions by the Taliban, a surge of protests have started in cities across Afghanistan, reports Zohal Silaab.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Protesters call out the DSEI arms fair’s ‘disgusting display of inhumanity’

    Wednesday 8 September was the third day of direct action against the DSEI arms fair in East London.

    DSEI – which is due to take place next week at the ExCeL centre in London’s docklands – is one of the world’s largest arms fairs. People have set up a protest camp outside the main Gate of ExCeL to try to obstruct those setting up the arms fair.

    On 7 September, Shabbir Lakkha gave this speech calling out the DSEI arms fairs complicity in the two decade long war in Afghanistan.

    Coming almost 20 years on from East London’s first DSEI arms fair – which kept on going despite the 9/11 attacks – we thought it was worth publishing his speech here:

    [The current situation is the] product of 20 years of the brutal and catastrophic war, that the US, that our country, that NATO has engaged in. And that is why we’re here today, really, to oppose this disgusting display of inhumanity at the ExCeL centre.

    Because in the last 20 years, the United States dropped over 300,000 bombs on Afghanistan, including the so-called crudely named mother of all bombs. And these were dropped on schools, on funerals on weddings or marketplaces, at least 70,000 civilians were killed. And this number is likely to be far higher, because during Obama’s presidency, they were describing any male between 18 and 65 in a combat zone, in a strike zone, as a ‘combatant’, thereby not counting them as civilians. So the toll has been really, really high. And this is the reality of what Western war does, how little it achieves apart from killing scores of people, destroying huge swathes of the country. And in the end, what they’ve done is made the Taliban stronger than they were in 2001. And they’ve allowed groups like ISIS to take hold in the country.

    “every bomb dropped on an Afghan village was money in their pockets”

    This Western imperialist project that’s caused so much death and destruction is what the DSEI arms fair has been an integral part of. In these last 20 years, companies like BAE Systems, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and others have seen their profits soar. Every bomb dropped on an Afghan village was money in their pockets. These are the murderers who will be in the ExCeL centre, selling their death machines. And places like Afghanistan, like the Gaza Strip, like Somalia, are used by these arms dealers for testing and promoting their weapons.

    Inside the arms fair, they proudly boast about the weapons that have been so-called battle tested. And these same arms companies are also supplying the technology that is being used to fortify borders to stop refugees from getting to Europe. So, they profit from creating the refugees and then they profit from stopping them reaching safety. And even now, our politicians – the neo-conservative establishment of which the arms industry is entirely intertwined with – are trying to manipulate the truth and claim that the war was the right decision, that it was moral. That it’s only the withdrawal that has been catastrophic. These people continue to believe or at least want to make us believe that the only way to help people is to bomb them.

    “They want to pretend like the war had anything to do with protecting women or their rights”

    They want to pretend like the war had anything to do with protecting women or their rights. You know, because the way to safeguard women is to bomb them! We have to say categorically ‘no’ to these backwards measures [that have] already cost so many lives and caused untold destruction and devastation in Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria, in Iraq and Palestine and Somalia. Their bombs don’t keep anyone safe… And if these people really cared about Afghan people, they wouldn’t deport 30,000 Afghan refugees in the last 10 years. The British government has spent millions on charter flights to send Afghan children back to Afghanistan.

    “create safe routes for refugees”

    Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, she went to court to fight the blanket ban on sending Afghan refugees back, and she won. And she claimed Afghanistan was a safe country to send Afghan refugees to, and it was her that spent £4 million on building a – so-called – reintegration Centre in Kabul to make it easier particularly to send children back. If this government wants to help the people who are now scared for their lives with the Taliban back in power – and we have to insist that they do whether they want to or not – what they need to do is create safe routes for refugees.

    The number of 5000 is not enough, the number of 20,000 over five years is not enough, they must open the borders and let them in now.

    I just want to make a couple of other quick points about the war in Afghanistan and the arms industry. Because we’ve spent the last 10 years being told that we needed austerity because there was no money. At least 120,000 people were killed directly because of the cuts made to public services and welfare. Our NHS was decimated and left wholly unprepared for the pandemic, which cost another 150,000 lives. But – all the while – their magic money tree never saw very fruitful war. The UK spends at least 40 billion pounds on Afghanistan alone. The US spends $2.2 trillion and the vast majority of this money was spent on military spending. A huge bulk of which went directly into the coffers of the crooks behind there [in the ExCeL centre]. And this is exactly what is still happening.

    The Tories will be increasing national insurance that will be used to affect the poorest workers the hardest, will be ending the Universal Credit uplift, they aren’t giving nurses a fair pay rise, they’re ending the furlough scheme. And meanwhile they increase defence spending by 16.5 billion pounds, they committed more money to the already £200 billion price tag of renewing the Trident nuclear missile system. And they’re spending millions on sending the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier with its flotillas in the South China Sea to ratchet up tensions with China. And all of this while our planet is literally on fire from climate breakdown, of which these weapons are a massive contributor. The US military is the single biggest polluter in the world. And the skills of 1000s of workers that could be used for green jobs – to produce renewable technology – are instead being wasted on producing instruments of death. So all these things are connected. And the war economy, the role of the arms dealers, and Western imperialism is at the heart of it.

    We need united movements

    We need a concerted, united movement that bring together all these different strands of opposition against this bankrupt system. And let’s not forget, that it is Priti Patel who is causing this suffering, [who is] stopping Afghan refugees from coming to this country and – at the same time – also spearheading the [Policing Bill]… to limit our ability to protest.

    What all that means for us is that we need to keep protesting because from here on out, every protest that we have, is a direct defiance of this authoritarian legislation.

    I just want to say big up to all of you for being out here solidarity, to your solidarity to our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan. Let’s keep protesting. Let’s keep building this movement.

    Featured image via Flickr/Resolute Support Media

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Noam Chomsky: The US-Led “War on Terror” Has Devastated Much of the World

    U.S. Army soldiers patrol

    Twenty years ago this week, the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, whose origins date back to 1979 when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in the United States. Shortly thereafter, the administration of George W. Bush embarked on a “global war on terror”: It invaded Afghanistan and, a year later, after having toppled the Taliban government, raised the specter of an “Axis of Evil” comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, thereby preparing the stage for more invasions. Interestingly enough, Saudi Arabia, whose royal family, according to certain intelligence reports, had been financing al-Qaeda, was not included on the list. Instead, it was Iraq that the U.S. invaded in 2003, toppling a brutal dictator (Saddam Hussein) who had committed most of his crimes as a U.S. ally and was a sworn enemy of al-Qaeda and of other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations because of the threat they posed to his secular regime.

    The outcome of the 20-year war on terror, which ended with the Taliban’s return to power, has been disastrous on multiple fronts, as Noam Chomsky pointedly elaborates in a breathtaking interview, which also reveals the massive level of hypocrisy that belies the actions of the global empire.

    C.J. Polychroniou: Nearly 20 years have passed since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. With nearly 3,000 dead, this was the deadliest attack on U.S. soil in history and produced dramatic ramifications for global affairs, as well as startling impacts on domestic society. I want to start by asking you to reflect on the alleged revamping of U.S. foreign policy under George W. Bush as part of his administration’s reaction to the rise of Osama bin Laden and the jihadist phenomenon. First, was there anything new to the Bush Doctrine, or was it simply a codification of what we had already seen take place in the 1990s in Iraq, Panama, Bosnia and Kosovo? Second, was the U.S.-NATO led invasion of Afghanistan legal under international law? And third, was the U.S. ever committed to nation-building in Afghanistan?

    Noam Chomsky: Washington’s immediate reaction to 9/11/2001 was to invade Afghanistan. The withdrawal of U.S. ground forces was timed to (virtually) coincide with the 20th anniversary of the invasion. There has been a flood of commentary on the 9/11 anniversary and the termination of the ground war. It is highly illuminating, and consequential. It reveals how the course of events is perceived by the political class, and provides useful background for considering the substantive questions about the Bush Doctrine. It also yields some indication of what is likely to ensue.

    Of utmost importance at this historic moment would be the reflections of “the decider,” as he called himself. And indeed, there was an interview with George W. Bush as the withdrawal reached its final stage, in the Washington Post.

    In the Style section.

    The article and interview introduce us to a lovable, goofy grandpa, enjoying banter with his children, admiring the portraits he had painted of Great Men that he had known in his days of glory. There was an incidental comment on his exploits in Afghanistan and the follow-up episode in Iraq:

    Bush may have started the Iraq War on false pretenses, but at least he hadn’t inspired an insurrection that turned the U.S. Capitol into a combat zone. At least he had made efforts to distance himself from the racists and xenophobes in his party rather than cultivate their support. At least he hadn’t gone so far as to call his domestic adversaries “evil.”

    “He looks like the Babe Ruth of presidents when you compare him to Trump,” former Senate Majority Leader and one-time Bush nemesis Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) said in an interview. “Now, I look back on Bush with a degree of nostalgia, with some affection, which I never thought I would do.”

    Way down on the list, meriting only incidental allusion, is the slaughter of hundreds of thousands; many millions of refugees; vast destruction; a regime of hideous torture; incitement of ethnic conflicts that have torn the whole region apart; and as a direct legacy, two of the most miserable countries on Earth.

    First things first. He didn’t bad-mouth fellow Americans.

    The sole interview with Bush captures well the essence of the flood of commentary. What matters is us. There are many laments about the cost of these ventures: the cost to us, that is, which “have exceeded $8 trillion, according to new estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University,” along with American lives lost and disruption of our fragile society.

