16December, 2010
America's Dirty Secret: AfPak War Not Winnable
By Stephen Lendman
Millions of lives were lost, an endless toll raging out-of-control in AfPak. Ending that atrocity and holding culpable officials accountable would be top priority in any just society. Only America's victims pay. Its officials, like Richard Holbrooke, are eulogized for services rendered
02 October, 2010
Pakistani Attacks On NATO Tankers Deepen
US Crisis In Af-Pak War
By Barry Grey
More than two dozen trucks and oil tankers carrying supplies for the US military offensive against Kandahar in Afghanistan were destroyed in two separate attacks Friday in southern Pakistan. The attacks compounded the crisis for the US and NATO occupation forces arising from the Pakistani government's closure the previous day of a key border crossing
01 October, 2010
Pakistan Shuts Key Afghan War Supply-Route
By Keith Jones
Pakistan shut down a pivotal US-NATO Afghan war supply route yesterday following a NATO attack on a Pakistani border post that killed three Pakistan Frontier Corps troops and injured three others
12 August, 2010
U.S. Leading The Terror In Afghanistan
By Ghali Hassan
The U.S.-led war on Afghanistan is like the U.S.-led war on Iraq; to destroy the country and to indiscriminately kill large numbers of Afghan civilians. The aim is to terrorise the civilian population into submission using the so-called “War on Terrorism” as a cover-up for a U.S.-led war of terror
30 July, 2010
Video: Endgame In Afghanistan:
'It's Taken A Year To Move 20km'
By Sean Smith, Michael Tait, Guy Grandjean and Alex Rees
As the war in Afghanistan enters its final chapter, Sean Smith's brutal, uncompromising film from the Helmand frontline shows the horrific chaos of a stalemate that is taking its toll in blood
25 July, 2010
Afghanistan: Condition Black
By Dave Lannen
Although the war in Afghanistan has escalated, there is no improvement in the availability of medical facilities, especially detrimental to wounded Afghan civilians
Why Afghanistan?
By Timothy V. Gatto
We are in Afghanistan in order to maintain a military presence that directly confronts both Iran and China. This is a military campaign for hegemony in Central Asia. We are also there to procure a source of oil from the Caspian Basin without having to use Russia in which to run the pipeline and thereby reduce their influence in Western Europe
26 May, 2010
Why Afghanistan?
By James Rothenberg
All the troops, all the missiles, all the Predator drones are there to bring Afghanistan under American dependence, consolidating U.S. presence in the oil and gas rich Caspian Basin with its geopolitical significance toward potential enemies Russia and China, and encircling Iran. We’re fighting them “over there” not so we don’t have to fight them “over here”, but because that’s where the oil and gas are
25 May, 2010
Do Empires End In Afghanistan?
By Gulam Mitha
There are some interesting similarities between the Soviet and American led occupations of Afghanistan over the past 30 years from 1979-2009 but first a look at the historical brief about the country of interest to all empires including among others that of Alexander in 330 BC and the Mongols in the 13th century
11 May, 2010
Afghanistan's My Lai Massacre
By Dave Lindorff
There was a massacre recently that was not a mistake - a massacre, which, while it only involved fewer than a dozen innocent people, bears the same stench as My Lai. It was the execution-style slaying of eight handcuffed students, aged 11-18, and a 12-year-old neighboring shepherd boy who had been visiting the others in Kunar Province on December 26
Afghan Escalation Funding
By David Swanson
Isn't it time to call what Congress will soon vote on by its right name: war escalation funding?
22 April, 2010
Memo To America: Stop Murdering My People
By Malalai Joya
Amid increasing civilian deaths and resurgent warlordism, Afghan women's leader Malalai Joya writes that Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are losing credibility in Afghanistan day by day
The Anatomy Of America's Defeat In Afghanistan
By Mohammed Daud Miraki
With the long awaited decision by the Obama Administration in regards to the new strategy for Afghanistan, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated to the point that the US commanders started using the word 'defeat’ in their report to Washington. The word defeat has rarely been uttered by military; however, Afghanistan is the exception, where defeat is a realistic outcome
17 April, 2010
Atrocities Of Pakistan’s Mercenary Army
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
More than 70 civilians were killed and scores injured in an air raid on April 10 by the Pakistani jet fighters in the tribal region along Pakistan’s northern border with Afghanistan. According to eyewitness accounts, a bomb was dropped on a house in the remote village of Sara Walla in the Khyber tribal agency. The fighter jets returned as villagers tried to dig out people from the rubble two hours later
16 April, 2010
Our Man In Kabul
By Alfred W. McCoy
From Ngo Dinh Diem to Hamid Karzai. So is President Karzai, like Diem, doomed to die on the streets of Kabul or will he, one day, find himself like Thieu boarding a midnight flight into exile?
