This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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During the Taliban’s previous rule, the conservative Islamists demanded that men grow beards
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Since the Taliban occupation, women largely stay at home because they are scared of being beaten and humiliated by the Taliban for just being women, reports Yasmeen Afghan.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Deputy Minister of information & Culture said that the documents possibly will have the name ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ on them
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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Afghanistan is in complete turmoil and is in a state of chaos after the takeover of the Taliban and is in dire need of humanitarian aid
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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The list of deputy ministers signals that the Taliban have not been swayed by the international criticism
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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After the Taliban announced that only boys and male teachers should resume their studies and work, a trend went viral on social media, reports Yasmeen Afghan. Children are posting their pictures, holding placards with slogans against the unofficial ban on girls’ education.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Afghans and the previous Kabul government had blamed Pakistan for its proxy war in Afghanistan
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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The Taliban converted the secretariat of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice on September 17, reports Yasmeen Afghan.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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The Taliban converted the secretariat of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice on September 17, reports Yasmeen Afghan.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Today, it’s been exactly one month since the fall of Kabul on 15th August 2021, writes Yasmeen Afghan. People live in constant fear, government employees have not been paid, and most people are out of jobs, especially Afghan women.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Baradar is considered to be a quiet, secretive man who rarely gives public statements
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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Western atrocities in the Middle East continue, with the 20-year-old War on Terror estimated to have displaced over 37 million people globally. While the Saudis may be doing the majority of the fighting, they are being armed, trained, aided and supported by the United States, Great Britain, and other Western nations profiting from the suffering. One man who knows more than most about this is Ahmed Al-Babati. Ahmed was a lance corporal in the British Army until last August, where he staged a public protest in London, demonstrating against British complicity in the violence.
The post British Soldier Arrested For Protesting Against Yemen War & Arms Support For Saudi Arabia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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The International Witness Campaign is remembering the last 20 years of the “failed War on Terror”. This decades-long war has seen its fair share of illegality and incompetence by those who’ve waged it. As with all wars, it’s hawks also paid no regard to the huge environmental costs involved.
Now, after these decades of war, the Middle East is facing another security threat: the climate crisis. Indeed, authorities around the world are increasingly recognising the environmental emergency as the greatest security threat we face.
As In These Times recently contemplated, imagine if those who waged the War on Terror had spent the last 20 years fighting the climate crisis instead. The populations targeted in the failed war, and the global community as a whole, would undoubtedly be better equipped to deal with the crisis if they had.
Indeed, there might not be a crisis to speak of if the vast amounts of money spent on the war had been directed to tackling the climate crisis from the start of the millennium onwards.
Perfect storm
A number of countries in the Middle East have faced intense temperatures this summer. In July, for example, Iraq saw temperatures of over 51C. In 2016, the country faced heat of more than 53C. As Foreign Policy recently reported, global warming in the region is double the global average. So 2C of global warming by 2050 would mean a 4C increase in the Middle East.
It’s not just intense heat affecting the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region either. The climate crisis is impacting rainfall and water availability. This means that some areas are experiencing increased drought, while others are flooding.
As the International Committee of the Red Cross has pointed out, the War on Terror and previous conflicts have played a role in this environmental situation. It’s regional water and habitat advisor Igor Malgrati said:
In southern Iraq, you have an environment that has been damaged by years of conflict, poor environmental management and weak governance. When you add climate change into the mix, you have the perfect storm.
The Costs of War Project has also asserted that the enduring military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan have resulted in “the degradation of the natural resources in these countries and a radical destruction of forest cover”. It said “the animal and bird populations have also been adversely affected”.
Security threat
The Max Plank Institute has warned that the climate crisis could make some areas of the MENA region uninhabitable in the coming years. A study by researchers from Princeton University earlier this year made similar claims about countries in the tropics. The study’s authors asserted that the world’s temperature increase needs to stay below 1.5C for the tropics to avoid the risk of exceeding a particular heat threshold, known as wet bulb temperature (TW). Because the human body is unable to regulate its own temperature past the TW threshold of 35C, it’s considered, as the Guardian put it, the “limits of human livability”.
As the UN secretary-general António Guterres said in August, greenhouse gas emissions are “choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk”. Meanwhile, the biodiversity crisis, whereby species are disappearing at a rate not seen in history, is devastating the ecosystems on which people depend on for food, water, and much more. These two interconnecting crises are converging too, with horrifying consequences.
Righting wrongs
Of course, climate change is not news. The oil and gas industry have known about it for decades. Governments involved in waging the War on Terror have long been aware of it too. As In These Times‘ Sarah Lazare wrote, in light of this understanding:
We should have been putting every resource toward stopping climate disaster, rather than pouring public goods into the war effort
Instead, the US ploughed $21tn into “foreign and domestic militarization” over the last 20 years. The UK government, meanwhile, recently revealed that it spent £22.2bn of taxpayers’ money on the 20-year-long invasion and occupation of Afghanistan alone.
