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Afghanistan

Who Am I?

 Asrar Anwar

April 12, 2012

I am the Iraqi child of Fallujah you exposed to cancer with your depleted uranium.

I am the Palestinian women whose olive tree you uprooted and kids you left starving.

I am the Afghan man who has only seen years of brutal Soviet war and now US occupation.

I am the Iraqi man you shot dead at a checkpoint because you felt like it.

I am the Palestinian family you forcibly removed from their home.

I am the widowed Afghan whose land you continue to occupy and children you continue kill.

I am the Iraqi women you raped in the name of liberation.

I am the prisoner you tortured at Abu Ghraib and Bagram in the name of democracy.

I am the civilian in Iraq you named ‘collateral damage’ and left to rot.

I am the Palestinian school child you prevented from getting to school with your apartheid roads forcing me to wait hours at a checkpoint and miss class.

I am the Afghan woman you so wish to liberate, except you can leave your liberation in the trash can where it belongs.

I am the Muslim man you accused of being a terrorist, water-boarded and locked up in Guantanamo without parole.

I am the victim of your so called war on terror.

I am the shadow that walks alone.

I am the one that haunts your dreams.

How can you go to sleep with the bloody image of me in the back of your mind?

I am Palestine. I am Iraq. I am Afghanistan.

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Afghan My Lai — Robert Bales was not alone

March 31st, 2012 § 3 Comments

That is according to Afghan child witnesses interviewed by Yalda Hakim for Australia’s SBS Dateline. (h/t Shaheen)

[youtube http://youtu.be/gnueG4I7Q9g?]
Hakim, who was born in Afghanistan and immigrated to Australia as a child, is the first international journalist to interview the surviving witnesses. She said American investigators tried to prevent her from interviewing the children, saying her questions could traumatize them. She said she appealed to village leaders, who arranged for her to interview the witnesses.

Noorbinak, 8, told Hakim that the shooter first shot her father’s dog. Then, Noorbinak said in the video, he shot her father in the foot and dragged her mother by the hair. When her father started screaming, he shot her father, the child says. Then he turned the gun on Noorbinak and shot her in the leg.

“One man entered the room and the others were standing in the yard, holding lights,” Noorbinak said in the video.

A brother of one victim told Hakim that his brother’s children mentioned more than one soldier wearing a headlamp. They also had lights at the end of their guns, he said.

“They don’t know whether there were 15 or 20, however many there were,” he said in the video. […]

Gen. Karimi, assigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the murders, told Hakim that he, too, wonders whether Bales acted alone and how he could left the base without notice.

“Village elders said several soldiers took part and that there is boot prints in the area,” Karimi told Hakim. He said villagers told him that they saw three or four individuals kneeling and that helicopters were overhead during the rampage.

“To search for him?” Karimi said he asked them.

“No,” he said they told him. “They were there from the very beginning.”

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The Colossal Folly of War in Afghanistan

January 24th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

by Ralph Nader

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is testing so much futuristic detect and destroy weaponry that it can be called the most advanced all-seeing invasion in military history. From blanket satellite surveillance to soldiers’ infra-red vision to the remotely guided photographing, killer drones to the latest fused ground-based imagery and electronic signal intercepts, the age of robotic land, sea, and air weaponry is at hand.

U.S. and NATO soldiers and contractors greatly outnumber the Taliban, whose sandals and weapons are from the past century. Still, with the most sophisticated arsenals ever deployed, why are U.S. generals saying that less than 30,000 Taliban fighters, for almost a decade, have fought the U.S. led forces to a draw?

Perhaps one answer can be drawn from a ceremony that could be happening in various places in that tormented country. That is, a Jirga of elders awarding a young fighter the Jirga medal of honor for courage on the battlefield, which often happens to be their village or valley.

The chief elder rose to address a wise circle of villagers. “Today we are presenting our beloved Mursi with the revered Jirga medal of honor for courage beyond the call of duty in rescuing seven of his brother defenders from almost certain destruction. The invaders had surrounded our young brothers at night in the great Helmand gully with their snipers, grenade-launchers and helicopter gunships.

It looked like the end. Until Mursi started a very smoky fire and diverted the enemy with a firebomb that startled several donkeys into braying loudly. In the few seconds absorbed by diverting the foreigners who directed their firepower in that direction, Mursi led his brothers, two of them wounded, through a large rock crevice and down an incline that was hidden from view and into a cave covered with bush. For some reason, the occupiers’ night vision equipment was not working, thanks be to Allah.