    Next time we should assess the costs to us more carefully, and do better.

    There are also well-justified laments about the fate of women under Taliban rule. The laments sometimes are no doubt sincere, though a natural question arises: Why weren’t they voiced 30 years ago when U.S. favorites, armed and enthusiastically supported by Washington, were terrorizing young women in Kabul who were wearing the “wrong” clothes, throwing acid in their faces and other abuses? Particularly vicious were the forces of the arch-terrorist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, recently on the U.S. negotiating team.

    The achievements in women’s rights in Russian-controlled cities in the late ‘80s, and the threats they faced from the CIA-mobilized radical Islamist forces, were reported at the time by a highly credible source, Rasil Basu, a distinguished international feminist activist who was UN representative in Afghanistan in those years, with special concern for women’s rights.

    Basu reports:

    During the [Russian] occupation, in fact, women made enormous strides: illiteracy declined from 98% to 75%, and they were granted equal rights with men in civil law, and in the Constitution. This is not to say that there was complete gender equality. Unjust patriarchal relations still prevailed in the workplace and in the family with women occupying lower level sex-type jobs. But the strides they took in education and employment were very impressive.

    Basu submitted articles on these matters to the major U.S. journals, along with the feminist journal Ms. Magazine. No takers, wrong story. She was, however, able to publish her report in Asia: Asian Age, on December 3, 2001.

    We can learn more about how Afghans in Kabul perceive the late years of the Russian occupation, and what followed, from another expert source, Rodric Braithwaite, British ambassador to Moscow from 1988 to 1992, and then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, also author of the major scholarly work on the Soviets in Afghanistan.

    Braithwaite visited Kabul in 2008, and reported his findings in the London Financial Times:

    In Afghanistan today new myths are building up. They bode ill for current western policy. On a recent visit I spoke to Afghan journalists, former Mujahideen, professionals, people working for the ‘coalition’ — natural supporters for its claims to bring peace and reconstruction. They were contemptuous of [US-imposed] President Hamid Karzai, whom they compared to Shah Shujah, the British puppet installed during the first Afghan war. Most preferred Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist president, who attempted to reconcile the nation within an Islamic state, and was butchered by the Taliban in 1996: DVDs of his speeches are being sold on the streets. Things were, they said, better under the Soviets. Kabul was secure, women were employed, the Soviets built factories, roads, schools and hospitals, Russian children played safely in the streets. The Russian soldiers fought bravely on the ground like real warriors, instead of killing women and children from the air. Even the Taliban were not so bad: they were good Muslims, kept order, and respected women in their own way. These myths may not reflect historical reality, but they do measure a deep disillusionment with the ‘coalition’ and its policies.

    The policies of the “coalition” were brought to the public in New York Times correspondent Tim Weiner’s history of the CIA. The goal was to “kill Soviet Soldiers,” the CIA station chief in Islamabad declared, making it clear that “the mission was not to liberate Afghanistan.”

    His understanding of the policies he was ordered to execute under President Ronald Reagan is fully in accord with the boasts of President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski about their decision to support radical Islamist jihadis in 1979 in order to draw the Russians into Afghanistan, and his pleasure in the outcome after hundreds of thousands of Afghans were killed and much of the country wrecked: “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

    It was recognized early on by informed observers that the Russian invaders were eager to withdraw without delay. The study of Russian archives by historian David Gibbs resolves any doubts on the matter. But it was much more useful for Washington to issue rousing proclamations about Russia’s terrifying expansionist goals, compelling the U.S., in defense, to greatly expand its own domination of the region, with violence when needed (the Carter Doctrine, a precursor of the Bush Doctrine).

    The Russian withdrawal left a relatively popular government in place under Najibullah, with a functioning army that was able to hold its own for several years until the U.S.-backed radical Islamists took over and instituted a reign of terror so extreme that the Taliban were widely welcomed when they invaded, instituting their own harsh regime. They kept on fairly good terms with Washington until 9/11.

    Returning to the present, we should indeed be concerned with the fate of women, and others, as the Taliban return to power. For those sincerely concerned to design policies that might benefit them, a little historical memory doesn’t hurt.

    The same is true in other respects as well. The Taliban have promised not to harbor terrorists, but how can we believe them, commentators warn, when this promise is coupled with the outrageous claim by their spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid that there is “no proof” that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attack?

    There is one problem with the general ridicule of this shocking statement. What Mujahid actually said was both accurate and very much worth hearing. In his words, “When Osama bin Laden became an issue for the Americans, he was in Afghanistan. Although there was no proof he was involved” in 9/11.

    Let’s check. In June 2002, eight months after 9/11, FBI Director Robert Mueller made his most extensive presentation to the national press about the results of what was probably the most intensive investigation in history. In his words, “investigators believe the idea of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon came from al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan,” though the plotting and financing apparently trace to Germany and the United Arab Emirates. “We think the masterminds of it were in Afghanistan, high in the al Qaeda leadership.”

    What was only surmised in June 2002 could not have been known eight months earlier when the U.S. invaded. Mujahid’s outrageous comment was accurate. The ridicule is another example of convenient amnesia.

    Keeping Mujahid’s accurate statement in mind, along with Mueller’s confirmation of it, we can move towards understanding the Bush Doctrine.

    While doing so, we might listen to Afghan voices. One of the most respected was Abdul Haq, the leading figure in the anti-Taliban Afghan resistance and a former leader of the U.S.-backed Mujahideen resistance to the Russian invasion. A few weeks after the U.S. invasion, he had an interview with Asia scholar Anatol Lieven.

    Haq bitterly condemned the U.S. invasion, which, he recognized, would kill many Afghans and undermine the efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within. He said that “the US is trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don’t care about the suffering of the Afghans or how many people we will lose.”

    Haq was not alone in this view. A meeting of 1,000 tribal elders in October 2001 unanimously demanded an end to the bombing, which, they declared, is targeting “innocent people.” They urged that means other than slaughter and destruction be employed to overthrow the hated Taliban regime.

    The leading Afghan women’s rights organization, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), issued a declaration on October 11, 2001, strongly opposing the “vast aggression on our country” by the U.S., which will shed the blood of innocent civilians. The declaration called for “eradication of the plague of the Taliban and al-Qaeda” by the “uprising of the Afghan nation,” not by a murderous assault of foreign aggressors.

    All public at the time, all ignored as irrelevant, all forgotten. The opinions of Afghans are not our concern when we invade and occupy their country.

    The perception of the anti-Taliban Afghan resistance was not far from the stance of President Bush and his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Both dismissed Taliban initiatives to send bin Laden for trial abroad despite Washington’s refusal to provide evidence (which it didn’t have). Finally, they refused Taliban offers to surrender. As the president put it, “When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations.” Rumsfeld added, “We don’t negotiate surrenders.” E.g., we’re going to show our muscle and scare everyone in the world.

    The imperial pronouncement at the time was that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. The shocking audacity of that proclamation passed almost unnoticed. It was not accompanied by a call to bomb Washington, as it obviously implied. Even putting aside the world-class terrorists in high places, the U.S. harbors and abets retail terrorists who keep to such acts as blowing up Cuban commercial airliners, killing many people, part of the long U.S. terrorist war against Cuba.

    Quite apart from that scandal, it is worth stating the unspeakable: The U.S. had no charge against the Taliban. No charge, before 9/11 or ever. Before 9/11, Washington was on fairly good terms with the Taliban. After 9/11, it demanded extradition (without even a pretense of providing required evidence), and when the Taliban agreed, Washington refused the offers: “We don’t negotiate surrenders.” The invasion was not only a violation of international law, as marginal a concern in Washington as the anti-Taliban Afghan resistance, but also had no credible pretext on any grounds.

    Pure criminality.

    Furthermore, ample evidence is now available showing that Afghanistan and al-Qaeda were not of much interest to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumvirate. They had their eyes on much bigger game than Afghanistan. Iraq would be the first step, then the entire region. I won’t review the record here. It’s well-documented in Scott Horton’s book, Fool’s Errand.

    That’s the Bush Doctrine. Rule the region, rule the world, show our muscle so that the world knows that “What we say goes,” as Bush I [George H.W. Bush] put it.

    It’s hardly a new U.S. doctrine. It’s also easy to find precursors in imperial history. Simply consider our predecessor in world control, Britain, a grand master of war crimes, whose wealth and power derived from piracy, slavery and the world’s greatest narco-trafficking enterprise.

    And in the last analysis, “Whatever happens, we have got, The Maxim gun, and they have not.” Hilaire Belloc’s rendition of Western civilization. And pretty much Abdul Haq’s insight into the imperial mindset.

    Nothing reveals reigning values more clearly than the mode of withdrawal. The Afghan population was scarcely a consideration. The imperial “deciders” do not trouble to ask what people might want in the rural areas of this overwhelmingly rural society where the Taliban live and find their support, perhaps grudging support as the best of bad alternatives. Formerly a Pashtun movement, the “new Taliban” evidently have a much broader base. That was dramatically revealed by the quick collapse of their former enemies, the vicious warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, along with Ismail Khan, bringing other ethnic groups within the Taliban network. There are also Afghan peace forces that should not be summarily dismissed. What would the Afghan population want if they had a choice? Could they, perhaps, reach local accommodations if given time before a precipitous withdrawal? Whatever the possibilities might have been, they do not seem to have been considered.

