Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for Afghanistan

Nato ends its war in Afghanistan as Taliban continues to grow

by

Event carried out in secret due to threat of Taliban strikes in Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated bombings.

Photo: EPA/CPL JANINE FABRE / ISAF

Photo: EPA/CPL JANINE FABRE / ISAF

by Al Jazeera

NATO has held a ceremony in Kabul formally ending its war in Afghanistan, officials said, after 13 years of conflict and gradual troop withdrawals that have left the country in the grip of worsening conflicts with armed groups.

The event was carried out on Sunday in secret due to the threat of Taliban strikes in the Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated suicide bombings and gun attacks over recent years.

On January 1, the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) combat mission will be replaced by a NATO “training and support” mission.

“Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an enduring partnership” between NATO and Afghanistan, US Army General John F Campbell told an audience of Afghan and international military officers and officials, as well as diplomats and journalists.

He paid tribute to the international and Afghan troops who have died fighting in the conflict saying: “The road before us remains challenging but we will triumph”.

The closing of NATO’s combat mission comes at the end of the country’s deadliest year during the war, which saw at least 4,600 Afghan soldiers and police killed and many other civilian deaths.

About 12,500 foreign troops staying in Afghanistan will not be involved in direct fighting, but will assist the Afghan army and police in the battle against the Taliban, who ruled from 1996 until 2001.

When numbers peaked in 2011, about 130,000 troops from 50 nations were part of the NATO military alliance.

‘Milestone for US’

Obama called the ceremony “a milestone for our country.”

“Now, thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” he said in a statement.

Obama thanked the troops and intelligence workers who served in Afghanistan, crediting them with “devastating the core al-Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives”.

“We are safer, and our nation is more secure, because of their service.”

But, Obama warned, “Afghanistan remains a dangerous place, and the Afghan people and their security forces continue to make tremendous sacrifices in defence of their country.”

Sunday’s ceremony completes the gradual handover of responsibility to the 350,000-strong Afghan forces, who have been in charge of nationwide security since the middle of last year.

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said that Afghans were very concerned with the complete pullout, citing a security vacuum and political instability as the main threats as heavy fighting rages across the country.

“The government has also failed to name a cabinet, so it is not just the lack of security that is a concern, but also political instability”.

Notes from the field: Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse reports from Kabul

There was a lot of mingling before the ceremony among Afghan officials, military officers, ambassadors, and diplomats from more than a dozen countries. It was a gathering befitting NATO’s largest and longest ever coalition.

In the blue and white gymnasium on ISAF’s main headquarters, a small brass military band played in the corner as US General Joseph Campbell rolled up the green flag emblazoned with ISAF for the International Security Assistance Force, he has commanded since August.

He unfurled a green flag with RS on it – the new colours as the military call them, of the NATO Resolute Support force that takes over on January 1.

The changeover marks the end of the 13-year long NATO combat mission. But about 5,500 US forces will remain in Afghanistan outside the NATO mission, carrying out counterterrorism operations.

In total, that puts about 17,000 international troops in Afghanistan in 2015.

The head of the Afghan Army, General Sher Mohammad Karimi says his forces will miss ISAF, and all the resources NATO offered. “ISAF had everything,” he told me. “We are limited. We do not have enough equipment to get rid of the IEDs [improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs] or equipment to give us early warning, but still we are doing better.”

But Afghan forces continue to take punishing losses with more than 4,600 killed this year, and thousands more wounded.

The speeches acknowledged the sacrifices made. Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar said, “We will never forget your sons and daughters who have died on our soil. They are now our sons and daughters. Afghan and Coalition personnel have spilled their blood to ensure a brighter future for our country and to bring peace to the world.”

No one here thinks peace will be easy. After 13 years and more than a trillion dollars spent in military and humanitarian support, Afghanistan is still in a perilous position.

It’s heavily dependent on foreign aid, and the Taliban and other groups that oppose the government continue to battle Afghan forces on a number of fronts.

The mood at the transition ceremony was one of deep camaraderie between allies who have come a long way, but recognise there is still a long way to go. Not necessarily a mission accomplished – more a mission continued.