The next morning, the enemy had gone away, provably to start another deadly attack elsewhere on our people. Before the Jirga awards you this ancient symbol of resistance, Mursi, in the form of a sculptured shield made of a rare wood, will you say a few words to your tribe?”

Mursi, a thin as a rail twenty year old youth, rose.

I accept this great honor on behalf of my brothers who escaped with their lives that terrible night in Helmand. I was very scared. The enemy has everything and we have nothing. They have planes, helicopters, artillery, many soldiers with equipment that resists bullets, sees in the dark and provides them with food, water and medicine. We only have our old rifles, some grenades and explosives. They can see us all the way from America on screens sitting in cool rooms where they can press buttons and wipe us out without our seeing or hearing anything coming at us. We are all so terrified. Especially the children.

We wonder why they are doing this to us? We never threatened them. They threaten everyone with their bases, ships, planes and missiles. I hear that the foreign soldiers ask themselves why are they here, what are they doing here and for what? But they are paid well to be here, destroying our country year after year, though they boast about building some bridges and digging some water wells. No thank you.

Go back to your families, you will never win because we are fighting to repel you invaders from our ancient tribal lands, our homes,. Fighting to expel the invaders is stronger and more righteous than your weapons and all your military wealth. Even if many of us lose our lives, we will prevail one day. For we will have heaven and they will have hell.

A long knowing silence followed. A rooster crowed in the distance. The chief elder then slowly handed the medal to their brave hero.

Can the most militarily powerful country in the world, many of whose people and soldiers are opposed or have serious doubts about why we are continuing to pursue these senseless undeclared wars of aggression that create more hatred and enemies, look with empathy at what those people, whom we are pummeling, are going through? Will the Pentagon, which doesn’t estimate civilian casualties, let its officials speak publically about the millions of such casualties—deceased, injured and sick—that have afflicted innocent Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis?

Will our current crop of political candidates for Congress and the Presidency ever reflect on the wise words of our past Generals—Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall and earlier Smedley Butler—about the folly and gore, not the glory of war?

The eighteenth century words of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, rings so true. He wrote:

And would some Power the small gift give us.
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us”

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Leaked Video Shows U.S. Soldiers Urinating On Dead Afghan Bodies

By Daniel Bates

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January 11, 2012

Marine Corps probe after video emerges showing American troops ‘urinating on dead Afghan bodies’

* The anonymous person who put it online wrote, ‘Scout sniper team 4 with 3rd battalion 2nd marines out of camp lejeune peeing on dead talibans’

The U.S. Marine Corps today launched an official investigation after footage emerged which showed American soldiers urinating on dead bodies.

The 40-second clip shows four men in combat gear standing over the three corpses with their genitals exposed as they relieve themselves.

At one point one of the men can be heard saying: ‘Have a great day, buddy’ to laughter from his colleagues.

Horrifying: A video posted online claims to show four Marines urinating on dead bodies

Grinning: One of the men can be heard saying: ‘Have a great day, buddy’ as his colleagues laugh and another jokes: ‘Golden like a shower’ and ‘Yeahhhh!’

Another of them jokes: ‘Golden like a shower’ and ‘Yeahhhh!’ as they groan with relief whilst urinating.

It is not clear if the corpses belong to civilians or insurgents engaged in combat, although the film does appear to have been shot in Afghanistan.

The anonymous person who posted it included the caption: ‘Scout sniper team 4 with 3rd battalion 2nd marines out of camp lejeune peeing on dead talibans.’

The film is likely to spark a huge diplomatic row between Washington and Kabul and rekindle memories of the abuse meted out by American troops at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

The three corpses are all male and are wearing civilian clothes. The youngest lies on his front with an overturned wheelbarrow dumped by his side.

The other two are on their backs and one has a large blood stain on his chest.

Marines spokeswoman Kendra Hardesty said: ‘While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps.

‘This matter will be fully investigated and those responsible will be held accountable for their actions.’

A spokeswoman for the Marines said: ‘While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps’

The footage emerged on Liveleak.com where some people left comments in support of what the soldiers had done.

One commenter wrote: ‘We’re all proud of you guys’, while another put: ‘The first bath they have had in years!’ and ‘cut their heads off and bury them with a pig’.

