NATO

NATO chief: Russian airstrikes in Syria undermine peace talks

February 5, 2016 by Nasheman

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg presents the 2015 NATO annual report during a press conference in Brussels, January 28, 2016. (AFP/Emmanuel Dunand)

by Al Bawaba

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that Russia’s increase in airstrikes is undermining Syria peace talks in Geneva, Reuters reported.

“The intense Russia airstrikes, mainly targeting opposition groups in Syria, is undermining the efforts to find a political solution to the conflict,” Stoltenberg told Reuters upon arriving for a meeting of EU defense ministers in Amsterdam.

Stoltenberg also defended claims that Russia had again violated airspace in Turkey, a NATO member.

“The increased Russia presence, the air activity in Syria, is also causing increased tensions and violations of Turkish airspace … violations of NATO airspace,” he said. “This creates risks.”

Since Monday, the Syrian army and forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad have made advances in a push to encircle and rout out rebels in the eastern part of Aleppo. The assault has been backed by Russian airstrikes and has also cut off a key supply route to the Turkish border.

Air strike kills MSF medical staff in Afghanistan

October 3, 2015 by Nasheman

Three Doctors Without Borders staff killed in bombing of hospital in Kunduz, as NATO admits it may have been involved.

Surviving MSF staff were in shock after the clinic in Kunduz sustained heavy damage in the bombardment [MSF/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says three of its staff have been killed in an overnight bombing of a hospital in the embattled Afghan city of Kunduz.

NATO said on Friday that a US air strike “may have” hit the hospital, which is run by the medical charity, adding that the attack may have resulted in collateral damage.

The MSF hospital is seen as a key medical lifeline in the region, which has been running “beyond capacity” in recent days of fighting which saw the Taliban seize control of the provincial capital for several days.

“At 2:10 am (20:40 GMT) local time … the MSF trauma centre in Kunduz was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged,” MSF said in a statement on Friday.

Deeply shocked at bombing of MSF hospital in #Kunduz. Staff and patients killed. MSF urges fighting parties to respect health facilities

— MSF International (@MSF) October 3, 2015

At the time of the bombing, 105 patients and their caretakers and more than 80 MSF international and national staff were present in the hospital, the charity said.

NATO investigation

NATO said in a statement that US forces conducted an air strike in Kunduz at 2:15am local time “against individuals threatening the force”.

“The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility. This incident is under investigation,” the statement said.

In a statement, the Taliban accused “barbaric American forces” of deliberately carrying out Saturday’s strike, which “killed and wounded tens of doctors, nurses and patients”.

The MSF trauma centre in Kunduz is the only medical facility in the region that can deal with major injuries.

Al Jazeera’s Qais Azimy, reporting from Puli Khumri, about 130km from Kunduz, said the bombing injured at least 50 people.

Following the attack, the medical charity urged all parties involved in the violence to respect the safety of health facilities, patients and staff.

Battle for Kunduz

The development came a day after the Afghan government claimed it had successfully retaken parts of Kunduz from Taliban fighters who had controlled the strategic city since Monday.

The Taliban, however, claimed it remained in control of most of Kunduz, our correspondent said.

Kunduz is facing a humanitarian crisis, with thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire between government forces and Taliban fighters.

Precise losses in the fighting were not known, but health authorities said on Friday that at least 60 people have been killed and 400 wounded.

As fighting spreads in neighbouring Badakhshan, Takhar and Baghlan provinces, concerns are mounting that the seizure of Kunduz was merely the opening gambit in a new, bolder Taliban strategy to tighten the grip across northern Afghanistan.

Afghan forces, backed by NATO special forces and US air strikes, have been going from house to house in Kunduz in a bid to flush Taliban fighters out of the city.

The Taliban’s offensive in Kunduz, their biggest tactical success since 2001, marks a major blow for Afghanistan’s Western-trained forces, who have largely been fighting on their own since last December.

Civilian and military casualties caused by NATO forces have been one of the most contentious issues in the 14-year campaign against the Taliban, provoking harsh public and government criticism.

US-led NATO forces ended their combat mission in Afghanistan last December, though a 13,000-strong residual force remains for training and counterterrorism operations.

But there has been an escalation in air strikes by NATO forces in recent months despite the drawdown.

MSF’s hospital is the only facility of its kind in the whole north-eastern region of Afghanistan [MSF]

The medical charity urges all parties to the violence to respect the safety of health facilities, patients and staff [MSF]

Noam Chomsky on Charlie Hebdo: We Are All – Fill in the Blank

January 12, 2015 by Nasheman

Terrorism is not terrorism when a much more severe terrorist attack is carried out by those who are Righteous by virtue of their power

On April 23, 1999, NATO air strikes blasted Serbian state television off the air, just hours after Belgrade offered a peace proposal to allow an “international presence” in war-torn Kosovo under U.N. auspices.

by Noam Chomsky

The world reacted with horror to the murderous attack on the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. In the New York Times, veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger graphically described the immediate aftermath, what many call France’s 9/11, as “a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris.” The enormous outcry worldwide was accompanied by reflection about the deeper roots of the atrocity. “Many Perceive a Clash of Civilizations,” a New York Times headline read.