    The depth of contempt for Afghans was, predictably, reached by Donald Trump. In his unilateral withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, he did not even bother to consult with the official Afghan government. Worse still, Bush administration foreign policy specialist Kori Schake reports, Trump forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters and relax economic sanctions. He agreed that the Taliban could continue to commit violence against the government we were there to support, against innocent people and against those who’d assisted our efforts to keep Americans safe. All the Taliban had to do was say they would stop targeting U.S. or coalition forces, not permit al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to use Afghan territory to threaten U.S. security and subsequently hold negotiations with the Afghan government.

    As usual, what matters is us, this time amplified by Trump’s signature cruelty. The fate of Afghans is of zero concern.

    Trump timed the withdrawal for the onset of the summer fighting season, reducing the hope for some kind of preparation. President Joe Biden improved the terms of withdrawal a little, but not enough to prevent the anticipated debacle. Then came the predictable reaction of the increasingly shameless Republican leadership. They were barely able to remove their gushing tributes to Trump’s “historic peace agreement” from their web page in time to denounce Biden and call for his impeachment for pursuing an improved version of Trump’s ignominious betrayal.

    Meanwhile, the Afghans are again hung out to dry.

    Returning to the original question, the Bush Doctrine may have been formulated more crudely than the usual practice, but it is hardly new. The invasion violated international law (and Article VI of the U.S. Constitution), but Bush’s legal team had determined that such sentimentality was “quaint” and “obsolete,” again breaking little new ground except for brazen defiance. As to “nation building,” one way to measure the commitment to this goal is to ask what portion of the trillions of dollars expended went to the Afghan population, and what portion went to the U.S. military system and its mercenaries (“contractors”) along with the morass of corruption in Kabul and the warlords the U.S. established in power.

    At the outset, I referred to 9/11/2001, not just 9/11. There’s a good reason. What we call 9/11 is the second 9/11. The first 9/11 was far more destructive and brutal by any reasonable measure: 9/11/73. To see why, consider per capita equivalents, the right measure. Suppose that on 9/11/2001, 30,000 people had been killed, 500,000 viciously tortured, the government overthrown and a brutal dictatorship installed. That would have been worse than what we call 9/11.

    It happened. It wasn’t deplored by the U.S. government, or by private capital, or by the international financial institutions that the U.S. largely controls, or by the leading figures of “libertarianism.” Rather, it was lauded and granted enormous support. The perpetrators, like Henry Kissinger, are highly honored. I suppose bin Laden is lauded among jihadis.

    All should recognize that I am referring to Chile, 9/11/1973.

    Another topic that might inspire reflection is the notion of “forever wars,” finally put to rest with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. From the perspective of the victims, when did the forever wars begin? For the United States, they began in 1783. With the British yoke removed, the new nation was free to invade “Indian country,” to attack Indigenous nations with campaigns of slaughter, terror, ethnic cleansing, violation of treaties — all on a massive scale, meanwhile picking up half of Mexico, then onto much of the world. A longer view traces our forever wars back to 1492, as historian Walter Hixson argues.

    From the viewpoint of the victims, history looks different from the stance of those with the maxim gun and their descendants.

    In March 2003, the U.S. initiated a war against Iraq as part of the neoconservative vision of remaking the Middle East and removing leaders that posed a threat to the interests and “integrity” of the United States. Knowing that the regime of Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, possessed no weapons of mass destruction and subsequently posed no threat to the U.S., why did Bush invade Iraq, which left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and may have cost more than $3 trillion?

    9/11 provided the occasion for the invasion of Iraq, which, unlike Afghanistan, is a real prize: a major petro-state right at the heart of the world’s prime oil-producing region. As the twin towers were still smoldering, Rumsfeld was telling his staff that it’s time to “go massive — sweep it all up, things related and not,” including Iraq. Goals quickly became far more expansive. Bush and associates made it quite clear that bin Laden was small potatoes, of little interest (see Horton for many details).

    The Bush legal team determined that the UN Charter, which explicitly bars preemptive/preventive wars, actually authorizes them — formalizing what had long been operative doctrine. The official reason for war was the “single question”: Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. When the question received the wrong answer, the reason for aggression instantly switched to “democracy promotion,” a transparent fairy tale swallowed enthusiastically by the educated classes — though some demurred, including 99 percent of Iraqis, according to polls.

    Some are now praised for having opposed the war from the start, notably Barack Obama, who criticized it as a strategic blunder. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t recall praise for Nazi generals who regarded Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa as a strategic blunder: They should have knocked out Britain first. A different judgment was rendered by the Nuremberg Tribunal. But the U.S. doesn’t commit crimes, by definition; only blunders.

    The regime-change agenda that had defined U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration was apparently behind NATO’s decision to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya in the wake of the “Arab Spring” revolutions in late 2010 and early 2011. But as in the case of Iraq, what were the real reasons for dealing with the leader of an alleged “rogue state” that had long ceased being one?

    The Libya intervention was initiated by France, partly in reaction to humanitarian posturing of some French intellectuals, partly I suppose (we don’t have much evidence) as part of France’s effort to sustain its imperial role in Francophone Africa. Britain joined in. Then Obama-Clinton joined, “leading from behind” as some White House official is supposed to have said. As Qaddafi’s forces were converging on Benghazi, there were loud cries of impending genocide, leading to a UN Security Council resolution imposing a no-fly zone and calling for negotiations. That was reasonable in my opinion; there were legitimate concerns. The African Union proposed a ceasefire with negotiations with the Benghazi rebel about reforms. Qaddafi accepted it; the rebels refused.

    At that point, the France-Britain-U.S. coalition decided to violate the Security Council resolution they had introduced and to become, in effect, the air force of the rebels. That enabled the rebel forces to advance on ground, finally capturing and sadistically murdering Qaddafi. Hillary Clinton found that quite amusing, and joked with the press that, “We came, We saw, He died.”

    The country then collapsed into total chaos, with sharp escalation in killings and other atrocities. It also led to a flow of jihadis and weapons to other parts of Africa, stirring up major disasters there. Intervention extended to Russia and Turkey, and the Arab dictatorships, supporting warring groups. The whole episode has been a catastrophe for Libya and much of West Africa. Clinton is not on record, as far as I know, as to whether this is also amusing.

    Libya was a major oil producer. It’s hard to doubt that that was a factor in the various interventions, but lacking internal records, little can be said with confidence.

    The debacle in Afghanistan has shown beyond any doubt the failure of U.S. strategy in the war on terror and of the regime-change operations. However, there is something more disturbing than these facts, which is that, after each intervention, the United States leaves behind “black holes” and even betrays those that fought on its side against terrorism. Two interrelated questions: First, do you think that the failed war on terror will produce any new lessons for future U.S. foreign policymakers? And second, does this failure reveal anything about U.S. supremacy in world affairs?

    Failure is in the eyes of the beholder. Let’s first recall that Bush II didn’t declare the global war on terror. He re-declared it. It was Reagan and his Secretary of State George Shultz who came into office declaring the global war on terror, a campaign to destroy the “the evil scourge of terrorism,” particularly state-backed international terrorism, a “plague spread by depraved opponents of civilization itself [in a] return to barbarism in the modern age.”

    The global war on terror quickly became a huge terrorist war directed or supported by Washington, concentrating on Central America but extending to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The global war on terror even led to a World Court judgment condemning the Reagan administration for “unlawful use of force” — aka, international terrorism — and ordering the U.S. to pay substantial reparations for its crimes.

    The U.S. of course dismissed all of this and stepped up the “unlawful use of force.” That was quite proper, the editors of The New York Times explained. The World Court was a “hostile forum,” as proven by the fact that it condemned the blameless U.S. A few years earlier it had been a model of probity when it sided with the U.S. in a case against Iran.

    The U.S. then vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law, mentioning no one, although it was clear what was intended. I’m not sure whether it was even reported.

    But we solemnly declare that states that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. So the invasion of Afghanistan was “right” and “just,” though ill-conceived and too costly. To us.

    Was it a failure? For U.S. imperial goals? In some cases, yes. Reagan was the last supporter of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, but was unable to sustain it. In general, though, it extended Washington’s imperial reach.

    Bush’s renewal of the global war on terror has not had similar success. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the base for radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorism was largely confined to a corner of Afghanistan. Now it is all over the world. The devastation of much of Central Asia and the Middle East has not enhanced U.S. power.

    I doubt that it has much impact on U.S. global supremacy, which remains overwhelming. In the military dimension, the U.S. stands alone. Its military spending eclipses rivals — in 2020, $778 billion as compared to China’s $252 billion and Russia’s $62 billion. The U.S. military is also far more advanced technologically. U.S. security is unrivaled. The alleged threats are at the borders of enemies, which are ringed with nuclear-armed missiles in some of the 800 U.S. military bases around the world (China has one: Djibouti).

    Power also has economic dimensions. At the peak of U.S. power after World War II, the U.S. had perhaps 40 percent of global wealth, a preponderance that inevitably declined. But as political economist Sean Starrs has observed, in the world of neoliberal globalization, national accounts are not the only measure of economic power. His research shows that U.S.-based multinationals control a staggering 50 percent of global wealth and are first (sometimes second) in just about every sector.

    Another dimension is “soft power.” Here, America has seriously declined, well before Trump’s harsh blows to the country’s reputation. Even under Clinton, leading political scientists recognized that most of the world regarded America as the world’s “prime rogue state” and “the single greatest external threat to their societies” (to quote Samuel Huntington and Robert Jervis, respectively). In the Obama years, international polls found that the U.S. was considered the greatest threat to world peace, with no contender even close.