However others were disgusted and wrote: ‘Not cool.. fight with honor and dignity for others, you sign up to get shot at so deal with it , set an example for future Soldiers. dont pee on the dead.’

Camp Lejeune is in North Carolina and is the largest Marine Corps Base on the East Coast of the U.S., home to 40,000 marines.

The 3rd Batallion 2nd Marines consists of 800 Marines and sailors and is nicknamed the ‘Betio Bastards’, a reference to the island of Betio in the Tawara Atoll and the site of one of the most deadly battles with the Japanese in World War II.

More recently they have served in Iraq, the Haiti earthquake of 2010 and in Afghanistan.

Their motto is: ‘We quell the storm, and ride the thunder!’ or ‘Strength and Honour’.

The video adds to a list of embarrassments that includes the abuses pictured from Abu Ghraib

The image of American troops has been battered by a series of scandals involving troops behaving appallingly whilst in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The further revelations are likely to make winning the hearts and minds of locals in the field even harder.

The most shocking instance was the abuse at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Baghdad in 2004 where detainees were piled naked into human pyramids for the amusement of their American guards.

Other inmates were put on wooden platforms with a hood over their heads and told they would be electrocuted if they stepped off.

There were also reports of rape, sexual abuse and other forms of torture. Eleven soldiers and a number of officials were disciplined over the scandal.

There was also the ‘Thrill Kill’ squad which murdered three Afghan civilians for sport and took their body parts as trophies.

Their leader, Sgt Calvin Gibbs, 26, was jailed for life for blasting innocent bystanders to death at random then covering his tracks by leaving grenades next to their bodies.

Nine other members of the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division were also implicated.
British troops were also accused of abusing and urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

The photos used to back up the story were later proved to be a hoax but not before they were dubbed ‘a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda’.

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Veteran-Led Civil Resistance to U.S. Wars — December 16, 2010

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We Want You Out

an open letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace

As the Obama administration releases its December review of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences.  To express support for their letter, click here.

To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the ‘Taliban/Al-Qaeda’ and regional countries,

We are intolerably angry.

All our senses are hurting.

Our women, our men and yes shame on you, our children are grieving.

Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.

President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?

America’s 250-million-dollar annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anaemic mother.

We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.

Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly un-equal, they do not listen, do not think and worst, they do not care.

We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.

We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.

We are not beasts.

We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.

Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, labourers, teachers, doctors….., people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide. (See Open Letter to our World Leaders)

This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you. Come arrest us all. (See excerpt below from Wikipedia’s ‘International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan’ )

Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.

We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.

We refuse you.

Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.

Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for non-violence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.

We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another’s pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! (Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.)

We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of non-violent resistance.

How can we do any less?

14-year-old Abdulai’s father was killed by the ‘Taliban’ and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.

But, he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that ‘something is very wrong with the world I’m caught up in’, ‘these elders of the world are not getting it…..’.

How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?

How does it make anyone safer?

How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?

Your policies, skewed-ly ‘diagnosed’ and ‘reviewed’ in a cold clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people, thus we endeavour to have a People’s Afghanistan December Review, because that’s what ordinary people can do.

We would try not to ‘throw’ our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner’s tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.

We want peace.

We want you out.

With singular sincerity,

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Afghans for Peace http://afghansforpeace.org/

***

My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government — world public opinion.”–Malalai Joya

Notes from Wikipedia:

International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.

The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).

In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan.

According to the ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from Oct. 29-Nov. 13, 2010:

Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about U.S.-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago.

More than half of Afghans interviewed said U.S. and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.

There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.

If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice.”–Malalai Joya

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Getting drunk in Kabul bars? Pass the sick bag

by Seema Jilani

Seema Jilani

The expat drinking scene of journalists and diplomats in Afghanistan’s capital is the height of disrespectful colonialism

“Kabul is the new Beirut.” This frivolous drivel fell from the mouth of a journalist in Afghanistan. She was effervescent with excitement about the prospect of Kabul’s expatriate bars being even more hip than those in Beirut. Beirut – where they dance to the beat of the bombs, where alcohol flows freely and women are freer still.

Yay! Kabul has finally left the dark ages and now offers expat bars for journalists and diplomats alike, where alcohol serves as the lubricant for self-congratulatory war stories and chest-beating. And how convenient: you don’t have to deal with any pesky local Afghans either. With the exception of Afghanistan’s upper echelon, Afghans aren’t allowed in. Under Afghan law, the sale of alcohol to Muslims is prohibited.

