‘Dozens’ of candidates in the Afghan parliamentary elections represent a party linked to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
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thabet
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thabet
Funding Afghan lords of war:
Trucks carrying supplies to US troops allegedly pay the firms to ensure their safe passage in dangerous areas of Afghanistan.
The convoys are attacked if payments are not made, according to allegations in a US military document.
The congressional report follows a six-month investigation.
The document states that trucks carrying food, water, fuel, and ammunition may be supplying up to $4 million (£2.7m) per week to the firms.
A US congressional committee is expected to hear the evidence on the investigation from senior officials at the US Department of Defense later on Tuesday.
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mirelle
Wow. My tax dollars are supporting pretty much all the parties in the Afghan war. I’m thinking, let’s cut off the money flow, maybe it will be like a lack of oxygen.
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johnpi
In the Philippines, Female Muslim religious leaders oppose warlordism; assert their role in peace process.
Some 100 female Muslim religious leaders from all over the country declared their opposition to “warlordism” that has plagued Mindanao and the country as they asserted their participation in community affairs, especially the peace process in Mindanao. The Aleemat (Muslim women religious leaders) participating in the three-day Regional Conference on Women and Peace Advocates at the Waterfront Insular Hotel here said they have been registering their opposition to warlordism in a number of occasions all over Mindanao as they stressed Islam does not tolerate it.
….The outrage against warlordism in the country came about after the November 23 massacre in Sitio Masaly, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town in Maguindanao where 58 persons were killed, 32 of them journalists.
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johnpi
Opium, rape and the American way.
The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional.
The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality.
War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women.
War always empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons.
War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights.
War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of society.
And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger.
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shams
shorter Johnpi.
The enemy of your enemy is still a Reaver.
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thabet
Our Afghan allies:
General Dostum was a feared Uzbek militia leader who fought on both sides of Afghanistan’s brutal civil war. He is notorious for disciplining a thieving soldier by running him over in a tank and faced allegations – which he denies – his forces oversaw the suffocation of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners packed into steel shipping containers in 2001.
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thabet
At last, a relatively well-informed discussion on our role in Afghanistan begins in the media (the sellers of war to the public):
To “win” a war in Afghanistan requires that we know what winning might look like. Not the idealised picture imagined in distant western capitals, but an end state that would leave Afghanistan best equipped to deal itself with its own myriad internal challenges. This means a final burying of the rhetoric of “war on terror” and the idea that what happens in Afghanistan presents a serious security threat that challenges us in an existential way.
In other words, we’re simply fighting for one side in a regional, local, conflict; we’ve just picked one bunch of murderous rapists over a different bunch of murderous rapists:
Dostum reportedly is living in self-imposed exile in Turkey after he was charged with kidnapping and torturing a political rival last year. Dostum’s militia fighters also stand accused of war crimes for allegedly suffocating hundreds of Taliban prisoners in shipping containers.
Dostum and another warlord, Mohammad Mohaqiq, have declared public support for Karzai’s reelection bid. They did so after reportedly being promised control of several cabinet posts each in a future Karzai administration. That agreement is thought to be last in a series of deals between Karzai and Afghanistan’s notorious factional militia commanders.
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Dan
Dostum’s militia fighters also stand accused of war crimes for allegedly suffocating hundreds of Taliban prisoners in shipping containers.
I don’t see anything wrong with that, especially when some Muslims glorify so-called mujahideen who have no problem taking schools hostage, beheading captives and school girls, and throwing acid on the faces of women.
Nothing wrong with giving the Taliban a taste of their own medicine, along with those who blindly support them.
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johnpi
Bravely resisting the hegemonic human rights narrative…
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thabet
Just like all those people in Guantanamo are “terrorists”?
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Dan
No thabet, not all of the people in Guantanamo were terrorists. That was made clear many times.
But the fighters caught fighting on behalf of the Taliban in the 90′s, I have to be skeptical of them allegedly being innocent.
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thabet
I have to be skeptical of them allegedly being innocent
Again, no different to what is said about people in Guantanamo, who, I would add, are hardly like to be fluffy liberals only into painting and poetry.
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thabet
Shams al-Nahar is discussing. 
mirelle is discussing. 
thabet, 
Dan, 
johnpi, and 1 other are discussing. 
Shams al-Nahar 6:28 pm on September 20, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
dragon’s teeth.