Skip to content

Afghanistan

To Leave Afghanistan Just Leave Afghanistan

It is doubtful that the meeting was planned at all. The optics of such a meeting, shortly before an 9/11 anniversary, would have been too terrible. On Friday the Afghan President Ghani already said that he would not come to Washington. And would the Taliban leaders really step on a U.S. plane or helicopter to fly to Camp David when the real destination might well be Guantanamo Bay?

Afghanistan Veteran Explains Real Reason Behind The War

After 18 years of the US war in Afghanistan, do we really understand the reasons behind it? We know that it has backfired and terrorism has spread and grown around the world. We know the US is losing the war because the Taliban now control more territory than they ever have since 2001. We know more civilians have died from US bombs than enemy combatants. But when asking organizers in the US peace movement, I receive a myriad of answers. Anything from theories of Israel secreting planning the 9/11 attacks or it was just a bad decision.

Remnants Of War

Intense fighting and hideous attacks battered Afghans throughout their country last week as negotiators in Qatar weighed the benefits and costs of a peace agreement that might stop the bloodshed. In Kabul at least 40 people, including one child, were killed in a complex Taliban attack. Dozens of children whose school was partially collapsed by a massive car bomb were injured. Of these, 21 were hospitalized with serious injuries. New York Times correspondent Mujib Mashal posted (on Twitter) a photo of an elementary school child being carried into the Italian Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War in Kabul. “Blood on his face,” Mashal writes, describing the child. “Still in shock. Still clutching that pencil.”

Remnants Of War

Intense fighting and hideous attacks battered Afghans throughout their country last week as negotiators in Qatar weighed the benefits and costs of  a peace agreement that might stop the bloodshed. In Kabul at least 40 people, including one child, were killed in a complex Taliban attack. Dozens of children whose school was partially collapsed by a massive car bomb were injured. Of these, 21 were hospitalized with serious injuries. New York Times correspondent Mujib Mashal posted (on Twitter) a photo of an elementary school child being carried into the Italian Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War in Kabul.

In Afghanistan, We Have Three Dreams

We’re the Afghan Peace Volunteers in Kabul, and we have three dreams. Our three dreams are about reuniting with nature and 7.7 billion other human beings! Our dreams aren’t prescriptions. They’re music and movements, distilled from today’s nightmares. What we hope to gain is love, not money or political power, because love will be good for all of us! We will re-boot the operating systems that have programmed us to chase after fake money and power.

Peace Is A Word That The West Has Taken From The Afghans

It’s difficult to explain the nature of the Afghanistan peace talks. There is no single table with the combatants arrayed on either side. Talks are not even taking place in the same city, since there are at least two sets of discussions ongoing. One location for the peace talks is in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban is meeting with the U.S. government. The other location is Moscow, Russia, where the Taliban has been holding meetings with Afghan opposition leaders—including the former president Hamid Karzai. Absent from both meetings is the incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and his government. The Taliban sees them as illegitimate and irrelevant. Everyone—except President Ghani—says that the talks have made “progress.” But seasoned diplomats say that this “progress” is far too slow for a war that has now lasted 18 years.

After Nearly 40 Years, Time To Let Afghanistan Decide Its Own Future

In Afghanistan as elsewhere, external factors have not solved the conflict. On the contrary, foreign interests have been transported to Afghanistan and in this way, political solutions have been destroyed. For this reason, people are leaving Afghanistan en masse. It is time to let the conflict be resolved by Afghans, in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan’s national interests. Thirty-nine years of war are more than enough. We must seriously seek new ways to peace.

The Revelations Of WikiLeaks: No. 2 —The Leak That ‘Exposed The True Afghan War’

Three months after it published the “Collateral Murder” video, WikiLeaks on July 25, 2010 released a cache of secret U.S. documents on the war in Afghanistan. It revealed the suppression of civilian casualty figures, the existence of an elite U.S.-led death squad and the covert role of Pakistan in the conflict, among other revelations. The publication of theAfghan War Diaries helped set the U.S. government on a collision course with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that ultimately led to his arrest last month.

