Sent to
WS and Blog
OMNI
NEWSLETTER ON AFGHANISTAN
AND PAKISTAN
Here
is the link to all the newsletters archived in the OMNI web site.
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
For views and information not found in the mainstream media For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change. Here is the link to the Index: http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/
Instead of Defense
Department, Say War Department
Instead of War on
Terror, Say War to Dominate World
Instead of Taliban,
Say Pashtun/Afghan Resistance to Occupation
Nos. 15, 16, 17 at
end.
Contents of #18, Oct.
20, 2012
Films,
Help Local Afghan Initiatives
Film,
Rethink Afghanistan
From Hell and Back Again New Documentary
New
Book: Little America
Martin,
Protests Against NATO and the War
Lendmann,
Military Dissent
Contents of #19
HAW,
Petition: End the War
Questions
for Kerry
More
Realities of Afghanistan (see preceding newsletters)
US
Killing Innocents
Trial of Sgt. Bales
Killing Children
Collapse
of Kabul :
Aikins, Kabul
Dick,
1) Taliban Realities, 2)Troops Out, Rescue the Victims
2
Books on the Taliban by Antonio Giustozzi
Neo-Taliban Insurgency 2003-2007 (2007)
Decoding the Neo-Taliban (2009)
2 Books by Linschoten and Kuehn,
Myth of Taliban/Al-Qaeda
Poetry of the Taliban
The Sky of Afghanistan
[haw-info] Jobs-Not-Wars Campaign
haw-info-bounces@stopthewars.org on behalf of Marc Becker [marc@yachana.org]
Actions
To:
haw-info@stopthewars.org
Attachments:
Inbox
Monday, December 17, 2012 9:03 AM
Send
President Obama and Members of
Congress a Strong Clear Message
Congress a Strong Clear Message
On Election Day, the American
people made their voices heard.
We rejected austerity schemes
to reduce the deficit at the expense of working people, the middle class, the
poor, children, and the elderly.
We want those who caused the economic crisis to
pay to fix it. We rejected more tax breaks for large corporations and the
wealthy. We want the super-rich and giant corporations to pay their share and
government to stop coddling the greedy and neglecting the needy!
One of the best ways to reduce
the deficit is to put people back to work. It’s time to invest in our people
and our communities to create stable jobs at living wages, rehabilitate our
nation’s infrastructure, repair the social safety net, restore government
services and programs that serve the needs of people and communities, and
develop a sustainable planet for future generations.
We want the war in Afghanistan
We want an economy, government
and nation that work for ALL of us, not just some of us.
Keep the pressure on – remind
Congress and President Obama that they work for the American people.
We will present the Jobs-Not-Wars Petition to
Congress & President Obama around the time of the Inauguration.
Forward this email to everyone
you know – ask them to join you in signing the Jobs-Not-Wars Petition. Post
it to your Facebook page and Tweet about it to your social network. There is
strength in numbers. Don’t let our elected officials forget who they represent.
We can, and must do better for
all Americans.
Thank you.
The Jobs-Not-Wars Campaign
Participating Organization:
Historians Against the War
Participating Organization:
Historians Against the War
…………………………………………………………………………………………
IT’S
TIME FOR PEACE AND JOBS!
The full text of the petition:
The full text of the petition:
Mr. President and Members of
Congress:
During this period, when people
of faith and secular people alike reflect on the year that is ending and
look forward with hope to the year ahead, it is a time to put aside differences and enmities to celebrate
our universal values.
look forward with hope to the year ahead, it is a time to put aside differences and enmities to celebrate
our universal values.
It is in this spirit of
humanity and hope that we call upon you to redirect your efforts and federal
resources to:
· End the war in Afghanistan
· Create good jobs at living wages: invest in our
communities and our people to grow the economy and put people back to work;
· In communities devastated by hurricane Sandy
· Train and hire veterans, the unemployed, and
youth from historically disadvantaged communities to perform cleanup and
reconstruction as a part of a broader national jobs program to rehabilitate
inner cities, build affordable energy-efficient homes, repair/replace public
infrastructure, and develop sustainable manufacturing for the 21st Century.
· Redirect our nation’s resources from war and
uncontrolled Pentagon spending to fund social programs and public services,
protect and improve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, repair the social
safety net, meet the challenge of climate change, and reduce poverty and
inequality.