The reaction of horror and revulsion about the crime is justified, as is the search for deeper roots, as long as we keep some principles firmly in mind. The reaction should be completely independent of what thinks about this journal and what it produces. The passionate and ubiquitous chants “I am Charlie,” and the like, should not be meant to indicate, even hint at, any association with the journal, at least in the context of defense of freedom of speech. Rather, they should express defense of the right of free expression whatever one thinks of the contents, even if they are regarded as hateful and depraved.

And the chants should also express condemnation for violence and terror. The head of Israel’s Labor Party and the main challenger for the upcoming elections in Israel, Isaac Herzog, is quite right when he says that “Terrorism is terrorism. There’s no two ways about it.” He is also right to say that “All the nations that seek peace and freedom [face] an enormous challenge” from murderous terrorism – putting aside his predictably selective interpretation of the challenge.

Erlanger vividly describes the scene of horror. He quotes one surviving journalist as saying that “Everything crashed. There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It was like a nightmare.” Another surviving journalist reported a “huge detonation, and everything went completely dark.” The scene, Erlanger reported, “was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation.” At least 10 people were reported at once to have died in the explosion, with 20 missing, “presumably buried in the rubble.”

These quotes, as the indefatigable David Peterson reminds us, are not, however, from January 2015. Rather, they are from a story of Erlanger’s on April 24 1999, which made it only to page 6 of the New York Times, not reaching the significance of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Erlanger was reporting on the NATO (meaning US) “missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters” that “knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air.”

There was an official justification. “NATO and American officials defended the attack,” Erlanger reports, “as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that “Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic’s murder machine as his military is,” hence a legitimate target of attack.

The Yugoslavian government said that “The entire nation is with our President, Slobodan Milosevic,” Erlanger reports, adding that “How the Government knows that with such precision was not clear.”

No such sardonic comments are in order when we read that France mourns the dead and the world is outraged by the atrocity. There need also be no inquiry into the deeper roots, no profound questions about who stands for civilization, and who for barbarism.

Isaac Herzog, then, is mistaken when he says that “Terrorism is terrorism. There’s no two ways about it.” There are quite definitely two ways about it: terrorism is not terrorism when a much more severe terrorist attack is carried out by those who are Righteous by virtue of their power. Similarly, there is no assault against freedom of speech when the Righteous destroy a TV channel supportive of a government that they are attacking.

By the same token, we can readily comprehend the comment in the New York Times of civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams, noted for his forceful defense of freedom of expression, that the Charlie Hebdo attack is “the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory.” He is quite correct about “living memory,” which carefully assigns assaults on journalism and acts of terror to their proper categories: Theirs, which are horrendous; and Ours, which are virtuous and easily dismissed from living memory.

We might recall as well that this is only one of many assaults by the Righteous on free expression. To mention only one example that is easily erased from “living memory,” the assault on Fallujah by US forces in November 2004, one of the worst crimes of the invasion of Iraq, opened with occupation of Fallujah General Hospital. Military occupation of a hospital is, of course, a serious war crime in itself, even apart from the manner in which it was carried out, blandly reported in a front-page story in the New York Times, accompanied with a photograph depicting the crime. The story reported that “Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs.” The crimes were reported as highly meritorious, and justified: “The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties.”

Evidently such a propaganda agency cannot be permitted to spew forth its vulgar obscenities.

Were NATO dogs used to rape Afghan prisoners at Bagram air base?

January 6, 2015 by Nasheman

by Emran Feroz, AlterNet

After the release of the CIA torture report by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) the world is reeling in shock at the level of brutality revealed in the documents. In fact, the whole report is nothing more than a confession of sadistic procedures that could have been lifted from the diaries of Torquemada, from “rectal feeding” to nude beatings and humiliation — horrors that were well-known but not officially confirmed. But the report remains incomplete. Indeed, some 9000 documents have been withheld.

What new horrors could be discovered with the publication of these records?

Perhaps the most gut-wrenching story to emerge from Bagram has been buried in the German media and remains unknown to much of the world. Published by German author and former politician Juergen Todenhoefer in his latest book, Thou Shalt Not Kill, the account stems from a visit to Kabul. At a local hotel, a former Canadian soldier and private security contractor named Jack told Todenhoefer why he could not longer stand working in Bagram.

