What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8464763.stm

Militants attack Afghan capital Kabul

is there a better afghanistan thread? anyway greenwald has been really enlightening lately imo - http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html

damn cold

that is the all-purpose reaction to any greenwald piece

my brother's being shipped out there next month :-/

dude. i am sorry to hear that.

How to End the War in Afghanistan
By David Miliband
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23870

New information not good:

U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women

KABUL, Afghanistan — After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.
...
Three women also died that night at the same home: One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. NATO military officials had suggested that the women were actually stabbed to death — or had died by some other means — hours before the raid, an explanation that implied that family members or others at the home might have killed them.

Survivors of the raid called that explanation a cover-up and insisted that American forces killed the women. Relatives and family friends said the bloody raid followed a party in honor of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05afghan.html

There's also that crazy video that leaked today (via gov't enemy Wikileaks) about US forces gunning down civilians in Iraq, including some Reuters journalists...

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/5766554.cms

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/world/asia/07convoys.html?ref=global-home

For months, reports have abounded here that the Afghan mercenaries who escort American and other NATO convoys through the badlands have been bribing Taliban insurgents to let them pass.

Then came a series of events last month that suggested all-out collusion with the insurgents.

...

“We’re funding both sides of the war,” a NATO official in Kabul said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said he believed millions of dollars were making their way to the Taliban.

Dammit, when we buy people, we expect them to stay bought!

that was just posted a few minutes ago i think, there was a related terrifying story i read in print this morning, lemme find it

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/world/asia/06warlords.html?ref=todayspaper

by golly we're gonna fix that place just you wait and see

i feel like there should be a different thread to put this in, but as this story unravels it's becoming one of the more heartbreaking things i've read this year. these people are honest to god heroes in every sense of the word

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/world/asia/10aidworkers.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

(has this been brought up elsewhere?)

Information is delivered as PowerPoint slides in e-mail at the flow rate of a fire hose. Standard operating procedure is to send everything that you have. Volume is considered the equivalent of quality.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/afghan_powerpoint_rangers/

Nine Afghan Boys Collecting Firewood Killed by NATO Helicopters

gruesome, horrifying, heartbreaking story. hearts and minds, we're winnin' em

I'M
SO
SORRY

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-07/u-s-defense-chief-gates-meets-afghans-amid-protests-over-civilian-deaths.html

analysis of taliban chant music

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a934337516&fulltext=713240928

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football [soccer], and cricket. Take the Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher [RPG] on your shoulders. Oh youth, quit volleyball, football [soccer], and cricket. Take the Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher [RPG] on your shoulders. Play with human heads instead of playing with balls. Play with human heads instead of playing with balls.

* Quit kids' games; take the RPG on your shoulders. Quit kids' games; take the rocket on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit playing volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* You look good with the weapon and Moswak [herbal toothbrush] but not chewing gum and chocolate. Oh youth, Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Purchase every worthless human for free (Kill the enemies.) Purchase every worthless human for free (Kill the enemies.) Take the RPG for on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. You will soon defeat the enemies. You will soon defeat the enemies. You only need to put some more efforts defeating them. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Behead by using the sword those people who open the country gate to the strangers. Behead by using the sword, those people who open the gate to strangers.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. Walk beside Ayubi [poet]. Don't be even late for a minute! Take the RPG on your shoulders. Don't be even late for a minute! Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football (soccer), and cricket. Oh youth, take the RPG on your shoulders. Oh youth, take the RPG on your shoulders.

* The enemies have come in the shape of friends. They look like human beings but they are wild animals. The act of disuniting people stays in their blood and their messages are look like flowers but they are full of poison. They have come under the banner of the friends but they are murderers.

* The enemies have come in the shape of friends. They look like human beings but they are wild animals. I have always made the destiny of this country. I have brought happiness and beauty to my country. They have come under the name of sympathy but they are muggers. They have come under the name of sympathy but they are muggers.

* The enemies have come in a shape of friend. They look like human beings but they are wild animals. They are Jewish but half of them are idolaters. They are fire worshippers who came from East and West.

Thanks!

so this oughta be wrapped up pretty soon eh

Ask the Taliban

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. You will soon defeat the enemies. You will soon defeat the enemies. You only need to put some more efforts defeating them. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

tangential, but the words without borders afghan literature issue is out this month - link offers an overview. words without borders is pretty rad imo

Afghan authorities said on Sunday NATO had killed 52 people, mostly civilians, in air strikes against fighters, as violence picked up in recent weeks with the start of the fighting season.

Separately, the governor of Nuristan on Sunday said that 18 civilians and 20 police were killed by "friendly fire" during recent US-led air strikes against al-Qaeda-linked fighters in his troubled northeastern province.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/2011529102045125188.html

"the start of the fighting season"

Yeah, really!

It is kind of mind-boggling to realize there are 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. That's like a decent-sized American city.

Greenwald on those damn ingrates:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/31/afghanistan/index.html

Actually, the quote is "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied."

http://counterpunch.org/mcgovern08082011.html

http://october2011.org/welcome

It's a big new expensive prison for Bagram, to hold prisoners sans habeas corpus rights:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram/index.html

LBJ -- I mean BHO -- picked a good night to trot out the dazzling Al Green act.

