VICE: "What Winning Looks Like" Afghan security forces documentary

Paul Szoldra ‏@PaulSzoldra 10s
Corrupt Afghan government angered by @nytimes report on corrupt Afghan government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/w...xpulsion-of-new-york-times-correspondent.html

Afghanistan Orders Expulsion of New York Times Correspondent

The attorney general of Afghanistan on Wednesday ordered the expulsion of an American correspondent for The New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg, and banned him from re-entering the country.

The action, the first public expulsion of a Western journalist since the Taliban regime, came less than a day after the office of the attorney general, Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, issued an order prohibiting Mr. Rosenberg from leaving the country while he was under investigation.

Both orders related to an article written by Mr. Rosenberg that was published Tuesday by The Times. It said that high-ranking government officials were discussing forming an interim government as a possible resolution to the country’s current electoral crisis — an action that would effectively amount to a coup.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/w...xpulsion-of-new-york-times-correspondent.html

https://twitter.com/MRosenbergNYT

The War You Don't See

From John Pilger, one year ago

John Pilger's 'The War You Don't See' (2011) is a powerful and timely investigation into the media's role in war, tracing the history of 'embedded' and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?

John Pilger says in the film: "We journalists... have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country... That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home... In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us... Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power."

vimeo.com/67739294

Up to 2,100 Photos of US Soldiers Abusing Prisoners May Soon Be Released | VICE News

Would the release of 10-year-old detainee abuse photographs, such as one depicting US soldiers pointing a broom handle at a hooded detainee's rectum, incite terrorist organizations and threaten national security?

That's a question government attorneys will have to answer next week when they explain to a federal court judge why as many as 2,100 unclassified photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqi and Afghan captives should continue to be concealed from the public.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case, which resurfaced last week, is part of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) long-running lawsuit against the US government to obtain documents about the treatment of detainees in custody of the CIA and military.

Last week, US District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein scheduled a hearing on the matter for September 8 and said he would allow the government to submit additional evidence to justify the withholding of the pictures before he renders a decision. But he also signaled that he may ultimately order the Department of Defense to release the abuse photographs, stating in a 21-page ruling that the government did not submit evidence to back up its 2012 claims that releasing the photographs would endanger national security and the lives of US military personnel.

"The government has failed to submit to this Court evidence supporting the Secretary of Defense's determination that there is a risk of harm," Hellerstein said, "and evidence that the Secretary of Defense considered whether each photograph could be safely released."

Continued here:
https://news.vice.com/article/up-to...ldiers-abusing-prisoners-may-soon-be-released

Graphic images of war are hard to stomach — but some say they're necessary | Public Radio International

For those in news media, the decision of whether or not to publish graphic images of war is fraught with ethical dilemmas.

For some, the answer is clear: Don’t expose your audience to gruesome, unsettling imagery, especially when they are unprepared. But for others — like journalist Peter Maass — it’s not so simple.

“This stuff is ghastly, it's terrible,” he says. “But unless you are confronted with it, I believe, you can't get to the depths of it, and you can't kind of reach the level of understanding and, perhaps, revulsion that one should.”

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-11/graphic-images-war-are-hard-stomach-some-say-theyre-necessary

How the Iraq War Launched the Modern Era of Political BS | Mother Jones

Factual divides over whether Iraq had WMD, and whether Saddam was working with Osama, set the stage for today's battles over reality.

By Chris Mooney, June 25, 2014

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/iraq-war-wmds-saddam-political-unreason

Historic, anxious handover as Afghanistan swears in new leader | Reuters

Afghanistan inaugurates its first new president in a decade on Monday, swearing in technocrat Ashraf Ghani to head a power-sharing government just as the withdrawal of most foreign troops presents a crucial test.

The first democratic handover of power in Afghanistan's history has been far from smooth: the deal for a unity government was cobbled together only after months of deadlock over a vote in which both Ghani and opponent Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory.

The inauguration marks the end of an era with the departure of President Hamid Karzai, the only leader Afghans have known since a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 overthrew the Islamist Taliban that had given sanctuary to al Qaeda.

Continued here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/28/us-afghanistan-politics-idUSKCN0HN0XA20140928

Extremely interesting article, thanks!

$7 Billion US Eradication Effort Delivers Record High Poppy Crop in Afghanistan | Common Dreams

Federal watchdog report "calls into question" US efforts to stamp out opium production

http://commondreams.org/news/2014/1...t-delivers-record-high-poppy-crop-afghanistan

Everyone is after the opium, and the US is no different, its a multi-billion dollar industry to keep the shit flowing into countries, and stuff like that keeps the arms manufacturers, drug dealers, and law-enforcement dudes happy too. Conflicts mean big bucks for all concerned, fuck the populations that suffer because of it, hey, there's kids in South America going to bed without coke.
fkfkfkfkfkfkfkfk.