Leaked internal CIA document admits U.S drone program "counterproductive"

by

Document published by Wikileaks reveals agency’s own internal review found key counter-terrorism strategy “may increase support” for the groups it targets

Wikileaks has released a 2009 internal CIA review of its clandestine "targeted killing" operations. (Image: Screenshot with overlay)

Wikileaks has released a 2009 internal CIA review of its clandestine “targeted killing” operations. (Image: Screenshot with overlay)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Wikileaks on Thursday has made public a never-before-seen internal review conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that looked at the agency’s drone and targeted assassination programs in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.

The agency’s own analysis, conducted in 2009, found that its clandestine drone and assassination program was likely to produce counterproductive outcomes, including strengthening the very “extremist groups” it was allegedly designed to destroy.

Here’s a link to the document, titled Best Practices in Counterinsurgency: Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Toolocument (pdf).

In one of the key findings contained in the CIA report, agency analysts warn of the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT).

“The potential negative effect of HLT operations,” the report states, “include increasing the level of insurgent support […], strengthening an armed group’s bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.”

Wikileaks points out that this internal prediction “has been proven right” in the years since the internal review was conducted near the outset of President Obama’s first term. And despite those internal warnings—which have been loudly shared by human rights and foreign policy experts critical of the CIA’s drone and assassination programs—Wikileaks also notes that after the internal review was prepared, “US drone strike killings rose to an all-time high.”

Reached by the Washington Post on Thursday for response, CIA spokesperson Kali J. Caldwell said the agency would not comment “on the authenticity or content of purported stolen intelligence documents.”

According to a statement released by Wikileaks:

The report discusses assassination operations (by various states) against the Taliban, al-Qa’ida, the FARC, Hizbullah, the PLO, HAMAS, Peru’s Shining Path, the Tamil’s LTTE, the IRA and Algeria’s FLN. Case studies are drawn from Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.

The assessment was prepared by the CIA’s Office of Transnational Issues (OTI). Its role is to provide “the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support”. The report is dated 7 July 2009, six months into Leon Panetta’s term as CIA chief, and not long after CIA analyst John Kiriakou blew the whistle on the torture of CIA detainees. Kiriakou is still in prison for shedding light on the CIA torture programme.

Following the politically embarrassing exposure of the CIA’s torture practices and the growing cost of keeping people in detention indefinitely, the Obama administration faced a crucial choice in its counter-insurgency strategy: should it kill, capture, or do something else entirely?

Given exclusive access to the CIA document ahead of its public release, theSydney Morning Herald’s Philip Dorling reported earlier on Thursday:

According to a leaked document by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, “high value targeting” (HVT) involving air strikes and special forces operations against insurgent leaders can be effective, but can also havenegative effects including increasing violence and greater popular support for extremist groups.

The leaked document is classified secret and “NoForn” (meaning not to be distributed to non-US nationals) and reviews attacks by the United States and other countries engaged in counter-insurgency operations over the past 50 years.

The CIA assessment is the first leaked secret intelligence document published by WikiLeaks since 2011. Led by Australian publisher Julian Assange, the anti-secrecy group says the CIA assessment is the first in what will be a new series of leaked documents relating to the US agency.

The 2009 CIA study lends support to critics of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by warning that such operations “may increase support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance insurgent leaders’ lore, if non-combatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent”.

Drone strikes have been a key element of the Obama administration’s attacks on Islamic extremist terrorist and insurgent groups in the Middle East and south Asia. Australia has directly supported these strikes through the electronic espionage operations of the US-Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Afghan retreat echoes of Vietnam defeat

by

US-soldier-Afghanistan

by Finian Cunningham, Press TV

It didn’t quite garner the same media highlight, but nevertheless there was the unmistakable comparison this week between the evacuation of American troops from southern Afghanistan and the Fall of Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1975.

Both events mark embarrassing retreats by a failing American empire whose hubris always manages to deny reality until the illusion of power finally comes crashing down.

This week thousands of US and British troops were hurriedly airlifted from the giant military base known as Camp Bastion in southern Helmand Province.

It was a huge logistical operation involving a fleet of transport planes and helicopters landing and taking off over a 24-hour period.

