Why isn’t this in the headlines? From the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Feb. 12: The Taleban have taken control of their second Helmand district in less than two weeks, say district officials. The Taleban captured the police chief… Read moreAfghanistan: Taliban seizing more territory in Helmand
Afghanistan’s eastern Zabul province is in the news at the moment because a US Chinook helicopter just crashed there, killing eight soldiers and wounding 14. The Taliban, as usual, claimed it was brought down by one of their missiles, and… Read moreAfghanistan: women fight for right to grow trees
Days after bomb blasts and insurgent attacks in Iranian Baluchistan, more terror in Pakistani Baluchistan. To what extent is this a Baluch ethnic insurgency, and to what extent a Sunni fundamentalist jihad? Or is it both? One shudders to think… Read moreBaluchistan terror: Pakistan’s turn again
From AFP, Feb. 14 (links added): WASHINGTON – The Pentagon announced plans to maintain some 27,000 US troops in Afghanistan — the most since it went to war there more than five years ago — to try to crush a… Read moreMore US troops to Afghanistan
The Pentagon recently posed Colombia as a “good model” for the war on opium in Afghanistan. But Hamid Karzai, to his credit, is displaying greater concern for the health of his own land and people than top US Latin American… Read moreAfghanistan: Karzai just says no —to glyphosate
The Western Hemisphere’s worst human rights abuser by a mile (and, not coincidentally, closest US ally) is a “good model” for what Washington hopes to build in Afghanistan. The Afghans must be very comforted. From Reuters, Jan. 19 (emphasis added):… Read morePentagon: Colombia “good model” for Afghan drug war
From The Scotsman, Jan. 18, links and emphasis added: Mullah Omar, leader of the Taleban, is living in Pakistan under the protection of the country’s intelligence service, a captured Taleban spokesman has told Afghan interrogators. Mohammad Hanif, a Taleban spokesman… Read morePakistan protecting Mullah Omar?
Still think freedom’s on the march in Afghanistan? Or, for those of you on the other side of the coin, that the Taliban insurgents are heroic anti-imperialists? From The Independent, Nov. 29: Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring… Read moreTaliban terror targets Afghan women
Afghanistan’s “official” security forces rape with impunity and engage in sale and trafficking of women, while the Taliban reap the backlash, imposing harsh vigilante “justice” over growing swaths of the country. Freedom’s on the march, eh? First this, from the… Read moreHuman trafficking in Afghanistan; Taliban reap backlash
Pakistan’s army admitted Oct. 31 it had killed up to 80 in an early-morning strike on a supposedly al-Qaeda-linked madrassa in a tribal area near the Afghan border. The military action sparked protests in the area, and in the neighbouring… Read morePakistan: protests as air strike wipes out madrassa in Tribal Areas
From CTV, Oct. 28: NATO’s top commander apologized Saturday for civilians killed during battles between NATO-led forces and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan this week. The death of a civilian “is something that causes anybody in uniform to lose a… Read moreAfghanistan: NATO blames civilian deaths on “asymmetric warfare”
Still cheering on the heroic Afghan resistance? From Index on Censorship, Sept. 26: A senior Afghan official working for women’s rights has been shot dead by suspected Taliban gunmen. She was the highest placed female official to be assassinated in… Read moreAfghanistan: women’s rights defender assassinated
