My following article is published by leading Indian magazine Tehelka: The Middle East is the region where global empires lavishly exercise their chequebook. Since the Second World War, America has bribed, cajoled and backed autocratic regimes in the name of stability. Israel, self-described as the only democracy in the area, has been insulated from the…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Afghans and Egyptians both see US backing corrupt thugs
Do we think they don’t care? Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker: On corruption, the American strategy isn’t clear. The American military appears to be succeeding in clearing the Taliban from large swaths of southern Afghanistan. But then what? At some point, the Afghans themselves have to take over—that is, the Afghan government. Without a…
The complex chaos for some Afghan women
Mother Jones magazine: For Afghan women, self-immolation has become a way to externalize private injustice, to push hidden pain into the public square. They are expressing a demand for human rights in a culture that does not allow them to articulate that wish.
Wikileaks: Not all leaks are created equal
My following essay appears today in Online Opinion: The Obama administration is pursuing Wikileaks and its Australian founder Julian Assange for alleged criminal activity in releasing classified documents. The US Department of Justice has ordered Twitter to hand over private messages sent by parties close to Wikileaks and the whistle-blower website says that even the…
Australia has no idea how to handle a few thousand refugees
We are led by cowards and fools, governments and oppositions afraid to treat asylum seekers as human beings. Instead of processing the relatively few people quickly and carefully, they are housed away in privatised prisons run by a British multinational, Serco, with no accountability. This feature in today’s Melbourne Age shows the disgrace: Today over…
If we had a serious debate about Afghanistan
This would be front-page news: The central justification of the U.S.-NATO war against the Afghan Taliban – that the Taliban would allow al Qaeda to return to Afghanistan – has been challenged by new historical evidence of offers by the Taliban leadership to reconcile with the Hamid Karzai government after the fall of the Taliban…
Cables of a failed war
Just one of the latest Wikileaks-related cables, this one from London in 2009: Prime Minister Brown was “very pleased” by President Obama’s December 1 speech describing the way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and HMG would like U.S. and UK public statements to remain in synch, Philip Barton, Director, Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the Cabinet…
Thank God some reporters don’t idolise Petraeus
American reporter Michael Hastings wrote a devastating portrait last year of leading US military man Stanley McChrystal. It was clear, unafraid to upset the establishment and devastating. McChrystal resigned shortly after. Hastings is now back, with another fascinating essay on the war in Afghanistan, this time profiling the role of General David Petraeus. The conclusion…
So this is how Australia deals with its human rights obligations
Just how keen is the Australian government to send back hapless refugees to a rogue and illegitimate regime that can’t even maintain security in the capital? A plan to automatically deport failed Afghan asylum seekers from Australia has been condemned by a coalition of organisations and prominent experts. The Australian government reached an agreement with…
Reporting the occupation; voices in Jaipur
Today I chaired a session here in Jaipur, India at the literature festival with three men who know something about war and conflict. Brit Rory Stewart, New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson and the Washington Post’s David Finkel. We faced a packed audience – hundreds in an outdoor tent with overflowing crowds hanging out as far…