Jul 03 2009
As U.S. Troops Mount Offensive in Afghanistan
U.S. Marines marked the start of a new offensive in Afghanistan Thursday, as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to stabilize the Afghan-Pakistan border region. A Washington Post reporter embedded in the Helmand province provides an update
Jun 25 2009
By Kathy Kelly
June 25, 2009
In early June, 2009, I was in the Shah Mansoor displaced persons camp in Pakistan, listening to one resident detail the carnage which had spurred his and his family’s flight there a mere 15 days earlier. Their city, Mingora, had come under massive aerial bombardment. He recalled harried efforts to bury corpses found on the roadside even as he and his neighbors tried to organize their families to flee the area.
“They were killing us in that way, there,” my friend said. Then, gesturing to the rows of tents stretching as far as the eye could see, he added, “Now, in this way, here.”
Jun 25 2009
President Pretty Mouth likes to stick his tongue in our collective ear about the universality of human dignity, freedom from coercive repression, and justice, but it feels utterly inappropriate.
Jun 20 2009
Remember on this day, We as a Nation are Directly Responsible for the plight of millions of recent refugee’s through our failed foreign policies of Wars/Occupations of Choice in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and now in Pakistan.
We have many, supporters of our occupations mostly, who rail against any illegal immigrants crossing our borders for the jobs companies will give them, while at the same time forcing millions to flee to their neighbors countries, leaving those countries to absorb and support them.
We Are Directly Responsible!
Jun 12 2009
Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) and Dan Pearson ([email protected]) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). With Gene Stoltzfus and Razia Ahmed, they are traveling in Pakistan. This report is posted at their request.
by Kathy Kelly and Dan Pearson
In Pakistan’s Swabi district, a bumpy road leads to Shah Mansoor, a small village surrounded by farmland. Just outside the village, uniform size tents are set up in hundreds of rows. The sun bores down on the Shah Mansoor camp which has become a temporary home to thousands of displaced Pakistanis from the Swat area. In the stifling heat, the camp’s residents sit idly, day after day, uncertain about their future. They spoke with heated certainty, though, about their grievances.
As soon as we stepped out of the car, men and children approached us. They had all arrived from Mingora, the main city of Swat, 15 days prior. One young man, a student, told us that bombing and shelling had increased in their area, but, due to a government imposed curfew, they weren’t allowed to leave their homes. Suddenly, the Pakistani Army warned them to leave within four hours or they would be killed. With the curfew lifted long enough for them to get out of Mingora, they joined a mass exodus of people and walked for three days before reaching this camp.
After being assigned to a section of the camp coordinated by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees(UNHCR), they were provided with tents and plastic mats. So far, 554 tents are set up in this section, with an average of 6 – 10 people living in each tent.
Jun 10 2009
Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). She, along with Dan Pearson, Gene Stoltzfus, and Razia Ahmad, is part of a Voices delegation to Pakistan due back in the U.S. on June 13th. She sent this by email and asked that it be posted.
* * *
Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan
by Kathy Kelly
June 10, 2009
In Jayne Anne Phillips’ Lark and Termite, the skies over Korea, in 1950, are described in this way:
“The planes always come…like planets on rotation. A timed bloodletting, with different excuses.”
The most recent plane to attack the Pakistani village of Khaisor (according to a Waziristan resident who asked me to withhold his name) came twenty days ago, on May 20th, 2009. A U.S. drone airplane fired a missile at the village at 4:30 AM, killing 14 women and children and 2 elders, wounding eleven.
The previous day, some travelers had come to Khaisor, and the villagers had served them a meal. “This is our custom,” my friend relates. “It is our traditional way.” But these travelers were members of the Taliban, and their visit was noted by U.S. forces. It is possible they were identified through pictures taken by unmanned U.S. drones. Although the visitors had left right after their meal, the U.S. responded to this act of hospitality by bombing the homes of the hosts early the following morning.
May 27 2009
Huge blast hits central Lahore
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — A huge explosion reduced at least one building to rubble and sent plumes of thick smoke miles into the sky in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday.
The blast occurred on Mall Road near the city police headquarters and the high court, according to witnesses and GEO-TV, a CNN affiliate.
There were no immediate details on confirmed casualties, though television reports said the blast wounded several people, destroyed dozens of cars and damaged buildings.
Lahore is the same city where gunmen hurled grenades and opened fire on officers at a police training center in March.
