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Afghanistan

The Unlearnt Lessons Of 9/11, Twenty Years Out

Twenty years after 9/11, America is less safe, a deeply troubled country, ravaged by COVID, racism, inequality, extreme weather from global warming and political strife. Its political leaders have embraced an Orwellian approach to the truth in which war is peace and large segments of our society are polarized by widely divergent concepts of reality. On the afternoon of 9/11, with the American media joining with the leaders of the two major parties in banging the drum for war, I wrote one of the first statements calling for America to seek peace instead, to not turn our cries of grief into a call for war. Eventually, many joined with early voices such as those of the Green Party and the War Resisters League in warning that peace and freedom both at home and abroad would be undermined if the United States went to war instead of participating in international criminal prosecution of this crime against humanity.

US Collected 4.8 Million Biometric Records Of Afghans

In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the ouster of the Afghan national government, alarming reports indicate that the insurgents could potentially access biometric data collected by the U.S. to track Afghans, including people who worked for U.S. and coalition forces. Afghans who once supported the U.S. have been attempting to hide or destroy physical and digital evidence of their identities.

Whistleblower Shares Perspective On End To Afghanistan War

David McBride is a former military lawyer in the Royal Australia Regiment and Australia Special Forces. He completed two tours in Afghanistan and submitted an internal complaint against what he witnessed in the war. He immediately faced scrutiny and harassment. What David had to reveal was published as “The Afghan Files.” It was a “quite a big story in Australia,” according to him. But the Australia government responded by raiding the ABC and targeting David with a prosecution for an espionage offense.

Stop The Terror Of The US Drone Killing Machine

Did you hear about the 3 Afghan toddler girls whose flesh was ripped to pieces by a U.S. Drone Strike last Sunday?  Striking in a Kabul NEIGHBORHOOD, the attack also killed 4 other children, including 2 more under 6 years old!  The grief on Amal Ahmadi’s face tells it all!  10 civilian family members dead, 7 of them children, body parts everywhere, and bodies unrecognizable.  It was a horrific and tragic scene. And then there was last Friday’s U.S. drone strike in Nangarhar Province that U.S. officials claimed killed two “high profile" ISIS-K targets.”  A witness reported, “…rickshaws were burning.  Children and women were wounded and one man, one boy and one woman had been killed on the spot.”   OFFICIALS LIE...CHILDREN, WOMEN AND MEN DIE!   WE MUST UNITE TO STOP THIS RACIST U.S. DRONE TERROR IN THE SKY.

Afghanistan Collapse Reveals Beltway Media’s Loyalty To Permanent War

In the wake of a remarkably successful Taliban offensive capped by the takeover of Kabul, the responses of corporate media provided what may have been the most dramatic demonstration ever of its fealty to the Pentagon and military leadership. The media did so by mounting a full-throated political attack on President Joe Biden’s final withdrawal from Afghanistan and a defense of the military’s desire for an indefinite presence in the country. Biden’s failure to establish a plan for evacuating tens of thousands of Afghans seeking to the flee the new Taliban regime made him a soft target for the Beltway media’s furious assault. However, it was Biden’s refusal last Spring to keep 4,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan on an indefinite basis – flouting an aggressive Pentagon lobbying campaign – that initially triggered the rage of the military brass.

Don’t Wage Economic War On Afghanistan

Now that U.S. forces have finally exited Afghanistan, some American hawks are already agitating for the government to stoke internal conflict by backing a new insurgency and wage economic warfare on the country. Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Mike Waltz publicly called for US recognition of anti-Taliban forces in the Panjshir Valley as the Afghan government, and they urged the Biden administration to add the Taliban to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). Sanctions advocates from the hardline Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently made the case for piling on sanctions on Afghanistan by adding the Taliban to both the FTO list and the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Afghan Crisis Must End US’s Empire Of War, Corruption And Poverty

Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country - and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.  Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services.  Under pressure from the Biden administration, the International Monetary Fund decided not to release $450 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent to Afghanistan to help the country cope with the coronavirus pandemic. 

Did The US Support The Growth Of ISIS-K In Afghanistan?

Washington — The list of governments, former government officials, and organizations in the region that have accused the US of supporting ISIS-K is expansive and includes the Russian government, the Iranian government, Syrian government media, Hezbollah, an Iraqi state-sponsored military outfit and even former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who called the group a “tool” of the United States as journalist Ben Norton recently noted, characterizing Karzai as “a former US puppet who later turned against the US, and knows many of its secrets.” So what exactly is ISIS-K and what is it’s history? After ISIS’s Afghanistan variant became a household name overnight following a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed more than 170 people and wounded more than 200, the group’s history demands renewed scrutiny.

