U.S. Defense Department officials are reportedly planning to brief President Donald Trump on several options to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, that include an option to pull them out before the 2020 U.S. presidential election in November. Trump has expressed a desire to end the U.S.’s wars throughout the course of his presidency. In 2019, he abruptly ordered the[Read More…]
…to highlight our interconnected need for renewable energy, a fairer economic system and the abolition of war. An annual youth peace conference organized by the Afghan Peace Volunteers last year. BEYOND HEALTHCARE Hakim spent two years in Quetta before moving to Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province as a medical specialist with an international NGO. But as he visited and lived in remote[Read More…]
The world is waiting anxiously to see whether the U.S. and Afghan governments and the Taliban will agree to a one-week truce that could set the stage for a “permanent and comprehensive” ceasefire and a withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign occupation forces from Afghanistan. Could the talks be for real this time, or will they turn out to be just another smokescreen for[Read More…]
The 2003 “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq had finally stopped. From the balcony of my room in Baghdad’s Al Fanar Hotel, I watched U.S. Marines moving between their jeeps, armored personnel carriers, and Humvees. They had occupied the street immediately in front of the small, family-owned hotel where our Iraq Peace Team had been living for the past six[Read More…]
At age 11, Saabir Gulmadin began chopping wood to support his family. Now 18, he earns about $1.50 US (120 Afghanis) for every 56 kg of wood he splits. It takes him 2 to 3 hours. “Is the work hard on your body?” I ask. “Ohhh, yes,” he says, without hesitation. “Where does it hurt?” Saabir raises his right hand[Read More…]
In September 2019, facing everyday dangers of the war and under constant pressure to view those from other tribes as enemies, young people from each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces gathered for a three day “On the Road to Peace” conference in Kabul. 30th September 2019 / 8th Mezan 1398 Despite the violent crises which we human beings have created for[Read More…]
Recovering from a broken hip, peace activist Kathy Kelly reflects on her experiences with people disabled and traumatized by war. Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains opium. Yet farmers there do grow other crops for export. Villagers in the Wazir Tangi area of Nangarhar province, for example, cultivate pine nuts. As a precaution, this year at[Read More…]
I’ve never been to Afghanistan, but I am the mother of two young children. So when I imagine what life must be like there after 18 years of war, my mind conjures up the children most vividly — the ones who have been affected by the conflict — and their parents. I think of the 12-year-old boy who was carrying water to[Read More…]
Amidst political posturing, aerial terrorism and street bombings, Afghan citizens pursue their daily work toward peace. On a very warm September morning in Kabul, several dozen men, women, and children sit on the carpeted floor of a room at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center. The women cluster together. All wear burqas, but because of the heat they push the[Read More…]
When the conflict that the Vietnamese refer to as the American War ended in April 1975, I was a U.S. Army captain attending a course at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In those days, the student body at any of our Army’s myriad schools typically included officers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Since ARVN’s founding two decades earlier,[Read More…]
It took gallons and flagons of blood, but it eventuated, a squeeze of history into a parchment of possibility: the Taliban eventually pushed the sole superpower on this expiring earth to a deal of some consequence. (The stress is on the some – the consequence is almost always unknown.) “In principle, on paper, yes we have reached an agreement,” claimed[Read More…]
Could Donald Trump end the Afghan war someday? I don’t know if such a possibility has been on your mind, but it’s certainly been on the mind of this retired U.S. Army major who fought in that land so long ago. And here’s the context in which I’ve been thinking about that very possibility. Back in the previous century, it[Read More…]
By Dr Hakim Young and the Afghan Peace Volunteers Dear fellow human beings, Some of us have wondered, “Are people today too disconnected and frantic to calm down, in order to solve global challenges together? Are we so polarized and self-absorbed that we cannot stop judging one another or insisting on our partisan ways?” In Kabul, our thoughts and feelings[Read More…]
Constant military surveillance of Afghans yields almost no real intelligence about the problems they face each day. An unusual group of volunteers uses a far different approach. Hossein, a member of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, (APV), which hosted my recent visit to Afghanistan, rolled up his sleeve to show me a still-healing three-inch wound. Thieves had broken into his family[Read More…]