15 April, 2010
Hamid Karzai's Rebellion
By Robert Dreyfuss
The idea that the urbane Karzai might join the Taliban is highly unlikely. Although he is at best an imperfect vehicle to represent nationalist opinion, Karzai is accurately reflecting the feelings of an increasing number of Afghans about the US occupation, now in its ninth year--feelings no doubt inflamed by recent Afghan government allegations that US Special Operations forces tampered with evidence to cover up their killing of civilian women near Gardez
13 April, 2010
US Troops Attack Afghan Bus,
Killing Four And Wounding 18
By Keith Jones
US troops opened fire on a passenger bus travelling on a highway in the Zhari District of Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province early Monday morning, killing at least four people, including a woman and a child. Eighteen other passengers were wounded
01 April, 2010
The Opium Wars In Afghanistan
By Alfred W. McCoy
Can anyone pacify the world's number one narco-state?
22 March, 2010
Policing Afghanistan
By Pratap Chatterje
How Afghan police training became a train wreck
11 March, 2010
An Angry Woman
By Malalai Joya
Malalai Joya is an angry woman. She's angry about the war being carried out by the international coalition in her country, Afghanistan, angry about the UN bombs that are killing civilians in their villages, angry about calls for reconciliation with the Taliban and the war lords. "Stop the massacres in my country. Withdraw your foreign troops so we can stop Talibanization," is what the young Afghan deputy tells Western public opinion
09 March, 2010
Fiction Of Marja As City Was U.S. Information War
By Gareth Porter
The picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley
03 March, 2010
Habeas Challenges For Bagram Prisoners
By William Fisher
Four men who have been imprisoned for over a year – some for almost two years – are going to U.S. federal court to challenge their detention at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan
Flexible Afghanistan War Objectives:
And The Agony Grinds On
By Ramzy Baroud
The intellectual cowardice of some should not blind the majority to the fact that the war in Afghanistan is morally indefensible and militarily unwinnable
How Kucinich's Resolution To End The War
Will Help Us End The War
By David Swanson
Tomorrow, Thursday, March 4th, Congressman Dennis Kucinich plans to introduce a privileged resolution to end the Afghan War. The resolution requires that the House debate, within the next week, the continuing war in Afghanistan, now the second longest war in American history
28 February, 2010
$2000 Per Dead Afghan Child
By Francis Shor
$2000 per dead child! That's the amount of compensation offered by the Pentagon for the "collateral damage" which it has caused in Afghanistan. As the war escalates and more innocent victims of Washington's aggressive actions accumulate in number, the US military calculates what it will take to placate grieving Afghan parents
26 February, 2010
U.S Started A War Of Aggression Against
Afghanistan Over 30 Years Ago
By James A. Lucas
Over three decades ago, there were social movements in Afghanistan to improve the standard of living of its people, to provide greater equality for women, and there was a functioning, if imperfect, democracy. However the U.S., using subversion, weapons and money was able, as the leader of coalition of nations, to stop progress in these areas of human welfare. In fact, the gains that had already been made were actually reversed
23 February, 2010
Another Massacre In Afghanistan
By Bill Van Auken
The massacre took place near the border between Uruzgan and Daykundi provinces. Initial reports cited 33 people dead and at least 12 others wounded. Later, Afghan officials revised the death toll to 27. Among the dead were four women and a child. It appears to be the worst attack on Afghanistan’s civilian population since September 4, when a German commander ordered an airstrike on a fuel tanker truck surrounded by local people, killing 142 of them
Five Questions For The Afghan Surge
By Juan Cole
Gen. David Petraeus, a straight shooter, admitted on Meet the Press Sunday that the Afghanistan War will take years and incur high casualties..The Marjah Campaign, the centerpiece of the new counter-insurgency strategy, is over a week old, and some assessment of this new, visible push by the US military in violent Helmand Province is in order
18 February, 2010
Battle for Marjah: The US Has Already Lost
By Dave Lindorff
The fighting is still underway in the town of Marjah, in what is being described as the first battle in Obama's War in Afghanistan, or alternatively as the biggest battle of the US War in Afghanistan. But already, the US has lost that battle. It lost it from day one, when troops fired missiles in to a Marjah house, killing 12 civilian occupants--half of them children. And it lost it further when another three more civilians were blown away by US-led forces. Finally, it lost the battle as much of the town has been simply destroyed by the fighting
15 February, 2010
Rockets Kill 12 Near Marjah
By Patrick Martin
In what is likely to be the first of many such atrocities, two US military rockets slammed into a house near Marjah, the target of the current offensive, killing 12 people. US military authorities admitted that the victims were innocent civilians sheltering in their own home, as they had been advised to do by US and NATO officials
12 February, 2010
US Military Noose Tightens On Marjah
By Patrick Martin
Thousands of US Marines and Army troops have moved into position on the outskirts of Marjah, a town in central Helmand province, identified publicly by the Pentagon as the first major target of the offensive authorized by President Barack Obama
U.S. Poised To Commit War Crimes In Marjah
By Robert Naiman
The United States and NATO are poised to launch a major assault in the Marjah district in southern Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians are in imminent peril. Will President Obama and Congress act to protect civilians in Marjah, in compliance with the obligations of the United States under the laws of war?