Afghan Activist: We All Deserve Refuge, Not Just Those Who Served The US

Following the Taliban’s seizure of power, people across the political spectrum have expressed concern about the fate of Afghans who helped the United States and are therefore at risk of retribution. (This concern is not universal: We are also seeing a rise in far-right, anti-Afghan refugee sentiment.) Pundits and politicians who gave little attention to civilian deaths in Afghanistan during 20 years of U.S. occupation are joining in this outpouring — a dynamic that is building pressure for the Biden administration to extend the U.S. military presence. The Biden administration has stopped evacuating Afghans by air, citing the bombings on the airport, but continues to airlift Americans from the country as the August 31 deadline approaches. Biden claims evacuations of Afghan allies will resume post-withdrawal.

The Empire Does Not Forgive

The Carthaginian general Hannibal, who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, committed suicide in 181 BC in exile as Roman soldiers closed in on his residence in the Bithynian village of Libyssa, now modern-day Turkey. It had been more than thirty years since he led his army across the alps and annihilated Roman legions at the Battle of Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae, considered one of the most brilliant tactical victories in warfare which centuries later inspired the plans of the German Army Command in World War I when they invaded Belgium and France. Rome was only able to finally save itself from defeat by replicating Hannibal’s military tactics.

Media Bury Story That US May Have Fired On Crowd At Airport

Western media appear to be downplaying a possible major development in the Kabul airport attack. If the story of U.S. soldiers firing into the crowd after the suicide bombing is true, it would be a major development that deserves prominent media attention. Western news organizations with reporters on the ground have been publishing highly detailed accounts of events at the airport for days.

The Futility Of The Afghan War And ‘War On Terror’

The world’s news feeds have been inundated this week with a deluge of images of the extremely hasty American retreat from Afghanistan. After militarily occupying the country for two decades and spending an estimated $2 trillion, the American-backed Afghan government lasted barely a week without U.S. troops backing it up. President Ashraf Ghani almost immediately fled to nearboring Tajikistan, reportedly taking hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen cash with him. The scenes of desperate Afghans crowding into the last American planes have made this week an extremely embarrassing one for the U.S. and its allies. But what about the human cost of two decades of occupation? One man who knows more than most about the absurdities of the war is Joe Glenton.

What A Truly Humanitarian Response In Afghanistan Would Look Like

As we reflect on what has transpired in Afghanistan with the Taliban returning to power, we have a vital opportunity for a more authentic, coherent humanitarian response. Toward this end, we must engage some critical analysis and questions.   We might ask why the Afghanistan government didn’t adequately have the support of its people? How can the conditions and momentum be generated for such trust, consideration and inclusion? Why has this been an ongoing issue long before the drawdown of U.S. troops?  President Biden has done a very courageous act by significantly reducing the role of the U.S. military and committing to military withdrawal in a large-scale international conflict, even after 20 years of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan.

Taliban Takeover Alarms The Gulf

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is being treated with great alarm in Arab capitals in the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are instigating their media (which dominates Arab discourse) to portray as horrors the U.S. defeat and resumption of Taliban rule. Ironically, when the Taliban first came to power in 1996 they obtained recognition from just three regimes in the world: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The rise of the Taliban could not have been possible without direct Saudi and UAE (and Qatari) military and financial investment. Then head of Saudi intelligence (who mysteriously left his post only days before Sep. 11), Prince Turki, was one of the few foreign leaders who actually met Mullah Omar and negotiated with him.

What Does The US Afghanistan Pullout Mean?

Max Blumenthal And Ben Norton Of The Moderate Rebels Podcast Discuss The US Military Pullout From Afghanistan With Journalist Pepe Escobar, Who Has Extensive Experience Reporting In The Country And Was Arrested By The Taliban Twice. In the first part of the interview, we talk about the geopolitics of the conflict, how the Taliban has changed, what the future Afghan government could look like, and the corruption of US puppet President Ashraf Ghani and other CIA assets. In the second part, we discuss the 20-year US/NATO war in Afghanistan, the opium ratline the CIA used to fund dirty covert ops, the fight over pipelines, and the estimated $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral reserves in the country, as well as Washington’s “pivot to Asia” and how Afghanistan is central in the new cold war on China and Russia.

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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.

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