“It’s not my thing when Afghans get raped by dogs,” Jack remarked.

Todenhoefer’s son, who was present with him in Kabul and was transcribing Jack’s words, was so startled by the comment he nearly dropped his pad and pen.

The war veteran, who loathed manipulating Western politicians even as he defended tactics of collective punishment, continued his account: Afghan prisoners were tied face down on small chairs, Jack said. Then fighting dogs entered the torture chamber.

“If the prisoners did not say anything useful, each dog got to take a turn on them,” Jack told Todenhoefer. “After procedure like these, they confessed everything. They would have even said that they killed Kennedy without even knowing who he was.”

A former member of parliament representing the right-of-center Christian Democratic Union from 1972 to 1990, Todenhoefer transformed into a fervent anti-war activist after witnessing the Soviet destruction of Aghanistan during the 1980’s. His journalism has taken him to Iraq and back to Afghanistan, where he has presented accounts of Western military interventions from the perspective of indigenous guerrilla forces. Unsurprisingly, his books have invited enormous controversy for presenting a sharp counterpoint to the war on terror’s narrative. In Germany, Todenhofer is roundly maligned by pro-Israel and US-friendly figures as a “vulgar pacifist” and an apologist for Islamic extremism. But those who have been on the other side of Western guns tend to recognize his journalism as an accurate portrayal of their harsh reality.

Though his account of dogs being used to rape prisoners at Bagram is unconfirmed, the practice is not without precedent. Female political prisoners of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s jails have described their torturers using dogs to rape them.

More recently, Lawrence Wright, the author of the acclaimed history of Al Qaeda, The Looming Tower, told National Public Radio’s Terry Gross, “One of my FBI sources said that he had talked to an Egyptian intelligence officer who said that they used the dogs to rape the prisoners. And it would be hard to tell you how humiliating it would be to any person, but especially in Islamic culture where dogs are such a lowly form of life. It’s, you know, that imprint will never leave anybody’s mind.”

I spoke to an Afghan named Mohammad who worked as an interpreter in Bagram and insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals. He told me Todenhoefer’s account of dogs being used to rape prisoners in the jail was “absolutely realistic.” Mohammad worked primarily with US forces in Bagram, taking the job out of financial desperation. He soon learned what a mistake he had made. “When I translated for them, I often knew that the detainee was anything but a terrorist,” he recalled. “Most of them were poor farmers or average guys.”

However, Mohammad was compelled to keep silent while his fellow countrymen were brutally tortured before his eyes. “I often felt like a traitor, but I needed the money,” he told me. “I was forced to feed my family. Many Afghan interpreters are in the very same situation.”

A “traitor” is also what the Taliban calls guys like Mohammad. It is well-known that they make short-shrift of interpreters they catch. Mohammad has since left Afghanistan for security reasons and is reluctant to offer explicit details of the interrogations sessions he participated in. However, he insisted that Todenhoefer’s account accurately captured the horrors that unfolded behind the walls of Bagram.

“Guantanamo is a paradise if you compare it with Bagram,” Muhammad said.

Waheed Mozhdah, a well-known political analyst and author based in Kabul, echoed Muhammad’s account. “Bagram is worse than Guantanamo,” Mozdah told me, “and all the crimes, even the most cruel ones like the dog story, are well known here but most people prefer to not talk about it.”

Hometown for soldiers, hellhole for inmates

It is hard to imagine what more hideous acts of torment remain submerged in the chronicles of America’s international gulag archipelago. Atrocities alleged to a German journalist by a former detainee at the US military’s Bagram Airbase in Kabul, Afghanistan, suggest that the worst horrors may be too much for the public to stomach.

Bagram Airbase is the largest base the US constructed in Afghanistan and also one of the main theaters of its torture regime. You have to drive about one and a half hour from Kabul to reach the prison where hundreds of supposedly high-value detainees were held. The foundations of the base are much older, laid by the Soviets in the 1950s, when the last king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir, maintained friendly connections with Moscow. Later, during the Soviet occupation, Bagram as the main control center for the Red Army.

Known as the “second Guantanamo,” even though conditions at Bagram are inarguably worse, you will find the dark dungeons, which were mentioned in the latest CIA report, next to American fast food restaurants. During the US occupation, the military complex in Bagram became like a small town for soldiers, spooks and contractors. In this hermetically sealed hellhole, the wanton abuse of human rights existed comfortably alongside the “American Way of Life.”

One of the persons sucked into the parallel world of Bagram was Raymond Azar, a manager of a construction company. Azar, a citizen of Lebanon, was on his way to the US military base near the Afghan Presidential Palace known as Camp Eggers when 10 armed FBI agents suddenly surrounded him. The agents handcuffed him, tied him up and shoved him into an SUV. Some hours later Azar found himself in the bowels of Bagram.

