The Conversation: The Washington Post has, after more than two years of investigation, revealed that senior foreign policy officials in the White House, State and Defense departments have known for some time that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was failing. Interview transcripts from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, obtained by the Post after many lawsuits, show
Michael Hughes: The Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers was met with deafening silence because most astute observers already knew the U.S. military had painted a false picture of the war, not to mention the fact the document dump was released to an indifferent American public. That said, the documents still shine a bright light on the incompetence and
1TV: Addressing an annual anti-corruption conference, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday ordered the acting interior minister to immediately arrest Zmaray Paikan, a former commander Civil Order Police. Paikan had been sentenced by the country’s anti-corruption court to over eight years in prison in late 2017, but he has not been arrested yet. Click here to
Salon: If it disturbs us that the U.S. public was misled, shouldn’t we be even more disturbed by the way that the Afghans themselves were lied to? If the lies to the U.S. public are disturbing, wouldn’t the ones to Afghans be even more so? And, how is it that the cost to the U.S.
The Washington Post: On Monday, The Washington Post published the Afghanistan Papers, a major years-long investigation into the costs and conducts of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. These papers largely consist of more than 400 interviews conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)’s for its Lessons Learned project. Click here
Carla Babb VOA News December 10, 2019 PENTAGON – The Pentagon has denied intentionally misleading the public about the 18-year war in Afghanistan, after The Washington Post published a trove of government documents revealing that officials made overly optimistic pronouncements they knew to be false and hid evidence that the conflict had become un-winnable. “There has been
Tolo News: The Budget and Financial Committee of the Afghan parliament on Saturday warned that they will refer acting Finance Minister Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi to the Attorney General’s Office if he refuses to provide a satisfactory explanation to them about violations in the budget and unaccountable spending on his foreign trips. The committee members said they
The Diplomat: Daily newspaper Etilaat Roz makes an impact in the chaotic Afghan democracy. Etilaat Roz, or Daily Information, has established itself as a torchbearer investigative newspaper in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The daily hunts corruption, stirring what’s increasingly becoming a chaotic Afghan democracy, which suffers from ethnic frictions, messy elections, and insurgency. Click here to read
Insider: The US-led war in Afghanistan turned 18 in October, and those two decades of fighting and rebuilding appear to have yielded little progress. The counternarcotics effort there, for example, “has just been a total failure,” John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, in November. Click
Tolo News: Lawmakers in Afghanistan’s parliament on Sunday blasted the acting minister of finance–and adviser to President Ashraf Ghani– Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi, for defying the lawmakers’ call to appear before the House of Representatives to answer questions. Qayoumi was scheduled to answer questions about reports of the embezzlement of six billion afs from 1397 (2018) Qatia