On January 27th, 2019, the Taliban and the U.S. government each publicly stated acceptance, in principle, of a draft framework for ongoing negotiations that could culminate in a peace deal to end a two-decade war in Afghanistan. As we learn more about the negotiations, it’s important to remember others working toward dialogue and negotiation in Afghanistan. Troublingly, women’s rights leaders[Read More…]
On Saturday, January 26, Reuters reported [1] that Taliban officials said the US negotiators agreed on a draft peace pact setting out the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan within 18 months, potentially ending the United States longest war. Confirming the news, New York Times reported [2] on Monday, January 28, that the US chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad stated the[Read More…]
As I approach 75, I’m having a commonplace experience for my age. I live with a brain that’s beginning to dump previously secure memories — names, the contents of books I read long ago (or all too recently), events, whatever. If you’re of a certain age yourself, you know the story. Recently, however, I realized that this experience of loss,[Read More…]
Writing from Kabul, Carolyn Coe describes experiences of frustration, outbreaks of rage and efforts to cope. Kabul–At a busy four-way intersection in the northwestern part of Kabul, traffic is stuck. There is no traffic signal, and cars are threaded through one another like a woven rug. A passenger car is in front of our taxi. The driver, with two children[Read More…]
On the advice of loved ones—and against my better instincts- I attended an event at Seattle University, October 27th, featuring noted author Khaled Hosseini. He was accompanied by Razia Jan, founder of Razia’s Ray of Hope. On the surface, such an event would seem not only worthwhile but uplifting. After all, both of the speakers are of Afghan origin,[Read More…]
Grade 12th Afghan student Jamila Omary asked, “Do you have any plans to arm yourselves, because of the threats and dangers you have faced?” Iqbal Khyber answered, “No. Though it is easy to buy weapons today, arming ourselves will worsen the war. Weapons will make us less secure.” What a breath of fresh air in the stench of war-as-usual! Iqbal[Read More…]
It’s frustrating that whereas all human beings wish to live meaningful lives, we seem helpless in the face of a few individuals waging wars and exploiting our world. But we can each do something about this insensible status quo, as ordinary folk of the People’s Peace Movement ( PPM )show us by taking one barefoot-step at a time, traveling to[Read More…]
Can Afghans convince us that the method of war doesn’t work? If we’re still quietly hoping that wars would end and people all over the world would get along peacefully, the dreams and demands of the Helmand Peace Convoy would give us courage and evidence. When Amanullah Khateb joined the Convoy, now called the People’s Peace Movement (PPM), he didn’t[Read More…]
“Attempting to control rural areas in Afghanistan always eventually ends up boiling down to personal survival.” Evan McAllister, former Marine staff sergeant, New York Times, July 28, 2018 It genuinely doesn’t matter how the security boffins within the Pentagon frame it: the Taliban have fought the United States, through sheer will of force and mania, to the negotiating table –[Read More…]
Writing this week for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman called a U.S. Government report on the war in Afghanistan “a chronicle of futility.” “The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” report says the U.S. spent large sums “in search of quick gains” in regional stabilization – but these instead “exacerbated conflicts, enabled corruption and bolstered support for insurgents.” “In short,” says[Read More…]
Here in Kabul in early June, outside the home of several Afghan Peace Volunteers, a large drilling machine is parked on what was once a lovely garden. To this now muddy patch, workers will soon arrive for another noisy, dusty day of digging for water. The well dried up a week ago. As of today, the household has no water. Ongoing[Read More…]
December 31, 2017: It is a dream come true being back among friends in Kabul! Streams of dented Toyotas (They are all Toyotas!) with windscreens cracked like bolts of lightning still jockey for position on roads where traffic lights and common sense hold little sway. Carts of vegetables drawn by donkeys or dragged by men without dreams continue clotting the already stuttering traffic,[Read More…]
Amrullah has a small frame and a soft voice. He used to have a reputation as a fighter and would fight with the rich kids. He’d get angry because they had nicer clothes. By fighting, he wanted to show his power. But now, at age 11, he believes that fighting is bad. When he sees those same boys, he[Read More…]
Surkh Gul with her daughter. Photo by Dr Hakim “My family’s water well has dried up,” 18-year-old Surkh Gul said. “Ours too,” echoed 13-year-old Inaam. A distressed Surkh Gul lamented, “We have to fetch water from the public well along the main road, but that water is muddy, not fit for drinking. I get bottled water for my two-year-old daughter.[Read More…]
