Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
16/3/10
A US Defence Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to track and kill suspected Islamic militants, reports said yesterday. The official, Michael Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former CIA and Special Forces members. These people gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected Islamic militants and the location of insurgent camps, a report said. The information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan for use in strikes. The New York Times report said that while it has been widely reported that the CIA and the military were using unmanned drones to attack al-Qa’ida operatives, some US officials said they were troubled that Mr Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. They were not sure who supervised his work.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Mercenaries, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Jared Owens; 8/3/10
An Afghan family has told how Australian forces botched a pre-dawn raid on their home, allegedly killing five children and another civilian. The Australians had been searching for Taliban leader Mullah Noorullah when they mistakenly raided the family’s compound in Oruzgan province last February, the family told SBS’s Dateline in a program aired last night. “They held the machine guns at me so I couldn’t move. Then they came and tied my arms up like this,” a father, Zahir Kahn, said. He said the troops had taken him outside and blindfolded him while they moved into the home, allegedly opening fire on the residents. The Australian Defence Force confirmed Mr Kahn had been detained by Australian troops that night.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, February 26th, 2010
26/2/10
Private American security guards working for the US military in Afghanistan removed hundreds of handguns and automatic weapons from stores intended for the exclusive use of the Afghan police and used them on drunken rampages that killed two Afghan civilians and injured at least two more. The guards included a former US marine with a criminal record of assault and a former soldier discharged from the US army after testing positive for cocaine, congress heard yesterday. Justin Cannon, Christopher Drotleff and a guard using the name “Eric Cartman” from the cartoon South Park were employees of a subsidiary of the Blackwater Worldwide group, implicated in a litany of extrajudicial shootings since 2003 in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cannon and Drotleff have been charged with killing two Afghans and injuring a third last May when they opened fire on a car carrying four civilians in Kabul, while under the influence of alcohol. The men, hired to train Afghan soldiers, had no permission to carry guns.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Iraq, Mercenaries, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Aid / Trade, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Mark Dodd; 23/2/10
A NATO airstrike has killed at least 27 civilians in the third such mistaken bombing raid in Afghanistan in a week and forcing another apology last night from the top US commander in the country. Four women and a child were among the civilians killed yesterday when they were attacked after being mistaken for Taliban militants who are waging an eight-year insurgency to evict Western troops. The top ground commander, Stanley McChrystal, last night apologised for the incident to President Hamid Karzai, who has repeatedly warned foreign and Afghan forces to take all measures possible to avoid harming civilians. The airstrike came days after NATO forces pressing a major offensive in the south killed at least nine Afghan civilians when a rocket slammed into a house — for which General McChrystal also apologised.
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Tags: Afghanistan, NATO, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Paul McGeough; 13/2/10
The kohl-eyed Hakimullah Mehsud probably is dead. He was the target for a missile fired last month from an unmanned aircraft hovering over the Afghan-Pakistani border – but launched by an operator in the US. Mehsud was the ruthless mastermind of multiple suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan. He was part of a suicide mission on December 30 at Khost, just across the border in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA agents who were working on the covert operation that now appears to have ended Mehsud’s brief and brutal leadership of the Taliban in Pakistan. In the artistry of war, the insertion of a Jordanian double-agent who detonated his explosive vest inside this super-sensitive CIA bunker was flawless. But, in their payback, the enraged Americans confirmed the breadth of a new horizon in modern warfare – launching 15 clinical drone attacks in which more than 100 people died along the border, as Washington’s electronic eyes and guns sought out Mehsud and his Taliban and al-Qaeda allies. War does not get more radical than this – technically, politically and, perhaps, ethically.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Human Rights, Pakistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Arms, Human Rights, Pakistan, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
8/2/10
A deadly airstrike in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province last September did not comply with Nato’s rules of engagement, according to the military organisation’s own investigators. In a leaked document published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel this week, it was revealed that crucial information was withheld from US pilots by the German military, who ordered the attack that killed scores of Afghan civilians. The newspaper says Nato investigators looking into the September 4 bombing, which claimed 142 lives, found that US fighter pilots were inappropriately ordered to attack two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban in northern Kunduz. Civilians from the nearby village of Omarkhail were collecting fuel from the tankers when Nato jets were ordered to drop two 500 pound bombs on the lorries.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Virginia Haussegger; 8/2/10
Anyone who has witnessed the horror of a charred body and the putrid stench of burned flesh knows how these sights and smells are seared into your psyche. But to witness such horrific injury to the body of a young woman who has purposefully done this to herself – in a desperate attempt to die – is almost too much to bear. Sydney filmmaker Amin Palangi kept his head down and his eye behind the camera as he filmed shocking scenes of burned young women and girls being treated in Afghan hospitals. Back in 2006, before the rest of the world was prepared to acknowledge that self-immolation by women is on the rise in Afghanistan, Palangi and his producer wife Sanaz, who both speak Dari, took themselves to Afghanistan and roamed through hospital wards. The result is the award winning documentary, Hidden Generation, which traces the plight of women who attempt suicide by setting themselves alight.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Suicide, Womens Rights
Posted in Afghanistan, Gender & Marriage, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Jeremy Kelly, Kabul; 27/1/10
A former Australian soldier has been sentenced to death in Kabul for murdering an Afghan security guard and trying to blame the Taliban for the crime. Robert William Langdon, 38, was working as a security contractor in Afghanistan and was arrested in May last year after shooting his colleague, a man known as Karim, four times in the head and body. At the time, he was employed by the US-based contractor Four Horsemen International, which specialises in the hire of former US and foreign special forces for guard duties in Afghanistan. The Australian can now reveal details of the case that potentially puts the Rudd government on a collision course with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, given its staunch opposition to the death penalty while it helps secure and rebuild the war-ravaged country.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Mercenaries, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Australia, Terrorism, USA | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Ryan Rodrick Beiler; 25/2/10
As the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan nears 1,000, and as civilian casualties continue to mount during the latest offensive, it’s hard to know how to offer fresh commentary on the war in Afghanistan. And yet we can’t remain silent. Sojourners offered its alternative to escalating the conflict late last year, knowing that appeals against the logic of war often fall on deaf ears — even those of a “progressive” president, whose vice president now brags of better body counts than Bush. We raised our voice again when that same president called for increases in an already bloated defense budget, at a time of record deficits.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Brendan Nicholson; 22/1/10
Australian special forces soldiers are using gunsights with biblical references etched on to them as they fight the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The ADF has several hundred of the sights, which are prized by elite troops for their accuracy over long range. Their use by US, British and New Zealand troops has raised alarm among military leaders that it could reinforce views among extremists that the West is waging a crusade against Islam. The Australian Defence Force is investigating how to remove biblical references etched on to gunsights, without damaging the weapons. The ADF and military authorities in the US, Britain and elsewhere thought the letters and numbers on the sights were simply stock or model numbers until a US soldier in Afghanistan complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation that the initials referred to passage from the Bible. One example was JN8:12 which turned out to be a reference to chapter eight, verse 12 in the Book of John: “When Jesus spoke again to the people he said ‘I am the light of the world.” ‘Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life’.”