The same month, gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying members of the Sri Lankan national cricket team on their way to a stadium for a match. The well-coordinated attack wounded at least eight members of the team and killed a driver and six Pakistani police officers.
North Korea Threatens Armed Strike, End to Armistice
May 27 (Bloomberg) — North Korea threatened military action in response to South Korea joining a program to seize weapons shipments, and said it’s no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.
South Korea’s actions are tantamount to a “declaration of war,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement today. “If the armistice agreement loses its validity, the Korean peninsula will revert to a state of war.”
The threats are the strongest since North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on May 25th, drawing international condemnation and the prospect of increased sanctions against Kim Jong Il’s reclusive regime. South Korea yesterday joined the U.S.-led initiative to locate and seize shipments of equipment and materials used to make weapons of mass destruction.
May 25 2009
Crossposted from Antemedius
Yesterday we saw investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter talk with Paul Jay of the Real News Network about the war in Afghanistan and Obama’s recent appointment of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to replace General McKiernan as the US commander in Afghanistan.
Porter says the McChrystal appointment won’t fulfill Obama’s supposed intention of investing in a civilian surge that will “win over the population,” through “services and political programs” because during his five year service in the Joint Special Operations Command and recently as the Director of the Joint Staff, McChrystal “has only been involved in targeted killings.”
We also learned that Obama’s surge may be only a prelude to a ground invasion of Pakistan as part of ongoing imperial resource wars.
Today in part two of the interview we learn that Porter has also interviewed Graham Fuller, the CIA Station Chief in Kabul during US support for the Afghan Jihadi movement against the Soviet Union, and says that Fuller “now believes very strongly the United States has to get out. That there is no way the United States is going to be able to win, [because the US] has no understanding of the forces it has unleashed in Afghanistan.”
I think that Porter is right as far as the majority of people in the US and the world not understanding the forces unleashed in Afghanistan by the US invasion and occupation, but I also feel Porter hasn’t gone far enough in explaining the context of what is happening in Afghanistan and with Obama’s surge, and I want to highly recommend to readers a thorough reading of another recent and very detailed in depth piece from Tom Englehart and from Pepe Escobar that places the AfPak situation in the much wider geopolitical context of a desperate US attempt at world energy and resource domination: Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak.
May 25 2009
I originally posted this here at the Great Orange Satan. I stated then and I will state now that my rights are not for sale. Now, Philip Gourevitch seeks to sell my right to know what is being done in my name down the river in the New York Times. I will repost here and then add a rebuttal to Mr. Gourevitch down below.
Crazed & Confused thinks that Obama was right not to release the torture photos. But he ignores the basic problems with Obama’s rationale — transparency is essential to a functioning democracy. It was the clear intent of the Founding Fathers that the government follow a policy of transparency — in fact, the Constitution requires that Congress publish a journal of its proceedings. If we do not have maximum transparency in our government, then how will we know if we are still a functioning democracy? How will we know if our elected officials are following the Constitution? This is the very sort of thing that Obama ran on. I suggest that he do what he was elected to do and provide more transparency in government by releasing these pictures.
May 24 2009
Crossposted from Antemedius
Investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter talks with Paul Jay about General Stanley McChrystal’s new job as the head of US operations in Afghanistan. Porter says McChrystal’s appointment will hardly change US policy in Afghanistan, but could intensify US commando raids and air strikes in the region.
He also comments on Obama’s plans for a civilian surge saying, “a civilian component to a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is essentially empty talk, in the sense that they don’t really know how to do it.”.
“They don’t have the means to do it. They don’t have people that are trained in Pashtun, the language of southern Afghanistan, where the ethnic group that basically inhabits the area, where most of the Taliban gains have been made, is located.”
May 15 2009
Crossposted from Antemedius
Pepe Escobar:
No one really knows the fate of the man who was the reason for the Bush administration-proclaimed “war on terror”. Some influential Pakistanis say the Americans don’t know it. The Americans admit they don’t know it. President George W. Bush wanted him dead or alive. No one really knows whether he’s dead or alive. President Barack Obama says he and his organization remain the number one threat to the U.S. But even America’s most media-savvy general admits his organization is not in Afghanistan anymore. Would that be reason enough for the U.S. to finally leave Afghanistan? On the contrary: now there’s a new – counterinsurgent – top boot on the ground.
Real News Network – May 15, 2009
Obama and Osama – McChrystal clear
The more it changes, the more the “war on terror” stays the same