The scene of hasty imperial removal from Helmand reminded one of the classic photographs taken in 1975 by UPI photographer Hubert Van Es, which captured American Huey choppers lifting hundreds of desperate personnel from off the rooftop of the CIA headquarters in Saigon ahead of imminent defeat by Vietnamese insurgents.

This week in Helmand the evacuating troops were the last of the US-led NATO force that has occupied Afghanistan for the past 13 years. At its peak, there were 140,000 American troops in the country with the second biggest contingency being the British, along with soldiers from nearly 50 other nations.

Now Camp Bastion has been handed over to Afghan troops and police, who will take over the daunting task of maintaining security across the country against a deadly resurgence of Taliban militants.

Officially, the US-led international force is to wind down its operation in Afghanistan at the end of this year, but some 10,000 American military and CIA will remain in the country in a “support role” to national security forces under a deal signed between Washington and the new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Just like the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, in which thousands of American personnel were scrambled out the country ahead of the Vietnamese victory, the retreat from Afghanistan this week signals another humiliating defeat for the warmongers in Washington.

Not only a humiliating defeat, but the end of a long and bloody chronicle of futile war. Thirteen years ago, the Americans invaded Afghanistan allegedly to topple a fundamentalist Taliban regime and eradicate an international source of terrorism led by Saudi al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Tens of thousands of deaths later, plus trillions of dollars billed to the American taxpayers, the US troops are clearing out from a country that is left in worst shape. The American-installed government can barely maintain security in the capital, Kabul, never mind the surrounding regions. What’s more terrorism of the Al-Qaeda brand has spread internationally eliciting the deployment of even more American militarism abroad, and the ramping up of state security powers within the US and its NATO allies.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent not only in their southern heartlands, but have taken over large parts of the east, west and north of the country, where they previously had little presence. Schools and other civic administration in these areas are now reportedly run, not by the US-backed government in Kabul, but by the militants.

Cultivation of poppy for heroin production – a main source of finance for the Taliban warlords – has reached an all-time high with over 200,000 hectares under cultivation. Nearly half of all Afghan poppy is harvested in Helmand Province, where US President Obama launched his much-vaunted surge of 30,000 extra marines in 2009-2010. Despite Washington spending $7.6 billion to curb poppy production, Afghanistan has emerged as the world’s biggest source of heroin, while drug addiction in the US is reportedly soaring.

On security matters, between March and August this year, nearly 1,000 Afghan troops and 2,200 police officers were killed in militant attacks. That represents the worst casualty rate for local forces over the past 13 years.

With the last of the US-led foreign forces pulling out this week, there is an ominous sense of the security levee bursting across Afghanistan.

If anything, the prognosis for Afghanistan is a lot worse than it was for Iraq where US troops beat a similar hasty retreat three years ago.

By comparison, Afghanistan has a much more active insurgency raging even as the Americans are pulling out. Iraq has gone on to descend into chaos, so the portent for Afghanistan would seem a lot worse.

Reuters news agency reported the view of US Marine Staff Sergeant Kenneth Oswood, who participated in both the Iraq withdrawal and this week’s evacuation from Afghanistan. He said: “It’s a lot different this time. Closing out Iraq, when we got there, we were told there hadn’t been a shot fired in anger at us in years. And then you come here and they are still shooting at us.”

The US marine added: “It’s almost like it’s not over here, and we’re just kind of handing it over to someone else to fight.”

More like handing it over to someone else to do the dying.

The “exceptional” Americans in Washington like to refer to their foreign interventions as “nation building.” Like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, among dozens of other unfortunate countries to have hosted American “nation builders” over the past century, the people of these wretched lands have experienced Washington’s reverse Midas Touch. Far from turning to gold, everything Washington touches brings death and destruction.

And in the end when the American destroyers finally pack up and run, it is the people that remain who must pick up the pieces and actually begin the real process of national development. How easier it would be if Washington just kept its imperialist, predatory hands off others.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

UK troops leave Afghanistan after 13 years

by

British hand Camp Bastion base in Helmand to Afghan troops, in withdrawal that went unannounced due to security fears.

UK troops leave Afghanistan

by Al Jazeera

British troops have ended combat operations in Afghanistan as they and US troops handed over two huge adjacent bases to the Afghan military, 13 years after a US-led invasion to topple the Taliban.

