Michael Hughes: The obsession of the U.S. and its international partners with building a strong central state in Afghanistan at the expense of local, more informal, governing institutions is one of the reasons the state-building mission failed, leaving the country vulnerable to predation and abuse by corrupt officials and warlords. As a result, the Afghan government,
Counter Punch: Islamic extremism was virtually unknown fifty years ago and suicide bombings were inconceivable. And yet today it seems that we are confronted with both on a daily basis. So what happened to bring Islamic fundamentalism to the forefront of global politics? While there are many factors involved, undoubtedly one of the primary causes is
Counter Punch: Bombs explode in a subway. The victims are everyday people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What follows is outrage: track down the perpetuators. The people who set off the bombs are monsters and inhuman fanatics, thunder the authorities. But the year is not 2016, it is 1883…
Aimal Faizi: The Taliban has rejected the Afghan government’s offer for peace talks as “futile” and “misleading”, saying they would be “contradictory” in the face of the fresh deployment of US troops and continued US air strikes and night raids in Afghanistan. Last week’s rebuttal came after the Pentagon deployed “hundreds” of new soldiers to back US
Michael Hughes: Not only did Washington’s $113 billion plus state-building endeavor fail to bring stability and good governance to Afghanistan, it neglected to put in safeguards against one of the most predictable financial collapses in history. It didn’t take a Nobel prize-winning economist to foresee that Afghanistan’s distorted “war economy” bubble would burst in the post-NATO
The Washington Post: Women in Afghanistan are changing their lives and their nation. Fifteen years ago, barely 5,000 girls were enrolled in primary school. Soon that number will exceed 3 million. Thirty-six percent of teachers are women. Afghanistan’s first lady, Rula Ghani, has launched a project to establish a female-only university, run by women. In government,
The New Yorker: America’s war in Afghanistan, which is now in its fifteenth year, presents a mystery: how could so much money, power, and good will have achieved so little? Congress has appropriated almost eight hundred billion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan; a hundred and thirteen billion has gone to reconstruction, more than was spent
Michael Hughes: Just as the spirit of rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad is in the air on the eve of talks with the insurgency, it appears Pakistan’s military chieftains have sunk to a new nadir amid reports they are supporting Daesh, otherwise known as the Islamic State, the sworn enemy of the Taliban and Al
The Guardian (UK): The policy of indefinite detention in Gitmo makes a mockery of the US constitution. That’s why, as Barack Obama makes his latest impassioned and forceful plea to close it once and for all, it is shameful that he is leaving in place the practices that enabled it to flourish in the first
The Independent: I have long nursed the suspicion that Taliban units, ISIS and government militias are not fighting about religion or government at all, more about mafia power. Click here to read more (external link).