According to Azar’s testimony, he was forced to sit for seven hours while his hands and feet were tied to a chair. He spent the whole night in a cold metal container. His tormentors denied him food for 30 hours. Azar also claimed that the military officers showed him photos of his wife and four children, warning him that unless he cooperated he would never see his family again. Today we know that officers and agents have threatened prisoners with their relatives’ rape or murder.

Azar had nothing to do with Al Qaida or the Taliban. He was caught in the middle of a classic web of corruption. The businessman’s company had signed phony contracts with the Pentagon for reconstruction work in Afghanistan. Later, Azar was accused of having attempted to bribe the U.S. Army contact to secure the military contracts for his company. This was not the sort of crime for which a suspect is normally sent to a military prison. To date, no one has explained why the businessman was absconded to Bagram.

Most prisoners from Bagram are not rich business men or foreign workers from abroad, but average Afghan men who had a simple life before they had been kidnapped. One of these men was Dilawar Yaqubi, a taxi driver and farmer from Khost, Eastern Afghanistan. After five days of brutal torture in Bagram, Yaqubi was declared dead on Dec. 10, 2002. His legs had been “pulpified” by his interrogators, who maintained that they were simply acting according to guidelines handed down to them by the Pentagon and approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The case of the Afghan taxi driver’s killing was highlighted in the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The film established that Yaqubi had simply been at the the wrong place at the wrong time. His family, his daughter and his wife, are waiting for justice. (Watch the full version of Taxi To The Dark Side.)

A US-backed government of rapists, warlords and torturers

The latest CIA torture report is focused entirely on the crimes of the Bush administration. But it should not be forgotten that the horrors that have plagued Afghanistan continued under Barack Obama’s watch. When Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, entered power two months ago, the first thing he did was sign a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US. According to the terms of this bogus deal negotiated without the consent or agreement of the Afghan public, the Afghan judiciary is forbidden from prosecuting criminal US soldiers in Afghanistan. This means that any American, whether a torturer or a drone operator who destroys a family with the push of a button, is above the law.

During the last days of his presidency, Hamid Karzai railed against the bilateral agreement, while other Afghan critics described it as a “colonial pact.” Karzai knew that his signature on the deal would damn him in the annals of history. On his way out, Karzai condemned the US occupation and remarked that Bagram had become “a terrorism factory,” radicalizing waves of men through torture and isolation. The responsible hands in Washington did not look kindly on Karzai’s sudden transformation into a man of the people.

Now that Karzai is gone, Ghani is doing all he can to prove his absolute obedience towards the US. According to different reports, currently he sits down for tea each week with various NATO commanders and generals, listening to their concerns and doing all he can to accommodate them. Ghani has reversed Karzai’s decrees regarding night-raids and NATO bombings and encouraged the Afghan National Army — a corrupt and criminal gang built and trained by the US military — to fight “terrorism” without mercy. Regarding the torture report, Ghani said that the described practices are “inhuman,” even as his actions bely his empty protestations.

On Dec. 10, 2014, exactly 12 years after the brutal murder of Dilawar Yaqubi and just one day after the CIA torture report’s release, the US Defense Departement announced it has closed the Bagram detention center once and for all. Yet it is not known how many secret prisons still exist in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, most elements in the Afghan government are absolutely loyal to the United States and know that they would lose power and financial support without them. The country’s new Vice President, Abdul Rashid Dostum, is a widely reviled warlord and militia leader who killed, tortured and personally oversaw the rape of countless Afghan civilians. His crimes are well documented by the world’s leading human rights organizations. Alongside other warlords notorious for human trafficking and sundry crimes operate alongside an Afghan intelligence service (NDS) that regularly engages in brutal abuse while tendering US salaries.

In an Afghanistan still dominated by Western interests and American power, the torture never stops.

The Afghan war that didn't really end yesterday ended in defeat

January 2, 2015 by Nasheman

None of the claimed long term objectives for the war in Afghanistan, either from the Bush or Obama administrations, have been achieved.

Afghan and international soldiers stand at attention during a ceremony at the headquarters of the US-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014. Massoud Hossaini/AP

by Dan Murphy, CS Monitor

News websites and broadcasts – and US and NATO press releases – were filled with discussion about the “formal” end of the Afghan war yesterday. But any close reading of the facts will find that they were wrong.

Call it semi-formal, or business casual, whatever you like. The reality remains the same: For American soldiers and for the Afghan people the war that began on Oct. 7, 2001 will go on.

While most of America’s NATO allies that hadn’t already washed their hands of combat will now do so, American fighting and dying will continue, with 11,000 US troops remaining in the country. There will be talk of “advising,” and “training” and “non-combat” presence. But for the most part that can be safely ignored.