· Rely foremost on determined diplomacy and patient
negotiation, rather than military power to respond to international disputes,
differences or conflicts;
· Require those at the top of the income ladder,
giant corporations and financial speculators to pay their fair share of taxes.
We ask that you summon the
personal courage and moral fortitude to transcend partisan differences to serve
the common good and public interest.
Give
peace a chance!
We need
jobs not cuts! Work not Wars!
Tough Questions for John Kerry
·
·
|
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Barack Obama’s nomination of John Kerry as secretary of state gives the Senate a critical opportunity to probe the administration’s foreign policy priorities—and many of those policies demand inquiry. The Republicans—who, like Senator John McCain, sniped disgracefully at UN Ambassador Susan Rice—have expressed few coherent reservations about our current course. So it will be incumbent upon Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lead a responsible review.
Here are a few questions senators should ask the nominee.
§ Presidential
war making: Are there any limits to the president’s war powers in the
so-called “war on terror”? Contrary to expectations, Obama has broadened the
Bush administration’s view that the congressional resolution authorizing the
pursuit of Al Qaeda after 9/11 gives the president the right to attack any
suspect group in any country as long as there are terrorists—in other words,
forever. That prerogative is said to include the power to kill anyone
(including US citizens) that
the president decides poses a terrorist threat to the United States
§ Climate change: Do you consider global warming a
clear and present danger to our national security? In his first inaugural
address, Obama raised the hope that we would begin to “roll back the specter of
a warming planet.” Yet the United States
was essentially AWOL in the recent climate negotiations in Doha
§ Global economic recovery: Does mass unemployment in the United States , recession in Europe and Japan , and continued trade conflict with China require new international policies from
the United States Washington
§ Militarization
of US United States
§ Afghanistan
§ The Middle East: What should US priorities be in this region, as the promise
of the Arab Spring looks increasingly like the Arab Fall, with a proliferation
of regional militias in Libya ,
increasing tensions in Egypt
and growing sectarianism among Syria Israel and the Palestinians,
do you believe our “Israel
right or wrong” policy adequately protects America United States
§ Iran and nuclear peril: Do you believe our current strategy
of ratcheting up sanctions while retaining the option of using military force
prevents Iran from joining Israel , Pakistan
and India Iran Iran has
often said it does not want nuclear weapons, especially if countries like Israel Iran ’s
interest in what is known as a “grand bargain” (in which, among other things, Washington would renounce regime change and accept
normalized relations in exchange for Tehran
This is only a small sample of the questions that any nominee
should answer. We are facing monumental foreign policy challenges. It’s time
for the Senate to get beyond partisan cheap shots and exercise its
constitutional responsibility to ask John Kerry how the administration plans to
address them.
Back in 2001, David Corn wrote an incisive
piece on “Defining John Kerry."
3
ARTICLES ON MORE AFGHAN REALITIES AND WHY WE SHOULD LEAVE
Afghan Villagers Tell of
'Massacre' (Sgt. Bales)
Associated Press, Nov.
11, 2012, RSN
Excerpt: "Stories of the
massacre came, one by one, over a live video link from Afghanistan to a military courtroom outside Seattle : torched
bodies, a son finding his wounded father, boys cowering behind a curtain while
others screamed: "We are children! We are children!"
As
the Afghans recounted the horror that left 16 dead in the darkness early on 11
Marc, the US
soldier accused of carrying out the rampage sat quietly in the courtroom. At one point, Staff Sgt
Robert Bales moved closer to a large monitor showing the testimony. At other
times, he watched as it played on a laptop screen in front of him. Either way,
he gave no discernible reaction.
Speaking
through an interpreter, one Afghan closed his remarks with the words: "My
request is to get justice."
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/323-95/14472-afghan-villagers-tell-of-massacre
KILLING AFGHAN CHILDREN:
2 Articles
Newtown, Afghanistan,
Robert Dreyfuss
Robert Dreyfuss on December 24, 2012 - 12:24 PM ET published in The Nation (Jan. 21,
2013)
Twenty children killed in Newtown , Connecticut
Tens, hundreds, thousands of
children killed in Afghanistan
Are Afghan children any less
precious? Or does it make a difference that the killers were wearing American
uniforms, piloting US helicopters and fighters, and operating drones?