Last U.S. Marines, British combat forces end Afghan operations, prepare withdrawal | Reuters

The last U.S. Marines unit and final British combat troops in Afghanistan officially ended their operations on Sunday as they packed up to leave the country and transferred a massive military base to the Afghan military.

The American and British flags were lowered and folded up for the final time at the regional headquarters of the international military, 13 years after the toppling of the Taliban’s radical Islamist regime launched America's longest war.

The timing of the troops’ withdrawal from the base in the strategic province of Helmand was not released for security reasons.

Camp Leatherneck is the largest U.S. base to be handed over to Afghan control as the coalition ends its combat mission at the end of the year, leaving most of the fight against a resilient Taliban insurgency to Afghan army and police.

British forces transferred the adjacent Camp Bastion at the same time.

Once a teeming compound of some 40,000 personnel, the coalition's Regional Command (Southwest) combined base on Sunday resembled a dust-swept, well-fortified ghost town.

Concrete blast walls and razor wire were left guarding empty sand lots and barracks. Offices were bare, and bulletin boards stripped of photo tributes of fallen American troops.

"It’s empty now – when I got here, it was still bustling, so there were a lot of services around and people around," said Marine Capt. Ryan Steenberge, whose taskforce was overseeing surveillance and security for the withdrawal and will be among the last troops out.

"It’s weird to see different pieces pull away."

The most recent official estimate of combined international troops at the base was 4,500 – and those last few will be gone soon, officials said.

After the withdrawal, the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps will be headquartered at the 6,500-acre base, leaving almost no foreign military presence in Helmand.

The province, which produces 80-90 percent of the opium that helps finance the Taliban’s insurgency, has seen fierce fighting this year, with Taliban and allied forces seeking to seize the district of Sangin from Afghan army and police.

The battles have raised concerns about whether Afghan forces are truly able to hold off the Taliban without intelligence and air support from the United States and its allies.

Continued here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/26/us-afghanistan-troopwithdrawal-idUSKBN0IF06I20141026

Why We Lost: Retired U.S. General Calls for Public Inquiry into Failures of Iraq, Afghan Wars



An American General Explains How We Lost In Iraq And Afghanistan | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

America has been at war ever since 9/11 – thirteen years and counting, longer than World Wars I and II combined. American soldiers are returning to Iraq to fight the Islamic State after it appeared they had left for good. Will we also have to reverse course in Afghanistan, where soldiers are scheduled to depart by year-end? Are we winning, losing or something in between? Or have we already lost? That’s the argument in a new book from a retired three-star general – who accepts personal responsibility for the outcome. This hour, On Point: taking stock of our Global War on Terrorism.

<snipped>

Read An Excerpt Of “Why We Lost” By Daniel Bolger

Why We Lost by Daniel Bolger

I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry.

We should have known this one was going to go bad when we couldn’t even settle on a name. In the wake of the horrific al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, we tried out various labels. The guys in the Pentagon basement at first offered Operation Infinite Justice, which sounded fine, both almighty and righteous. Then various handwringers noted that it might upset the Muslims. These were presumably different kinds of followers of Islam than the nineteen zealots who had just slaughtered thousands of our fellow citizens. Well, better incoherent than insensitive, I guess.

So we settled on Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Our efforts in Afghanistan certainly lived up to the “enduring” part, dragging out longer than the ten-year Trojan War as we desperately tried to impose “freedom” on surly Pashtuns. The big guys in Washington then riffed off that OEF theme. We embarked on OEF-CCA (Caribbean and Central America), OEF-HOA (Horn of Africa, run out of Djibouti), OEF-K (Kyrgyzstan), OEF-P (the Philippines), OEF-PG (Pankisi Gorge, in the Caucasus republic of Georgia), and OEF-TS (Trans-Sahara, in northern Africa), among others not publicly acknowledged. We even found time, and nomenclature, for loosely related campaigns. One was the 2011 imbroglio in Libya known at the outset as Operation Odyssey Dawn, a good name for a Las Vegas pole dancer but a bit exotic for a military campaign. Cooler heads at NATO headquarters quickly substituted the boring but less provocative Unified Protector. We are a long way from Korean War operations like Killer and Ripper. You didn’t have to guess what those names meant.

Still, that Enduring Freedom idea reflected the preferred brand. Few could have been much surprised when, in 2003, the next major campaign in the ill-named war drew the title Operation Iraqi Freedom. As in World War II, the Iraq intervention was seen, rightly, as yet another theater in what the military formally called the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Like many veterans, I earned campaign ribbons with that designation.

