published in Commondreams.org on April 6, 2009

The proposed new Afghan law requiring (among other things), women to have sex with their husbands on demand and not leave home unescorted, has shocked the West. But for women in Afghanistan whose rights have always been bargaining chips to be given or taken away for political gain, it comes as no surprise. Despite the rhetoric from the Bush Administration in 2001 that “to fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights …

Much attention has been paid to the numbers of US troops being killed in Afghanistan this year – surpassing the numbers killed in Iraq despite there being about a third as many troops in Afghanistan as in Iraq. But what of the Afghans killed?

The Taliban and the US/NATO forces were competing with one another this year for who could kill more civilians. Members of the Taliban use suicide bombers as weapons, while US/NATO forces use bombs, and in some cases, …

A suspected Afghan druglord went on trial this week in New York for attempting to smuggle tens of millions of dollars worth of heroin from Afghanistan into the US. Afghanistan is currently the world’s most prolific producer of heroin. Not coincidentally, Afghanistan’s drug trade has gone hand-in-hand with US policy in that country.

In the 1980s, the US backed and financed, along with its Saudi allies, a massive holy war on Afghan soil against the Soviet …

This morning I was a guest on a Grit TV with Laura Flanders, alongside a number of other Afghanistan experts – we were discussing the proposed increase in US troops in that country and Flanders (who, by the way, is one of my favorite radio/TV hosts!) asked the question, “Is this the right war?” as many Americans across the political spectrum often proclaim. I said what I’ve said publicly before: that a …

Guess what? It’s okay for Danish Christians to print racist anti-Muslim cartoons, but cartoons critical of well-documented US torture are “a disgrace” and require an apology. Mike Luckovich’s 22 June political cartoon in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (reprinted above) depicts an American torturer, giving lessons in “torture etiquette” to an Al Qaeda torturer. According to the newspaper’s public editor Angela Tuck, the cartoon resulted in a powerful “backlash,” …

About ten thousand ethnic Pashtuns were forced to leave their homes when Pakistani forces attacked the village of Miran Shah in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan. Over 100 have been killed, labeled “militants” by the press, although opposition parliamentarian Imran Khan described the operation …

No official response yet in the US on Friday’s Predator attacks in Pakistan, supposedly targeting Ayman al-Zawahri, that have instead killed 13-18 civilians (see yesterday’s post). This is the second such strike in two weeks. There is no evidence that al-Zawahri was even in the homes that were destroyed. The ISI or CIA is expected to do DNA testing to check, although one Pakistani intelligence official didn’t think it was a good idea. “What do you …

The CIA just bombed a village in Pakistan using one or more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), killing 17 civilians. Remember, UAVs are the weapons Colin Powell warned that Iraq was going to use against us. The only country that has ever used UAVs to kill people is the United States.

The purported goal of the assault was to kill Ayman al-Zawahri, supposedly al Qaeda’s “Number 2″ and …

Afghanistan’s Parliamentary Elections

Published in Foreign Policy In Focus on September 16, 2005

by Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls

The United States has supposedly created new “democracies” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these endeavors give democracy a bad name. Sure, the two countries have some ingredients of representative democracy, such as elected officials and a constitution. But both countries are still beset by grinding poverty, insurgencies, and entrenched militia forces that make the exercise of democracy either impractical or dangerous. Both countries …

The US media and government have said very little about what is probably the most dramatic and well-organized attack by jihadist terrorists since 9/11, the August 17 explosion of 459 bombs in a span of 30 minutes in Bangladesh.

The attacks were subtle (if that can be said of bombings), and very well-organized. The targets were government buildings and populated areas, but apparently the intention was not wanton destruction — only 2 people were killed and a couple hundred …