    U.S. leaders can continue to undermine the country, if they choose, but its enormous power and unrivaled advantages make that a hard task, even for the Trump wrecking ball.

    A look back at the 9/11 attacks also reveals that the war on terror had numerous consequences on domestic society in the U.S. Can you comment on the impact of the war on terror on American democracy and human rights?

    In this regard, the topic has been well enough covered so that not much comment is necessary. Another illustration just appeared in The New York Times Review of the Week, the eloquent testimony by a courageous FBI agent who was so disillusioned by his task of “destroying people” (Muslims) in the war on terror that he decided to leak documents exposing the crimes and to go to prison. That fate is reserved to those who expose state crimes, not the perpetrators, who are respected, like the goofy grandpa, George W. Bush.

    There has of course been a serious assault on civil liberties and human rights, in some cases utterly unspeakable, like Guantánamo, where tortured prisoners still languish after many years without charges or because the torture was so hideous that judges refuse to allow them to be brought to trial. It’s by now conceded that “the worst of the worst” (as they were called) were mostly innocent bystanders.

    At home, the framework of a surveillance state with utterly illegitimate power has been established. The victims as usual are the most vulnerable, but others might want to reflect on Pastor Niemöller’s famous plea under Nazi rule.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Kabul Diaries Part 10: A city with one gender stinks

    Afghan women have always played an active role in the fight against occupiers, writes Yasmeen Afghan. Women — especially the new generation of young Afghans — will not bow to the Taliban’s brutalities and will fight for their rights.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Biden Exits Afghanistan, Heads in the Wrong Direction

    On August 31, Joe Biden accepted the inevitable and announced the final departure of all open military personnel from Afghanistan.

    Perhaps, the most important part of the speech had to do with the future, and here Biden was unequivocal:

    And here is the critical thing to understand: The world is changing. We’re engaged in a serious competition with China. We’re dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia. ….We have to shore up American competitiveness to meet these new challenges and the competition for the 21st century.

    A major motivation for getting out of Afghanistan is to give the US a freer hand to bring down China and Russia. And this is not to be a peaceful “Pivot.” The US has surrounded both countries with military bases, and the Pivot to Asia, pioneered by Obama/Hillary/Biden, sees 60% of America’s naval forces ending up in China’s neighborhood.

    The Final Quagmire. In the aftermath of the Afghan retreat the resolutely clueless mainstream punditocracy is asking: Has the US learned from this latest fiasco about the limits of its power? Did they not read Biden’s speech? Clearly, they have not.

    If the US has not been able to defeat a minor power like Afghanistan (or Vietnam), what are the odds of doing so with major powers like Russia and China? And given the nuclear weapons capacity of these powers, where might that lead? How many Cuban Missile Crises, or worse, shall we have to go through in this New Cold War before one incident leads not simply to endless war but to a world ending war?

    Let us be clear. Biden did the right thing in terminating the war and he should do the same in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. He has, however, not only done the right thing for the wrong reason, but for a very malign reason which will lead to greater problems and graver dangers.

    Unfortunately, the pols, the pundits and think tankers pay no heed to the danger here. Equally sad, too many liberals are silent about this New Cold War or cheer it as a new crusade for “democracy and human rights.” But some opposition is coming from a quarter that must deal with reality, not ideology or electioneering demagoguery.

    The Business Realists Push Back. On the day after Biden’s speech, the New York Times ran a story on the front page of the business section entitled, “Businesses Push Biden to Develop China Trade Policy: … companies want the White House to drop tariffs on Chinese goods and provide clarity about a critical trade relationship.” Said the article:

    Business impatience with the administration’s approach is mounting. Corporate leaders say they need clarity about whether American companies will be able to do business with China, which is one of the biggest and fastest-growing markets. Business groups say their members are being put at a competitive disadvantage by the tariffs, which have raised costs for American importers.

    Patrick Gelsinger, the chief executive of Intel, said in an interview last week…’To me, just saying, ‘Let’s be tough on China,’ that’s not a policy, that’s a campaign slogan. It’s time to get to the real work of having a real policy of trade relationships and engagement around business exports and technology with China.’

    In early August, a group of influential U.S. business groups sent a letter to Ms. Yellen and Ms. Tai (recently appointed U.S. Trade Representative) urging the administration to restart trade talks with China and cut tariffs on imported Chinese goods.

    The silent cruelty of Biden’s speech. Biden was right to grieve for the 2,461 Americans killed in Afghanistan. But he failed to mention the hundreds of thousands of Afghans killed as a direct result of the war, hundreds of thousands more as a result of disease and malnutrition and the millions displaced internally and millions more as external refugees. Instead of apologies from Biden and an offer of reparations, there came news that the US was freezing over $9 billion dollars in Afghan foreign assets needed by this starving nation lying in ruins.

    The United States has apparently learned nothing either in terms of the limits of its power or the morality of its foreign policy if we are to take Biden’s speech and actions as any indication. To say the least, it will not be easy to change this, but we have no choice. A calamity beyond imagination awaits us if we fail.

    The post Biden Exits Afghanistan, Heads in the Wrong Direction first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Fewer than 100 of Kabul’s 700 women journalists still working, says RSF

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Taliban to provide immediate guarantees for the freedom and safety of women journalists in Afghanistan, where a new media landscape is emerging from which they are missing.

    This is in spite of Taliban assurances that press freedom would be respected and women journalists would be allowed to keep working.

    The Taliban has announced an all-male caretaker government three weeks after taking over Kabul and the move has been criticised by UN Women as sending “the wrong signal” for a promised inclusive administration.

    What with incidents involving Afghan women journalists since the Taliban takeover on August 15 and orders to respect Islamic laws, an RSF investigation has established that fewer than 100 women journalists are still formally working in privately-owned radio and TV stations in the Afghan capital.

    According to a survey by RSF and its partner organisation, the Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ), Kabul had 108 media outlets with a total of 4940 employees in 2020.

    They included 1080 female employees, of whom 700 were journalists.

    Of the 510 women who used to work for eight of the biggest media outlets and press groups, only 76 (including 39 journalists) are still currently working.

    Disappearing from Kabul
    In other words, women journalists are in the process of disappearing from the capital.

    “Taliban respect for the fundamental right of women, including women journalists, to work and to practice their profession is a key issue,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

    “Women journalists must be able to resume working without being harassed as soon as possible, because it is their most basic right, because it is essential for their livelihood, and also because their absence from the media landscape would have the effect of silencing all Afghan women.

    “We urge the Taliban leadership to provide immediate guarantees for the freedom and safety of women journalists.”

    Most women journalists have been forced to stop working in the provinces, where almost all privately-owned media outlets ceased operating as the Taliban forces advanced.

    A handful of these women journalists are still more or less managing to work from home, but there is no comparison with 2020, when the survey by RSF and the CPAWJ established that more than 1700 women were working for media outlets in three provinces (the provinces of Kabul, Herat and Balkh, in the east, west and north of the country).

    The illusion of normality lasted only a few days. Forty-eight hours after the Taliban took control of the capital, women reporters with privately-owned TV channels such as Tolonews, Ariana News, Kabul News, Shamshad TV and Khurshid TV had dared to resume talking on the air and going out to cover events.

    Media executives harassed
    But media executives quickly found that they were being harassed. Nahid Bashardost, a reporter for the independent news agency Pajhwok, was beaten by Taliban while doing a report near Kabul airport on 25 August.

    Other tearful women journalists described how Taliban guards stationed outside their media prevented them from going out to cover stories.

    Women journalists speaking on the air in the studio are tolerated almost as little as they are reporting in the field.

    A woman journalist working for a radio station in the southeastern province of Ghazni said that, two days after the Taliban took control of her province, they visited the station and warned: “You are a privately-owned radio station. You can continue, but without any woman’s voice and without music.”

    It is the same in Kabul. A Taliban has replaced a female anchor at state-owned Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), who was told to “stay at home for a few days.”

    Another female anchor was denied entry to the building. RTA employed 140 women journalists until mid-August.

    Now, none of them dares to go back to work at the state TV channels, which are now under Taliban control.

    Stay-at-home advice
    Executives and editors with privately-owned media outlets that have not already decided to stop operating confirm that, under pressure, they have advised their women journalist to stay at home.

    Zan TV (Dari for “Woman TV”) and Bano TV (Dari for “Mrs TV”) have ceased all activity since August 15.

    These two privately owned TV channels employed 35 and 47 women journalists, respectively.

    One of these journalists said: “It was the perfect job for me. I wanted to help women. Now I don’t know if I will ever be able to go back to work.”

    Deprived of her job and salary, she now faces the prospect of extreme economic hardship, like many other women journalists.

    Despite undertakings from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid that women would be able to “return to work in a few days,” no measure to this effect has been announced, forcing hundreds of women journalists to stay at home, dreading an uncertain future.

    On August 24, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said: “A fundamental red line will be the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls, and respect for their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, education, self-expression and employment, guided by international human rights norms.”

    Afghanistan was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index that RSF published in April.

    Asia Pacific Report collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Civilians in Afghanistan’s Panjshir valley face humanitarian crisis as Taliban attack

    Afghan-Australian Mahboba Rawi says the valley’s residents are without food and medical supplies in the last holdout against the militants’ rule

    Afghanistan’s Panjshir valley is facing a humanitarian crisis, with families trapped inside the narrow valley without enough food or medical supplies, and cut off from the outside world as the Taliban attacks the last holdout to their control of the entire country.