US & Its Afghan Trainees Now Killing More Civilians Than The Taliban

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — For the first time in recorded history, the U.S. and the Afghan government, whose forces are trained by Americans, killed more civilians than did the Taliban in the first quarter of 2019, according to a United Nations report. Increased bombing campaigns by the U.S. and increasingly reckless search operations by pro-government forces have fueled the trend reversal. While the U.S. war in Afghanistan was bloodiest in its infancy, little data is available until 2009, when the UN started keeping track of civilian casualties and the U.S. started accounting for the bombs and munitions it drops on the country.

ICC Refuses To Investigate Crimes In Afghanistan, U.S. Torture

April 12, 2019, Paris, The Hague, New York – In what human rights groups call an appalling decision, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II decided not to grant the Prosecutor’s request to open an investigation into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan and on the territory of other States Parties implicated in the U.S. torture program. Tens of thousands of victims in Afghanistan, along with victims of U.S. torture, had urged the ICC to authorize the investigation. Despite finding that requirements were met as regards both jurisdiction and admissibility, the Pre-Trial judges decided that authorizing an investigation would not serve “the interests of justice”...

‘Shameful’: Trump Admin Revokes ICC Prosecutor’s Visa Over Probe Of Potential US War Crimes In Afghanistan

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's office said she will continue her work for the Hague-based tribunal "without fear or favor." In a move human rights defenders decried as "shameful," the Trump administration revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor this week for trying to investigate alleged war crimes committed by American forces in Afghanistan. "What we can confirm is that the U.S. authorities have revoked the prosecutor's visa for entry into the U.S." Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's office said in a statement. The decision, per her office, shouldn't interfere with her travel to the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

American Soldiers Aren’t Dying For Our Freedom In Syria, Iraq And Afghanistan.

President Trump has promised repeatedly to end “endless wars,” during both his campaign and his tenure so far in office. Despite this rhetoric, endless — and, frankly, pointless —wars are, sadly, still the American norm. Two more Americans were just killed in Afghanistan — a war that the Trump administration realises needs to end, but seems in no hurry to actually do so. In December 2018, Trump announced that all US troops would be withdrawn from Syria, only to later rescind that declaration in favour of a small force of 400 to 1,000 troops to stay behind indefinitely...

Nonviolent Versus Violent Peace In Afghanistan And The World

“Salam (peace)!” is how Afghans greet one another, some of them simultaneously placing a hand over their hearts. But, while everyone including Afghans wants peace, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and I have observed that the human species appears to be stuck on violent peace. We think that this is because most of us are reared as armed doves, like the one drawn by Wifred Hildonen for Cartoon Stock below. There is a new Peacemaker in town! Using Wilfred’s cartoon analogy, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and I are differentiating violent peace from nonviolent peace based on whether a society includes or excludes the use of weapons and armies as a resort to secure peace.

The Taliban Is Ascendant As Afghanistan Hangs In The Balance

The tables have turned. The Taliban, the militants who sheltered the 9/11 attackers and earned the wrath of America, are now meeting their arch-nemesis in Doha, Qatar. Conducting the talks is Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior diplomat of Afghan descent who is currently serving as the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation. Since August 2018, the two parties have met five times. Last Tuesday, Ambassador Khalilzad tweeted: “Just finished a marathon round of talks with the Taliban in Doha. The conditions for peace have improved. It’s clear all sides want to end the war. Despite ups and downs, we kept things on track and made real strides.”

What It Really Takes To Secure Peace In Afghanistan

Kabul - Hossein, a member of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, (APV), which hosted my recent visit to Afghanistan, rolled up his sleeve to show me a still-healing three-inch wound. Thieves had broken into his family home in Kabul. When they were discovered, one of the robbers stabbed Hossein. An APV coordinator, Zekerullah, was robbed and beaten by assailants in broad daylight. Ata Khan lost his camera and mobile phone to a gang of young thieves who accosted him and eight other people in a public park during the daytime. Habib, a recent young graduate of the APV Street Kids School program, suffered blows from several attackers a month ago.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.