Afghanistan is a dangerous place. The US-installed government there is on shaky ground, and just advising Afghan troops is a dangerous job, given thata high-percentage of US military deaths in recent years have been caused by Afghan soldiers and police. In August, Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was murdered by an Afghan soldier, becoming the highest ranking US officer killed overseas since Vietnam.

US casualties compared to Afghan ones have been negligible. Over 4,000 Afghan soldiers and cops were killed fighting in 2014 alone, compared to 2,224 US soldiers killed fighting there since 2001. Civilian deaths had soared to 3,188 by the end of November, making this year the bloodiest for civilians since at least 2009, when the UN began tracking civilian deaths. The civilian death toll is at least a 20 percent increase over last year.

If Afghan history is anything to go by, it’s due to get worse as America’s longest war war winds down to its inevitable conclusion. For the Afghans, who have been embroiled in a civil war with heavy foreign meddling since 1979, the prospect of peace seems slim.

The Soviet Union failed to impose its will on the Afghans after its invasion in 1979. In the decades since, other foreign powers haven’t done the country much long term good. Some haven’t cared much. Pakistan has supported the Taliban who have sought to destroy the US imposed order there – never mind the vast subsidies the US taxpayer ships to Pakistan’s military every year.

During the Soviet occupation, the US supported the so-called mujahideen (“holy warriors”), and often seemed more interested in giving what Ronald Reagan branded the Evil Empire a black eye, than in caring about the long term stability of the country.

What came next was a bloodier chapter of the civil war. After the Russian pull-out in 1989 and subsequent end of funding for Kabul following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former mujahideen began a bloody fight for the spoils, with torture, rape, and pillage the methods of war employed by all sides.

The Taliban emerged and seized Kabul in 1996, but the fighting continued along largely ethnic-lines, with America’s former mujahideen friends, now fighting the Taliban as the United National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, often equaling the Taliban for brutality. The front came to be called in Western circles the “Northern Alliance” particularly as the US military began working with its militias to topple the Taliban following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks organized by Al Qaeda, whose leaders were being harbored by the Taliban at the time.

Those warlords and their allies are largely the people running the show in Kabul today, with the Taliban a potent presence in many provinces and looking forward to taking on their old enemies with less American interference.

What has the war bought for the US, at a cost of $1 trillion?

President Obama claimed yesterday that “we are safer, and our nation is more secure” thanks to the sacrifices of the Afghan war. There’s no evidence to support that claim, and plenty to suggest the war has been a long, self-inflicted wound on the country. The job of scattering old Al Qaeda was accomplished by 2003. By the time Bin Laden was killed in a daring US raid in 2011, he was living comfortably in the Pakistani military garrison town of Abbottabad. Mullah Omar, the titular head of the Taliban, has likewise lived in Pakistan for years.

Afghanistan is a poor, far away country. While Al Qaeda was based there ahead of 9/11, what is less often repeated is that much of the operational planning for the attacks were conducted in Hamburg, Germany.

Meanwhile, opium production in Afghanistan has soared despite $7 billion flushed down the tubes by the US on opium eradication. Afghanistan can not by any stretch be called a democracy – vote buying and thuggery at the polls dominate elections. The country’s government is entirely dependent on foreign aid, and has been gifted or burdened, depending on your perspective, with assets it cannot afford.

Consider the military, which has about 200,000 soldiers on the books. (How many soldiers actually show up to work is another matter; so-called ghost soldiers are as much a problem in Afghanistan as they are in Iraq). The US has spent about $11 billion annually on Afghan forces in recent years – equivalent to more than half of the country’s GDP. That means that if and when foreign funding stops or is reduced, Afghanistan won’t be able to pay for the army fighting the Taliban.

None of the claimed long term objectives for the war, either from the Bush or Obama administrations, have been achieved. That’s a defeat by any measure.

US funding for Kabul is likely to go on for quite some time. But it is unlikely to be better and more wisely spent with less foreign oversight and involvement. The rampant corruption that has bled billions over the past decade was never contained and the Afghan government is largely paralyzed. The presidential election earlier this year almost led to civil war among the opponents of the Taliban, with heavy US pressure ending up in the inauguration of President Ashraf Ghani. Yet three months since that crisis was averted, the country still doesn’t have a cabinet. Why?

The US insisted that a special, yet ill-defined, job of “chief executive” be created for the runner-up in the presidential election, Abdullah Abdullah. Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have been squabbling over who will control choice positions in the government ever since, even as the population has grown frightened at the departure of foreign troops, the economy has teetered, and the Taliban have enjoyed a good year.