    Afghan-Australian Mahboba Rawi – the “mother of a thousand” who has for decades run Mahboba’s Promise which houses, educates and supports thousands of Afghan widows and orphans – traces her ancestral home to the famously redoubtable valley, and said under Taliban besiegement, the people of Panjshir were suffering.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The US Owes Reparations to Afghan Women, Starting With an Open Borders Policy

    Women in Hijab sit at the back of a classroom

    My family escaped Afghanistan and resettled in the U.S. in the early 1990s, when I was a child. Even as I grew accustomed to life in the United States, I mourned the separation from my beautiful home country. Hardly a decade had passed before my new home country waged war on Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11.

    From the very beginning of the war on Afghanistan Afghan women have been selectively and opportunistically used as pawns to justify military intervention and nation building. For example, less than two months after the launch of the war, First Lady Laura Bush gave a speech saying, “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” Fast-forward 20 years, and former president George W. Bush, who launched the war on Afghanistan, expressed concern for Afghan women in response to the news that Biden was withdrawing troops, saying “I’m afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm.” However, U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was never actually about protecting Afghans. That the Bush administration used an illegal war to feign concern for Afghan women was yet another level of violence that that the U.S. government inflicted on Afghanistan and its people.

    In my visits to Afghanistan in 2011, 2012 and 2013, I witnessed the violence of the U.S. military occupation firsthand. The capital city of Kabul felt like an open-air prison with U.S. military and NATO forces surrounding and blockading the city. U.S. soldiers and vehicles had priority over everyone and everything; Afghans had to stand back and give them right of way. I never felt safe during these visits, and it wasn’t the norm for any Afghan, regardless of gender identity, to speak of feeling safe. There were a handful of suicide attacks while I was there. One day I was shopping in a well-known and heavily populated market; 24 hours later, that exact market was attacked by a suicide bomber and suffered high casualties. The fact that I was in that exact location just 24 hours ago really impacted me for the remainder of my trip, and it still haunts me to this day. That was life in Afghanistan under the U.S. occupation.

    I spent most of my time in Kabul, supposedly the safest city in all of Afghanistan. But when I traveled outside Kabul, it was another world, free of occupation and violence; the mountains, rivers, and rural landscape were so breathtakingly beautiful and calming. That’s the Afghanistan I like to remember. The military occupation did nothing for my country or my people, especially women. Now the country has completely fallen to the mercy of the misogynistic and brutal Taliban, and as an Afghan in the diaspora, I honestly wonder if I will ever be able to set foot on Afghan soil again.

    While I never believed the U.S. to be the savior of Afghan women, the U.S. failure to prevent the Taliban from once again assuming power shows that the stated mission articulated by the U.S. in the early days of the war has not been “accomplished” in the last two decades, especially in relation to women. Instead, women have been harmed by the Taliban and the U.S. alike. The fear, anxiety and despair that has gripped Afghans both in Afghanistan and in the diaspora is impossible to express in words. The Afghan people are urgently in need of the protection and support of the international community. The rapid advancement of the Taliban has proven how precarious the current situation is. The most extreme members of the Taliban are ruthless fanatics vowing once again to subjugate Afghan women to extreme human rights abuses. Their dominance threatens to yield systematic persecution against individuals based on gender, ethnic background and religious beliefs. This past week, the U.S. abandoned Afghan women abruptly and without sufficient aid or support for evacuation, proving that they never cared about women’s rights and security in Afghanistan. In the last few weeks, numerous Afghan women have gone into hiding in Kabul. Women’s rights activists, journalists, young students and women NGO workers are all fearing backlash from the Taliban. My heart has always bled for my Afghan sisters, and even more so now. And as an Afghan American woman, I feel it is my responsibility to be a voice for women in Afghanistan and hold the international community accountable for their safety and security.

    The perpetual narrative that the U.S. has always put forth is that it is saving Afghans from themselves. But we don’t need to be saved by the U.S. — we are the ones who will determine our future. As young Afghan American influencers are making noise and spreading awareness on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, this new generation, born and raised in the U.S., express their American roots but have not forgotten their ancestral roots either. Their voices matter and I beg my fellow Americans to listen to them first and foremost. The U.S. has demonstrated a lack of care for the Afghan people time and time again, both by waging war on Afghanistan in the first place and in the way paternalistic government and media narratives have drowned out the voices of actual Afghan and Afghan American women.

    In 2001, Donald Rumsfeld, who was an architect of the war in Afghanistan, stated, “We did not start the war… So let there be not doubt, responsibility for every single casualty in this war, be they innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of Taliban and Al Qaeda.” From the beginning therefore, the U.S. has always deflected responsibility and accountability for the war in Afghanistan. This has resulted in callous disregard for the destruction the United States has caused in Afghanistan and the harm and pain it has caused Afghan women.

    The U.S. is responsible for the state violence it has inflicted on Afghanistan, and it is imperative for accountability to be included in the discourse surrounding the war. One aspect of accountability is clear: The U.S. must implement an “open borders” policy pertaining to incoming Afghan refugees. This means that the U.S. in addition to the international community must open their borders to Afghan women and other vulnerable groups in Afghanistan that are fleeing the country. This is critical as many are fleeing from the violence in Afghanistan that the U.S. caused over the course of 20 years of perpetual warfare and destruction that only legitimized and paved the way for the return of the Taliban. Providing assistance to Afghan refugees, especially Afghan women, is not an act of benevolence by the U.S.; rather, it is what is owed.

    On September 1, the Costs of War Project out of Brown University released its findings on the number of deaths in the post-9/11 wars. Their findings indicate that, in the almost 20 years of the War on Afghanistan, over 46,000 Afghan civilians were killed. This is almost certainly a conservative estimate and the real cost of lives lost is likely much, much higher, particularly when one includes deaths driven by displacement, starvation and other consequences of war. Despite this human cost, the United States has made no effort to acknowledge these deaths in any serious way. This violence must be reckoned with, and that reckoning must include compensation to the families of deceased loved ones and a serious mechanism of accountability for those who caused the war in the first place — namely Bush and his administration officials.

    We need accountability from the U.S., for the violence that it has both perpetrated and facilitated and for the everlasting facade of caring about and protecting Afghan women. If U.S. leaders really care about Afghan women, it’s time to implement an open borders policy for refugees. This is the only way forward.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dominic Raab urged to ‘find a backbone and resign’ over Afghanistan

    Dominic Raab has been urged to “find a backbone and resign” after MPs criticised his handling of the Afghanistan crisis.

    Spineless

    Labour told the foreign secretary the coordination between his department and the Ministry of Defence to assist people seeking to flee Afghanistan is “still appalling” despite the efforts of some “very hardworking” civil servants.

    The SNP’s Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) went a step further when asking why Raab went on holiday to Crete despite concerns being raised in July over the future of Afghanistan. He added:

    When’s he going to find a backbone and resign?

    Raab replied:

    He referred to the risk report that the management board received in July, it’s a standard monthly report, it goes to senior officials. It didn’t contain any novel or new intelligence assessment.

    What the July document made clear was that our central planning assumption at the time was the peace process in Afghanistan would probably run for a further six months.

    So we followed all that advice while at the same time preparing our contingency plans for the evacuation.

    The Taliban retook control of nearly all of Afghanistan by mid-August.

    “Lottery of life and death”

    Raab repeatedly stressed the UK will not recognise the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan and noted his “scepticism is quite deep” about their assurances. But he told MPs:

    There is some evidence, in relation to the engagement we had on the ground in relation to the airport, it is possible to have a rational, constructive engagement and be able to test whether they will keep their word.

    Labour’s Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) earlier warned that the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme “is going to end up as a lottery of life and death”. She asked about the number of Afghan citizens “who want and need to flee here from Afghanistan and have already asked”. Harman said:

    How will the Government in practice decide between those who will be the lucky 5,000 and be allowed to come here and those who, though meeting the criteria, will because of the 5,000 cap be refused and face a terrible fate at the hands of the Taliban?

    I think the reality is unless they increase the 5,000 cap, the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme is going to end up as a lottery of life and death.

    Raab replied:

    I think she’s right to say frankly even if we doubled or tripled the quota, the number of people fleeing Afghanistan is going to outstrip what the UK would be able to take alone.

    “Appalling”

    Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said:

    The coordination between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, despite some very hardworking civil servants on the ground who are working round the clock, is still appalling.

    She also asked about the number of calls handled by the crisis centre. The foreign secretary said:

    Since August 11, (the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office crisis centre) has handled more than 44,000 calls. We surged 45 members of FCDO staff and 35 staff from other departments.

    Since August 19, we have answered well over 90% – 93% – of the total number received, and every day since the 24th, our call handlers have answered more than 94% of the calls that were made.

    And just to give the honourable lady a sense, since August 20 average wait times have been less than a minute.

    Raab also told MPs there is “clearly a difference” between the Taliban and terrorist groups such as Isis-K – the affiliate of the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan – and al-Qaeda.

    He added:

    Indeed, there is suspicion that the Abbey Gate attack from Isis-K, that part of the intention was to target the Taliban.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The truth behind the UK’s refugee ‘resettlement’ plan

     

    The UK government has plans to allow thousands of refugees from Afghanistan to resettle in the UK following the Taliban occupation of Kabul.

    Once again, we’re here to set the record straight:

    In 9 years, the UK sold £104.7m worth of approved military arms to Afghanistan.