The troops handed over to Afghan forces on Sunday at camps Bastion and Leatherneck, in the southwestern province of Helmand. The timing of their withdrawal had not been announced for security reasons.

Their departure on Sunday leaves Afghanistan and its newly installed president, Ashraf Ghani, to deal almost unaided with an emboldened Taliban after the last foreign combat troops withdraw by year-end.

Leatherneck and Bastion formed the international coalition’s regional headquarters for the southwest of Afghanistan, housing up to 40,000 military personnel and civilian contractors.

After Sunday’s withdrawal, the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps will be headquartered at the 28sq km base, leaving almost no foreign military presence in Helmand.

The US military leaves behind about $230m of property and equipment for the Afghan military.

This includes a major airstrip at the base, plus roads and buildings.

Camp Leatherneck resembled on Sunday a dust-swept ghost town of concrete blast walls, empty barracks and razor wire.

Offices and bulletin boards, which once showed photograph tributes to dead US and British soldiers, had been stripped.

Heaviest fighting

The British experienced their heaviest fighting of the Afghan campaign in Helmand, losing hundreds of soldiers.

Their presence was boosted in recent years by US troops as the UK wound down its operations.

In all, 2,210 US and 453 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, when the US-led coalition toppled the Taliban government shortly after the September 11 attacks.

“We gave them the maps to the place. We gave them the keys,” said Colonel Doug Patterson, a US marine brigade commander in charge of logistics.

General John Campbell, the head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, acknowledged Helmand “has been a very, very tough area” over the last several months.

“But we feel very confident with the Afghan security forces as they continue to grow in their capacity,” he said.

He said the smaller international force that will remain next year will still provide some intelligence and air support, two areas where Afghan forces are weak.

General Sher Mohammad Karimi, chief of staff of the Afghan army, said the Taliban “will keep us busy for a while”.

“We have to do more until we are fully successful and satisfied with the situations,” he said.

Source: AP

US ordered to explain withholding of Iraq and Afghanistan torture photos

by

Obama admistration must justify suppression of never-before-seen photographs depicting US military torture of detainees

The photographs discussed in court on Tuesday are said to be even more disturbing than the infamous prison photos from Abu Ghraib. Photograph: Khalid Mohammed/AP

The photographs discussed in court on Tuesday are said to be even more disturbing than the infamous prison photos from Abu Ghraib. Photograph: Khalid Mohammed/AP

by Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

The Obama administration has until early December to detail its reasons for withholding as many as 2,100 graphic photographs depicting US military torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge ordered on Tuesday.

By 12 December, Justice Department attorneys will have to list, photograph by photograph, the government’s rationale for keeping redacted versions of the photos unseen by the public, Judge Alvin Hellerstein instructed lawyers. But any actual release of the photographs will come after Hellerstein reviews the government’s reasoning and issues another ruling in the protracted transparency case.

While Hellerstein left unclear how much of the Justice Department’s declaration will itself be public, the government’s submission is likely to be its most detailed argument for secrecy over the imagery in a case that has lasted a decade.

“The only thing that bothers me is that we’re taking a lot of time,” Hellerstein told a nearly empty courtroom.

At issue is the publication of as many as 2,100 photographs of detainee abuse, although the government continues not to confirm the precise number. Said to be even more disturbing than the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs that sparked a global furor in 2004, the imagery is the subject of a transparency lawsuit that both the Bush and Obama administrations, backed by the US Congress, have strenuously resisted.

In 2009, US president Barack Obama reversed his position on the photographs’ release and contended they would “further inflame anti-American opinion and … put our troops in greater danger”. That year, Congress passed a law, the Protected National Security Documents Act, intended to aid the government in keeping the images from the public. Two secretaries of defense, Robert Gates in 2009 and Leon Panetta in 2012, have issued assertions that US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be placed at risk by the disclosure.

But in August, Hellerstein said the government’s declaration was overbroad. Some of the photographs, which he said on Tuesday he had seen behind closed doors, “are relatively innocuous while others need more serious consideration”, Hellerstein said in August.