There was the March 2012
case, of course, of the army sergeant who slaughtered children:
Stalking from home to home, a United
States Army sergeant methodically killed at least 16 civilians, 9 of them
children, in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan
Or this, from October 2012:
The international military coalition in Afghanistan has confirmed that three children
were killed in a coalition artillery strike in Helmand Province
Or this one, also from October 2012:
A firefight that raged for an hour
between international forces and the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan
Or this one, from February 2012:
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai,
accused NATO on Thursday of killing eight children in a coalition airstrike in
eastern Afghanistan
And from July 2012:
The fatal airstrike on Wednesday in Khost Province
Or this catastrophic one, from 2008, in which 60
children died (two, three, many Newtowns):
A
United Nations human rights team has found “convincing evidence” that 90
civilians—among them 60 children—were killed in airstrikes on a village in
western Afghanistan on
Friday, according to the
United Nations mission in Kabul
There are hundreds of these cases, dating back to the earliest
days of the war in Afghanistan
Don’t expect any
wall-to-wall coverage by CNN anytime soon.
Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:27 am
(PST) Posted by:
*
<
http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/12/04/us-military-says-killing-afghan-children-is-fair-game/
>
The Brits did the same thing in October as
well.<http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/04/british-troops-accused-of-executing-four-afghan-teenagers/>
Bill
<
http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/12/04/us-military-says-killing-afghan-children-is-fair-game/
>
The Brits did the same thing in October as
well.<http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/04/british-troops-accused-of-executing-four-afghan-teenagers/>
Bill
 |
|
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·
Donate
·
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Contact
·
Letters
John Glaser, December 04, 2012
In October, the US
launched an airstrike in Afghanistan
But now, according to theMilitary
Times, the
…a Marine official here raised questions about whether the
children were “innocent.” Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery
Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a
hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may
have recruited the children to carry out the mission.
So digging holes in Afghanistan
That’s apparently not enough for the US
“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion
“Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age
males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”
There you have it. The US
military is now looking for “military-age males” and “children”
to kill in Afghanistan
Harper’s Magazine,, February 2013
Download Pdf
MicroFicheIt was a Monday in November, the second day of
Eid al-Adha 2011, and the streets of Kabul
“This area is interesting
because it was never poor,” Jolyon Leslie said to me as we left one of
Taimani’s main roads and headed toward a hill called Kolola Pushta. Leslie, a
slight, ruddy-cheeked South African architect with a widow’s peak of closely
trimmed white hair, first came to Afghanistan in 1989 with the United Nations;
he has been working here ever since. “I’m absolutely staggered how things have
changed,” he said, gesturing at the half-built homes around us. “Almost every
compound is having, or has had, construction done.”
[Dick: This optimistic opening is steadily
undermined in the article, the theme of which is the economic collapse of Kabul
This
article is only available to magazine subscribers. If you are a subscriber, please
sign in. If you aren't, please subscribe below and get access to the entire
Harper's archive for only $16.97/year.
Share
Matthieu Aikins is a freelance
writer based in Afghanistan
More from Matthieu Aikins:
TALIBAN REALITIES, LEAVE AFGHANISTAN
By Dick Bennett
The warmongers in
the Bush Administration and the Congress knew little about past or present Afghanistan , the
Pashtun, the Taliban, the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and
everything else essential to justifying the invasion and succeeding in the occupation. Now after their initial defeat, the Taliban have
returned, in some places to complete control, in others gradually expanding
their power.
I have seen the
Taliban compared to Nazis for their ferocity and brutality, but the Nazies were
invaders and occupiers, while the Taliban are the victims of invasion and
occupation, and subsequently resisters for their country and way of life. Thanks
to the many observers and researchers of the New Taliban post-9-11, we can
assess the nature of the enemy. We now
know the alleged alliance of Taliban and al-Qaeda was only the phantom of minds
deranged for vengeance. And we now know
the Taliban, fierce in battle and extremely narrow and severe when in power, are
also diverse and complex members of the venerable Pashtun culture.