    The UK remains the second largest arms dealer in the world, selling £17bn worth of weapons to countries who are on the Foreign Office’s own list of “human rights priority countries”.

    This government continues to sell arms to almost 80% of countries under sanctions and embargoes because of scale of human rights violations in them.

    As a result of violence and threats to humanity, over 4m Afghans have been displaced, with over 18.4 million needing urgent support.

    The #FactOfTheMatter is the government is responsible for some of what’s going on in Afghanistan.

    The Home Office has already stated 5,000 former Afghan staff and family members are likely to be eligible for resettlement by the end of 2021. But, the arms trade has devastated the lives of Afghan citizens and created yet more refugees.

    That’s the reality of the UK’s ‘re-settlement’ plan.

    By Emma Guy

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The “Longest War” Is Not Over

    Speaking from the White House on August 31, President Joe Biden lied to the people of the U.S. and to the world: “Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan — the longest war in American history.” The U.S. war on Afghanistan did not end— it has only adapted to technological advances and morphed into a war that will be more politically sustainable, one more intractable and more easily exportable. As the president admitted, “We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries.  We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.  We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed.”

    Five days before, on the evening of Thursday, August 26, hours after a suicide bomb was detonated at the gate of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport killing and wounding scores of Afghans trying to flee their country and killing 18 U.S. soldiers, President Biden spoke to the world, “outraged as well as heartbroken,” he said. Many of us listening to the president’s speech, made before the victims could be counted and the rubble cleared, did not find comfort or hope in his words. Instead, our heartbreak and outrage were only amplified as Joe Biden seized the tragedy to call for more war.

    “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he threatened. “I’ve also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing.”

    The president’s threatened “moment of our choosing” came one day later, on Friday, August 27, when the U.S. military carried out a drone strike against what it said was an ISIS-K “planner” in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. The U.S. military’s claim that it knows of “no civilian casualties” in the attack is contradicted by reports from the ground. “We saw that rickshaws were burning,” one Afghan witness said. “Children and women were wounded and one man, one boy and one woman had been killed on the spot.” Fear of an ISIS-K counterattack further hampered evacuation efforts as the U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens to leave the airport. “This strike was not the last,” said President Biden. On August 29, another U.S. drone strike killed a family of ten in Kabul.

    The first lethal drone strike in history occurred in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, when the CIA identified Taliban leader Mullah Omar, “or 98-percent probable it was he,” but the Hellfire missile launched by a Predator drone killed two unidentified men while Mullah Omar escaped. These two recent instances of “force and precision” ordered by Biden twenty years later, marked the presumed end to the war there just as it had begun. The intervening record has not been much better and, in fact, documents exposed by whistleblower Daniel Hale prove that the U.S. government is aware that 90% of its drone strike victims are not the intended targets.

    Zemari Ahmadi, who was killed in the August 29 drone strike in Kabul along with nine members of his family, seven of them young children, had been employed by a California based humanitarian organization and had applied for a visa to come to the U.S., as had Ahmadi’s nephew Nasser, also killed in the same attack. Nasser had worked with U.S. Special Forces in the Afghan city of Herat and had also served as a guard for the U.S. Consulate there. Whatever affinity the surviving members of Ahmadi’s family and friends might have had with the U.S. went up in smoke, that day. “America is the killer of Muslims in every place and every time,” said one relative who attended the funeral, “I hope that all Islamic countries unite in their view that America is a criminal.” Another mourner, a colleague of Ahmadi, said “We’re now much more afraid of drones than we are of the Taliban.”

    The fact that targeted killings like those carried out in Afghanistan and other places from 2001 to the present are counterproductive to the stated objectives of defeating terrorism, regional stability or of winning hearts and minds has been known by the architects of the “war on terror,” at least since 2009. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have access to a CIA document from that year, Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool. Among the “key findings” in the CIA report, analysts warn of the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT). “The potential negative effect of HLT operations, include increasing the level of insurgent support …, strengthening an armed group’s bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.”

    The obvious truths that the CIA kept buried in a secret report have been admitted many times by high ranking officers implementing those policies. In 2013, General James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reported in The New York Times, “We’re seeing that blowback. If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.” In a 2010 interview in Rollingstone, General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, figured that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.” By the general’s equation, the U.S. created a minimum of 130 new enemies for itself in the strikes ordered by President Biden on August 27 and 29 alone.

    When the catastrophic consequences of a nation’s policies are so clearly predictable and evidently inevitable, they are intentional. What has happened to Afghanistan is not a series of mistakes or good intentions gone awry, they are crimes.

    In his novel, 1984, George Orwell foresaw a dystopian future where wars would be fought perpetually, not intended to be won or resolved in any way and President Eisenhower’s parting words as he left office in 1961 were a warning of the “grave implications” of the “military-industrial complex.” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange noted that these dire predictions had come to pass, speaking in 2011: “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the U.S. and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

    No, the war is not over. From a nation that should be promising reparations and begging the forgiveness of the people of Afghanistan comes the infantile raging, “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay” and while pledging to perpetuate the conditions that provoke terrorism, the parting taunt “and to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet.”

    In the simplistic dualism of U.S. partisan politics, the issue seems to be only whether the current president should be blamed or should be given a pass and the blame put on his predecessor. This is a discussion that is not only irrelevant but a dangerous evasion of responsibility. 20 years of war crimes makes many complicit.

    In 1972, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, [and] in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” All of us in the U.S., the politicians, voters, tax payers, the investors and even those who protested and resisted it, are responsible for 20 years of war in Afghanistan. We are also all responsible for ending it.

    The post The “Longest War” Is Not Over first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Afghans call for extended families to also be evacuated

    Afghans formerly employed by the British military who are now living in the UK have said home secretary Priti Patel owes it to them to evacuate their extended families too.

    Family

    Nazir is a former interpreter and Shams worked as a communications officer at the British embassy in Kabul for 10 years. They said their employment with Western forces means the Taliban will target the relatives they had to leave behind. Both men were safely evacuated from Kabul at the start of August with their wives and children. They’ve been staying at a hotel in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, for more than a month along with hundreds of other Afghan families.

    The small town’s Baptist Church and council have been leading the resettling effort. They had organised a cricket match to welcome the families on Sunday 5 September. Shams and Nazir were among the refugees playing the friendly but fiercely competitive game with locals. They expressed deep gratitude for the town’s support, but they could not shake grave worries for people left in their homeland.

    Shams said:

    We feel safe, and we appreciate the opportunity to be here. But some of my colleagues and relatives are in hiding from the Taliban.

    They have been shifting their locations, but this is a very temporary measure… they are living in a life-threatening situation.

    Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan
    Recently arrived Afghans watch the match at Newport Pagnell Town Cricket Club in Buckinghamshire (Joe Giddens/PA)

    Asked if he feels the UK owes it to him to evacuate his remaining embassy colleagues and relatives, he said:

    Yes. I just remind Priti Patel of her words, when she said that she owes a debt of gratitude to the Afghan people, I think that’s the best way to put it, and we really hope the UK will continue to try its best to evacuate the people who deserve it.

    He added that his six children, aged between three and 14, are “very happy” in their temporary “second home”. And they’re “passionately waiting for their chance” to start school.

    Threats

    Nazir, 43, worked in Helmand between 2009 and 2012. He said his family of nine had to relocate 12 times in Afghanistan “due to being threatened by the Taliban”. Now he fears for his brother and sister-in-law who did not manage to escape. He said:

    I have spent 43 years in my homeland with my relatives and my countrymen so it was really very, very difficult for me to leave, but I was compelled with my family to leave, because we have to live.

    Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan
    Local minister Peter Young (right) talks to recently arrived Afghans (Joe Giddens/PA)

    Nazir added:

    One thing, to be very clear, the Taliban can’t be trusted… so we have deep concerns about our family left behind in Afghanistan. (My relatives) are being tortured, mentally tortured, threatened and they are being intimidated, asking them where we are, because they have got our list according to the information on social media, the Taliban have access to some of the interpreter list data…

    We will keep on trying to evacuate them from Afghanistan… but the process still belongs to the Government.

    In limbo

    Shams added that their own lives are still in limbo because they’re due to be relocated from Newport Pagnell. The Home Office has “not entertained questions” about when they can expect a permanent home.

    Speaking about life in the hotel, he said:

    The noise levels are not manageable, and we also have difficulty when it comes to creating a bank account…

    We really request them (the Home Office) to expediate and speed up the process to help us find suitable housing and start our life properly.

    He added:

    The tricky bit is that you can’t do anything.

    I can’t apply for a job because you don’t have a permanent address. You don’t have the status or the residents’ card so we really need to be moved to houses.

    Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan
    Adbullah watches his father takes part in the cricket match (Joe Giddens/PA)

    Warm welcome

    Nazir said that although their stay is temporary, the welcome his family has received in Newport Pagnell has been “outstanding”. He described the people as “fabulous”.

    Minister for the Newport Pagnell Baptist Church Steve Wood was among the locals playing cricket on Sunday. And he’s been a key coordinator of the Afghans’ settlement in their town. Wood said:

    It’s been a privilege to get to know these families.

    We put labels on people like the Afghans, we put labels on people who arrive into our countries – refugees is the one that is used so often.

