Axis of Logic: Afghanistan and Pakistan are both U.S. allies, but the latter is accused of destabilizing the former with U.S. help. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani gave a blistering speech on April 25 to a rare joint session of parliament, accusing Pakistan’s government of aiding and abetting Afghan Taliban officials in Peshawar and Quetta. “Today, I
Michael Hughes: U.S. servicemen responsible for an attack on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan are not guilty of war crimes because they did not mean to kill more than 40 patients and staff, or so says the Pentagon, an argument that does not sit well with physicians, survivors and victims’ families. Many are
Press TV May 1, 2016 An American geopolitical commentator says the United Sates is an empire and empires never admit any wrongdoing, they always blame others. Dean Henderson, an author and columnist at Veterans Today, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday, after a US military investigation concluded that American forces
Michael Hughes: Convening a Loya Jirga, as some Afghan figures have called for recently, is a proper and fitting mechanism for remedying Afghanistan’s political gridlock. That the U.S. is opposed to this solution is not too surprising given indigenous governing mechanisms are antithetical to Washington’s mission to democratize the world, Jeffersonian style. However, Afghans should still
DW: US Secretary of State Kerry recently visited Kabul in an effort to keep the country’s rulers working together. The government’s internal rifts are growing, while opposition groups demanding the president’s resignation. Click here to read more (external link).
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