The Taliban are
particularly the extreme fundamentalist faction of the ancient Pashtun ethnic
group who inhabit most of Afghanistan
and Western Pakistan . But included among the Taliban are all those
who support fundamentalism in various, decreasing intensities, including all
those who dislike the leaders but who acquiesce to them, when their only other
choices have been the brutal warlords conquered by the Taliban and the new
super warlord, the USA . Furthermore, within the Taliban itself
diversity exists. The Taliban today
continue the resistance to foreign invasion and occupation going back to the Aghan
resistance to the British empire and then to the Soviet empire—and eventual
victory over both—and now against the US empire. But the Taliban are not warriors only. They are also the many relationships common
to other countries. And as one book
shows, they write poetry about those experiences.
As my newsletters show, every rationalization of the invasion
and occupation of Afghanistan
has been exposed as false. The invasion
and occupation are grossly lethal, destructive, illegal, immoral, unnecessary,
and not only failed in its fabricated missions but creating enemies against the
US
worldwide. Our armed forces must leave
at once. But after warring on the
country for a dozen years, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of
thousands, we must not abandon the living victims whose lives we have so
endangered and disrupted, especially the women and children who now need
rescue. Rather our leaders must study
the realities of the (largely) Pashtun Taliban in order to help design a
society beneficial to all. The New
Taliban demands a new US
approach to rebuilding the destroyed country and to creating respect for human
rights there These goals won’t be accomplished by tanks, bombs,
drones, or special ops night raids. Our
leaders with its passive public spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the Violent Way . Now let us spend that much money for
suffering people using the Peaceful
Way . My
future newsletters on Afghanistan
will focus on that urgent need to end US/NATO violence and to convert the money
for war to money for peace, to the extent that I can find useful writings and
films. Send me what you find. Dick
2 BOOKS
ON TALIBAN BY ANTONIO GIUSTOZZI
Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The
Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007, Antonio Giustozzi.
Columbia
Since the Allied invasion of Afghanistan
in 2002, the Bush administration has celebrated the imminent demise of the
Taliban, with claims of a "moral and psychological defeat" playing a
prominent role in the presidential elections of 2004. Some commentators
suggested that "reconstruction and development" had won over the
Afghan population, despite widespread criticism of the meager distribution of
aid and failed attempts at "nation building," not to mention the
infamous corruption of Kabul 's
power-hoarding elites.
In March 2006, both Afghan and American officials continued to assert that "the Taliban are no longer able to fight large battles." Unfortunately that theory would soon collapse beneath the weight of a series of particularly ferocious clashes, causing the mood in the American media to turn from one of optimism to one of defeatism and impending catastrophe. Suddenly faced with a very sophisticated and creative form of guerilla warfare, the West found itself at a loss to fight an insurgency that bore little resemblance to its former enemy.
In the first book ever to be published on the neo-Taliban, Antonio Giustozzi provocatively argues that the appearance of the neo-Taliban should in no way have been a surprise. Beginning in 2003, a growing body of evidence began to surface that cast doubt on the official interpretation of the conflict. With the West cutting corners to maintain peace within the country, which included toleratingAfghanistan 's
burgeoning opium trade, the Taliban was able to regroup and grow in strength,
weapons, and recruits. Giustozzi's book poses a bold challenge to contemporary
accounts of the invasion and its aftermath and is an important investigation
into the rise and dangerous future of the neo-Taliban.
About the Author
In March 2006, both Afghan and American officials continued to assert that "the Taliban are no longer able to fight large battles." Unfortunately that theory would soon collapse beneath the weight of a series of particularly ferocious clashes, causing the mood in the American media to turn from one of optimism to one of defeatism and impending catastrophe. Suddenly faced with a very sophisticated and creative form of guerilla warfare, the West found itself at a loss to fight an insurgency that bore little resemblance to its former enemy.
