Afghans ‘dressed like Americans and pretending to speak English’ are engaged in acts of violence in Ghazni province, Afghanistan:
Troubling, I’m sure, but doesn’t sound quite as sophisticated as countergangs.
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thabet
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thabet
Aerial bombardment is an indiscriminate form of violence:
At least 87 refugees have been killed in an army air raid on a makeshift camp in north Yemen.
The camp at Adi in Harf Sufyan has been at the centre of fighting between government forces and Zaidi Shia fighters, which erupted in early August.
News Yemen, an independent website, aid on Thursday the raid hit the refugees while “they were sleeping under trees and plastic awnings.”
There’s talk of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, although one informed commentator says viewing this conflict in this way “does not help”.
(Side note: I was interested to discover Saudi had been at loggerheads with Oman and pre-UAE Abu Dhabi in the 1950s. Over oil, of course.)
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thabet
For better discussion, I recommend reading Registan and Abu Muqawama (who I was pleasantly surprised to read spent sometime living up the road from me in London). They’re two of the better ‘pro-interventionist’ blogs in the context of Western involvement in Afghanistan.
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thabet
Fighting in Yemen continues:
A Yemeni military source claims there were many casualties, although there is no independent confirmation.
The UNHCR, Al-Jazeera, and Juan Cole’s blog have a bit of a background on the people fighting against the Yemeni government.
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thabet
A news report on the insurgency in southern Thailand by ethnic Malay Muslims.
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The UN says the conflict in Darfur is over… ‘for now’ at least.
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thabet
The UK’s former chief scientist says the Iraq war will be seen by future historians* as the first of many 21st-century “resource wars”.
(*Only if people in The Future are going to be as fascinated with ‘history’ as we are today.)
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thabet
Ill-advised words and how the media works: Lyse Doucet is one of the BBC’s most experienced correspondents. Recently, she appeared at the Edinburgh International Television Conference to discuss the reporting of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. In the midst of trying to explain the complexity of the conflict and the difficulties in reporting in the region, she said the media needs to report on the “the humanity of the Taliban”.
I can understand what she was saying — put simply not everyone with a big beard and gun who is unhappy with foreign troops on their soil is ‘Taliban’. There was a need to inform readers, viewers and listeners of the complexities of the situation on the ground, which I suppose is difficult due to the nature of the conflict and the commercial, corporate and political pressures contemporary news media find themselves under.
Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone will bother to understand her point. All people will become fixated on are her poor choice of words: “the humanity of the Taliban”. It matters not she said what we call “Taliban” maybe “diverse” and not all are interested in fighting British troops. It matters not that there were early warning signs about the possibility of a full scale eruption in the country due to a badly managed reconstruction programme. It doesn’t matter that she mentioned the countless civilians who are dying due to Coalition actions (‘fairly’ or not), or that this was swept under the carpet when Prince Harry’s time in Afghanistan was being covered by the media. All that matters is that a BBC correspondent mentioned something about “the humanity of the Taliban”.
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thabet
While Defenders of Western Civilisation cry into their cornflakes over the pulping of a trash novel, a genuine threat has developed to free press and reporting the conflict in the Holy Land:
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thabet
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries found that people in 14 of them expressed the belief that their governments should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Respondents in three countries favoured taking the Palestinian side (not surprisingly these were Egypt, Iran, and Turkey). India remained divided. No country favoured taking Israel’s side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.
A majority of people in Muslim majority countries (Indonesia, Nigeria and Azerbaijan), rejected taking sides, as did the EU countries covered by the survey (Britain, France, Spain).
There was also significant support for the UN to be more involved through the use of peacekeepers.
(Via Glenn Greenwald, who also discusses what these sorts of views mean for American politics.)