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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Religion, UK, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Christianity, Religion, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Tom Allard & Jonatha Perlman; 19/1/10; (2 Items)
The last asylum seekers from the Oceanic Viking are due to leave Indonesia this week, with most destined for New Zealand, which had originally refused to take any of the 78 Sri Lankans on the customs vessel. The development brings to an end a politically challenging saga for the Rudd Government that began when the ethnic Tamils refused to get off the Oceanic Viking after being rescued on the high seas. Along the way, the important relationship with Indonesia was strained while questions remain about just how the Australian Government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) managed to convince several countries to accept the refugees so quickly.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Indonesia, Migrants & Refugees, NZ
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
18/1/10
The United States has published the names of 645 prisoners held at a controversial US-run prison in Afghanistan following a freedom of information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Despite previous refusals to identify those held in the jail at Bagram, the ACLU received the list of names on Saturday after their request for documents related to the detention and treatment of prisoners at the base was partially accepted. Melissa Goodman, a lawyer for ACLU, said the publication of the list was “an important step toward transparency and accountability at the secretive Bagram prison” but that vital information was still missing. “Full transparency and accountability about Bagram requires disclosing how long these people have been imprisoned, where they are from and whether they were captured far from any battlefield or in other countries far from Afghanistan,” she said.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Richard Norton-Taylor; 14/1/10
The British Government’s justification for launching the Iraq war has been undermined after two inquiries cast new light on the build-up to war. Delivering the first independent assessment of the legality of the war, a Dutch inquiry has found the military action had no sound mandate in international law. It delivered its findings as details of former prime minister Tony Blair’s support for the war emerged in testimony by his former communications chief Alastair Campbell to the Chilcot inquiry into the war. In about five hours of questioning about the secret diplomacy between Washington and Downing Street in the months before the invasion, Mr Campbell told the inquiry in London that Mr Blair had assured US President George Bush in private letters in 2002 that Britain would support a US-led war against Iraq.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Doug Bandow; 6/1/10
With al-Qa’ida dispersed, Afghanistan, though a human tragedy, doesn’t matter much to the US or its allies. Rather than allow the Afghan mission to slide into nation-building, the Obama administration should begin withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan. Afghanistan originally looked like the good war. Consolidating power in a reasonably democratic government in Kabul was never going to be easy, but the Bush administration tossed away the best chance of doing so by prematurely shifting military units to Iraq. The Obama administration now is attempting the geopolitical equivalent of shutting the barn doors after the horses have fled. The situation is a mess. The Karzai government is illegitimate, corrupt and incompetent. Taliban forces and attacks are increasing. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that Afghanistan is “deteriorating”.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Henry and Bert Thornton; 4/1/10; http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5906; (2 Items)
The United Nations has withdrawn one-third of its staff from Pakistan because of worsening security and increased terrorist attacks. The Wall Street Journal writes Pakistan’s failure to defeat terrorist groups operating within the country and Afghanistan forced the UN to leave.
Suicide bomber strikes at heart of CIA’s Afghan program
The Wall Street Journal; The suicide attack this week on a CIA compound in Afghanistan devastated what has been a hub of counter-terrorism and intelligence operations for the spy agency. The CIA base was at the heart of a covert program overseeing strikes by the agency’s remote-controlled aircraft along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, officials familiar with the installation said. The CIA continued drone strikes yesterday. A security official in Pakistan confirmed that two militants were killed in what was described as a missile attack by a Predator drone in Pakistan’s autonomous North Waziristan region, across the border from Khost.
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Tags: Afghanistan, CIA, Clandestine, Pakistan, Secrecy, Terrorism, USA, Yemen
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Pakistan, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Joby Warrick; 1/1/10 (2 Items)
Eight Americans, most of whom worked for the CIA, were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up after sneaking into the gym on a US base in Afghanistan. Four Canadian soldiers and a journalist were also killed when a bomb exploded as their armoured vehicle passed by on Wednesday. The attacks came as the number of US and NATO-led foreign forces is set to soar to 150,000, to try to halt an increasingly virulent insurgency by the Taliban that has made 2009 the bloodiest year for international forces since the invasion in 2001. The attack represented an audacious blow to intelligence agents at the vanguard of US counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes
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Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
