Afghanistan
Being the Other
Spring was short this year, it arrived late and is in a hurry to go –dusty winds are taking over fast. But there’s a bloom in my backyard, the least likely place in the guesthouse. Not many in the guesthouse know that my room has a backyard.
25 May 2009
Young and old, poor and prosperous, sick and healthy -- residents of Pakistan's Swat Valley continue to flee the violence that has erupted there as the military clashes with the Taliban.
Those who have fled tell of the whole valley being turned into a battlefield as citizens run away, many of them with no shoes and some elderly. They fall ill from sun and heat exposure -- particularly infants and those already weak and sick -- as they flee.
21 Mar 2009
This article poses two questions: on the day after US/Nato forces invade and occupy some of Balochistan and Waziristan, what will we say we should have done, and why aren’t we doing it now? Is this far-fetched?
20 Mar 2009
The visit this week to New Delhi of Leon Panetta, the Obama administration’s new CIA Director, marks a significant uptick in cooperation between US and India aimed at containing a collapsing Pakistan, with its dangerous mix of exporting terrorism and nuclear proliferation, according to sources.
20 Mar 2009
In order to forge an Afghan force that would wage this war, the United States needed camps in Pakistan. Pakistan was ruled by General Zia al-Huq, who had proclaimed two transcendent goals: imposing a "true Islamic order" in his country and building a nuclear bomb. He had also just hanged the elected leader he deposed, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. This was the man the United States would have to embrace if it wanted Pakistan to support the anti-Soviet rebellion it hoped to foment in Afghanistan. It eagerly did so.
22 Feb 2009
An investigation into a missile strike carried out by US-led forces in Afghanistan earlier this week has found that 13 civilians were among 16 people killed, the US military has said.
The military made the admission on Saturday, after originally saying that 15 opposition fighters had been killed in the strike in the Gozara district of Herat province.
Afghan officials insisted all along that six women and two children were among those killed.
Following Afghan outrage over the attack, US generals undertook an investigation, travelling to Gozara and talking to locals there.