In honor of the end of a war that wasn’t really the end of the war, the foreign involvement in the war was renamed yesterday. No longer the International Security Assistance Force but:

NOTICE TO OUR FOLLOWERS: Reflecting the launch of @NATO's new mission in #Afghanistan, @ISAFMedia is now officially @ResoluteSupport

— Resolute Support (@ResoluteSupport) December 28, 2014

Resolute? Perhaps. But Afghanistan’s problems are manifold.

Afghanistan conflict: Taliban declares 'defeat' of Nato

December 30, 2014 by Nasheman

The US and its allies insist that Afghan security forces are strong enough to defeat Taliban insurgents

by BBC

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have declared the “defeat” of the US and its allies, a day after the coalition officially ended its combat mission.

A Taliban statement said the US-led force had “rolled up its flag” without having achieved “anything substantial”.

Nato formally ended its 13-year mission on Sunday, but about 13,000 troops will stay to train the Afghan army.

Meanwhile, officials said four Afghan soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack in Helmand province on Monday.

Three other soldiers were injured during the attack on an army checkpoint in Sangin district. Eight insurgents were said to have been killed.

The US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) marked the end of its mission by lowering its flag at a ceremony in Kabul on Sunday.

Mission commander Gen John Campbell said the Nato force had “lifted the Afghan people out of the darkness of despair and given them hope for the future”.

‘Demoralised’

But in a statement on Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Nato ceremony was “a clear indication of their defeat and disappointment”.

He said the Taliban would establish “a pure Islamic system by expelling the remaining invading forces,” adding that Western troops were “demoralised”.

Nato’s Afghan deployment began after the 9/11 attacks against the US.

At its peak, the US-led Isaf deployment involved more than 130,000 personnel from 50 countries.

But from 1 January, the force will consist of about 13,000 mostly-American troops and will shift to a training and support mission for the Afghan army.

The US will also have an additional force of a few thousand troops whose focus will be counter-terrorism operations.

While the US and its allies say the Afghan security forces have been able to prevent a Taliban offensive, violence has increased in recent months.

This year has been the bloodiest in Afghanistan since 2001, with at least 4,600 members of the Afghan security forces having been killed.

Nearly 3,500 foreign troops have been killed since the beginning of the Nato mission in 2001, including about 2,200 American troops.

Nato ends its war in Afghanistan as Taliban continues to grow

December 29, 2014 by Nasheman

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

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.

All-Out War in Ukraine: NATO’s ‘Final Offensive’

November 24, 2014 by Nasheman

by James Petras

There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine: A war actively promoted by the NATO regimes and supported by their allies and clients in Asia (Japan) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). The war over Ukraine will essentially run along the lines of a full-scale military offensive against the southeast Donbas region, targeting the breakaway ethnic Ukraine- Russian Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the intention of deposing the democratically elected government, disarming the popular militias, killing the guerrilla resistance partisans and their mass base, dismantling the popular representative organizations and engaging in ethnic cleansing of millions of bilingual Ukraino-Russian citizens. NATO’s forthcoming military seizure of the Donbas region is a continuation and extension of its original violent putsch in Kiev, which overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in February 2014.

The Kiev junta and its newly ‘elected’ client rulers, and its NATO sponsors are intent on a major purge to consolidate the puppet Poroshenko’s dictatorial rule. The recent NATO-sponsored elections excluded several major political parties that had traditionally supported the country’s large ethnic minority populations, and was boycotted in the Donbas region. This sham election in Kiev set the tone for NATO’s next move toward converting Ukraine into one gigantic US multi-purpose military base aimed at the Russian heartland and into a neo-colony for German capital, supplying Berlin with grain and raw materials while serving as a captive market for German manufactured goods.

An intensifying war fever is sweeping the West; the consequences of this madness appear graver by the hour.

War Signs: The Propaganda and Sanctions Campaign, the G20 Summit and the Military Build Up

The official drum- beat for a widening conflict in Ukraine, spearheaded by the Kiev junta and its fascist militias, echoes in every Western mass media outlet, every day. Major mass media propaganda mills and government ‘spokesmen and women’ publish or announce new trumped-up accounts of growing Russian military threats to its neighbors and cross-border invasions into Ukraine. New Russian incursions are ‘reported’ from the Nordic borders and Baltic states to the Caucuses. The Swedish regime creates a new level of hysteria over a mysterious “Russian” submarine off the coast of Stockholm, which it never identifies or locates – let alone confirms the ‘sighting’. Estonia and Latvia claim Russian warplanes violated their air space without confirmation. Poland expels Russian “spies” without proof or witnesses. Provocative full-scale joint NATO-client state military exercises are taking place along Russia’s frontiers in the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

NATO is sending vast arms shipments to the Kiev junta, along with “Special Forces” advisers and counter-insurgency experts in anticipation of a full-scale attack against the rebels in the Donbas.