Disclosure, sought by the American Civil Liberties Union since 2004, will not come this year. Hellerstein scheduled a hearing to discuss the upcoming government declaration for 23 January.

The return of the US to war in Iraq raises the stakes for the case. Unlike in 2012, when Panetta certified that the release of the photographs would endanger the US military in Afghanistan, some 1,600 US troops are also now in Iraq again, this time to confront the Islamic State (Isis).

But while Hellerstein indicated he was interested in an “update” about current exposure to danger, he only ordered the government to specify its reasons for keeping each individual photograph withheld as of Panetta’s November 2012 declaration.

Potential release of the photographs dovetails with another imminent torture disclosure. The Senate intelligence committee is expected to soon unveil sections of its long-awaited investigation into CIA torture. The government’s most recent filing in a different transparency suit indicated the report’s release will come on 29 October, though the government has asked for extensions in the past and may do so again.

Marcellene Hearn, an attorney for the ACLU, portrayed the release of the torture photographs as an accountability measure.

“It’s disappointing that the government continues to fight to keep these photographs from the public,” Hearn said after the half-hour hearing. “The American people deserve to know the truth about what happened in our detention centers abroad. Yet the government is suppressing as many as 2,100 photographs of detainee abuse in Iraq and elsewhere. We will continue to press for the release of the photos in the courts.”

Growth of opium trade in Afghanistan direct result of U.S. invasion: James Petras

by

AFGHANISTAN US MARINES

– by PressTV

An American political commentator says the resurgence of opium trade in Afghanistan is a “direct result of the US invasion” in 2001.

“I think the growth of the opium trade in Afghanistan is a direct result of the US invasion of Afghanistan,” James Petras, retired Bartle Prof. of sociology at Binghamton University, told Press TV in an interview on Tuesday.

According to US federal auditors, Afghanistan’s opium industry is booming despite $7.6 billion spent in US counternarcotics efforts since 2002.

The most recent report was released on Tuesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

SIGAR said the net land area used for poppy cultivation in 2013 was more than 500,000 acres, a 36 percent jump from the previous year and a historic record.

The United Nations said that the majority of the cultivation happened in Helmand and Kandahar provinces that were the focus of the 33,000-strong American troop surge four years ago.

“The antinarcotics international agencies all noted that during the reign of the Taliban, there were [sic] virtually no poppies being grown,” Petras said. “The Taliban was strictly enforcing the outlawing of the growing of the narcotic plants.”

“Subsequent to the invasion, we have the breakdown of government responsibilities, the imposition of US rule through warlords and selected client regimes which had no authority, no influence over the countryside,” Petras continued.

He noted that the Afghan government under the influence of US presence had no influence on rural areas of the country and bribed tribal leaders by letting them grow narcotics.

“One way they attempted to secure the allegiances of various tribal and rural leaders was by tolerating the growth of opium and other narcotic plants as a way of trying to outlaw the Taliban,” he said.

Petras concluded that the end of the US military occupation in Afghanistan and large scale alternative farming and subsidies could end the “narcotics epidemic” in the country.

AN/AGB

NATO airstrike kills seven civilians in Southern Afghanistan

by

NATO labels all slain ‘enemy combatants’.

– by Jason Ditz, AntiWar.com

Protests erupted in the Paktia Province of Afghanistan today after an overnight NATO airstrike killed seven civilians, including a nine-year-old child. Deputy Governor Abdul Walisahl confirmed the incident.

The provincial government has announced a thorough investigation, and says that the slain were gathering firewood on a mountainside for the approaching winter at the time of the attack.

NATO, as usual, dismissed the allegations as untrue, but offered no explanation for the seven civilian bodies obviously killed in airstrikes. They insisted the attack on the mountainside killed eight “enemy combatants.”

As the first major civilian killings since the inauguration, there has been a conspicuous lack of comment from President Ashraf Ghani. His predecessor, Hamid Karzai, regularly condemned such killings, despite the fact that such criticism made him unpopular with NATO.