In short, rather than investing in averting climate disaster, US and UK politicians chose to wage a climate-destroying war that made targeted populations even more vulnerable to the environmental crises.
The actions of rich nations in general, largely the elite among them, have brought the world to this environmental juncture. And the warmongering decisions these elites have made are a part of the litany of failures that got us here.
Officials from these countries need to address these injustices, and provide reparations for them, as they gather at climate and biodiversity conferences over the coming months.
Featured image via Channel 4 News / YouTube
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Impromptu markets where people sell household goods for cash have sprung up across Kabul, although buyers are in short supply
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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In post-9/11 Afghanistan, music and cricket became an escape from twin-violence of United States-occupation and Taliban-terrorism. Farooq Sulehria reports that with the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, these cultural activities are now under attack.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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An international online campaign of Afghan women’s traditional dress started after the Taliban introduced a strict dress code for female university students, reports Yasmeen Afghan.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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There are growing concerns over the Pakistan establishment’s influence in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, reports Yasmeen Afghan.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Since the movement swept to power, Taliban officials have said women would be able to work and study within the limits laid down by sharia
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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Peter Boyle spoke to an eyewitness about the latest Turkish drone attack on the United Nations-supervised Makhmour Refugee Camp in northern Iraq.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Members of the Iranian-Australian community are calling on the Federal government to support their struggle for justice for more than 30,000 victims of the massacre of Iranian political prisoners, which took place from July to September, 1988, writes Mohammad Sadeghpour.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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The classrooms will have no men and Islamic dress is compulsory
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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After the attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, United States president George W Bush gained unlimited powers to fight “forever wars”, writes Malik Miah. Meanwhile, Arabs and those who “looked Muslim” — especially Iranians and South Asians — became domestic targets at home.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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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.
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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.
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US president Joe Biden recently announced that he will sign an executive order to facilitate the release of classified documents about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The move is the result of a long-running campaign by victims’ families to determine whether the government of Saudi Arabia played a hand in the atrocities.
Throughout the 20 years since the attacks, it appears that successive US administrations and the US intelligence community alike have gone out of their way to suppress evidence that might implicate one of Washington’s staunchest allies. This refusal to release the documents speaks volumes about the US’s fawning treatment of one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies. It also raises big questions about the US’s flagrant double standards in the Middle East during its so-called ‘War on Terror’.
Documents finally redacted after three presidents in a row refuse
On 3 September, Biden ordered the US Justice Department to release documents produced as part of a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) probe into the 9/11 attacks. Groups representing families of 9/11 victims have lobbied hard for years for their release. In response, Biden committed to declassifying the documents during his 2020 presidential campaign.
As the anniversary of the attacks approached, these groups released a statement urging Biden not to attend memorial events unless his administration declassified the documents. The administrations of former presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all refused to do so.
Saudi involvement?
Many victims’ families have been particularly motivated by a suspicion that the government of Saudi Arabia might have been involved in planning the attacks. On 3 September, Reuters reported:
Family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks asked a U.S. government watchdog on Thursday to investigate their suspicions that the FBI lied about or destroyed evidence linking Saudi Arabia to the hijackers.
These suspicions have been heightened by the fact that Saudi Arabia is, after Israel, the US’s second staunchest ally in the Middle East. Throughout the presidencies of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, Washington all entered into profitable arms deals with the country’s royal family. Successive US administrations, therefore, have had an incentive to suppress information that could reveal Saudi involvement in 9/11. Politico reported in April 2017 that the 9/11 Commission’s “own members protested drastic, last-minute edits that seemed to absolve the Saudi government of any responsibility”.
Bogus justification for meddling in the Middle East
But the reality is that Washington’s deceitfulness runs even deeper. Because the 9/11 attacks were used as a ruse to provide bogus justification for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to topple the Taliban and the Ba’athist government of Saddam Hussein respectively. Yet there is evidently significantly less reason to believe that either of these actors had any connection to 9/11 when compared with Saudi Arabia.
In spite of this rather obvious reality, there were no calls in the aftermath of 9/11 to take any kind of action whatsoever against Saudi Arabia, let alone to invade it and replace its government. Yet despite much thinner evidence linking them to the attacks, the Bush administration instead launched invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. What could explain this stunning paradox?
Revealing double standards
The answer lies in examining the criteria on which the US bases its treatment of other countries. As The Canary has extensively argued, US administrations of both parties do not base their treatment of other countries on their publicly-stated criteria of human rights and democracy. (Indeed, if the true motivation behind Washington’s foreign policy was to spread democracy, as George W. Bush claimed, then Saudi Arabia would probably top the list of countries to invade given its status as one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies.) Rather, Washington bases its stance towards other nations according to how obedient they are to US geo-strategic and economic interests.