(ROME) When in 1978 the 31-year old Afghan Communist politician-activist, Mohammad Najibullah, arrived in Tehran, “exiled” to neighboring Iran as Afghanistan’s Ambassador, I had just left Iran where I had worked throughout the year of 1977. Najibullah’s political party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had come to power in Kabul in April, 1978 in what is known[Read More…]
Sultan, Ali’s brother, was killed in August 2016. Hussein, Bismillah’s uncle, was killed in April 2017. I don’t want Rahman, Inaam’s brother, to end up being killed. Rahman is now training to be a soldier. Both Sultan and Hussein were Afghan soldiers in their twenties. They joined the army because there were no other viable jobs available. Their families needed[Read More…]
Here we go again! Years after most Americans forgot about the longest warthis country ever fought, American soldiers are again being deployed to Afghanistan. For almost 16 years now, at the command of three presidents and a sadly forgettable succession of generals, they have gone round and round like so many motorists trapped on a rotary with no exit. This time their[Read More…]
Interview with ANDRE VLTCHEK by ALESSANDRO BIANCCHI, Chief Editor of Anti-Diplomatico 1) AB: The geographic location of Afghanistan has always occupied a central role. The April peace talks between Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Russia and China seemed to have put an end to the persistent and dominant American presence in the country. What’s your opinion? AV: What you have mentioned is extremely important,[Read More…]
On Monday, August 21, President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time speech almost shocking in its ordinariness. It was such an address as either of his immediate predecessors, George W. Bush or Barack Obama, could easily have given over the previous decade and a half. While hinting at nebulous new strategies and ill-defined new metrics to measure success, President Trump[Read More…]
Ghulam ( second from left ) working on our community’s greenhouse, together with Zek, Khamad and Ali Ali, Zekerullah, Khamad and I miss Ghulam and his family. We feel sad that life in Afghanistan had finally become too burdensome for them. They are now Afghan refugees in Iran. We have known Ghulam for many years, Ali and Ghulam[Read More…]
The story continues with dispiriting relentlessness. The remark by Samuel Beckett in The Unnamable comes to mind: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” With the sense of incapacity about going on, yet doing so with a drone’s dedicated commitment, President Donald Trump did what US Presidents have done since George W. Bush: commit. Commit, that is, to the mission;[Read More…]
President Donald Trump announced a major escalation of the US war in Afghanistan in a nationally televised speech Monday night, although he gave no details either about the number of additional troops that will be sent or the extent or duration of the military commitment. Trump also made menacing threats against Pakistan in remarks clearly crafted in close coordination with[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek It often appears that “true Afghanistan” is not here in Kabuland not in Jalalabad or Heart either; not in the ancient villages, which anxiously cling to the steep mountainsides. Many foreigners and even Afghans are now convinced that the “true” Afghanistan is only what is being shown on the television screens,depicted in magazines, or what[Read More…]
She read to us. “The Works of Mercy: Feed the hungry; Give drink to the thirsty; Clothe the naked; Visit the imprisoned; Care for the sick; Bury the dead.” And then she read: “The Works of War: Destroy crops and land; Seize food supplies; Destroy homes; Scatter families; Contaminate water; Imprison dissenters; Inflict wounds, burns; Kill the living.” The following[Read More…]
On June 15, 2017, theNew York Times reported that the government of Saudi Arabia aims to ease the concerns of some U.S. legislators over U.S. weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis plan to engage in“a $750 million multiyear training program through the American military to help prevent the accidental killing of civilians in the Saudi-led air campaign against[Read More…]
During the election campaign of 2008 before he was elected as the president, Barack Obama made an artificial distinction between the “just war” in Afghanistan and the unjust war in Iraq. In accordance with the flawed distinction, he pledged that he would withdraw American troops stationed in Iraq. The unilateral intervention in Iraq by the Bush Administration was highly unpopular[Read More…]
Dear mom and fellow members of the human family, I love my 77-year-old frugal, hardworking, self-sacrificial Han Chinese Singaporean mother, so when Trump’s military/government dropped what they nicknamed the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ ( MOAB ) on Achin District in Afghanistan, I knew I had to do something about this psycho-social disease of ‘war’. I mean, my mom is nothing[Read More…]