America's deadly double tap drone attacks are 'killing 49 people for every known terrorist in Pakistan'

by

The site of a missile attack in Tappi, a village 12 miles east of Miranshah, near the Afghan border after a U.S. missile attack by a pilotless drone aircraft in 2008. At least six people were killed

The site of a missile attack in Tappi, a village 12 miles east of Miranshah, near the Afghan border after a U.S. missile attack by a pilotless drone aircraft in 2008. At least six people were killed

– by Leon Watson, Daily Mail

Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today.

The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.

And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene.

The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that people often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack. Investigators also discovered that communities living in fear of the drones were suffering severe stress and related illnesses. Many parents had taken their children out of school because they were so afraid of a missile-strike.

Bombardment: More than 345 strikes have hit Pakistan’s tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan in the past eight years

Today campaigners savaged the use of drones, claiming that they were destroying a way of life.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of the charity Reprieve which helped interview people for the report, said: ‘This shows that drone strikes go much further than simply killing innocent civilians. An entire region is being terrorised by the constant threat of death from the skies.’

There have been at least 345 strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan in the past eight years.

‘These strikes are becoming much more common,’ Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who represents victims of drone strikes, told The Independent.

‘In the past it used to be a one-off, every now and then. Now almost every other attack is a double tap. There is no justification for it.’

The study is the product of nine months’ research and more than 130 interviews, it is one of the most exhaustive attempts by academics to understand – and evaluate – Washington’s drone wars.

Tribesmen gather near a damaged car outside a house after a missile struck in Dandi Darpakheil village on the outskirts of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region

Despite assurances the attacks are ‘surgical’, researchers found barely two per cent of their victims are known militants and that the idea that the strikes make the world a safer place for the U.S. is ‘ambiguous at best’.

Researchers added that traumatic effects of the strikes go far beyond fatalities, psychologically battering a population which lives under the daily threat of annihilation from the air, and ruining the local economy.

They conclude by calling on Washington completely to reassess its drone-strike programme or risk alienating the very people they hope to win over.

They also observe that the strikes set worrying precedents for extra-judicial killings at a time when many nations are building up their unmanned weapon arsenals.

The Obama administration is unlikely to heed their demands given the zeal with which America has expanded its drone programme over the past two years.

Washington says the drone program is vital to combating militants that threaten the U.S. and who use Pakistan’s tribal regions as a safe haven.

The number of attacks have fallen since a Nato strike in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Pakistan wants the drone strikes stopped – or it wants to control the drones directly – something the U.S. refuses.

Reapers and Predators are now active over the skies of Somalia and Yemen as well as Pakistan and – less covertly – Afghanistan.

But campaigners like Mr Akbar hope the Stanford/New York University research may start to make an impact on the American public.

‘It’s an important piece of work,’ he told The Independent. ‘No one in the U.S. wants to listen to a Pakistani lawyer saying these strikes are wrong. But they might listen to American academics.’

Today, Pakistani intelligence officials revealed a pair of missiles fired from an unmanned American spy aircraft slammed into a militant hideout in northwestern Pakistan last night.

The two officials said missiles from the drone aircraft hit the village of Dawar Musaki in the North Waziristan region, which borders Afghanistan to the west.

Some of the dead were believed to be foreign fighters but the officials did not know how many or where they were from.

The Monday strike was the second in three days. On Saturday a U.S. drone fired two missiles at a vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing four suspected militants.

That attack took place in the village of Mohammed Khel, also in North Waziristan.

North Waziristan is the last tribal region in which the Pakistan military has not launched an operation against militants, although the U.S. has been continually pushing for such a move.

The Pakistanis contend that their military is already overstretched fighting operations in other areas but many in the U.S. believe they are reluctant to carry out an operation because of their longstanding ties to some of the militants operating there such as the Haqqani network.

NATO airstrike in Khost leaves 4 civilians dead

by

One civilian was killed during a US-led coalition forces operation in Masmo village of Ali-shing district of eastern Laghman province. (Photos: Najibulrahman Enqalabi/PAN)

One civilian was killed during a US-led coalition forces operation in Masmo village of Ali-shing district of eastern Laghman province. (Photos: Najibulrahman Enqalabi/PAN)

– by Javed Hamim Kahar & Muhammad Haroon, RAWA News

Khost: A district development council head was killed in a militant attack in southeastern Paktia province while four people — believed to be civilians — lost their lives in a NATO drone strike in southern Khost on Tuesday.