Other names were tried for the parts or the whole of the conflict. These included the Long War (true enough), the Afghan War, the Iraq War, the 9/11 War, the War on Terrorism (minus the Global), the War on Terror (minus the -ism), and — a real bureaucratic gem — the Overseas Contingency Operation. That inane euphemism arose as a result of a related phrase, the “man-caused disaster” on 9/11. Not one title for this war identified the enemy: anti-Western Islamists and the ramshackle, quasi-fascist Middle East states that enabled them.

So instead we waged a Global War on Terrorism against enemies referred to vaguely as terrorists, cowards, evildoers, and extremists. Although those descriptions were rather generic, somehow we always ended up going after the same old bunch of Islamists and their ilk. Our opponents had no illusions about who our targets were, even if some of us did. This GWOT sputtered along for years, with me in it, along with many others much more capable, brave, and distinguished.

I was never the overall commander in either Afghanistan or Iraq. You’d find me lower down on the food chain, but high enough. I commanded a one-star advisory team in Iraq in 2005 – 06, an Army division (about twenty thousand soldiers) in Baghdad in 2009 – 10, and a three-star advisory organization in Afghanistan in 2011 – 13. I was present when key decisions were made, delayed, or avoided. I made, delayed, or avoided a few myself. I got out on the ground a lot with small units as we patrolled and raided. Sometimes, I communed with the strategic-headquarters types in the morning and at sunset grubbed through a village with a rifle platoon. Now and then, Iraqi and Afghan insurgents tried to kill me. By the enemy’s hand, abetted by my ignorance, my arrogance, and the inexorable fortunes of war, I lost eighty men and women under my charge; more than three times that number were wounded. Those sad losses are, to borrow the words of Robert E. Lee on that awful third day at Gettysburg, all my fault.

This history does not purport to tell the whole story of the war. At best, it’s a start. A century hence, if our society still exists and still cares, much better chroniclers than I will still be laboring to render a complete account. All I can offer at this point is a study in what went right and what went wrong, colored — perhaps too much — by experience.

What went right involved the men and women who fought. Most of them were not Americans, as these wars among the people always feature a lot of locals helping the cause. Like our enemies, our regional comrades were almost all Muslims. In addition, both the Afghan and Iraq campaigns included partner countries, from old allies like Australia, Britain, and Canada to newer teammates like El Salvador, Korea, and Mongolia. All of that help meant a lot, and although we didn’t always appreciate it enough at the time, we can never forget those others and their sacrifices. But in the end, the outcome rode on the United States.

This look at the war focuses on us, the Americans. We didn’t start it, but once it began, we drove the pace and course of the conflict. At the tactical level — Army-speak for the realm of vicious firefights and night raids — the courage, discipline, and lethality of our Americans in uniform stand with anything accomplished in the Civil War, both world wars, Korea, or Vietnam. That all went very right.

What went wrong squandered the bravery, sweat, and blood of these fine Americans. Our primary failing in the war involved generalship. If you prefer the war-college lexicon, we — guys like me — demonstrated poor strategic and operational leadership. For soldiers, strategy and operational art translate to “the big picture” (your goal) and “the plan” (how you get there). We got both wrong, the latter more than the former. Some might blame the elected and appointed civilian leaders. There’s enough fault to go around, and in this telling, the suits will get their share. But I know better, and so do the rest of the generals. We have been trained and educated all our lives on how to fight and win. This was our war to lose, and we did.

We should have known better. In the military schools, like West Point, Fort Leavenworth, Quantico, and Carlisle Barracks, soldiers study the work of the great thinkers who have wrestled with winning wars across the ages. Along with Thucydides, Julius Caesar, and Carl von Clausewitz, the instructors introduce the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and theorist who penned his poetic, elliptical, sometimes cryptic Art of War some twenty-three centuries ago. Master Sun put it simply: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” We failed on both counts. I know I sure did. As generals, we did not know our enemy — never pinned him down, never focused our efforts, and got all too good at making new opponents before we’d handled the old ones.

We then added to our troubles by misusing the U.S. Armed Forces, which are designed, manned, and equipped for short, decisive, conventional conflict. Instead, certain of our tremendously able, disciplined troops, buoyed by dazzling early victories, we backed into not one but two long, indecisive counterinsurgent struggles ill suited to the nature of our forces. Time after time, despite the fact that I and my fellow generals saw it wasn’t working, we failed to reconsider our basic assumptions. We failed to question our flawed understanding of our foe or ourselves. We simply asked for more time. Given enough months, then years, then decades — always just a few more, please — we trusted that our great men and women would pull it out. In the end, all the courage and skill in the world could not overcome ignorance and arrogance. As a general, I got it wrong. And I did so in the company of my peers.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/11/13/lost-iraq-afghanistan-army-general

http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Lost-Generals-Afghanistan/dp/0544370481/

Dozens killed in Afghanistan fighting as foreign troops head home | Reuters

The Afghan Taliban killed a Supreme Court official, a dozen mine clearers and several national and foreign soldiers but also suffered heavy losses from intensifying violence ahead of the withdrawal of most international troops in the next two weeks.

