On 25 July, exactly two years after the WikiLeaks release of the Afghan war diaries, the following banners were unfurled at the summit of Snowdon in Wales: ‘Free Bradley Manning’, ‘Don’t shoot the messengers! Free Manning. Free Assange. End the wars.’
WISE Up Action, a solidarity network for Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, held the demo to support US army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning (who has Welsh roots) who has been held for two years in pre-trial detention on charges of…
On 15 May, lawyers from Leigh Day & Co and Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) – the latter acting on behalf of well-known peace activist Maya Evans – won the right to a further judicial review of the transfer of prisoners from British to Afghan forces.
As a consequence, the UK announced that all British transfers to the Afghan authorities in Kabul, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah would be stopped – and the court made clear that it expected this moratorium to be observed until the review has…
Two recent agreements between the US and Afghan governments suggest that US/UK ‘withdrawal’ (actually, thousands of US troops will remain and ‘continue to participate in combat missions’, according to White House spokesperson Jay Carney) will be accompanied by increased use of Afghan proxies to torture, imprison and assassinate
The first, signed 9 March, transferred the ‘management’ of the US prison complex at…
Developments since the publication of the March issue of PN have, I fear, only served to confirm my analysis there of the Afghan ‘peace talks’ process (PN 2543).
In particular, the Taliban’s announcement that it is ‘suspending’ its proto-talks with the Americans should reinforce the crucial need for the international peace movement to mobilise public pressure to force the US to take the ‘peace process’ seriously and commit to a full withdrawal.
The suspension is due, in…
Despite a ‘game changing’ move by the Taliban towards peace talks, the US looks committed to continuing its war in Afghanistan far into the future – albeit retooled to place more emphasis on drones, special forces and local proxies. The consequences for ordinary Afghans are likely to be disastrous.
In January – in a what the New York Times described as ‘a first major public sign that they may be ready for formal talks with the American-led coalition’ – the Taliban declared that it had…
Shamsia, 23, is a graffiti artist in Kabul, Afghanistan. She learned graffiti in December 2010 at a workshop by Combat Communications: ‘I was used to working with paints on canvasses but when I used a spray can for the first time and worked on a big wall it was exciting and cool and such an achievement. I wanted to do something about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the burqa, but in an ironic way and take the idea of the burqa away from how we are used to seeing it.
Image…
17 December 2011:
Arriving in Kabul
The sun was setting as my plane approached to land in Kabul. My first sights of Afghanistan were the snow-capped hills and gigantic mountain ranges which seemed to stretch forever.
As I got off the airport bus, I immediately headed for a queue with some other women in it. My pious Islamic outfit purchased from Whitechapel market only a week beforehand was probably too authentic as all the Afghani women wore western jeans and tops with…
Tents at Northwood gates. PHOTO: Maria Albrecht
On 29 December, the Christian Holy Innocents Day, a group of 16 Christian peace activists closed the main entrance to the Northwood military headquarters for two hours. After pitching their tents, some knelt to pray, while others held placards outside the north London base, which is the command centre for all British forces in Afghanistan. A banner reading “Occupy Northwood HQ not Afghanistan” was…
January is always a desperate time of year for the occupants of the Chamne Babak refugee camp in Kabul. Temperatures at night drop to well below freezing and the little work that the men in the camp can find dries up as the snow begins to fall. This year however some relief was delivered thanks to the readers of Peace News and members of the National Union of Journalists at the Financial Times.
Well over £2,000 was raised (over £1,700 through Peace News) and on 3 January it was delivered…
While a new poll in Afghanistan shows overwhelming support for negotiations with the Taliban, and a majority favouring a coalition government including the Taliban, future British strategy in the country is hard to judge.
Though UK officials have reportedly concluded that the Taliban are “too deep-rooted to be eradicated by military means”, they are still preparing to escalate the war next spring.
Afghans demand talksIn a cross-country poll of 1,578 Afghans, conducted in mid-…
US Special Forces in Afghanistan killed as many as 1,500 civilians in night raids by ground forces during nine months spanning 2010 and early 2011, according to an estimate produced by Gareth Porter, a US journalist for Inter Press Services (IPS).
Porter’s estimate is of especial interest as accurate information about civilians killed by NATO forces is hard to come by, not least because NATO rarely admits to killing any civilians, unless forced to do so by independent media coverage (…