10 February, 2010
The 700 Military Bases Of Afghanistan
By Nick Turse
After nearly a decade of war, close to 700 U.S., allied, and Afghan military bases dot Afghanistan. Until now, however, they have existed as black sites known to few Americans outside the Pentagon. It remains to be seen, a decade into the future, how many of these sites will still be occupied by U.S. and allied troops and whose flag will be planted on the ever-shifting British-Soviet-U.S./Afghan site at Shinwar
29 January, 2010
NATO To Provide $500 Million To Bribe Taliban
By Juan Cole
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have called the London Conference on Afghanistan for domestic political purposes, as a sort of publicity stunt. But the nearly 70 nations that gathered there unexpectedly took advantage of the meet to plot out a NATO exit strategy. Of course, how realistic it is remains to be seen
London Conference On Afghanistan:
Occupation Will Last For Years To Come
By Chris Marsden
The London conference on Afghanistan laid down a scenario for the country’s military occupation stretching over at least 5 years and, according to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, as long as 15 years
Afraid Of The Dark in Afghanistan
By Anand Gopal
In the secretive U.S. detentions process, suspects are usually nabbed in the darkness and then sent to one of a number of detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families. This process has become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes. The night raids and detentions, little known or understood outside of these Pashtun villages, are slowly turning Afghans against the very forces they greeted as liberators just a few years ago
22 January, 2010
Layperson’s Guide To Counting
Occupied Afghanistan Deaths
By Dr Gideon Polya
Assuming for "bad outcome" Third World countries that "under-5 infant mortality" is numerically about 0.7 of the "avoidable mortality", we can estimate that the post-invasion avoidable mortality in Occupied Afghanistan = 2.7 million/0.7 = 3.9 million
12 January, 2010
Could The Pakistani Government
Fall Over Karachi Violence?
By Juan Cole
The ongoing political turmoil in a major Pakistani city to which few Americans pay much attention could nevertheless prove pivotal to the Obama administration's AfPak project
11 January, 2010
The Shadow War
By Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse
Making sense of the New CIA battlefield in Afghanistan
20 December, 2009
Can Pakistan Win This War?
By Dr Shabir Choudhry
If Pakistan wants to win this war then they have to change their strategy. They must not only rely on use of F16 and helicopters gunship. They have to win minds and hearts of the people and that could not be won by use of brute force and making more people homeless, making more orphans and martyrs. Above all they seriously need to look for moles among their ranks. It is these people who are cause of so much death and destruction in Pakistan
19 December, 2009
Afghan Children Are Neglected Casualties Of War
By Cesar Chelala
Years of war, bad government, corruption and poverty have left Afghanistan with the highest infant mortality rate in the world, according to UNICEF. More than one out of every five children are dead by the time they are five
11 December, 2009
The Nine Surges Of Obama’s War
By Tom Engelhardt
What follows is my own attempt to make sense of the nine fronts on which the U.S. has been surging, and continues to do so, as 2009 ends. Think of this as an effort to widen our view of Obama’s widening war
When Our Leaders Fail To Lead
We Have To Make Them
By David Korten
President Obama's decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan was a tragic error. He specifically said that to compare Afghanistan with Vietnam is a misreading of history. In a way, I would have to agree. We ultimately left Vietnam in humiliation. Afghanistan is not comparable, because our prospects for success there are even worse
Our Murderers In The Sky
By Scott Ritter
The war in Afghanistan by whatever name you call it, is in reality murder
Obama’s Second Af-Pak policy:
A Fallacy In Composition
By Ramtanu Maitra
One can reasonably conclude from the goings-on in Washington before and after the speech that the United States has realized that the Afghan war cannot be won. If Washington chooses to stay in Afghanistan with the motto we will defeat you, American troops will remain there for decades, if not forever
05 December, 2009
The Secret US War In Pakistan
By Jeremy Scahill
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus
03 December, 2009
War Is Peace; Escalation Is Withdrawal
By Kevin Zeese
If I ever get cancer, I want Barack Obama to tell me I’m dying. He could probably convince someone like me who does not believe in the supernatural that death is life. He certainly did his best on Tuesday night to convince the American public that war means peace, and escalation means withdrawal
Obamathink On Afghanistan: Escalate To Exit
By Stephen Lendman
The die is cast. Escalation is now fact by a man promising change, delivering betrayal, and seeing his approval rating fall from a 68% late January high to 47% according to the December 1 Rasmussen Report, a number steadily falling because growing numbers of supporters are losing faith. Heading into 2010, the combination of economic hardship, eroding civil liberties, and wasted billions on futile wars promises to raise public discontent and disapproval of a president and Congress they no longer trust. What's disturbing is why they did in the first place
23 November, 2009
Civil War Spreads Across North West Pakistan
By James Cogan
The Pakistani military offensive in South Waziristan against Tehrik-e-Taliban —the Pakistani Taliban—has escalated into a civil war throughout the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP)
19 November, 2009
Advice On Afghanistan
By Ralph Nader
Your staff estimates each U.S. soldier is costing $1 million a year, in addition to the horrific toll on these soldiers and the Afghan people. You owe the American people an un-Bush-like explanation. Why are you not receiving these groups of American from varied backgrounds and experience at the White House on this pending Afghan decision?
