The price of dying for Afghanistan
Families forced to search for fallen kin as Afghan army fails to fulfil its promise to return dead soldiers’ bodies.
Kandahar, Afghanistan - After searching for 44 days, 78-year-old Najmuddin finally found the body of his son, an Afghan army lieutenant, in a freezer in this southern Afghan city.
“I searched and searched. I asked everyone that I came across,” said the old man, looking up to the sky and repeating he had “no one but God”.
His son, 24-year-old Mohamad Esa, had joined the army after he returned from five years of labouring in Iran. He died after a bullet pierced his left torso while serving in the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 215 Maiwand Corps. Despite an injury to the back of his head, his face was calm and unscathed.
Pakistan Military Warn East Afghanistan Residents to Leave Homes.
Pakistan military forces have sent warnings to residents of the far eastern districts of Nangarhar province to leave their homes or risk attack, according to Nangarhar MP Faridon Mohmand.
He claimed in an interview with TOLOnews Thursday that armed forces from Pakistan have pushed several kilometers into Afghanistan and launched missiles into the Lahlpor and Gushta districts numerous times.
“The Pakistani military warned the residents of Lahlpoor district to leave their homes, and as the residents refused to do so, they started shelling. The rocket attacks started two weeks ago and have continued until now, resulting in the displacement of 5000 families who have moved to other districts. The area is now empty,” Mohmand said.
Afghanistan, from bad to worse.
If Charles Dickens were writing “A Tale of Two Cities” about today’s Afghanistan, his opening line would be abbreviated: “It was the worst of times.”
when are there ever peaceful stretches in Afghanistan anymore? This year, 176 American military personnel have been killed, bringing the total to more than 2,000 dead and 15,000 wounded. At the current rate, 2012 will be the third-bloodiest year of the war.
We have also lavished upward of half a trillion dollars on the effort at a time when we are not exactly flush with revenue. All our sacrifices, however, appear to be in vain. Afghan civilian casualties tripled between 2006 and this year.
And these may be the good old days. After 11 years, the longest war in American history, we have begun the process of leaving. Our combat troops are supposed to be gone by the end of 2014. Opponents of withdrawal say it will endanger our gains, and that the only way to assure success is to stay even longer.
But what reason is there to believe another 11 years would achieve what the past 11 didn’t? “Judged by any yardstick — its ability to protect its officials, provide basic services and control corruption — Afghanistan has made little or no headway since 2001,” wrote Yale University security scholar Jason Lyall last year.
We have been down this road before — spending huge sums of money as well as thousands of lives trying to build a semblance of an honest, competent, halfway democratic government in a country beset by determined homegrown militants. It didn’t work in Vietnam, and it hasn’t worked in Afghanistan.
Why that should be is a puzzle. Things started out brilliantly in 2001, with a quick, seemingly complete defeat of the enemy. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exulted: “The Taliban are gone. Theal-Qaida are gone.”
But things drifted off course. We let Osama bin Laden escape. Pakistan furnished aid and refuge to the insurgents. We shifted our focus to Iraq. President Hamid Karzai proved unable or unwilling to establish security and curb corruption. Before long, the enemy was back with a vengeance.
How does the enemy endure and often prevail despite its enormous disadvantages? How have they turned illiterate, undernourished Afghan peasants into a tough, dogged fighting force that refuses to be defeated?
They apparently have something our friends don’t have: bottomless supplies of motivation. They also seem to have more support among the people in the countryside. The longer we stay the more pronounced the discrepancy becomes.
Much of their motivation is resentment of foreigners with guns and anger at military missions that inadvertently kill innocents. So maybe when we leave, many insurgents will lose interest in the fight. Maybe government troops will step up when we force them to take over.
Maybe not. Things could go very badly for the government and very well for the Taliban. But if we’ve learned nothing else, it’s that whatever needs to be done for Afghanistan, we can’t do it.
Why I refused to return to fight in Afghanistan's brutal occupation | Joe Glenton
At the same time as the Taliban attacks there has been a rise in atrocities. We have recently seen British soldiers convicted for raping children, as well as the stabbing by a squaddie of a 10-year-old Afghan boy. A multinational operation in all respects, the US has done its share; kill teams, SS flag-waving, photographing bodies, urinating on corpses and the Panjwai massacre carried out, according to the witnesses, by 15 to 20 US troops. When young men are shaped for war and sent to fight there are consequences – even in “just” wars. The training involves two-way dehumanisation – both of our soldiers and of the enemy – as Giles Fraser highlighted lately. These acts are coming thick and fast at the end of a long, dehumanising, failed war. Conscientious objection was a hard road for me, but while I was in military prison I received 200 letters a day, which helped. As did the support of my fellow soldiers.
US Soldiers Find Themselves Being Terrorists in Afghanistan [worth a watch]
As the US continues to step up war efforts in Afghanistan, the number of American soldiers refusing deployment to war zones is also increasing. Author and Independent Journalist Dahr Jamail tells RT that U.S. soldiers in combat zones find themselves being terrorist.
“Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.” - Albert Einstein
![“Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger
[watch] US Soldiers Find Themselves Being Terrorists in Afghanistan](http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/img/features/latuff/img/74.jpg)
“Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger
[watch] US Soldiers Find Themselves Being Terrorists in Afghanistan
Smoke Screen (US burn pits in Afghanistan)
In Afghanistan, the U.S. military disposes of garbage—computers, motorbikes, TVs, shoes, even human feces—in open burn pits. Are toxic clouds from these sites making everyone sick?