The Kiev regime has never abided by the Minsk cease fire. According to the UN Human Rights office 13 people on average –mostly civilians –have been killed each day since the September cease fire. In eight weeks, the UN reports that 957 people have killed –overwhelmingly by Kiev’s armed forces.

The Kiev regime, in turn, has cut all basic social and public services to the Peoples’ Republics’, including electricity, fuel, civil service salaries, pensions, medical supplies, salaries for teachers and medical workers, municipal workers wages; banking and transport have been blockaded.

The strategy is to further strangle the economy, destroy the infrastructure, force an even greater mass exodus of destitute refugees from the densely populated cities across the border into Russia and then to launch massive air, missile, artillery and ground assaults on urban centers as well as rebel bases.

The Kiev junta has launched an all-out military mobilization in the Western regions, accompanied by rabid anti-Russian, anti-Eastern Orthodox indoctrination campaigns designed to attract the most violent far right chauvinist thugs and to incorporate the Nazi-style military brigades into the frontline shock troops. The cynical use of irregular fascist militias will ‘free’ NATO and Germany from any responsibility for the inevitable terror and atrocities in their campaign. This system of ‘plausible deniability’ mirrors the tactics of the German Nazis whose hordes of fascist Ukrainians and Ustashi Croats were notorious in their epoch of ethnic cleansing.

G20-plus-NATO: Support of the Kiev Blitz

To isolate and weaken resistance in the Donbas and guarantee the victory of the impending Kiev blitz, the EU and the US are intensifying their economic, military and diplomatic pressure on Russia to abandon the nascent peoples’ democracy in the south-east region of Ukraine, their principle ally.

Each and every escalation of economic sanctions against Russia is designed to weaken the capacity of the Donbas resistance fighters to defend their homes, towns and cities. Each and every Russian shipment of essential medical supplies and food to the besieged population evokes a new and more hysterical outburst – because it counters Kiev-NATO strategy of starving the partisans and their mass base into submission or provoking their flight to safety across the Russian border.

After suffering a series of defeats, the Kiev regime and its NATO strategists decided to sign a ‘peace protocol’, the so-called Minsk agreement, to halt the advance of the Donbas resistance into the southern regions and to protect its Kiev’s soldiers and militias holed-up in isolated pockets in the East. The Minsk agreement was designed to allow the Kiev junta to build up its military, re-organize its command and incorporate the disparate Nazi militias into its overall military forces in preparation for a ‘final offensive’. Kiev’s military build-up on the inside and NATO’s escalation of sanctions against Russia on the outside would be two sides of the same strategy: the success of a frontal attack on the democratic resistance of the Donbas basin depends on minimizing Russian military support through international sanctions.

NATO’s virulent hostility to Russian President Putin was on full display at the G20 meeting in Australia: NATO-linked presidents and prime ministers, especially Merkel, Obama, Cameron, Abbott, and Harper’s political threats and overt personal insults paralleled Kiev’s growing starvation blockade of the besieged rebels and population centers in the south-east. Both the G20’s economic threats against Russia and the diplomatic isolation of Putin and Kiev’s economic blockade are preludes to NATO’s Final Solution – the physical annihilation of all vestiges of Donbas resistance, popular democracy and cultural-economic ties with Russia.

Kiev depends on its NATO mentors to impose a new round of severe sanctions against Russia, especially if its planned invasion encounters a well armed and robust mass resistance bolstered by Russian support. NATO is counting on Kiev’s restored and newly supplied military capacity to effectively destroy the southeast centers of resistance.

NATO has decided on an ‘all-or-nothing campaign’: to seize all of Ukraine or, failing that, destroy the restive southeast, obliterate its population and productive capacity and engage in an all-out economic (and possibly shooting) war with Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel is on board with this plan despite the complaints of German industrialists over their huge loss of export sales to Russia. President Hollande of France has signed on dismissing the complaints of trade unionists over the loss of thousands French jobs in the shipyards. Prime Minister David Cameron is eager for an economic war against Moscow, suggesting the bankers of the City of London find new channels to launder the illicit earnings of Russian oligarchs.

The Russian Response

Russian diplomats are desperate to find a compromise, which allows Ukraine’s ethnic Ukraine- Russian population in the southeast to retain some autonomy under a federation plan and regain influence within the ‘new’ post-putsch Ukraine. Russian military strategists have provided logistical and military aid to the resistance in order to avoid a repeat of the Odessa massacre of ethnic Russians by Ukrainian fascists on a massive scale. Above all, Russia cannot afford to have NATO-Nazi-Kiev military bases along its southern ‘underbelly’, imposing a blockade of the Crimea and forcing a mass exodus of ethnic Russians from the Donbas. Under Putin, the Russian government has tried to propose compromises allowing Western economic supremacy over Ukraine but without NATO military expansion and absorption by Kiev.