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.

A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan....

“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history)” (said the report) .... Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” said the report, and it played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/world/asia/afghan-soldiers-step-up-killings-of-allied-forces.html

http://www1.rollingstone.com/extras/RS_REPORT.pdf

“Afghans protest when something is shocking and surprising,” said Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security project, a nonprofit, bi-partisan public policy and research institute based in Washington, DC. “But this is something that they are used to and expect. They consider all civilian deaths criminal. This is just more of the same.”

It may seem counterintuitive that Afghans will take to the streets, kill or injure themselves and damage their own property, to protest an insult to their religion, but maintain relative calm when their loved ones are killed.

Last week’s protests against the Quran burnings were not unique; in 2005, a story in Newsweek magazine that US soldiers had flushed Qurans down the toilet set off a storm of anger that left 17 people dead.

When a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that Muslims found insulting, embassies in Kabul were stormed, thousands rioted and several people were killed.

There have never been similar outpourings of violence against the deaths of civilians. For those, sorrow far outpaces anger, as Afghans resign themselves to the horrors of war.

The issue of civilian casualties has long plagued U.S.-Afghan relations. Karzai has railed against night raids that violate homes and sometimes target innocent individuals, airstrikes that sometimes go astray and cause numerous deaths, and operations that do not take adequate precautions to protect the civilian population.

The United States, while often expressing regret at the loss of civilian lives, considers such collateral damage to be the price of war.

“Afghans are not making the moral distinction we are,” Foust said. “[These shootings are] not a game changer, it is just another aspect of the same game.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/12/just_another_civilian_massacre/singleton/

so, business as usual through 2024...?

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2012/0502/Obama-s-agreement-with-Karzai-in-Afghanistan-short-on-specifics-video

Yesterday was listening to a report on NPR about what the recent US-Afghan pact means to the future of the war there. After a bunch of scrupulous parroting of the official US goverment line, straight out of the briefing room, wherein the reporter blandly explained that the 25,000 troops who would be staying indefinitely would be responsible for training the afghani army, he THEN explained that the goal was to get all the afgahn troops "up to a first grade level and the officers up to a third grade level" because some of the current officers "even had trouble counting".

He backed it up with a story of US army soldiers drawing a big rectangle in the dirt, so an Afghan army commander could figure out if his unit had the correct number of men. The commander was instructed to have all his men stand in the rectangle and see if they all fit, or if there was any room left over.

At a stroke he destroyed all the carefully constructed propaganda he had just dutifully shoveled out to the listeners.

let's just outsource the Pentagon black budget to those guys.

what would be the propaganda purpose of that? it just makes the whole thing sound more like a fools' errand.

what are we outsourcing education to blackwater now too? wtf.

charming Af/Pak weekend developments while we were at the beach:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/27/the_authoritarian_mind_2/singleton/

via Greenwald

"The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations . . . .

"If the average age is 16, 'This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by U.S. forces,' Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday.

"'I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram,' said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_AFGHANISTAN_TEENS_DETAINED

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/24/world/asia/afghanistan-us-special-forces/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The Afghan government says a group of armed people who may be U.S. special forces is carrying out acts of torture and murder.
The U.S. military says it is investigating.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force must stop all special force operations out of Wardak province, where such horrors have been taking place, and all U.S. special forces must be gone from the province within two weeks, Afghanistan's National Security Council demanded.
At a meeting of the council, chaired by President Hamid Karzai, "it became clear that armed individuals named as U.S. special force stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people," Karzai's office said in a statement. It did not indicate who "named" the group a U.S. special force.

Nine people "disappeared in an operation by this suspicious force," the statement said. And in another incident, a student was taken from his home at night, and his "tortured body with throat cut was found two days later under a bridge," the statement said.

It added that the United States rejects any suggestion that its special forces carried out any such operation.

NYT subhead:

President Obama, frustrated in his dealings with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, is considering speeding up troop withdrawals and perhaps leaving none there after next year.

bleeve it when ya see it

coulda sworn the radio said out at the end of THIS year. Well, he's not a miracle worker.

"Got us out of Anghanistan" is how Obamadrones will sound even more like Nixonloons.

u don't give nixon credit for getting us out of vietnam?

fuck the Pentagon
fuck Afghanistan
fuck Obama
fuck America

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/asia/afghanistan-bombing-hospital-doctors-without-borders-kunduz.html

At least 19 people were killed when a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz was badly damaged early Saturday after being hit by what appears to have been an American airstrike, sparking international outrage.

The United States military, in a statement, confirmed an airstrike at 2:15 a.m., saying that it had been targeting individuals “who were threatening the force” and that “there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility....

President Ashraf Ghani’s office released a statement Saturday evening saying that Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of American forces in Afghanistan, had apologized for the strike. However, General Campbell said in a statement that he was “aware of an incident that occurred at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz” but stopped short of taking responsibility, saying that the airstrike “was conducted against insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. service members advising and assisting Afghan Security Forces.”

He said the military would investigate the circumstances, echoing a statement by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter....

The hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces....

Doctors Without Borders, which released the casualty numbers, said 37 people were wounded, of whom 19 were hospital staff and 18 were patients or their caregivers, which means mostly family members. The organization described the facility as “very badly damaged.”