Shopkeepers close their doors when U.S. troops patrol Bagram Village just outside the American base of the same name.
Their shelves hold Army pants, boots and knives sold to them, they say, by Afghans working on the base, gifts to them from American soldiers but more likely stolen. Either way, soldiers confiscate these items on sight. The shopkeepers sit in the shade watching traffic inch past, motorcycles weaving between cars. They hear the saws and hammers from nearby construction. They watch steam rise from restaurant kitchens.
Sipping tea, the shopkeepers wait for my questions while keeping a wary eye on the passing soldiers. What is it like living so close to an American base? I want to know. I expect them to grumble about the soldiers searching their shops. Instead, they tell me about a strange odor they say comes from the base. It smells of plastic.
****
The odor, the Afghans said, comes from a burn pit, a huge open dump site used on U.S. bases to consume mountains of trash, unleashing harmful chemicals. Burning plastic, for instance, releases carcinogenic substances that may increase the risk of heart disease and respiratory ailments, cause rashes and damage the nervous system.
Computers, television sets and mobile phones release cadmium, lead, and mercury, which can also damage the nervous system and the kidneys.
As of last year, the United States Central Command estimates that there were 114 open burn pits in Afghanistan. According to a public information officer at Bagram Airbase who asked not to be identified, there were twenty-two burn pits in Iraq as of 2010. Used since the beginning of both wars, burn pits have consumed metals, Styrofoam, human waste, electronics and even, in some cases, vehicles and body parts. Diesel and jet fuel keep the pits burning, adding their own mix of dangerous elements.
There are more than 100,000 troops currently deployed in Afghanistan—and thousands more private contractors—and the Department of Defense estimates that each soldier and contractor generates about ten pounds of solid waste per day.
Military officials declined to comment on the decision to use open burn pits, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency bans open pit burning of materials that discharge toxic chemicals and whose smoke can contribute to the risk of cancer, asthma and reproductive problems. The EPA also prohibits open pit burning grass and leaves, food and petroleum products such as plastic, rubber and asphalt.
450 Bases and it's Not Over Yet: The Pentagon’s Plans for Prisons, Drones, and Black Ops in Afghanistan
Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible. U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012.
FBI removes Mullah Omar's name from list of most wanted terrorists.
“So there is no question of him being removed from our list,” said a spokesman for FBI, which maintains a list of most wanted terrorists responsible for attacks inside the US.
'Afghan civilians killed for no reason'
Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:50PM GMT - Tahir Safi, an advisor to Karzai, told reporters on Saturday that one child, who had climbed a tree on December 13, was among the 21 civilians killed by US-led forces.
“Our delegation found that a child who went up a tree to collect leaves for sheep was killed in the bombing by the NATO chopper without any pre-coordination with the Kandahar administration,” Safi said.
“The child’s father rushed to the bombing site with other family members as another chopper of the international forces dropped other bombs,” he added.
The adviser said the child’s father, Abdul Rahim, along with his four relatives, had all died immediately, while his daughter was injured. Three other children from the same village also died.
Three civilians, who were carrying a water-pump on a motorbike, were also killed in another US-led attack in Kandahar on the same day.
US forces kill pregnant Afghan woman
(if this was done by Taliban or someone else it would have been the headlines for weeks like the rape victim, but no. Since the US had done it, no one even cares! )
USTwin attacks in Afghanistan against Shiites not homegrown, say Afghans
Our Unity will not be threatened by the plots of Enemies. This is NOT Iraq this is AFGHANISTAN.
Afghanistan have not witnessed such acts/bombings between shiites and sunni’s through out history. “While there has been some tension between the Hazaras/shias and other ethnic groups in Afghanistan today, they have lived in relative harmony and incidents of sectarian violence have been extremely rare.” This only shows this is the work of external source trying to raise conflicts between the Sunni’s and shiites of Afghanistan. People who don’t want peace in Afghanistan.
“This attack is not the work of those Taliban who ruled Afghanistan in the past. Even during that time every sect had their freedom to celebrate their holidays. I would say this is the act of those intelligence circles and spies of Pakistan who are trying to start a new phase of Sunni and Shiite tension in the country,” says Mohammad Hassan Walasmal, an independent political analyst in Kabul.”
Mr. Walasmal needs to add something that pakistani government and American security companies who did many such attacks in pakistan by the name of “Taliban” are very well experienced. There is no doubt that such proxy attacks are dony by pakistanis in pakistan but this attack is more likely done by security companies by the order of CIA as this attack means alot.
First pakistan did not participated in Bonn conference so this attack will show their intentions to world, secondly this attack will increase sectarian violence which hopefully will not effect Afghanistan’s Unity and lastly it will help Americans to show to world that they are for a “good cause” in Afghanistan.
Afghans Allegedly Forced Onto Mined Roads
October 20, 2011, by Quil Lawrence.
Villagers from a violent part of southern Afghanistan say that Afghan troops, along with several American mentors, forced civilians to march ahead of soldiers on roads where the Taliban were believed to have planted bombs and landmines.
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