    These families that have arrived from Afghanistan are just people like you and I and to get to know them and support them in this way and to help the community do that has been one of the biggest privileges I’ve ever had.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Pakistani state and the return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan

    Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has hailed the new Taliban rulers of Afghanistan for having “broken the chains of slavery”. Green Left‘s Peter Boyle spoke to veteran Pakistani socialist Farooq Tariq about the attitudes of the Pakistani state and ruling elite to the Taliban’s recent return to power. This interview was conducted on September 4, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Kabul Diaries Part 9: ‘In Kabul we can’t afford a loaf of bread or paracetamol anymore’

    Three weeks have passed since the fall of Kabul. If one dares to go outside, then all you see is the Taliban — with their guns roaming around — very few women can be seen outside, writes Yasmeen Afghan.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • US Collected 4.8 Million Biometric Records Of Afghans

    In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the ouster of the Afghan national government, alarming reports indicate that the insurgents could potentially access biometric data collected by the U.S. to track Afghans, including people who worked for U.S. and coalition forces. Afghans who once supported the U.S. have been attempting to hide or destroy physical and digital evidence of their identities.

    The post US Collected 4.8 Million Biometric Records Of Afghans appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Australian Military Whistleblower Shares Perspective On End To Afghanistan War

    David McBride is a former military lawyer in the Royal Australia Regiment and Australia Special Forces. He completed two tours in Afghanistan and submitted an internal complaint against what he witnessed in the war. He immediately faced scrutiny and harassment. What David had to reveal was published as “The Afghan Files.” It was a “quite a big story in Australia,” according to him. But the Australia government responded by raiding the ABC and targeting David with a prosecution for an espionage offense.

    The post Australian Military Whistleblower Shares Perspective On End To Afghanistan War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Stop The Terror Of The US Drone Killing Machine

    Did you hear about the 3 Afghan toddler girls whose flesh was ripped to pieces by a U.S. Drone Strike last Sunday?  Striking in a Kabul NEIGHBORHOOD, the attack also killed 4 other children, including 2 more under 6 years old!  The grief on Amal Ahmadi’s face tells it all!  10 civilian family members dead, 7 of them children, body parts everywhere, and bodies unrecognizable.  It was a horrific and tragic scene.

    And then there was last Friday’s U.S. drone strike in Nangarhar Province that U.S. officials claimed killed two “high profile” ISIS-K targets.”  A witness reported, “…rickshaws were burning.  Children and women were wounded and one man, one boy and one woman had been killed on the spot.”  

    OFFICIALS LIE…CHILDREN, WOMEN AND MEN DIE!  

    WE MUST UNITE TO STOP THIS RACIST U.S. DRONE TERROR IN THE SKY.

    The post Stop The Terror Of The US Drone Killing Machine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Google Locks Afghan Government Accounts as Taliban Seek Emails.

     Web Desk:

    According to Reuters, In the weeks since the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan from a US-backed government, reports have highlighted how biometric databases might be exploited by the new rulers to hunt their enemies. Google has temporarily locked down an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts.

    In a statement on Friday, Alphabet’s Google stopped short of confirming that Afghan government accounts were being locked down, saying that the company was monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts.

    “In consultation with experts, we are continuously assessing the situation in Afghanistan. We are taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts, as information continues to come in,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement obtained by The Post.

    One employee of the former government has told Reuters the Taliban are seeking to acquire former officials’ emails. Late last month the employee said that the Taliban had asked him to preserve the data held on the servers of the ministry he used to work for.

    “If I do so, then they will get access to the data and official communications of the previous ministry leadership,” the employee said.

    Publicly available mail exchanger records show that some two dozen Afghan government bodies used Google’s servers to handle official emails, including the ministries of finance, industry, higher education, and mines. Afghanistan’s office of the presidential protocol also used Google, according to the records, as did some local government bodies.

    Commandeering government databases and emails could provide information about employees of the former administration, ex-ministers, government contractors, tribal allies, and foreign partners.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Evacuated Afghan medical student calls UK quarantine a ‘prison’

    A newlywed Afghan-British medical student has been quarantining with his wife because of coronavirus (Covid-19) since he arrived in the UK. He has described the hotel he and his wife are quarantining in as “a prison”.

    Abdul, 25, whose name has been changed, said the couple have not been allowed to go outside or wash their clothes in 14 days. Moreover, they’ve been given rotten food and have already stayed two days longer than expected.

    “We feel like we are in a prison”

    The UK government has pledged to take up to 20,000 Afghan refugees who were forced to flee their home or face threats of persecution from the Taliban, These include 5,000 refugees within the first year.

    Abdul told the PA news agency:

    We thought we would be here for 10 days, so we prepared ourselves mentally, but two [more] days have passed.

    We feel like we are in a prison now because our quarantine period has passed, but why are they still keeping us here?

    The Government promised us we would be provided with accommodation right after our quarantine, but now it has been two days. They have not communicated with us about the next steps.

    Mental health

    The student first came to the UK from Afghanistan as a refugee in 2010 and was granted citizenship in 2015.

    He had travelled to his home country in July to get married after completing his third-year exams. He intended to sponsor his wife to join him only once he had completed his studies and had his own home and a job.

    The couple was forced to flee the Taliban, leaving the country on their fourth attempt. They have been quarantining in a hotel in south London. However, they expected to leave on 1 September.

    They are still stuck there two days later. Abdul said the situation has affected his wife’s mental health:

    She cries at night and early in the morning, when are we going to leave this place?

    We got married four weeks ago and instead of enjoying that, she has gone into a state of depression now.

    Lack of basic provisions

    Other refugees at the hotel have been experiencing the same problems, Abdul said. He added:

    They all feel like they are not being listened to. When we go for our breaks, we can only see them there and I have spoken to a few of them.

    Women don’t have any access to sanitary pads. People haven’t washed their clothes since they have come from Afghanistan.

    I came with a pair of trousers and I haven’t washed them for the past 14 days, since I left Kabul.

    We don’t have access to regular healthcare staff like a GP. There’s no mental health support and I am sure every family here is in the same position.

    Abdul is one of thousands of people to flee to the UK after the Taliban takeover in Afganistan (Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP)

    ‘Trapped’

    Abdul added that the hotel is providing “rabbit food”, some of which is rotten or spoiled. And those quarantining are not allowed to go outside.

    He said:

    Our movement has been restricted. We cannot go outside. They only take us out for 10 minutes, and that is only to another floor of the hotel.

    They say if we go out to get fresh air, we will have to sleep on the streets because they won’t let us come back.

    We need to be free and to get fresh air… to get exposed to the greenery and nature. We are trapped in a four-wall room.

    I kindly request for the authority to find a prompt solution so that they can accommodate and provide housing for all refugees who have been abandoned and stranded in quarantine hotels.

    Think about the human aspect. People are emotionally suffering every night in hotel rooms.

    Ongoing quarantine

    A government spokesperson said:

    A significant cross-Government effort is under way to ensure the thousands of Afghans who were evacuated to the UK receive the support they need to rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education and integrate into their local communities.

    So far over 100 councils have agreed to house Afghans and we have made £5million to support in housing costs.

    Those arriving have to complete mandatory quarantine in hotels.

    After they leave quarantine, the Government will work with them and local authorities to secure long term accommodation and the necessary financial support.

    While quarantine is supposed to be for 10 days, the reason for refugees remaining restricted past this period remains unclear.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Afghanistan: militia endure ‘heavy assaults’ from Taliban in Panjshir Valley

    Rebels say they are holding on despite celebratory gunfire in Kabul amid reports that hardliners have wiped out last pocket of resistance

    Militia forces say they are enduring “heavy assaults” as they battle the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, the final holdout against hardline Islamist control.

    The Taliban face the enormous challenge of shifting gears from insurgent group to governing power, days after the US fully withdrew its troops and ended two decades of war.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Afghanistan and the US corporate media

