So this is what mature diplomacy means. Working with a corrupt government to further another bromance? So sweet and so revealing: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called it “extraordinarily embarrassing,” which might also describe the sentiments beneath the decorous tableau on Wednesday night in the palace of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. A little more…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Of course Canberra wants other people to protect our empire in Afghanistan
Australia begins to copy the American mercenary model; outsourcing essential tasks with little or no parliamentary oversight: Australia has awarded a $20 million two-year contract guarding diplomats in Kabul to a private security company owned by a special forces soldier turned British lord and that once hired a former South African apartheid-era assassin. The move…
Australia is in Afghanistan to support this?
Oh what a glorious war: Britain’s four-year military stewardship of the troubled Helmand province has been scorned by President Hamid Karzai, top Afghan officials and the US commander of Nato troops, according to secret US diplomatic cables. The dispatches expose a devastating contempt for the British failure to impose security and connect with ordinary Afghans.…
US visiting refugee camps to further its oh so noble goals
The fusing of aid and military actions is a worrying development that threatens the independence of truly independent NGOs (and the US military isn’t part of this, sorry Barack): A US military plan to survey refugee camps and aid agencies on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, possibly to obtain targeting information for air strikes, sparked alarm among…
The key players behind attacking Iran are radical Zionists
Nice try. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, fond of Middle East wars, argues that the latest Wikileaks documents vindicate claims that the “Arab lobby” are behind attempts to bomb Iran: Here’s a fact that might astonish Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose book, “The Israel Lobby,” posits the existence of a nefarious, all-powerful Jewish lobby that…
Can we trust the press to be totally honest over Wikileaks (hint: no)
I wish this interview was more comforting. The idea of a Murdoch editor talking about resisting potential Australian government requests not to publish certain Wikileaks cables requires a suspension of disbelief, not least because he argues about not challenging anything that “could imperil the lives of Australian soldiers, men and women serving overseas in a…
Wikileaks may not be quite as bad as al-Qaeda
Another day and so much more Wikileaks news. Currently snowed under with work related to the information dump, so here are a number of relevant links to keep things flowing (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). This is perhaps the funniest and more tragic response thus far: American Conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin…
Failing work in Afghanistan is signal for a promotion
This is what we’re doing in Afghanistan: For more than a year, Afghan police chief Rajab Mohammed and his men have worked out of a dark, cramped mud home in a remote corner of Afghanistan while waiting in vain for construction workers to finish building the U.S.-funded police station across the street. With winter fast…
Washington still fighting the Soviets in 2010
Happy anniversary suckers: The US has now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Union.
The global lure of Muslim resistance
Amazing reporting by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in the UK Guardian: British-based men of Afghan origin are spending months at a time in Afghanistan fighting Nato forces before returning to the UK, the Guardian has learned. They also send money to the Taliban. A Taliban fighter in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan last month told the Guardian he…