so please..tell me why our kids are still in Afghan dying?
( and i don't think Sarah is against these wars..as I am! and have always been..after all it was my co-workers death that WERE USED AS AN EXCUSE FOR THESE FUCKING ILLEGAL WARS OF AGRESSION AND OCCUPATION!)
thanks to IndianaGreen for many of his past threads! on truth and facts!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x21881#23086IndianaGreen (1000+ posts) Sat Nov-28-09 12:17 AM
Original message
Do you think you really know what is happening in Afghanistan?
Edited on Sat Nov-28-09 01:08 AM by IndianaGreen
Have you paid more attention to the British press, particularly recent reports of what the British military and diplomats have had to say about Afghanistan recently?
Have you bothered to find out what the Afghans are saying about NATO and the US?
Does it bother you that we are being asked to put our trust in the same military commander that played a leading role in the cover up of Pat Tillman's death?
I strongly urge all of you to read the speeches and writings of Malalai Joya, a champion of women's rights in Afghanistan.
Here is one of her recent speeches:
Eight years ago, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan under the banner of women's rights. Today, the situation for women--half of the population of the country--is hell in most of the provinces. Killing a woman is as easy as killing a horse. A few days before I come here, in Sar-e Pol province in the north of Afghanistan, a 5-year-old girl was kidnapped and killed. The rape of women and kidnapping and acid attacks--all of this violence is increasing rapidly, even at historical levels. And all of these crimes are happening in the name of democracy, women's rights and human rights.
I'm saying that as long as these warlords are in power along with these occupation forces, there is no hope to make positive changes in the lives of the men and women of my country.
It's not only women who are suffering. If I talked only about conditions for women, it would be all morning, but I wouldn't even be finished. All of this shocking news that the media never even gives to the people around the world. Women don't even have a human life.
But today, women and men don't have liberation. Millions of Afghans suffer from injustice, insecurity, corruption, joblessness, etc. Your government says that it sent troops there so that girls can go to school, but according to official figures from the government, more than 600 schools have been closed. When the girls go to school, they throw acid on their faces.
I think education is important--very important in my country. I always say that it's the key to our emancipation. But security is more important than food and water. They keep the situation dangerous like this so they can stay longer in Afghanistan because of their strategy and policies.
To know more about the deep tragedy of Afghanistan, during these eight years, they changed my country to the capital of the center of drug trade.
http://socialistworker.org/2009/11/03/no-nation-can-lib... For the benefit of those that suffer from a Pavlovian response to any stimulii having the word socialist in it:
The big lie of Afghanistan
My country hasn't been liberated: it's still under the warlords' control, and Nato occupation only reinforces their power
Malalai Joya
The Guardian, Saturday 25 July 2009
You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.
For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the "democracy" backed by Nato troops.
In the constitution it forbids those guilty of war crimes from running for high office. Yet Karzai has named two notorious warlords, Fahim and Khalili, as his running mates for the upcoming presidential election. Under the shadow of warlordism, corruption and occupation, this vote will have no legitimacy, and once again it seems the real choice will be made behind closed doors in the White House. As we say in Afghanistan, "the same donkey with a new saddle".
So far, Obama has pursued the same policy as Bush in Afghanistan. Sending more troops and expanding the war into Pakistan will only add fuel to the fire. Like many other Afghans, I risked my life during the dark years of Taliban rule to teach at underground schools for girls. Today the situation of women is as bad as ever. Victims of abuse and rape find no justice because the judiciary is dominated by fundamentalists. A growing number of women, seeing no way out of the suffering in their lives, have taken to suicide by self-immolation.
This week, US vice-president Joe Biden asserted that "more loss of life (is) inevitable" in Afghanistan, and that the ongoing occupation is in the "national interests" of both the US and the UK.
I have a different message to the people of Britain. I don't believe it is in your interests to see more young people sent off to war, and to have more of your taxpayers' money going to fund an occupation that keeps a gang of corrupt warlords and drug lords in power in Kabul.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/25/afg... IndianaGreen (1000+ posts) Sat Nov-28-09 01:22 AM
Response to Original message
21. Robert Fisk: 'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government'
Robert Fisk was the first correspondent in Kabul, reporting on US bombing of Al-Jazeera. He also reported about entire villages destroyed by US bombing. Here ia an article he wrote back in 2008 as he left Afghanistan. One thing should be clear to all us: no American Messiah can change the FUBAR that is Afghanistan!
Robert Fisk: 'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government'
As he leaves Afghanistan, our correspondent reflects on a failed state cursed by brutal fundamentalism and rampant corruption
Thursday, 27 November 2008
The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes. Kandahar is in Taliban hands all but a square mile at the centre of the city and the first Taliban checkpoints are scarcely 15 miles from Kabul. Hamid Karzai's deeply corrupted government is almost as powerless as the Iraqi cabinet in Baghdad's "Green Zone"; lorry drivers in the country now carry business permits issued by the Taliban which operate their own courts in remote areas of the country.
The Red Cross has already warned that humanitarian operations are being drastically curtailed in ever larger areas of Afghanistan; more than 4,000 people, at least a third of them civilians, have been killed in the past 11 months, along with scores of Nato troops and about 30 aid workers. Both the Taliban and Mr Karzai's government are executing their prisoners in ever greater numbers. The Afghan authorities hanged five men this month for murder, kidnap or rape one prisoner, a distant relative of Mr Karzai, predictably had his sentence commuted and more than 100 others are now on Kabul's death row.
This is not the democratic, peaceful, resurgent, "gender-sensitive" Afghanistan that the world promised to create after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Outside the capital and the far north of the country, almost every woman wears the all-enshrouding burkha, while fighters are now joining the Taliban's ranks from Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and even Turkey. More than 300 Turkish fighters are now believed to be in Afghanistan, many of them holding European passports.
"Nobody I know wants to see the Taliban back in power," a Kabul business executive says anonymity is now as much demanded as it was before 2001 "but people hate the government and the parliament which doesn't care about their security. The government is useless. With so many internally displaced refugees pouring into Kabul from the countryside, there's mass unemployment but of course, there are no statistics.
"The 'open market' led many of us into financial disaster. Afghanistan is just a battlefield of ideology, opium and political corruption. Now you've got all these commercial outfits receiving contracts from people like USAID. First they skim off 30 to 50 per cent for their own profits then they contract out and sub-contract to other companies and there's only 10 per cent of the original amount left for the Afghans themselves."
Afghans working for charitable organisations and for the UN are telling their employers that they are coming under increasing pressure to give information to the Taliban and provide them with safe houses. In the countryside, farmers live in fear of both sides in the war. A very senior NGO official in Kabul again, anonymity was requested says both the Taliban and the police regularly threaten villagers. "A Taliban group will arrive at a village headman's door at night maybe 15 or 16 of them and say they need food and shelter. And the headman tells the villagers to give them food and let them stay at the mosque. Then the police or army arrive in the day and accuse the villagers of colluding with the Taliban, detain innocent men and threaten to withhold humanitarian aid. Then there's the danger the village will be air-raided by the Americans."
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/...