    The Taliban’s lightning fast takeover of Afghanistan was amazingly achieved with relatively little killing and bloodshed. Since the rout of the government, an entity essentially installed by the US, the Taliban has been assuring the Afghan people that its governance style will be more moderate than under its previous rule. Many people in Afghanistan are very fearful and particularly skeptical about the idea that the Taliban will change its ways. Many in the US share this skepticism and view the comments by the Taliban about including women in government, an amnesty and honoring human rights as simply public relations spin.
    In contrast, very few people in the US political arena or the corporate-controlled US media express any skepticism about the US and its trustworthiness. It appears the possibility that the US is not trustworthy never crosses their minds. However, if it does, they realize that it is likely not to their political or professional advantage to raise this possibility with others.
    President Obama benefited from this lack of skepticism when he falsely touted the precision of the US drone program. When Obama claimed that few civilians were killed, the mainstream media generally accepted this claim until there was too much evidence of civilian deaths to be denied.
    The hypocritical US political/media elite are now raising concerns about the safety and well being of the Afghan population under the Taliban’s rule. However, it appears that these concerns about Afghan lives were not a major issue for these elites when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected a proposed surrender by the Taliban in December 2001, a surrender that would have brought an end to most of the fighting there.
    These elite also didn’t show much concern about Afghan lives during the past 20 years when the US forces were bombing and then militarily occupying the country. In addition, the fighting with the Taliban, especially the air campaign, continued throughout these past 20 years and killed a large number of civilians. In fact, according to a excellent recent article by Jim Lobe in Responsible Statecraft, using research by Andrew Tyndall, in 2020 the corporate-controlled media mostly ignored Afghanistan with a total of 5 minutes coverage during the 14,000 minutes of weekday evening news coverage on the three national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). In the previous five years prior to 2020, the networks averaged 24 minutes per network per year. Thus there is little evidence of any real concern being shown about the safety and well being of the Afghanistan people before the Taliban recaptured control of Afghanistan.
    Moreover, the US has denied the Taliban access to $9.5 billion of Afghan government funds and has worked with the IMF to cut off aid to Afghanistan. These acts clearly demonstrate a hypocritical lack of concern for the welfare of the Afghan people who are facing desperate conditions.
    There is also much concern expressed about the treatment of women under the Taliban rule. However, if the US and its corporate media were really concerned about the treatment of women, both entities would certainly challenge Saudi Arabia about its treatment of women. It appears that the issue of women is used selectively and hypocritically to advance US political interests.
    There are certainly grounds for being very skeptical about the Taliban and its claims of moderation. However, there are overwhelming grounds for doubting US claims as well. For example, under the Trump administration the US reneged on the Obama administration’s agreement with Iran and other nations on the enrichment of uranium. The Biden administration broke the Trump agreement with the Taliban for the withdrawal of US troops by May 1, 2021. The George W. Bush administration used the false claim of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as the basis for its illegal attack on Iraq. The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all broke the George H.W. Bush promise to the Soviet Union not to expand NATO one inch to the east if the Soviet Union would allow the unification of East and West Germany. This shameful record of the US duplicity stretches all the way back to its very beginning when it broke its treaties with American native peoples.
    Afghanistan’s future is uncertain, but it depends upon how well the Taliban can deliver on its promises. Given that the Taliban consists of very conservative members as well as members who are relatively progressive, it faces a major challenge in being able to live up to its words. If the US and its allies stop being vindictive losers and allow the international community to help Afghanistan through the current dire situation, Afghanistan will have a chance. In addition, Afghanistan’s relations with its neighbors will play a key role in the success of the Taliban and Afghanistan.
    The post Afghanistan and the US corporate media first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Second Afghan evacuee boy dies in Poland after eating toxic mushrooms

    Six-year-old pronounced dead a day after his younger brother also died after eating soup made from death cap mushrooms

    A second child of an Afghan family evacuated from Kabul to Poland has died after eating soup containing death cap mushrooms, which the family had unknowingly gathered in a forest outside their quarantine centre.

    The six-year-old boy received an emergency liver transplant but doctors were unable to save him. His five-year-old brother died on Thursday at Poland’s main children’s hospital in Warsaw, where both were treated.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Evidence contradicts Taliban’s claim to respect women’s rights

    There are signs of a return to something worryingly close to the hardline restrictions of the past across Afghan life

    When Taliban fighters moved into Herat city in western Afghanistan last month, one thing mattered more to some of them than the battle itself. As gunmen faced off around the governor’s office, a group of militants came to Shogofa’s* workplace and ordered all the women home.

    “They hadn’t even taken all the city, but they came to our headquarters. The manager called an emergency meeting and they told all the women to leave,” she said.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • On Propaganda and Failed Narratives: New Understanding of Afghanistan is a Must

    For twenty years, two dominant narratives have shaped our view of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and neither one of these narratives would readily accept the use of such terms as ‘illegal’, ‘invasion’ and ‘occupation.’

    The framing of the US ‘military intervention’ in Afghanistan, starting on October 7, 2001, as the official start of what was dubbed as a global ‘war on terror’ was left almost entirely to US government strategists. Former President, George W. Bush, his Vice President, Dick Cheney, his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and an army of spokespersons, neoconservative ‘intellectuals’, journalists and so on, championed the military option as a way to rid Afghanistan of its terrorists, make the world a safe place and, as a bonus, bring democracy to Afghanistan and free its oppressed women.

    For that crowd, the US war in an already war-torn and extremely impoverished country was a just cause, maybe violent at times, but ultimately humanistic.

    Another narrative, also a western one, challenged the gung-ho approach used by the Bush administration, argued that democracy cannot be imposed by force, reminded Washington of Bill Clinton’s multilateral approach to international politics, warned against the ‘cut and run’ style of foreign policymaking, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

    Although both narratives may have seemed at odds at times, in actuality they accepted the basic premise that the United States is capable of being a moral force in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Whether those who may refer to themselves as ‘antiwar’ realize this or not, they, too, subscribe to the same notion of American exceptionalism and ‘Manifest Destiny’ that Washington continues to assign to itself.

    The main difference between both of these narratives is that of methodology and approach and not whether the US has the right to ‘intervene’ in the affairs of another country, whether to ‘eradicate terrorism’ or to supposedly help a victim population, incapable of helping themselves and desperate for a western savior.

    However, the humiliating defeat suffered by the US in Afghanistan should inspire a whole new way of thinking, one that challenges all Western narratives, without exception, in Afghanistan and throughout the world.

    Obviously, the US has failed in Afghanistan, not only militarily and politically – let alone in terms of ‘state-building’ and every other way – the US-Western narratives on Afghanistan were, themselves, a failure. Mainstream media, which for two decades have reported on the country with a palpable sense of moral urgency, now seem befuddled. US ‘experts’ are as confused as ordinary people regarding the hasty retreat from Kabul, the bloody mayhem at the airport or why the US was in Afghanistan in the first place.

    Meanwhile, the ‘humanistic interventionists’ are more concerned with Washington’s ‘betrayal’ of the Afghan people, ‘leaving them to their fate’, as if the Afghans are irrational beings with no agency of their own, or as if the Afghan people have called on the Americans to invade their country or have ‘elected’ American generals as their democratic representatives.

    The US-Western propaganda, which has afflicted our collective understanding of Afghanistan for twenty years and counting, has been so overpowering to the point that we are left without the slightest understanding of the dynamics that led to the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country. The latter group is presented in the media as if entirely alien to the socio-economic fabric of Afghanistan. This is why the Taliban’s ultimate victory seemed, not only shocking but extremely confusing as well.

    For twenty years, the very little we knew about the Taliban has been communicated to us through Western media analyses and military intelligence assessments. With the Taliban’s viewpoint completely removed from any political discourse pertaining to Afghanistan, an alternative Afghan national narrative was carefully constructed by the US and its NATO partners. These were the ‘good Afghans’, we were told, ones who dress up in Western-style clothes, speak English, attend international conferences and, supposedly, respect women. These were also the Afghans who welcomed the US occupation of their country, as they benefited greatly from Washington’s generosity.

    If those ‘good Afghans’ truly represented Afghan society, why did their army of 300,000 men drop their weapons and flee the country, along with their President, without a serious fight? And if the 75,000 poorly-armed and, at times, malnourished Taliban seemed to merely represent themselves, why then did they manage to defeat formidable enemies in a matter of days?

    There can be no argument that an inferior military power, like that of the Taliban, could have possibly persisted, and ultimately won, such a brutal war over the course of many years, without substantial grassroots support pouring in from the Afghan people in large swathes of the country. The majority of the Taliban recruits who have entered Kabul on August 15 were either children, or were not even born, when the US invaded their country, all those years ago. What compelled them to carry arms? To fight a seemingly unwinnable war? To kill and be killed? And why did they not join the more lucrative business of working for the Americans, like many others have?

    We are just beginning to understand the Taliban narrative, as their spokespersons are slowly communicating a political discourse that is almost entirely unfamiliar to most of us. A discourse that we were not allowed to hear, interact with or understand.

    Now that the US and its NATO allies are leaving Afghanistan, unable to justify or even explain why their supposed humanitarian mission led to such an embarrassing defeat, the Afghan people are left with the challenge of weaving their own national narrative, one that must transcend the Taliban and their enemies to include all Afghans, regardless of their politics or ideology.

    Afghanistan is now in urgent need of a government that truly represents the people of that country. It must grant rights to education, to minorities and to political dissidents, not to acquire a Western nod of approval, but because the Afghan people deserve to be respected, cared for and treated as equals. This is the true national narrative of Afghanistan that must be nurtured outside the confines of the self-serving Western mischaracterization of Afghanistan and her people.

    The post On Propaganda and Failed Narratives: New Understanding of Afghanistan is a Must first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Afghanistan Collapse Reveals Beltway Media’s Loyalty To Permanent War State

    In the wake of a remarkably successful Taliban offensive capped by the takeover of Kabul, the responses of corporate media provided what may have been the most dramatic demonstration ever of its fealty to the Pentagon and military leadership. The media did so by mounting a full-throated political attack on President Joe Biden’s final withdrawal from Afghanistan and a defense of the military’s desire for an indefinite presence in the country.

    The post Afghanistan Collapse Reveals Beltway Media’s Loyalty To Permanent War State appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Used “Feminism” to Sell Invasion. Now Afghan Women Must Pick Up the Pieces.

    With the official end of the War in Afghanistan, we speak with Rafia Zakaria, author of Against White Feminism, about how U.S. officials used the plight of the women in the country to justify the 2001 invasion and subsequent occupation. “Feminism has been delegitimized in Afghanistan because it is associated with an occupying force,” says Zakaria. “Now Afghan women are left to pick up the pieces and deal with the Taliban.”

    Please check back later for full transcript.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Don’t Wage Economic War On Afghanistan

    Sanctions advocates from the hardline Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently made the case for piling on sanctions on Afghanistan by adding the Taliban to both the FTO list and the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Hawks have been disastrously wrong about the use of sanctions for decades, and now they propose to strangle a country that has been wracked by war for the last four decades. The last thing that Afghanistan needs after generations of armed conflict is a new US economic war.

    The post Don’t Wage Economic War On Afghanistan appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.