Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’
Monday, July 19th, 2010
Tim Costello; 19/7/10; (12 Items)
It is already clear that asylum seekers and ”stopping the boats” will be a critical element of this election. Yet the politics of asylum seekers is both deflating and confounding. Little wonder Immigration Minister Chris Evans, in an unguarded moment, reflected on his frustrations on the issue, which he said was ”killing the government”. Evans later said his frustrations were historical and things had changed since Julia Gillard became prime minister. Nevertheless, the issue remains perplexing. One poll last week showed tougher rhetoric on asylum seekers had boosted the government’s electoral support, despite a significant proportion of people polled saying they had little faith the government’s
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Migrants & Refugees, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant, USA | No Comments »
Monday, July 19th, 2010
Paige Taylor; 19/7/10 – 6 Items
Patrick McGorry, touched down on Christmas Island yesterday as a guest of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The leading mental health researcher, Australian of the Year and and outspoken critic of immigration detention centres, (he has described them as factories for mental illness), said he was there to “look and learn”.Professor McGorry will inspect the Indian Ocean island’s three detention facilities, including a former workers’ camp where families with young children are detained – amid increasing focus on incidents of self-harm and conflict among asylum-seekers on the island. Approximately 2500 people are detained on Christmas Island and two boats, carrying suspected asylum-seekers, are on their way there now. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship frequently allows refugee advocates inside its compounds on Christmas Island but it has never opened the gates to such a high-profile mental health expert.
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Migrants & Refugees, Vietnam
Posted in Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant, USA, Vietnam, War | No Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Amanda Hodge; 28/4/10; (4 Items)
Afghan refugees are returning in unexpectedly high numbers to their war-ravaged homeland, with more than 22,000 fleeing Pakistan’s rising insurgency and employment squeeze for an uncertain future across the border in the past month. Close to 1000 Afghans a day have filed through the UNHCR’s two reprocessing centres – in the restive Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta – since the UN refugee agency reopened its voluntary repatriation program late last month. The latest figures come just a fortnight after the Australian government announced it was suspending all Afghan and Sri Lankan refugee visa applications to try to dissuade a growing number of asylum-seekers arriving by boat. That decision is unlikely to have been a motivating factor for the thousands of families who have chosen to return to Afghanistan. The UNHCR said that, over the past month, returning refugees had cited rising living costs, fewer jobs and the difficult security situation in Pakistan as key reasons to go back to Afghanistan.
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Migrants & Refugees, Sri Lanka, UN, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, Sri Lanka, United Nations, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Brad Norington, 29/4/10
It has become a running joke in the Pentagon. So much so, that it makes the famous Knowledge Nation diagram advanced by Barry Jones for federal Labor’s education policy in 2001 look like child’s play. General Stanley McChrystal, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, had his own acerbic way of describing the complicated PowerPoint slide. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal told a room of army chiefs when he first saw it in Kabul last year. He drew laughter when he made his remarks, not surprisingly, but the PowerPoint slide was meant to be a serious attempt by military analysts to explain the task for allied forces in confronting the Taliban and winning support among the local population.
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Jerome Starkey; 6/4/10
US soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have claimed. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez, in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public. The claims were made as NATO admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
23/3/10
The American detention centre at Bagram, in Afghanistan, could be expanded into a Guantanamo-style prison for terrorist suspects detained around the world. This is one of the options being considered as US officials try to find an alternative to Guantanamo Bay, which President Barack Obama promised to close within a year of taking office. The continued use of the prison in Cuba has presented Mr Obama with an embarrassing dilemma because of the difficulty of finding somewhere acceptable to imprison those considered to be the most dangerous detainees. A decision to send al-Qa’ida suspects detained in countries such as Yemen and Somalia to Bagram, north of Kabul, would be highly controversial. General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, has already voiced his opposition, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, because of the negative publicity it would generate.
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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’.”
(more…)
Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Religion, UK, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Christianity, Religion, USA | No Comments »
