NATO plans for Afghanistan this year are shaping up nicely: negotiate with the Taliban, but at the same time kill them in Kandahar and Kunduz, observes Eric Walberg A joint operation involving several thousand troops was launched in Kandahar last week, the second one this year after Operation Mushtarak in Helmand province. Kandahar has been the bailiwick of 2,500 contingent of Canadian troops who have suffered heavy losses in this
Statement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan regarding monopolization of activities of Mass Media Outlets by the Puppet Administration. By Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan March 03, 2010 “Information Clearing House” — According to international media reports, the Kabul Puppet Administration have warned media outlets not to publish or transmit live reports of events without obtainment of prior permission. In case of violation, they have threatened to arrest relevant reporters, seize
Democracy Now reports: Afghanistan has banned the news media from covering Taliban attacks. The announcement came on a day when NATO-led forces reported six of its service members had been killed in various attacks. Under the new rules, journalists will be allowed to film only the aftermath of attacks, when given permission by Afghanistan’s spy agency. Journalists who film while attacks are underway will be held and their gear seized.
What did Medvedev have up his sleeve when he welcomed Obama’s new surge in Afghanistan, wonders Eric Walberg US President Barack Obama’s now expanding war against the Taliban is garnering support from liberals and neocons alike, from leaders around the world, even from Russia. “We are ready to support these efforts, guarantee the transit of troops, take part in economic projects and train police and the military,” Russian President Dmitri
The only thing Obama’s got right so far about his warzone-of-choice is the name, worries Eric Walberg As more NATO trucks were being torched in Peshawar last week, a Karachi student managed to fling his shoe at warmongering US journalist Clifford May during his address to the Department of International Relations on “Pakistan’s Role in Countering the Challenge of Terrorism”. In Washington, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced bitterly
By Eric Margolis for the Toronto Sun (via Informationclearinghouse) “We should hang a huge neon sign over Afghanistan: “CAUTION: DEJA VU.” Afghanistan’s much ballyhooed recent election staged by its foreign occupiers turned out to be a fraud wrapped up in a farce — as this column predicted a month ago. It was as phony and meaningless as U.S.-run elections in Vietnam in the 1970s. Canada played a shameful role in
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up to Obama’s Bloated Military Budget By Jeremy Scahill April 10, 2009 “Information Clearing House – Much of the media attention this week on President Obama’s new military budget has put forward a false narrative wherein Obama is somehow taking his socialist/pacifist sledgehammer to the Pentagon’s war machine and blasting it to smithereens. Republicans have charged that Obama is endangering the country’s security, while the
by Venik for Venik’s Blog Obama’s election campaign put the war in Afghanistan on a pedestal as the single most important national security goal of the post-Bush era. Currently, the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan numbers about 55,000 troops from forty one countries, including about 23,000 American soldiers.The NATO force in Afghanistan has virtually no heavy armor – just a couple dozen of Canadian and Danish tanks. At the height
On February 15th, 1989 the last Soviet soldier crossed the (then) Soviet-Afghan border leaving behind over one million dead Afghans, several millions more wounded and displaced. This war cost the Soviet Union just under 14 thousand lives. This is, for sure, a disastrous tally and nobody in his right mind would attempt to qualify the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as a “success”. Still, while unequivocally a failure and a tragedy,
This will appear in the next issue of Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg Triangulation or strangulation? The new president is discovering that America ’s road to Kabul goes through Moscow , says Eric Walberg As Obama prepares to transfer troops from Iraq to Afghanistan , Al-Qaeda and other jihadists are also “transferring” there according to Afghan Defence Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak, giving the country the dubious distinction of remaining the centre
Al-Manar reports: Kyrgyzstan said Friday its decision to shut a U.S. air base was final, dealing a blow to Washington’s efforts to retain what has been a major staging post for US occupation forces fighting in Afghanistan. Thursday, the United States said it was still in talks with Kyrgyzstan about keeping the Manas base in the mainly Muslim, impoverished former Soviet republic and traditional Russian ally. “The decision has been
There are increasing signs that the USraelian Empire is trying to negotiate some kind of deal with the Taliban including their chief, Mullah Omar. Some are rejoicing at this development seeing it as a way to finally get the US out of Afghanistan. I would agree with such optimistic hopes if the issue was only getting the US out of Afghanistan, but there is far more at stake here than
Amazing stuff. First, there was the information that the Hamid Karzai had invited Mullah Omar back to Afghanistan (which he probably never left anyway, but we know what he meant) and now it’s the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick S. Moon who is quoted as saying that Omar would be taken off the US list of sought terrorists. Yep,
According to the BBC, the “Mayor of Kabul”, a.k.a Khamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, has threatened Pakistan by warning that he would send “troops across the border” to “confront militants based in Pakistan” adding that when militants crossed over from Pakistan to kill Afghans and coalition troops, his nation had the right to retaliate in “self-defence”. There is, of course, a reason why the always elegant “Armani President” Karzai is
Al-Manar TV reports: Just after the head of the Progressive Socialist Party MP Walid Jumblatt finished his press conference on Sunday, Israeli media went for analyses. They read in his speech a direct message to Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Jumblatt openly stated in his speech that he’s ready for war. “If you think that we are going to sit with our hands tied, then perhaps we would have
By Dr Gideon Polya (Source: Countercurrents via Informationclearinghouse) The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 with the ostensible excuse of the Afghan Government’s “protection” of the asserted Al Qaeda culprits of the 9/11 atrocity that killed 3,000 people. In the light of as many as 6.6 million post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan as of February 2008 (see below), it is important to consider the major problems with this
Maybe it is because I did my basic training in the mountains, or maybe its because I just love them; the fact is that I have always been fascinated by how mountains totally change the face of presumably ‘modern’ warfare. In the mountains, a horse if much better than an APC, helicopters are sometimes very useful and at times utterly useless, a platoon can stop a regiment, air strikes are
By Jeffrey Imm Once again, another national leader of an American “ally” in the “war on terror” has offered to help the Taliban regain political power. AP has reported that Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai offered “to meet personally with Taliban leader Mullah Omar for peace talks and give the militants a high position in a government ministry as a way to end the rising insurgency in Afghanistan.” AP reports that
By GARY LEUPP Hamid Karzai, hand-picked by Washington to pose as president of the broken country of Afghanistan, says his government has “very, very good, very, very close relations [and] will continue to have good relations with Iran.” He declares on CNN, “So far, Iran has been a helper” in fighting terrorism. Nuri al-Maliki, favored by Washington as the most viable prime minister to pretend to lead the bleeding country
AFP – WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a key US ally, contradicted US assessments of the threat posed by Iran and insisted in an interview aired Sunday that Tehran played a beneficial role in his region. “So far, Iran has been a helper and a solution,” Karzai told CNN on the eve of a visit here Sunday to meet with President George W. Bush for talks on the deteriorating security
