The silent heroes who report on inept and criminal Western wars: Stringers in Afghanistan, where I am the correspondent for al-Jazeera, are the eyes and ears of the world’s media. Without them, getting a picture of what is going on outside Kabul is almost impossible for a western journalist. Most correspondents don’t often stray from…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
It is your patriotic duty to provide weapons of death to the state
The privatisation of war is an ugly business, pushed by governments keen to pursue a “war on terror” with no end in sight and virtually no accountability: The CIA is implicated in a court case in which it’s claimed it used an illegal, inaccurate software “hack” to direct secret assassination drones in central Asia. The…
Hold Western military powers to account (and the Hague beckons)
The message is clear; Western powers can’t be exempt from thorough examinations of their war crimes. Hardly a revolutionary idea and yet such plans are virtually absent from “polite” discussions: A United Nations investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan should be launched to identify and prosecute individuals responsible, says a former top-ranking UN official…
America wants faceless men to kill its enemies
The largely secret war now being fought by unaccountable private firms. This is how the West fights battles: More private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, the first time in history that corporate casualties have outweighed military losses on America’s battlefields. More than 250 civilians working under U.S. contracts…
Petraeus believes in forever conflict
Just in case it wasn’t clear, America’s “war on terror” in Afghanistan may last, well, for decades. Here’s Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book: You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit…
Obama’s covert killing squads in Afghanistan
The book, Obama’s Wars, by Court Reporter Bob Woodward, is about to be released, examining American’s deepening involvement in Afghanistan. Expect mountains of coverage in the coming weeks, but here’s a preview: Beyond the internal battles, the book offers fresh disclosures on the nation’s continuing battle with terrorists. It reports that the C.I.A. has a…
Private contractor Serco escapes scrutiny in the detention debate
My following piece appears today in Crikey: I visited Villawood on Sunday”‰—”‰alongside a delegation of union leaders and Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon”‰—”‰and met several asylum seekers subsequently involved in the protest that ended peacefully last night with the arrival of UNHCR officials. We spent hours conversing with men in their 20s and up from Iraq,…
Talking on ABC TV News24 about refugees, Afghanistan and some common sense
Last night I again appeared on ABC TV’s News24 The Drum panel alongside the Australian Financial Review’s David Crowe and The Daily Grind’s Joe Stella (vision here for two weeks and here’s info about my August appearance). YouTube video here. The main topic up for discussion was the asylum seeker crisis at Sydney’s Villawood detention…
Asylum seekers all over the news but Serco’s role remains covered
From this morning’s ABC AM: TONY EASTLEY: A police investigation will continue today into the death of a Fijian man at the Villawood Immigration detention centre in Sydney. The 36-year-old, who jumped to his death yesterday morning, was due to be deported back to Fiji. Overnight, tensions remained high at the centre when a group…