Paktia police chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Zaman told Pajhwok Afghan News the development council head for Syed Karam district Mirza Mohammad was shot dead by militants in the morning.

He said the militants were in a car and managed to flee after the attack. An Investigation into the incident is underway. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the assassination.

According to another report, four people believed to be civilians were killed in a drone strike in Ali Sher district of Khost province, the governor’s spokesman said. Mubarez Mohammad added the four people were traveling in a car when they came under attack.

The car destroyed in the airstrike, he said, adding it was unclear who the victims were.“We have ordered police to investigate the incident,” Mubarez added.

A resident of Khost City, Ismail Khan said the victims included his uncle and other relatives.“My uncle and three others traveling in the car had no links with militants and they were not equipped with weapons.”

More Washington lies on Hong Kong, ISIS, and more

by

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

– by Paul Craig Roberts

Hong Kong:

Whatever is occurring in Hong Kong, it bears no relation to what is being reported about it in the Western print and TV media. These reports spin the protests as a conflict between the demand for democracy and a tyrannical Chinese government

Ming Chun Tang in the alternative media CounterPunch says that the protests are against the neoliberal economic policies that are destroying the prospects of everyone but the one percent. In other words, the protests are akin to the American occupy movement.

Another explanation is that once again, as in Kiev, gullible westernized students have been organized by the CIA and US-financed NGOs to take to the streets in hopes that the protests will spread from Hong Kong to other Chinese cities. The Chinese, like the Russians, have been extremely careless in permitting Washington to operate within their countries and to develop fifth columns.

ISIS:

Americans are forever deceived. Remember the bullshit about “Mission Accomplished!”

The only mission that has been accomplished is the enrichment of the military/security complex and the creation of the American Police State. After eight years of the US military battering Iraq, Patrick Cockburn, one of the last front line reporters, tells us: “ISIS at the Gates of Baghdad.”

What is ISIS? There are a number of offered explanations. One from Washington and its puppet states is that it is a demonic threat to the West that cuts off people’s heads.

Another is that it is a CIA recruited and funded operation that is carrying out the neoconservatives plan to overthrow the governments in the Middle East.

My tentative explanation is that ISIS consists of Sunnis who are tired of existing in artificial states created by the British and French after World War I when the Western colonialists seized the territories of the Ottoman Empire. They are tired of being suppressed by Shia majorities or by secular dictators who use suppression to control conflict between Sunni and Shia. They are tired of being murdered, plundered, and raped by the Americans and Europeans. They are tired of being displaced and dispossessed. They are tired of the immoral Western culture imposed on them by modern technology. The Islamic State is redrawing the artificial boundaries that the Europeans created, and they are establishing an Islamic government free of the moral corruption of Western materialism and sexual promiscuity.

In short, they are tired of being dictated to and having their culture suppressed.

The huge sums of money taken from the gullible American taxpayers, people who, unlike ISIS, are willing to accept any imposition, for training the Iraqi army went entirely into the coffers of the American firms that got the training contracts. As Patrick Cockburn reports, the American trained and equipped Iraqi Army defending Mosul nominally numbered 60,000, much larger than the attacking force, but only one-third were actually present. The rest had kick-backed half their salaries to their officers in order to stay at home or to work a better paying job. When the Islamic State attacked, the Iraq army collapsed.

Afghanistan:

The new “president” of Afghanistan has agreed to Washington’s demands to which even the corrupt Karzai would not agree. The new bought-and-paid-for-puppet president has agreed for US troops to remain in Afghanistan. We will see what the Taliban have to say about this.

Ebola:

We now have the first ebola case in the US. A person in a hospital in Dallas, Texas, has brought ebola from Liberia to the US. The CDC says that the virus can be contained, like ISIS, and that no one is in danger. This remains to be seen. Because of the years of transparent lies emanating from Washington, many Americans already believe that the importation of ebola is part of the one percent’s plan to destroy the rest of us so that they have the country to themselves.

This is what comes of a government and a media that serves only the One Percent and that inflicts endless lies and disinformation on the rest of us.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives