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POPSThe Taliban Will 'Never' Negotiate With West "If increase the soldiers in Afghanistan, the jihad against will become serious." When asked if he had a message for Canadians, Ahmadi called on Canada not to "kill their sons" by sending troops to fight in Afghanistan. "I tell them to let Afghans to make their future by themselves and decide by themselves," he said. "Afghanistan does not belong to America or Canada." Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to pull all Canadian combat forces out of Afghanistan by 2011.
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POPSThe Case for U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan So if aerial bombardments and occupations give legitimacy to those very fundamentalists who Afghans would remove from power, what does the real war on fundamentalism look like? And it's not just that the Afghan population believes that the Taliban resistance is legitimate; that resistance is legitimate under international law. No less important a document than the United Nations charter gives the Taliban and other Afghans the right to legitimate self-defense against U.S. aggression. Instead of scaling up an already disastrous war, the United States should change it's course The whole article is worth a read.
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POPSAfghanistan: The Promise and the Reality
I have now spent several days in Afghanistan as an unembedded journalist, travelling around freely without an armed or military escort. Yes, it’s risky and at times nerve-wracking but if I want to find out what is really happening on the ground I’m not going to get it hiding in some hotel compound or army barracks being briefed by an army spokesman who knows even less than me. So far I’ve spoken to men and women from all backgrounds, cultures and Islamic ideologies and without exception they’re hacked off with the American presence. All the goodwill I saw after the fall of the Taliban has been squandered by the military presence of the US as well as the British (no one really distinguishes between the two) and it is crystal clear they have overstayed their welcome. The Taliban are in control of large swathes of the country and are now bordering on Kabul having already carried out several raids on the capital where Afghan leader Hamid Karzai is under virtual siege. Sinc
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POPSAhmadinejad's Message to Obama, "Change" Please Congratulates and calls for "change" toward policy of "non-interference" from one of hostile aggression threatening war with Iran and forbidding nuclear energy development. By "selfish minority" he appears to reference the neoconservatives and Israeli Lobby that have controlled war policy contrary (Iraq, et al) to what most Americans believe is right.
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POPSPakistani security forces said to secure Loisam area Tribal sources said the militants from Loisam used to easily travel to Nawagai Tehsil on one side and Nawapass in Charmang on the border with Afghanistan on the other side and similarly to Mamond via Bhai Cheena and Banda. Similarly, the militants were using it as an easy route to the adjoining Mohmand Agency via Ambar and Sarlara areas.Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for Baitullah Mahsud-led banned TTP, had once remarked that they would die but never allow Loisam to fall to the troops.
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POPSFrom "War on Terror" to "War of Terror" This war in Afghanistan's not about avenging the 9-11 attacks or preventing new ones. It's about killing local fighters, who fight to rid Afghanistan of unwelcome foreigners from Christian-majority countries. What began as a "War on Terror" has long since become a War of Terror. The Canadians and Europeans have long since tired of it. So have the American people, despite the failure of the corporate media to expose the Big Lies that Cheney and Bush continue to promote in order to justify their Terror War. Seven years down the road, there's no end in sight. No hope except for the "fool's hope" that public opinion in the imperialist countries, plus the inevitable resistance of the Afghans to foreign control, plus the military judgement that the war is not winnable will bring this "good war" to an end. The whole article is worth reading. Clip Song
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POPSThe Savagery of a Surge That Failed He didn't scream. Instead, the sight induced a sort of catatonia; he picked up the head, cradled it in his arms, and started walking aimlessly. He carried on like this for days, until tribal elders pried the head from his hands and convinced him to deal with his loss more constructively. He decided he would get revenge by becoming a suicide bomber and inflicting a loss on some American family as painful as the one he had just suffered. The Taliban are as uninterested in social services and human rights as the Karzai government or the international forces, but they know how to turn a world of poverty, insecurity, and death from laser-guided missiles to their advantage. Washington spends about $100 million a day on this war - close to $36 billion a year - but only five cents of every dollar goes towards aid. From this paltry sum, "a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and salaries".
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POPSTaleban On Top of USA & UK in Propaganda A War is lost if Propaganda of Loser wins hearts of Populace. Taleban uses Mobile phone technology and has won. Britain and USA awake too late. Underestimating is a habit with both 'uk & usa'.
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POPSOn the terror war quagmire-a Pakistani view Terrorism is the sword of extremism, whether it is religious, ethnic or regional. Islamic fundamentalism in its present form was nurtured by the absence of democratic rule in the Muslim world; the short-sighted and exploitative terms of engagement employed by the western powers to deal with Muslim majority countries, which included support to dictatorships, monarchies and oppressive rules; economic injustice meted out to the majority of the population in collaboration with comprador local elite and western corporations; and finally the issue of Palestine and the sentiment it broods across the Muslim world.
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POPSAfghans Fed Up With Government, US A strong sense of frustration echoed through dozens of interviews by The Associated Press with Afghan villagers, police, government officials, tribal elders and Taliban who left and rejoined the religious movement. The interviews ranged from the capital, Kabul, to the rural regions near the border with Pakistan. The overwhelming result: Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. They are equally fed up with what they see as seven years of corruption and incompetence in a U.S.-backed government that has largely failed to deliver on development. Even with more foreign troops, Afghanistan is now less secure.
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POPSAfghan leader assails airstrike on civilians “It is quite obvious, the Americans bombed the area due to wrong information,” he said by telephone. “I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban.”
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POPSAfghanistan’s Secret Treasure Afghanistan has probably one of the richest cultural and historical heritage, dating back to the third millennium BCE and the land had been a melting pot of Mesopotamian, Harappan, Greek and Chinese civilizations. Unfortunately, the wars and oppressive/dogmatic regimes tried their best to destroy the traces of this brilliant cultural background. Archaeology Magazine's latest issue tells the story of an amazing treasure of ancient artifacts, 95 percent of which was luckily recovered and brought to museums worldwide to be exhibited.
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POPSUK Denies Money to Wounded Afghans I think there are a lot more deaths from "collateral damage" and so do officials reprting...It's disgusting what our tax dollars are doing.... ‘We have huge concerns, especially over the number of casualties from air strikes,’ said Marc Garlasco, a former air strike commander for the Pentagon who left after becoming disillusioned with the number of innocent victims in Afghanistan and who is the author of this week’s HRW report. He said the casualty figures must be viewed as extremely conservative with the total representing the ‘bare minimum’.
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POPSAfghans Increasingly Caught in Crossfire--more to come from USA Afghanistan has been mired in a vicious cycle of violence since 1979 when local communist groups formed a government in Kabul with the help of the former Soviet army. They were overthrown by Islamist militants backed by the United States in the early 1990s. U.S. officials largely ignored the country and the plight of its people from then until 2001, when Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group launched its attacks on the United States.
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POPS60% Increase in Afghan Civilian Deaths "Most of those casualties are caused by the insurgents, who seem to have no regard for civilian life, but there are also still significant numbers caused by the international military forces,” Holmes said.
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POPSWhat will Obama do? This piece seems a logical bit to remember in the coming months. It is hero time in America and there is no one we may fall back on as fully as ourselves and in doing so support a creative President in his agenda with his choice for the second seat. We have seen what evil does when it sits in the second seat. Lets see what good can do.
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POPSDespite 2002 Hunting Ban, Snow Leopard Furs Being Sold As Souvenirs In Kabul U.S. soldiers joke with a snow leopard skin sample during an awareness programme at a military base in Kabul May 25, 2008. Afghanistan's snow leopards have barely survived three decades of war. But now the few remaining mountain leopards left in Afghanistan face another threat -- foreigners involved in rebuilding the war-torn country. Despite a complete hunting ban across Afghanistan since 2002, snow leopard furs regularly end up for sale on international military bases and at tourist bazaars in the capital. Foreigners have ready cash to buy the pelts as souvenirs and impoverished Afghans break poaching laws to supply them. Picture taken May 25, 2008. To match feature AFGHAN-SNOWLEOPARDS/ REUTERS/Omar Sobhani (AFGHANISTAN) AFGHAN-SNOWLEOPARDS/ KABUL Afghanistan 6/27/2008
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POPSDozens died in Afghanistan Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said thousands of soldiers and police officers -- with reinforcements from the capital city of Kabul -- began moving into Arghandab Wednesday morning. "This clearing operation is a response to a direct Taliban threat to the people of Arghandab district, where insurgents have forced hundreds of innocent Afghans to flee their homes," a statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. "The operation is expected to be completed within the next three days." The two Afghan soldiers were killed in a gun battle with three Taliban fighters, the defense ministry said. A NATO air raid in the district killed 20 other militants, the ministry said. Even with the operation under way, NATO said it had seen no evidence of an increased Taliban presence in the region. Video Watch former CIA boss talk about Taliban activity »
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POPSHunger, water scarcity displaces thousands of Afghans Faced by violence in the past two years, the bloodiest since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, and frustration from many Afghans about perceived lack of development, the government has been seeking ways to import flour or wheat to curb rising food prices
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