Afghanistan

On 21 September, there will be a seventh Global Day of Listening for the entire 24 hours (GMT). Anyone can book a slot to speak to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and their friends via Skype, the free internet telephone system. To book a call, check the schedule on the website to see when a slot is available, then email the team (with your Skype ID) to request a call-in time. Anyone can listen on the internet on 21 September without needing to install Skype. Full details, and live…

It’s a bit odd to me that with my sense of geographical direction I’m ever regarded as a leader to guide groups in foreign travel. I’m recalling a steaming hot night in Lahore, Pakistan, when Josh Brollier and I, having enjoyed a lengthy dinner with Lahore University students, needed to head back to the guest lodgings graciously provided us by a headmaster of the Garrison School for Boys.

We had boarded a rickshaw, but the driver had soon become terribly lost and with my spotty sense…

Established in 1977, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is an independent women’s organisation fighting for human rights and social justice in Afghanistan. RAWA opposed the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-89, as well as the subsequent mujahideen and Taliban governments, running underground schools for Afghan girls, publishing a journal and setting up humanitarian projects. Mariam Rawi, a member of RAWA’s foreign relations committee,…

Since setting up the Media Lens website in 2002, David Edwards and David Cromwell have been publishing regular free Media Alerts “correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media”. Dissecting the reporting of issues such as Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and climate change in the liberal media (the BBC, Guardian, Independent and so on) Media Lens encourages readers to email individual journalists to take them to task, always urging those that do “to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non…

Described by one Pentagon adviser as an “industrial scale counter-terrorism killing machine”, the US’s ongoing Kill-Capture campaign in Afghanistan has killed over 3000 Taliban fighters in the last year, according to The Times’s Stephen Grey. I would be interested in how Nick Kent [PN2534] squares these mass targeted killings with his belief that the NATO mission in Afghanistan is “a peacekeeping force”?

Recent claims by Afghan president Hamid Karzai that the US has started “peace talks” with the Taliban – and official US confirmation that it has been engaged in “very preliminary” contacts with them – have fuelled media speculation about the possibilty of a negotiated end to the war, the option long favoured by the majority of ordinary Afghans (see PN 2530).

Though US officials have publicly justified military escalation by claiming that it is needed to force the Taliban to the…

British forces are likely to remain in Afghanistan long after David Cameron’s 2014 deadline for the end of Britain’s “combat” mission, according to the commander of British forces in the country, general James Bucknall.

Bucknall told the Guardian, “December [2014] is not a campaign end date but a waypoint – a point at which the coalition security posture changes from one that is in the lead to one that is mentoring and advising, but is still here.”

Following press reports that…

On 13 May, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced it is forming a second RAF drones squadron to be based at RAF Waddington, Lincs. RAF pilots will then control the UK’s armed Reaper drones that fly in Afghanistan from Waddington rather than the Creech US air force (USAF) base in Nevada. Defence secretary, Liam Fox noted that this followed the doubling of the UK’s Reaper capability to ten aircraft, an increased investment of £135m in drone warfare.

A recent article by two senior MoD…

Peace activist and PN columnist Maya Evans won a judicial review at the high court on 12 May, overturning a new rule introduced last year ending legal aid for applicants who would not directly benefit from their claims. Maya had already successfully challenged the Ministry of Defence’s policy of handing over detainees in Afghanistan to the local police.

Maya, from the peace group Justice Not Vengeance, said: “The Ministry of Defence has tried to cut off funding for politically…

I was in two minds as to how to write up the interview with Nicolas Kent. Our usual format in PN is to just to present the transcript of the interview, and that’s what we did in the end (for an unusually long three pages), but I was very tempted to write it up in a more traditional journalistic style. These notes are a small move to bringing a bit more of the flavour of the thing over.

When I called up to arrange the interview, Nicolas Kent was very gracious, but it was clear he was…

“[W]e must talk to the Taliban. Without that, we will leave a broken country. Our present strategy, says one official who has been at the heart of it, “is all a big, big lie”” - Guardian columnist Julian Glover.

Following “extensive interviews in Washington with many of the key players involved in Afghan policy”, renowned Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid recently reported that the US is “preparing for extensive diplomatic initiatives in the next few months to take the fledgling peace…

“Afghans understand that the US is here for its own interests and to get rid of al-Qa’eda for their own protection.” We were in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, speaking with the head of an Afghan human rights NGO. “But when they came,” she continued, “Afghans had to choose the better group to support, and US presence brings some benefits to the people. We are hoping NATO forces will also help with our problems from neighbouring countries.”

Our delegation, sponsored by the Chicago-based…

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Even as the current US-led escalation in Afghanistan continues to shut-down the still-live option of a negotiated end to the war, a new report has confirmed that the US blocked Taliban efforts to reconcile with the Afghan government in the wake of the 2001 invasion – efforts that could have ended the current war eight years ago.

According to a recent paper for New York University’s Centre for International Cooperation, written by Kandahar-based researchers Felix Kuehn and Alex Strick…

According to official figures, nine members of the armed forces have applied for discharge as conscientious objectors since the Afghanistan war started in 2001, it was disclosed at the end of January. In the previous 10 years, 13 navy personnel and one soldier applied for CO status. In February 2010, based on a Freedom of Information Act request, the Independent revealed that British soldiers have gone AWOL on more than 17,000 occasions since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.