Veterans Today Network: As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple...
Read more »
Archive for November, 2010
GORDON DUFF: McCHRYSTAL LOST IN AFGHANISTAN, IS IGNORANCE THE REAL EXCUSE?
“In My Father’s House They Gathered All the Women into One Room”
In late 2001, after helping kick the Taliban out of northern Afganistan, two militias allied with the United States raped and plundered their way through your villages. One was the ethnic Uzbek militia of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; the other was made up of ethnic Hazara followers of the warlord Muhammad Mohaqiq. They killed...
Read more »
Addicts spend $1.5m a day on drugs: survey
PAN: A survey showed over one million drug addicts, including women and children, in Afganistan spent 1.5 million US dollars to buy drugs on a daily basis, an official said on Thursday. The spokesman for the counter-narcotics ministry Zalmay Afzali told a press conference here the survey revealed the number of drug addicts had...
Read more »
Afghans blame troops and Taliban
The Associated Press: With a U.S.-led offensive only weeks away to clear the Taliban from this key southerncity, many residents blame foreign troops and the Afgan government as much as the Taliban for pushing Kandahar toward the brink of chaos – the very thing the military hopes to reverse. The goal of the operation...
Read more »
AFGHANISTAN: Unofficial moratorium on capital punishment
IRIN: Up to 200 people have been sentenced to death in Afganistan over the past 15 months but President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign any execution orders, according to the Supreme Court. “We have sent many execution verdicts to the president but he has not signed any for over a year,” Abdul Rasheed...
Read more »
Women Self-Immolation Surges in Paktia
Quqnoos: Human rights bodies are concerned about the rise of women self-burnings in Paktia province. Daud Afzali, the head of the Human Rights Independent Commission, said during a session in southeast Afganistan on ways how to reduce violence against women that several factors have boosted the self-burnings.
Read more »
Chilling Afghan claims
Toronto Star: Did Canadian troops use Afganistan’s notorious security services as “subcontractors for abuse and torture?” That’s what the Commons committee on Afganistan heard this week from Ahmadshah Malgarai, an Afgan-Canadian who worked as an interpreter in Kandahar. “If the (Canadian) interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to NDS (the...
Read more »
‘Blood money’ angers Afghans
Winnipeg Free Press: The system by which Afghans and their families are compensated if they are injured in an American military attack has increasingly become a source of outrage among Afghans who say they feel a price is being put on their lives. The practice has come under particular criticism since the major U.S....
Read more »
Anti-American anger grows in Afghanistan
The Globe and Mail: U.S. troops fired on a crowded passenger bus on the outskirts of Kandahar city, killing four civilians and injuring 18 others, stoking anti-American protests that promised to complicate a massive offensive against Taliban insurgents this summer. Although the military command issued an apology, saying it “deeply regrets the tragic loss...
Read more »