Robert Fisk on the destruction of ancient cultures while the West talks about “democracy” and “liberation” at the barrel of a gun: Over the door of the Kabul museum today is a Persian quotation: “A nation stays alive when its culture and history are kept alive.” But is it possible to believe that even these…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Isolating Iran is part of the “great energy game”
Here’s my interview with Foreign Policy Journal by Kourosh Ziabari: The Middle East is witness to continuous developments these days, such as Iran’s active diplomacy to attract the indispensable 118-member bloc of non-aligned countries to support its nuclear program, the growing isolation of Israel in European countries and within academic circles in the U.S., Arabs’…
The Taliban takes our money (because we give it to them)
This is how the West “wins” wars: paying off the enemy: Allegations that a private security firm has been bribing Taliban and other insurgents to ensure safe passage for NATO convoys in Afghanistan are being denied by a key player in the business. Kabul-based Watan Risk Management was among the private companies fingered in recent…
Hizbollah rearms and accused of terrorism and Israel just continually rearms
Remind me who is the neighbourhood bully in the Middle East? It certainly isn’t Hizbollah or Lebanon: Hezbollah on Wednesday shot back at US charges it was stockpiling sophisticated weapons, accusing Washington of destabilising the Middle East and vowing to continue to build its artillery. “The resistance has the right to use all legitimate means…
The real fighters, cooks and trainers in Afghanistan
Who is really fighting the war in Afghanistan? The message, very often, is sent with bloodshed. There was the suicide bombing last week on a fortified Kandahar guesthouse shared by Western contracting companies, killing four Afghans and injuring several Americans. There was the Afghan engineer, shot dead in March as he helped inspect a school…
Watch the Zionist gate-keepers, Nick Clegg
Here’s how corporate and Zionist smearing works. British Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg is surging in the polls and this makes the old hacks, who can only imagine a two-party reality, nervous. Besides, anybody that dares challenge Israel and the US is clearly beyond the pale. For the record, Clegg is hardly some radical (for…
Blackwater don’t believe they should ever face justice
The death penalty is a futile and heinous act but the idea that former Blackwater guards in Afghanistan won’t be paying a high price for their crimes in Afghanistan fits a sadly typical pattern: the private military firm appears to be above the law:
Spending billions on a cause that remains unclear
The price of an endless “war on terror”: Over the past five years, the U.S. government has spent a combined $80 billion on contractors to support its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that has U.S. military leaders concerned: On Friday, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan suggested that the coalition had become too dependent…
What does a Taliban fighter think?
My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Melbourne Age: My Life with the Taliban Abdul Salam Zaeef Scribe, $45 The former UN special representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, told the BBC World Service in March that not negotiating with the Taliban was “unthinkable”. He condemned the arrest by American-backed Pakistani troops of prominent Taliban leaders…
Soldiers aren’t the only ones engaged in Afghanistan
Who is actually fighting the noble war in Afghanistan? A recent Congressional Research Service analysis [1] obtained by ProPublica looked at the number of civilian contractors killed in Afghanistan in recent months. It’s not pretty. Of the 289 civilians killed since the war began more than eight years ago, 100 have died in just the…