That policy of conciliation has repeatedly failed.

The democratically elected ‘compromise regime’ in Kiev was overthrown in February 2014 in a violent putsch, which installed a pro-NATO junta.

Kiev violated the Minsk agreement with impunity and encouragement from the NATO powers and Germany.

The recent G20 meeting in Australia featured a rabble-rousing chorus against President Putin. The crucial four-hour private meeting between Putin and Merkel turned into a fiasco when Germany parroted the NATO chorus.

Putin finally responded by expanding Russia’s air and ground troop preparedness along its borders while accelerating Moscow’s economic pivot to Asia.

Most important, President Putin has announced that Russia cannot stand by and allow the massacre of a whole people in the Donbas region.

Is Poroshenko’s forthcoming blitz against the people of southeast Ukraine designed to provoke a Russian response – to the humanitarian crisis? Will Russia confront the NATO-directed Kiev offensive and risk a total break with the West?

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. Latest book: “The New Extractivism. A Post-Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century?” Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras. Zed Books. http://petras.lahaine.org/

Putin: ‘U.S wants to subdue Russia, but no one did or ever will’

November 20, 2014 by Nasheman

President of Russia Vladimir Putin. (RIA Novosti / Alexey Druzhinin)

by RT

The US has no plans to humiliate Russia, but instead wants to subdue it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said, adding that no one had ever succeeded in doing so – and never will.

Speaking at a forum of the All-Russia Peoples’ Front in Moscow on Tuesday, the Russian leader said that history was not about to change, and that no one would manage to suppress the country.

“Throughout history no one has ever managed to do so toward Russia – and no one ever will,” Putin said.

Responding to a question about whether America was trying to humiliate Russia, Putin disagreed, saying that the US wanted “to solve their problems at our expense.”

He said that people in Russia really like the Americans, but it’s the US politics that are not accepted so well. “I think America and its people are more liked than disliked by people here [in Russia]. It’s the politics of the ruling class [in the US] that is likely negatively viewed by the majority of our citizens,” he said.

The Russian leader said the US had managed to subordinate its allies to its influence – with such countries “trying to protect foreign national interests on obscure conditions and perspectives.”

One of the means of changing the balance of power in the world to eventually subdue Russia was NATO’s gradual approach to its borders, which made Russia “nervous”, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told BBC.

Russia needs a “100% guarantee that no-one would think about Ukraine joining NATO,” Peskov added.

Heads of states and international organizations pose for the “family photo” during the G20 Summit in Brisbane on November 15, 2014. (AFP Photo/Saeed Khan)

The Russian president has last met with his American counterpart last week, while attending the G20 summit in Australia. Despite the focus on the world economy, the crisis in Ukraine was one of the hottest topics at the G20. Talking about the summit’s results at a press conference, US President Barack Obama did not announce any significant changes in his country’s approach to Russia.

“We would prefer a Russia that is fully integrated with the global economy,” the US president told a news conference, adding that his country was “also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles.”

Before leaving Brisbane, Putin said that a solution to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine was possible. “Today the situation [in Ukraine] in my view has good chances for resolution, no matter how strange it may sound,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.

The Russian leader also said he was satisfied with both the results and atmosphere of the meetings.

Australian authorities created an exceptionally friendly atmosphere for discussing solutions to economic challenges at the G20 summit in Brisbane, the Russian president said, dispelling rumors there were any confrontations.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) shaking hands with members of his motorcycle escort at the airport in Brisbane as he leaves the G20 Summit.(AFP Photo / Steve Holland)

“Our Australian partners created an exceptionally friendly working atmosphere, very heartfelt, I should say, that was conducive to finding solutions to the challenges faced by the global economy,” Putin said at a forum of the All-Russian People’s Front, adding that it was a pleasant surprise for him to see the warm reception of the Russian delegation from Australian citizens on the streets of Brisbane.

Answering a question about Abbott’s idea to “shirtfront” Putin over the downing of the MH17 jetliner, the Russian president said no such confrontation took place at the Brisbane summit.

“We had very constructive discussions of not only the themes that had brought us together, but some very grave issues involving the Malaysian Boeing. We discussed that in every detail. I can assure you that everything was decent and rather friendly,” said the Russian leader.

Though many media outlets speculated that Putin had left the summit early, skipping a Sunday working breakfast because of an icy welcome at the G20, the Russian leader reiterated on Tuesday that practically all work had been finished by that time. “I addressed all sessions,” Putin said, adding: “Our stance was heard.”

NATO airstrike kills seven civilians in Southern Afghanistan

October 15, 2014 by Nasheman

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.