In Kabul on Saturday, a bomb ripped through a bus carrying soldiers in Kabul, killing at least seven of them, mangling the vehicle and sending a column of black smoke over the capital.

"A suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives at the door of a bus carrying army soldiers," said Hashmat Stanekzai, a spokesman for Kabul police chief.

Earlier gunmen shot dead senior Supreme Court official Atiqullah Raoufi as he left his home in the city.

The Taliban, ousted from power by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, claimed responsibility, but did not say why it had killed him. The hardline Islamist insurgents run their own courts in parts of the country and consider the official judiciary to be corrupt.

Heavily fortified Kabul has seen multiple attacks in recent weeks, including several on army buses and a suicide bomb that killed a German citizen in a French cultural center during a performance of a play that denounced suicide attacks.

Fatalities and injuries among Afghan security forces and civilians peaked this year to the highest point since the U.S.-led war began in 2001, as foreign forces rapidly withdrew most of their troops from the interior of mountainous nation.

About 5,000 Afghan police and soldiers have been killed, and more than 1,500 civilians were killed in the first half of the year. A rump of about 13,000 foreign soldiers will remain in Afghanistan next year, down from a peak of more than 130,000.

Continued here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/13/us-afghanistan-violence-idUSKBN0JR0CD20141213

Trevor Timm @trevortimm · 3 minutes ago
Afghanistan War "formally ends," except there will still be 11,000 US troops there, and they'll still be fighting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/28/afghanistan-war-ends_n_6386602.html

$1 Billion Later, It's Unclear If U.S. Cash Is Really Helping Afghan Women

An audit says it’s too hard to know if American money is having an impact.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/1-billion-later-its-unclear-if-us-cash-is-really-helping-afg

And now this, from the New York Times:

U.S. Is Escalating a Secretive War in Afghanistan

Data From Seized Computer Fuels a Surge in U.S. Raids on Al Qaeda

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/w...er-fuels-a-surge-in-us-raids-on-al-qaeda.html

Our Condolences: How the U.S. Paid For Death and Damage in Afghanistan

By Cora Currier, The Intercept

An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy’s legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was “blown up by mistake”: $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter “shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows”: $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.

A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.

These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the payments are for mundane incidents such as traffic accidents or property damage, while others, in flat bureaucratic language, tell of “death of his wife and 2 minor daughters,” “injuries to son’s head, arms, and legs,” “death of husband,” father, uncle, niece.

The databases are incomplete, reflecting fragmented record keeping in Afghanistan, particularly on the issue of harm to civilians. The payments The Intercept has analyzed and presented in the graphic accompanying this story are not a complete accounting, but they do offer a small window into the thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies that take place during more than a decade of war.

Continued here:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/27/payments-civilians-afghanistan/

The Justice Department Just Declared That the War in Afghanistan Is Not Over

By Jason Leopold, VICE News, April 25, 2015

The war in Afghanistan is not ending, US government attorneys said in court documents unsealed Friday, undercutting statements President Barack Obama made last December and in his State of the Union address a few weeks later when he formally declared that "the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion."

But Obama didn't really mean that the war was over, the government now argues.

"Simply put, the President's statements signify a transition in United States military operations, not a cessation …" Andrew Warden, a Justice Department attorney, wrote. "Although the United States has ended its combat mission in Afghanistan, the fighting there certainly has not stopped."

Warden made the argument in a 34-page motion (viewable below as a PDF) filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia in response to a legal challenge by Guantanamo detainee Mukhtar Yahi Naji al-Warafi. The detainee asked a federal court to grant his writ of habeas corpus and set him free because Obama said the war in Afghanistan is over and the legal authorization the US has relied upon to hold him for the past 13 years is no longer valid.

"The government's position is incoherent," David Remes, al-Warafi's Washington, DC-based attorney, told VICE News. "The president says the war is over. The brief says the war isn't over and will never be over. And the government says they are being consistent with what the president said. They are twisting the president's own words. Obama was clearly making the point that the war was over, that hostilities have ended."

Continued here:
https://news.vice.com/article/the-j...lared-that-the-war-in-afghanistan-is-not-over

Afghanistan Is Home to 400,000 Football Fields Worth of Opium

By Lucy Westcott, Newsweek, May 11, 2015

Afghanistan has the equivalent of 400,000 football fields of opium fields, despite significant efforts and money spent by the United States on curbing the development of the country’s drug supply.

The country’s enormous drug reserve is one of several issues holding back the U.S.’s Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, according to John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. Sopko made the comments last week at a speech at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

The U.S. isn’t winning the war on drugs in Afghanistan or domestically, said Sopko.

“Many of you here today are no doubt painfully familiar with the human consequences of those dual failures,” said Sopko.

The United Nations estimates Afghan opium cultivation increased by 7 percent last year and accounts for 90 percent of the world’s supply. Both the U.N. and U.S. say Afghanistan has around 500,000 acres, or 780 square miles, of opium-growing land, which is the same as 400,000 football fields, including the end zones.

“This enormous acreage devoted to opium feeds a huge tragedy-fostering heroin addiction and crime around the world, including here — as well as a strategic threat. Taxes on opium are a major revenue source for Afghan insurgents and a powerful prod to corruption among Afghan officials,” said Sopko.

The rising level of opium production continues despite an $8.4 billion investment in counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan. Last year, the U.S. managed to reduce poppy-cultivation by only 1 percent, said Sopko.

Since 2002, the U.S. has spent more than $110 billion on Afghanistan’s reconstruction, which, adjusted for inflation, is worth more than the entire Marshall Plan after World War II. Billions more dollars have been pledged. While there are some positives, like more schools, lower rates of maternal and infant mortality, and the construction of roads, power stations and irrigation facilities, the list of problems is numerous, said Sopko.

“SIGAR professionals have documented details of U.S.-funded clinics that lack staff or medicines, schools that can collapse on their occupants because of shoddy construction, contracts that weren't performed properly or at all, aircraft that the Afghans can't fly or even maintain, troop rosters that can't be verified, cash assistance that can't be traced, and many other outrages,” he said.

Source:
http://www.newsweek.com/afghanistan-home-400000-football-fields-worth-opium-330828

In 1989, the Soviet withdrew from Afghanistan after a 9 years occupation, having suffered a humiliating failure to quell the Mujahideen uprising, Muslim fundamentalism and opium production. They had over 100 000 men under arms there, and a long common border giving a short supply rout. Also, the Soviets did not rely on outside allies, and had limited qualms about spending human lives.

The US-lead allied forces is about half the size of the Soviet force and are a hodgepodge of troops from several countries. They have a long and difficult supply rout, and are plagued by lack of popular support in their democratic home countries. Due to the lacking popularity, they are sensitive to losses and civilian causalities which hamstring their operations.

In the mean time, the Afghanis have raised several generations of young people who have known nothing but war and are thought to hate foreigners with a vengeance. They may be starving and under-educated, but they may possibly be the best mountain guerillas in the world.

How did anyone imagine the war in Afghanistan could be won by an outside force?

Afghanistan's Billion Dollar Drug War



Published by Al Jazeera English on May 6, 2015

It is the frontline of the war on drugs - and it is a battle authorities are losing.

Afghanistan's poppy fields, which feed the habits of drug addicts worldwide, are thriving, with cultivation of the crop hitting record highs last year.

With NATO troops pulling out and local law enforcement agencies ill-equipped and underfunded, production looks set to increase even further.

The number of Afghan addicts is soaring and with the Taliban funded by the drug trade, security fears are paramount.

101 East travels to fields where poppies grow and meets the local officers responsible for stemming the flow of drugs to the world.

Witness: Dozens, including foreigners, held at Afghan hotel | Associated Press

An eyewitness says several dozen people, including foreigners, are held at a besieged Afghan guesthouse.

The witnesses spoke to The Associated Press just before an explosion and more gunfire at Kabul's Park Palace Hotel. Gunmen stormed the hotel Wednesday night.

Amin Habi, a U.S. citizen from Los Angeles, told the AP that a party was going on at the hotel to honor a Canadian. He says as many as 40 people, including foreigners, could still be inside the hotel.

India's ambassador to Afghanistan previously told the AP that at least six Indian citizens were inside.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, though the Taliban have attacked guesthouses before in Kabul.

Source:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c376...attack-government-compound-afghanistan-kill-7

The Associated Press @AP · 6 minutes ago
BREAKING: Eyewitness says several dozen, including foreigners, likely held at besieged Afghan guesthouse.

Christopher Hayes ‏@chrislhayes 3 hours ago
Father of four US servicemen confronts @SenTomCotton

Watchdog Tries to Verify Coordinates of Afghan Health Clinics; Gets a Surprise

By Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept

When the official watchdog overseeing U.S. spending on Afghanistan asked the U.S. Agency for International Development recently for details about the 641 health clinics it funds there, the agency readily provided a list of geospatial coordinates for them.

But when the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) went looking for the $210 million worth of clinics, the majority of them weren’t there.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...inates-afghan-health-clinics-hilarity-ensues/

This might be a bit wrong topic for my rant, but hey ho move it if you will. I was myself "hired"(Only one available) by $cn to handle Marketing and Promotion Hat. I think I was the director, fuck do I remember. What I found about PR in Scientology by reading the hat stuff was similar to the claims on this documentary. Everything can be presented and should be presented in light which makes Scientology look favourable and opposers not so.

I recall the countless photography sessions in the Ldn Org where the rooms were filled with staff(there was no-one else) and everybody dressed up, smiled etc just to make photos which would illustrate blooming and happy orgs. I did marketing and promotion courses in St Hill and the shit was even more present there. And people bought it. The same people who were part of creating the illusion, bought the scam of it. That also got me thinking whilst part of the cult, that if it represents everything in a different light than actuality then they essentially must be liars, which I also found out is true.

Taliban Kills 4 Security Officials, Frees More Than 350 Prisoners In Afghan Jailbreak

Four security officials have died and more than 350 prisoners have escaped after Taliban militants stormed a jail in Ghazni, Afghanistan early Monday morning.

Ghazni’s deputy provincial governor, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, said one of the militants carried out a suicide bombing at the gates of the prison complex, allowing gunmen to force their way in and open jail cells. The militants were wearing uniforms, and appeared to be well organized, Ahmadi added, according to the BBC.

Continued here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/franciswhit...-security-officials-frees-more-than-350-priso

U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies | The New York Times

Quote:

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

“The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),” Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

In Sergeant Martland’s case, the Army said it could not comment because of the Privacy Act.

When asked about American military policy, the spokesman for the American command in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, wrote in an email: “Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law.” He added that “there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it.” An exception, he said, is when rape is being used as a weapon of war.

The American policy of nonintervention is intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also reflects a reluctance to impose cultural values in a country where pederasty is rife, particularly among powerful men, for whom being surrounded by young teenagers can be a mark of social status.

Some soldiers believed that the policy made sense, even if they were personally distressed at the sexual predation they witnessed or heard about.

“The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.”

Continued here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/w...ld-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

There's a related thread here:

Abby Martin - The Empire Files - The Rise of History's Biggest Empire

https://whyweprotest.net/threads/ab...s-the-rise-of-historys-biggest-empire.130168/

I'll duplicate the most relevant post in that thread:

The Empire Files - 9/11 and the Belligerent Empire



Published by teleSUR English on September 11, 2015

In September 11th's episode of The Empire Files on TeleSUR, Abby Martin examines the two major wars launched under the "Global War on Terror"--their historical development and their aftermath. Featuring former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, this episode digs into the tragedy of a region shaped by Empire.

teleSUR
http://www.telesurtv.net/english

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...s-killed-at-night-we-can-hear-them-screaming/

There's a new thread here:

Doctors Without Borders Condemns Airstrikes On Afghanistan Hospital

https://whyweprotest.net/threads/do...pital-us-defense-secretary-promises-p.130338/

Breaking The Real Reason For Obama's Delay In Afghanistan Withdrawal



Published by WeAreChange on October 15, 2015

In this video Luke Rudkowski covers the breaking news of Obama delaying the drawdown in Afghanistan. obama has just given a speech saying he will continue military operations in Afghanistan. You need to watch this video to understand the real reason why this is happening.

We live in one huge lie.

The Resurgence of the Taliban (Trailer)



Published by VICE News on November 2, 2015

In late September, the Taliban launched an offensive against Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan, capturing key buildings and freeing hundreds of prisoners from the city’s jail.

The offensive sparked a fierce battle between the militants and government forces, supported by US airstrikes. After several days of fighting, Afghan troops recaptured the city, and took down the Taliban's flag from the central square.

American planes targeted Taliban positions, but at the beginning of October, a hospital run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) was hit, killing 22 hospital staff and patients, with many seriously injured. The Pentagon later admitted that the strike was a mistake.

Gaining exclusive access to the Taliban, VICE News filmmaker Nagieb Khaja spoke to fighters that briefly took control of Kunduz — the first major city to fall to the group since it was ousted from power in 2001.

Watch "Robert Grenier: The VICE News Interview"
https://news.vice.com/video/robert-grenier-the-vice-news-interview

Read "Nurse Describes 'Unspeakable' Horror as Bombs Hit Doctors Without Borders Hospital"
https://news.vice.com/article/nurse...as-bombs-hit-doctors-without-borders-hospital

There's a related thread here:

https://whyweprotest.net/threads/do...pital-us-defense-secretary-promises-p.130338/

The War in Afghanistan Has Turned a Generation of Children Into Heroin Addicts

By Michaela Whitton, The Anti-Media, May 9, 2016

Quote:

One of the many catastrophic legacies left behind by the longest war in U.S. history is that Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium. As with most parts of the world, the most vulnerable pay the heaviest price of war, and the country has faced a harrowing escalation in the number of child heroin addicts.