So come, drown yourself in forbidden libations while you deliver a machismo speech on what a cowboy you are for making it through the war. “The Renegade of Afghanistan.”

Your friendly “native” Afghan driver will even risk his life to wait outside for you as you feed your inflated sense of self-importance. Never mind that his wife and six children await him at home. Never mind that he drives through precarious, unkempt roads just to service your desire for a vodka tonic. You need to celebrate, dammit. Gloriously, bombastically celebrate the fact that you are a westerner in Afghanistan. You need “closure” (isn’t that what your therapist back home told you?) to all the death you witness and the blood that torrentially rains down from Afghanistan’s skies.

And aren’t you just so cool to taste the forbidden alcohol here? Aren’t you? Quick, take a picture so you can retain bragging rights. Don’t forget to get on your mobile-interweb-gadget and update your Facebook status too.

It doesn’t get more colonialist than invading a country, setting up shop, selling a prohibited, culturally and religiously forbidden product like alcohol, and throwing centuries of tradition out the window. But of course there is a good reason. For who can go without a beer for six weeks anyway?

Dear melodramatic expats: you are not special because you set foot on this soil. You have not lived through the annihilation of your family for the past 30 years. Kandahar is dangerous, but you can stop spitting forth the tales of war and halt the swagger in its tracks.

Thank God you have medical evacuation insurance and are embedded so that if you have a toothache, the US Marines will airlift you right back home to a nice, immaculate hospital, not one crawling with cockroaches and rats like those the Afghans are subjected to. Too bad that your Afghan colleagues, who do your translations and make your connections, don’t have the same insurance.

My Afghan friend told me of his shame at not even being allowed into restaurants in his own country. When waiters confront him with: “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable at a place that serves Afghans?” his acidic response is: “No, would that make you more comfortable?”

Congratu-effing-lations. We have just managed to isolate Afghans from us even more than before. Not only have we invaded their country and torn it to shreds, but we have also created a segregated, imperialistic society – one in which Afghans are third-class citizens in their own country, invalidating an already marginalised population further.

Is it too cumbersome to engage the Afghans and build a relationship with them – one that doesn’t just involve their translation services? Do you writhe with an awkward discomfort at the thought of having dinner next to an Afghan? Cognitive dissonance perhaps? Maybe, if we took the time to see them as people, not as “fixers” and “locals”, but just as neighbours with hardships more dreadful than we can ever imagine, maybe then we can begin to understand the nuanced complexities of the region.

The condescending attitude of foreigners towards Afghans is not lost on Afghans and only fosters distrust. Perhaps a lesson can be learned from the humanitarian aid workers killed recently in Afghanistan. Many spoke the language fluently; they lived among the people, they ate Afghan food and breathed the Afghan spirit.

But since we are not all able to accomplish such feats, the least we can do is to engage in dialogue with longstanding humanitarian aid agencies who have their finger on the pulse in Afghanistan. Instead of knocking at their door only when a death or explosion comes along, perhaps it would behoove diplomats and journalists alike to befriend those who are part of the grassroots movements and who work with local leaders. Their grasp on the politics of Afghanistan could constructively influence foreign policy, if only we’d put down our rum and coke and listen.

Maybe it is true what Virginia Woolf said: “On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.”

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Endgame in Afghanistan: ‘It’s taken a year to move 20km’

thanx uruknet

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Did Bradley Manning act alone ?

by Philip Shenon

The massive dump of U.S. military secrets about the Afghan war is believed to have come from the detained Army intel analyst. Philip Shenon reports he may not have been the lone leaker. Plus, the seven most shocking secrets from the WikiLeaks files.

A 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst from Potomac, Maryland, is almost certainly the source of what could well be one of the most damaging leaks of classified military information in the nation’s history, according to the former computer hacker in California who turned in the analyst.

The former hacker, Adrian Lamo, told The Daily Beast he had no doubt that the young Army analyst, Bradley Manning, who had been posted in Iraq until this spring, was responsible for the massive leak of American military reports from Afghanistan that were posted online Sunday by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, and promoted with joint reports in The New York Times, The Guardian of Britain, and the German magazine Der Spiegel.

“I believe that somebody would have had to have been of assistance to him,” said Adrian Lamo of Bradley Manning.

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