Private mercenaries have been integral to the “war on terror”, so much so that Western aid groups are warning the Afghan government that without them the country will miss billions of dollars in aid: More than a billion dollars worth of aid projects in Afghanistan will have to be cancelled by the end of the…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Australia misses the Wikileaks story entirely
So the Australian government is not interested in investigating any potential war crimes in Iraq but the messenger who brought the news. Don’t be surprised: Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the release of almost 400,000 US documents about the Iraq War could create a security risk for Australia. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published classified…
Not allowing private firms to run our brutal wars
Who can blame the Afghan government, as corrupt as it is, resisting the onslaught of unaccountable private military contractors, teams increasingly relied upon by Western states in their futile battle against an indigenous “enemy”? The Afghan president on Wednesday rejected pleas from the international community to reverse his order to disband all private security companies,…
A one-eyed view of Sri Lanka
My following article appears today in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed: A Western journalist visits the Sudanese capital Khartoum to interview President Omar al-Bashir. The reporter, after calling him “controversial” due to his “bloody” record in fighting terrorism, gives the leader a platform to explain his views and tactics. The only other voice featured in the…
Who knew that occupation caused Muslims to hate us?
Robert Pape tells us what we should already know. When the West occupies and kill Muslims, they may want to respond in kind. Funny that: More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and…
Invade, beg, pay
Is the British rule that massive aid to poor countries can mostly come after a disastrous Western invasion and occupation? Britain is to double to …£3.8bn the amount of aid money spent on war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, raising fears among charities that national security priorities will determine development spending. As David Cameron warned that…
Back on ABC TV News24 talking Afghanistan, drugs policy and 9/11
I appeared again last night on ABC TV News 24 The Drum with former politician Kerry Chikarovski and ABC journalist Chris Uhlmann (previous appearances here). The show is available here. We discussed Australia’s role in Afghanistan and whether the country should maintain troops there. It appears that the US alliance and “national security” reasons are…
If the Taliban can be engaged, why not the other “terrorists”?
So Richard Barrett, the coordinator of the United Nations Al Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team, thinks it’s time to “talk to the Taliban.” Guess the next major piece in the New York Times will be that Israel should talk to Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran.
Washington agrees that Wikileaks harmed nobody but US war-making
So after all the huffing and puffing and accusations, Wikileaks is only “guilty” of harming US interests? Surely questioning the rationale behind criminal American foreign policy is highly praise-worthy: No U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs by the WikiLeaks website, the Pentagon has concluded, but the…
Assange; the importance of making powerful enemies
In the annual “50 People Who Matter 2010” for New Statesman, John Pilger endorses Julian Assange and Wikileaks; guts that matters and so necessary: The arrival of WikiLeaks is one of the most exciting developments in the enduring struggle of ordinary people for the right to call secret power to account. This is what journalism…