“What’s happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that is really without any parallel in history,” Kabul-based journalist Matthieu Aikins told Democracy Now back in 2014.

Adding that all levels of Afghan society are involved in the flourishing trade — which became undeniably worse after the U.S.-led invasion — Aikins accused both the Taliban and government-linked officials of profiting from the crisis. He claimed the U.S., in its quest for vengeance against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, not only cooperated with warlords but ignored corruption by criminals whose human rights abuses created the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.

As a result, Afghanistan now produces twice as much opium as it did in the year 2000, and the booming trade now accounts for 50% of the country’s GDP. Since the cartels began refining their poppy harvests into addictive and profitable heroin, the street price for “powder,” as it is known, is the cheapest in the world — and it costs less than food in the war-torn country.

Lost childhoods

The psychological damage of war, together with the flood of cheap heroin, has led to a doubling in addiction rates over the last five years. In the Channel 4 documentary, Unreported World, Ramita Naval explores a harrowing escalation in child addiction. In the ravaged country, where access to drug treatment is severely limited, she visits a rehabilitation centre where children as young four or five — haunted by horrors they have witnessed — attempt to regain lost childhoods.

The only treatment centre in Kabul to help children, it was originally set up to treat women. The 20-bed unit, which forces kids off the drugs by making them go cold turkey is, ironically, funded by the U.S. State Department. Naval is introduced to a number of very small children who are at varying stages of the 45-day treatment programme.

At one point, the reporter finds it hard to contain her dismay at being in a room full of drug-addicted children. One describes becoming addicted after taking the drug for toothache, while another became hooked after inhaling his father’s smoke. Doctor Latifa Hamidi said in the past two years she has seen a 60% increase in the number of child addicts at the centre. Claiming the future of the country is at stake, she added, “There is going to be a future generation of drug addicts that need help and aren’t going to be able to work.”

The problem is so severe among the child population that many are taking desperate measures to fund their habits. Naval spoke to a 13-year-old boy at a safe house who began using when his parents were killed by shelling. From the age of eight, he was paid by drug addicts to guard them while they smoked. Unsurprisingly, he then developed his own habit, which he funds with child prostitution. Many addicted children sell their bodies, as there are no jobs or work.

Fifteen-year-old Ali has been using heroin for the past two years. His mother is dead and his father fled to Iran. He smoked a gram of heroin, which cost £1, on camera as he explained how he became addicted.

The young boy’s trauma began when, after witnessing a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, he went to stay with relatives in the countryside. While he was there, U.S. forces bombed his village, killing dozens of people; he described seeing bodies scattered everywhere. The young boy and other villagers had to pick up the body parts and put them in plastic bags. Claiming the war breaks his heart — and making his descent into drug use more understandable — he said, “I’d rather not live, than live through this war.”

Continued here: http://theantimedia.org/afghanistan-child-heroin-addicts/

horrific and sad

Choreographed for the profit of psychopaths.

The Dogs of War

The Dogs of War page is dedicated to Alexey Mozgovoy - a defender of Russian Donbass

“War is the greatest injustice. We are not fighting the culprits. Those who pay, who incite, who use the media to make people turn against each other – this is who we should fight against.” – Alexey Mozgovoy, commander of the “Ghost” brigade, killed May 23, 2015

Paul Hardcastle - 19 - Official Music Video (1985)



Paul Hardcastle - Boys To War, 25th Anniversary Edition



"I have got to the point now where I just felt I had to do something. History keeps repeating itself and we are still sending Boys to War. After talking with the families of many of the victims of this conflict, I felt both encouraged and outraged about what is happening. History keeps repeating itself. The video highlights the terrible trauma of war, and shows explicitly the impact on families and loved ones."

Paul Hardcastle went on to say, "This is not your usual Pop video, and neither is it supposed to be. I am fed up with the politicians carrying on as if none of this matters. It does."

"The video brings together footage from Vietnam with footage of the current conflict in Afghanistan and shows clearly how the victims of war are going through the same thing all over again. Within the first fours hours of the screening and its release, the video was receiving thousands of hits from across the world, with the heaviest demand coming from America, and Germany."

"When I first put this video and track together I found it really haunting. History really is repeating itself."

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_(song)

Taliban use 'honey trap' boys to kill Afghan police

The Taliban are using child sex slaves to mount crippling insider attacks on police in southern Afghanistan, exploiting the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi" -- paedophilic boy play -- to infiltrate security ranks, multiple officials and survivors of such assaults told AFP.