Lord Palmerston, the 19th century British Prime Minister, has famously said: “The Great Britain has no friends, no enemies, but only interests.” It was rephrased by Henry Kissinger as “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This applies to current Afghan politics where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former anti-Soviet “mujahideen” commander, arrived in the capital on Thursday (May[Read More…]
The US national security advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, was in Afghanistan over the weekend, speaking with President Ashraf Ghani and General John Nicholson, the US military commander in the country. The aim of the talks, the Military Times reported prior to McMaster’s arrival in Kabul, was to “assess whether more military personnel are needed to break the stalemate there.”[Read More…]
Australian government officials are at it again, and the visit by President Ashaf Ghani to Canberra on Sunday piqued interest amongst various members of the Afghan community concerned about the next innovation in cruelty practiced by Canberra. If there is something exceptional in the otherwise dreary annals of Australian policy making in recent years, repelling unwanted refugees and asylum seekers[Read More…]
WINTER It is now winter in Kabul, end of February 2017. At night the temperature gets near zero. The mountains surrounding the city are covered by snow. It feels much chillier than it really is. Soon it will be 16 years since the US/UK invasion of the country, and 16 years since the Bonn Conference, during which Hamid Karzai was[Read More…]
Ghulam Reza often plays at the Borderfree Centre. He’s 5 years, 3 mos. On Saturday, he was filling an empty chips bag with water, tying off the top, and pushing it along, atop a roof tile. Zarghuna and I tried asking if it was a ship or a truck, but he generally ignored us and kept on playing quietly. Near[Read More…]
December 10th marks the U.N. Human Rights Day, celebrating and upholding the indispensable and crucial declaration of universal human rights.On the eve of this event, I visited a refugee camp housing 700 families in Kabul. Conditions in refugee camps can be deplorable, intolerable. Here, the situation is best described as surreal. As I approach the entrance to the camp with my friends[Read More…]
Here in Kabul, I’m generally an early riser at the home of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, but I’m seldom alone. Facing exams, my young friends awaken early and then stay up late to study. Before sunrise this morning, eighteen year old Ghulamai sits in the kitchen, poring over his textbook. His efforts have made him number one in his[Read More…]
In July 1941, Albert Einstein, ten months a US citizen, wrote Eleanor Roosevelt asking her, as First Lady, to raise with the president the matter of lifting bureaucratic hurdles so that Jewish refugees threatened by Hitler’s final solution could be granted entry into the U.S. “I know of no-one else to whom to turn for help,” he wrote. But the U.S. government[Read More…]
US air strikes are common in the Afghanistan where these are used to eliminate the suspected Taliban cadres. These are supported by the Afghan government though several politicians including the former President Hamid Karzai opposes such attacks. US in a similar such strikes killed more than 30 civilians on Thursday who were innocents and it is assumed had no relations[Read More…]
Kevin Frost, a special forces sergeant in the Australian Army, has done something unusual. He wishes, even demands, to be tried for his role behind the summary execution of an Afghan prisoner in his captivity during a tour of the country. From Frost came a statement to an inquiry digging through allegations of war crimes by Australian troops that took[Read More…]
Friday, October 7 went by quietly unnoticed by major US media. It was the 15th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan — a war with no foreseeable end in sight. The number of troops due to remain in Afghanistan has been raised 50 percent to 8400. Drones based in Pakistan continue to play their deadly role. On the anniversary date,[Read More…]
Today completes the fifteen years of US entry in Afghanistan. It was on 7th October 2001 when US had entered the Afghanistan when it declared that US was attacked by the terrorists and war on terror was now to be carried on. US was attacked on 11 September 2001 and this was attack on its existence. ‘At 8:46 on the[Read More…]
Watch Shy Bismillah Finds Friends from 34 Afghan Provinces From top left clockwise: Pashtun – Barath, Tajik – Malik, Uzbek – Habib, Hazara – Nemat, Afghans – All, Human Family Members – All “1948?” Habib remarked at how long it had taken for the human family to agree in writing that “all human beings ( including himself, Barath, Malik,[Read More…]
This was not a typical festive ‘first world’ outing, as its need and idea arose not from leisure, but from trauma. Recently, Hadisa was broken after an ‘endless’ night of crouching nervously in the dark of her University dormitory, while bomb blasts and gunshots were ending precious lives only a hair’s breath away. Nemat, in a safe space which softened[Read More…]
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