When it comes to Saudi Arabia, the evidence speaks for itself. In the final year of World War II, the US entered into a deal with the Saudi royal family to ensure continued privileged access to the country’s ample oil reserves. Ever since, the Saudi royals have been rewarded for this with the most fawning treatment imaginable. As then-US president Donald Trump put it in a November 2018 statement:
The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.
Opening up the region to Western oil companies in Afghanistan…
When it comes to Afghanistan and Iraq, on the other hand, the Taliban and the government of Saddam Hussein had fallen afoul of the US foreign policy establishment due to their growing unwillingness to serve US interests. This was particularly so in terms of providing favorable access to their countries’ oil reserves. And that resulted in a desperate scramble by the Bush administration to somehow tie them to 9/11.
In the case of Afghanistan, Washington attempted to strike a deal with the Taliban in the late-1990s to allow the US-based petroleum giant Unocal to build an oil pipeline through the country to the Caspian Sea. When it became clear that the Taliban was unlikely to accommodate this process, Unocal withdrew from negotiations and the plans were shelved. When 9/11 came along, it gave the Bush administration its perfect ruse to topple the Taliban in order to install a more friendly government that would allow the building of the pipeline. (Though there were considerable delays, probably owing to the chaos caused by the US invasion, construction of the pipeline finally began in February 2018. The New York Times reported at the time: “The United States has supported pipelines to bypass Russia and alleviate former Soviet states’ economic dependence on it.”)
Since this motivation would have surely provoked widespread scorn, Washington weaponized 9/11 by issuing allegations that the Taliban were ‘harboring terrorists’ and had links to al-Qaeda to whip up public and congressional support for invasion. On both counts, these allegations were dubious. A 2011 report by the Center on International Cooperation describes the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban as “complicated and often tense”, adding that they “knew little about each other”. Nonetheless, the ploy seemingly paid off: only one congress member voted against the invasion while public opinion polls at the time put support for it at around 80%.
…and Iraq
A similar, and even more duplicitous, dynamic played out with respect to Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been a close US ally, and even received US military funding in the 1980s. But throughout the 1990s, the relationship began to sour over his invasion of Kuwait. In the early 2000s, Hussein’s status as a US enemy was cemented when he fully nationalised Iraq’s oil industry and closed off access to Western petroleum companies. Unfortunately for the Bush administration, however, his connection to 9/11 was simply nonexistent – even Bush himself said after the invasion “I don’t think we ever said — at least I know I didn’t say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein”.
So his administration concocted a narrative, which the media dutifully repeated, that would nonetheless play on public fears that had been ignited by the attacks. It fabricated bogus claims that Hussein’s government had been developing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to provide a ruse for invading the country. (To demonstrate the absurdity of denouncing Iraq for purportedly having ‘weapons of mass’ destruction, consider that the only nuclear armed state in the entire region is the US’s number one ally, Israel.) As was the case with Afghanistan, the true purpose of the invasion was to create a more favorable environment for US oil companies. Even members of the US’s own military have admitted this reality. Former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq gen. John Abizaid said in 2007: “Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that”.
Some of the Bush administration’s leading figures, meanwhile, had extensive ties to the very corporations that ultimately benefited from the invasion, such as the former CEO of oil giant Halliburton, Dick Cheney, who served as Bush’s vice president. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were highly profitable for such US private contractors, which received billions in contracts for both wars. Halliburton itself ultimately became the largest single US government contractor in Iraq and by 2013 had received over $39bn in contracts.
The final piece of evidence could be coming soon
Clearly, the US foreign policy and intelligence establishment have a vested interest in suppressing evidence of potential Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. After all, this would make even further nonsense of the entire edifice of bogus justification that the Bush administration built in order to manufacture consent for invading Iraq and Afghanistan.
Though his administration is hardly a decisive break from the bipartisan consensus for endless war, Biden’s decision to declassify the documents should nonetheless be welcomed. It might end up providing the final piece of evidence needed to determine whether one of the US’s own allies in the Middle East played a hand in the worst domestic terrorist atrocity in US history.
Featured image via Flickr – Stacy Herbert and Wikimedia Commons – Michael Foran
By Peter Bolton
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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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.
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Mawlawi Hafiz Mansour said the majority of Afghans waiting to take one of four evacuation flights have neither valid visas nor passports
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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What happens in universities and schools across the country is being closely watched by foreign powers
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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The Panjshir Valley is famed for being the site of resistance to Soviet forces in the 1980s and the Taliban in the late 1990s
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
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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.
