The New York Times: For months, reports have abounded here that the Afgan mercenaries who escort American and other NATO convoys through the badlands have been bribing Taliban insurgents to let them pass. After a pair of bloody confrontations with Afgan civilians, two of the biggest private security companies — Watan Risk Management and...
Read more »
Archive for September, 2011
Rule of the gun: Convoy Guards in Afghanistan Face an Inquiry
Kucinich: ‘We may be funding our own killers in Afghanistan’
The Raw Story: On June 7, the day Afganistan became America’s longest-ever war, the New York Times reported on an ongoing investigation poised to prove that private security companies “are using American money to bribe the Taliban” to fuel combat and thus enhance demand for their services. The news follows a “series of events...
Read more »
Rule of the Gun: With U.S. Aid, Warlord Builds Afghan Empire
The New York Times: The most powerful man in this arid stretch of southern Afganistan is not the provincial governor, nor the police chief, nor even the commander of the Afgan Army. It is Matiullah Khan, the head of a private army that earns millions of dollars guarding NATO supply convoys and fights Taliban...
Read more »
Russia Says Afghan Drug Trade Threatens World Peace
VOA: Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday Afgan drug trafficking should be classified as a threat to international peace and security. The Russian Deputy Prime Minster made his remarks at an Asia security conference in Singapore. “Large part of the population of Afganistan is involved in the cultivation and production of opium...
Read more »
Afghan lawmaker calls for execution of Christian converts from Islam
AFP: The Afgan government has suspended two Christian aid groups after a TV show reported they were proselytising, which is illegal in the devoutly Islamic country. Converting from Islam to another religion is punishable by death under Afgan law. The Afgan constitution is based on traditional sharia law, which strictly bans religious conversion. In...
Read more »
Iran executes seven Afghan immigrants
PAN: Iranian authorities executed seven Afgan refugees two days ago, their relatives in western Herat province claimed on Wednesday. The families asked the provincial government to help return the bodies of their relatives to their country of origin. Shir Gul, 40, said Iranian officials in a jail known as Taibad called him and said...
Read more »
Ahmad Wali Karzai: From waiter to “King of Kandahar”
National Post: Eighteen years ago, as manager of a family-run Afgan restaurant on North Halsted Street in the Chicago’s Wrigleyville district, Ahmed Wali Karzai spent his days serving aushak and lamb dwopiaza … Today, the chubby 49-year-old half-brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afgan President, is the most powerful man in southern Afganistan. The...
Read more »
US actors, intellectuals protest Obama “crimes”
AFP: US actors and liberal intellectuals joined a list to be published Friday of nearly 2,000 people accusing President Barack Obama of allowing human rights violations and war crimes. The statement, published as a paid advertisement, accuses Obama, who was elected in 2008 with the enthusiastic support of US liberals, of continuing Bush’s controversial...
Read more »
Child Brides Escape Marriage, but Not Lashes
The New York Times: The two Afgan girls had every reason to expect the law would be on their side when a policeman at a checkpoint stopped the bus they were in. Disguised in boys’ clothes, the girls, ages 13 and 14, had been fleeing for two days along rutted roads and over mountain...
Read more »