No commentary required (and similar things are clearly happening in Afghanistan, I heard it discussed routinely during my recent visit there). Eli Lake reports for The Daily Beast: During the war in Iraq, battalion commanders were allocated packets of $100 bills and authorized to use them for anything from repairing a schoolhouse to paying off…
Showing all posts tagged war on terror
Scahill on Obama’s war on Muslim civilians
The relentless US-led drone war against “terrorists” in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond rarely examines who is actually being killed. President Obama has massively expanded the global program. This weekend saw a Drone Summit held… in Washington DC that highlighted this still largely secret war. A keynote speaker was the leading investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill…
Shadow of Bin Laden continues to haunt
The life and times of Osama Bin Laden post 9/11 remains shrouded in mystery. During my recent visit to Pakistan, I spent time with Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani Army Brigadier, who personally investigated the story behind Bin Laden’s killing last year. This lead story in the Guardian by Jason Bourke adds more details to…
Role of Taliban central in Afghanistan (whether the West likes it or not)
Intriguing interview in The Daily Beast that highlights the internal struggles within a movement that has beaten the US and its allies in Afghanistan: Not so long ago,… Agha Jan Motasim… was one of the most important men in the Afghan Taliban. That was before he was sacked as head of the ruling Quetta Shura’s political committee—and…
Who has power to fly drones inside the USA?
Electronic Frontier Foundation is digging: This week the… Federal Aviation Administration… (FAA) finally released its first round of records in response to… EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit… for information on the agency’s drone authorization program. The agency says the… two… lists… it released include the names of all public and private entities that have applied for authorizations to fly drones…
Private military and intelligence still alive and well in Afghanistan
My following investigation appeared in Australian publication Crikey last week: The private security compound is on the outskirts of Kabul, along the road to Jalalabad, a notorious strip of highway, the landscape is predominantly industrial, with shipping containers set against a string of mountains on the horizon. Several logistics companies sit behind these concrete walls”‰—”‰this…
War business in Afghanistan
My following investigation is published by Lebanon’s Al Akhbar: Since the US invasion in 2001, Afghanistan has seen multiple private armies take control of the country’s security sector. The private security compound was on the outskirts of Kabul. Situated along the road to Jalalabad on a… notorious strip of highway, the landscape was industrial with sun-drenched…
Clear intent for CIA to commit terrorism in Yemen
Just think about the ramifications of this first paragraph in a Washington Post story: The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, U.S. officials said.
The kindly Washington gift to dysfunctional Pakistan
Today’s Pakistan is a nation with various sources of power but the intelligence services, ISI, are who truly controls the place. Dilip Hiro writes in TomDispatch about who has been largely funding this degradation since 9/11: It is common knowledge that Pakistani judges, fearing for their lives, generally refrain from convicting high-profile jihadists with political…