The ancient custom is prevalent across Afghanistan, but nowhere does it seem as entrenched as in the province of Uruzgan, where "bacha bereesh" -- or boys without beards -- widely become objects of lustful attraction for powerful police commanders.

The Taliban over nearly two years have used them to mount a wave of Trojan Horse attacks -- at least six between January and April alone -- that have killed hundreds of policemen, according to security and judicial officials in the province.

"The Taliban are sending boys -- beautiful boys, handsome boys -- to penetrate checkpoints and kill, drug and poison policemen," said Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Lewanai, who was Uruzgan's police chief until he was removed in a security reshuffle in April amid worsening violence.

"They have figured out the biggest weakness of police forces -- bacha bazi," he told AFP.

The assaults, signifying abuse of children by both parties in the conflict, have left authorities rattled, with one senior provincial official who echoed Rogh Lewanai's view saying "it's easier tackling suicide bombers than bacha attackers".

The killings illustrate how bacha bazi is aggravating insecurity in Uruzgan, a remote province which officials warn is teetering on the brink of collapse, unravelling hard-won gains by US, Australian and Dutch troops who fought there for years.

"These bacha attacks have fuelled deep mistrust within police ranks," Seddiqullah, a police commander at a checkpoint near the provincial capital Tarin Kot, told AFP.

The insurgents are using boys as honey traps, said 21-year-old Matiullah, a policeman who was the only survivor from an insider attack in Dehrawud district in spring last year.

He said the attacker was the checkpoint commander's own sex slave, a teenager called Zabihullah. Late one night, he went on a shooting spree, killing seven policemen including the commander as they slept.

Continued here:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/taliban-honey-trap-boys-kill-afghan-police-034032649.html

Taliban use boy sex slaves to assassinate lusty officials: Insurgents exploit Afghan custom of 'paedophilic boy play' to kill hundreds of police officers with Trojan Horse attacks

• Taliban send boys to infiltrate checkpoints to shoot and poison policemen
• One boy used as honey trap was checkpoint commander's own sex slave
• He went on shooting spree, killing six police and commander as they slept
• Addiction for young 'boys without beards' is worse than opium, says judge
• Horrifying abuse at the hands of police makes children hungry for revenge

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...eds-police-officers-Trojan-Horse-attacks.html

The secret shame of Afghanistan's bacha bazi 'dancing boys' who are made to dress like little girls, then abused by paedophiles

• Bacha bazi, meaning 'boy play', is a tradition found across Afghanistan, where boys dress as women and perform
• But these boys, some as young as 10, are also sexually abused by the men - passed around after the parties
• The stigma of having been a 'bacha bereesh' sees the victims shunned by their families and society
• However, 'owning' more than one boy is seen as a display of both power and wealth among some Afghan war lords
• See full news coverage and stories from Afghanistan at www.dailymail.co.uk/afghanistan

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...tle-girls-make-skirts-abused-paedophiles.html

Well, well, at least the Taliban has found an effective way of making pederastry a lotr less appealing.

Blast kills at least 80 during peaceful protest in Kabul | The Washington Post

Quote:

At least 80 people were killed and more than 230 wounded Saturday when attackers detonated explosives amid a huge crowd of peaceful protesters in the Afghan capital, most of them from the country’s Shiite ethnic Hazara minority, Afghan officials said.

Spokesmen for the Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for the attack at a traffic circle jammed with demonstrators, according to Afghan media. The group’s media office said two Islamic State fighters detonated suicide belts among the crowd, in two separate bombings.

The death toll was the highest for any terrorist attack in the capital after more than a decade of fighting between Taliban militants and Afghan and NATO forces. If indeed carried out by the Islamic State, known as Daesh in Afghanistan, it would be the first major urban attack in the country by the radical Sunni Muslim terrorist group and could signal its first deliberate effort to target Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, which it views as infidel.

Hundreds of Hazaras have reportedly fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s troops in Syria against Sunni groups, including the Islamic State, in recent years, making Hazaras a likely target for the extremist group’s loyalists back in Afghanistan.

Until now, the Middle Eastern-based Islamic State has been active mainly in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. The domestic Taliban insurgency has carried out numerous bombings and other attacks in the capital over the past several years .

Until Saturday’s blast, the deadliest single attack in Kabul had been in December 2011, when about 70 people were killed in a suicide bombing near a mosque where Shiite mourners were observing Ashura, a day that marks killing of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussain and his followers in 680 A.D. A Pakistani militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. Bombings also took place in two other Afghan cities that day.

Continued here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...0df1e6-50d9-11e6-bf27-405106836f96_story.html