Rising Indian Influence In Afghanistan
Worries US And Pakistan
By Ajay Prakash
The top US military commander in Afghanistan has warned that India’s growing influence in the country could “exacerbate regional tensions” and encourage “countermeasures” by Pakistan, India’s historic rival in south Asia
11 November, 2009
US Is Doing No Good In Afghanistan
By Malalai Joya
As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country
10 November, 2009
Romancing The Afghan Dragon
By Aetius Romulous
The strange relationship between opium and Afghan politics
09 November, 2009
US Pressing To Shore Up Security For
Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons
By Sherwood Ross
Washington has been negotiating secret and “highly sensitive understandings” to “provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis,” investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports
Where Will They Get The Troops?
By Dahr Jamail & Sarah Lazare
As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in
05 November, 2009
America Is Performing Its Familiar Role Of
Propping Up A Dictator
By Robert Fisk
As in Vietnam, Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption
In Afghanistan, The Pentagon Digs In
By Nick Turse
The pentagon's building boom in Afghanistan indicates a long war ahead
03 November, 2009
Pakistan: The Long War
By Beena Sarwar
Pakistan is at war. The entire country is the battleground. The series of bomb blasts gained momentum as expected, in the run-up to Oct 17 when the army launched its ground offensive in South Waziristan. During the first two weeks of October, militant attacks killed over 150 people, including some 40 on a deadly Thursday in Lahore, Kohat and Peshawar
02 November, 2009
Why All The President's Afghan Options
Are Bad Ones
By Tom Engelhardt
The United States lived through all the phases of escalation, withdrawal, and defeat in Vietnam without suffering great post-war losses of any sort. This time we may not be so lucky. The United States is itself no longer too big to fail -- and if we should do so, remind me: Who exactly will bail us out?
31 October, 2009
Waging War Upon Ourselves
By Peter Chamberlin
It is easy to see why Pakistan has been chosen as the battleground of the century, but it is a real shame to us all that we have allowed our governments so much unsupervised freedom of action that they could get away with the things you are about to read about in the following article
Daring To Understand
By Maryam Sakeenah
I stand the risk of being misunderstood and misjudged. I do not condone the ongoing violent attacks in civilian areas all over Pakistan which victimize innocents. I cannot possibly justify them, nor can any human being in his right mind. But I think I can understand why. I can dare just that much
30 October, 2009
Taliban Take Over Afghan Province
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan, on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles
A Must Read For Obama: An Afghan Travelogue
By Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Some excerpts from a recent account of Afghanistan by a visiting American
29 October, 2009
Pakistan Owes Much, But Not Suicide
By Firdaus Ahmed
No nation can be compelled to commit suicide even for the sake of supposed best interests of the international community
28 October, 2009
Pakistani Army Offensive Devastates
Tribal Communities
By James Cogan
The ongoing Pakistani military offensive into the tribal agency of South Waziristan is having a devastating impact on the entire civilian population. Villages and towns are literally being bombed into rubble and tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee for their lives
22 October, 2009
Pakistan Can Help Obama To Earn His
Nobel Peace Prize
By Javed I. Chaudry
It is highly unlikely that Obama can deliver peace for which he won the Nobel prize merely on the basis of his oratories and the political rhetoric. But, Pakistan can help him achieve exactly that by distancing itself from the so called war on terror