In the first book ever to be published on the neo-Taliban, Antonio Giustozzi provocatively argues that the appearance of the neo-Taliban should in no way have been a surprise. Beginning in 2003, a growing body of evidence began to surface that cast doubt on the official interpretation of the conflict. With the West cutting corners to maintain peace within the country, which included tolerating
About the Author
Antonio Giustozzi has spent more than a decade
visiting, researching, and writing on Afghanistan Afghanistan
Decoding
the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, Edited by Antonio Giustozzi. Columbia
Antonio Giustozzi gathers a renowned cast of journalists, experts,
and academics to answer the most pressing questions regarding the Taliban
today. Each contributor possesses extensive knowledge of the insurgency's
latest developments, decoding its structure and organization as it operates
within specific regions and provinces. They analyze the new Taliban as it expands:
from the new south, where they hold sway; to the southeast, where they struggle
to penetrate; from the west and the northeast, now in the initial stages of
infiltration; to the provinces surrounding Kabul
Along with these advances, contributors review current theories for defeating the strategies and propaganda of the new Taliban. Issues covered include the strengths and weaknesses of the organization; the nature of its networks and whether they are based on traditional ties of kin and ethnicity or more institutional chains of command; its success at maintaining unity, even when faced with attrition in the field; the consequences of unruly leaders and conflicts over rule; the group's exploitation of the opium trade; the factors that have contributed to a resurgence in Kabul; and the extent to which Taliban leaders have imposed strategy among the rank and file, despite immense geographical challenges and poorly functioning communication systems.
Guided by the wisdom and expertise of a celebrated, bestselling author, Decoding the New Talibanis a critical tool for comprehending this dangerously chimerical, cleverly resurgent threat.
Along with these advances, contributors review current theories for defeating the strategies and propaganda of the new Taliban. Issues covered include the strengths and weaknesses of the organization; the nature of its networks and whether they are based on traditional ties of kin and ethnicity or more institutional chains of command; its success at maintaining unity, even when faced with attrition in the field; the consequences of unruly leaders and conflicts over rule; the group's exploitation of the opium trade; the factors that have contributed to a resurgence in Kabul; and the extent to which Taliban leaders have imposed strategy among the rank and file, despite immense geographical challenges and poorly functioning communication systems.
Guided by the wisdom and expertise of a celebrated, bestselling author, Decoding the New Talibanis a critical tool for comprehending this dangerously chimerical, cleverly resurgent threat.
About the Author
Antonio Giustozzi has spent more than a decade
visiting, researching, and writing on Afghanistan Crisis States Research
Center , London School of Economics,
and the author of Empires of
Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan and
the bestselling Koran,
Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban in Afghanistan
2 BOOKS BY LINSCHOTEN AND KUEHN
1) Taliban
complex, and not Al Qaeda
2) Taliban
poetry reveals great diversity
An
Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan BY Alex Strick van
Linschoten and Felix Kuehn
ISBN13: 9780199927319ISBN10: 0199927316Hardcover, 560 pages
Jul 2012,
Description
To this day, the belief is widespread that the
Taliban and al-Qaeda are synonymous, that their ideology and objectives are closely intertwined, and that
they have made common cause against the West for decades.
In An Enemy We Created, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn debunk this myth and reveal the much more complex reality that lies beneath it. Drawing upon their unprecedented fieldwork in Afghanistan, as well as their Arabic, Dari, and Pashtu skills, the authors show that the West's present entanglement in Afghanistan is predicated on the false assumption that defeating the Taliban will forestall further terrorist attacks worldwide. While immersing themselves inKandahar Afghanistan
The first book to fully untangle the myths from the realities in the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, An Enemy We Created is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's really happening inAfghanistan
In An Enemy We Created, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn debunk this myth and reveal the much more complex reality that lies beneath it. Drawing upon their unprecedented fieldwork in Afghanistan, as well as their Arabic, Dari, and Pashtu skills, the authors show that the West's present entanglement in Afghanistan is predicated on the false assumption that defeating the Taliban will forestall further terrorist attacks worldwide. While immersing themselves in
The first book to fully untangle the myths from the realities in the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, An Enemy We Created is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's really happening in
Features
·
Without question, this
is the most authoritative and deeply researched account of the Taliban and its
relationship with Al-Qaeda available
·
The book has already received prominent and positive coverage in
the New Yorker
·
Will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in
the nature of enemy America
Taliban Poetry: Yes, They Write Poems, and They're Surprisingly
Diverse inShare15JUN 11 2012, 7:31 AM ET 9
The
Afghan militant group's collected literary works provide a rare window into how
they see the world.
A young Afghan boy
smells a flower in the Oshay Bazaar, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Poetry of the Taliban is an English language
anthology of poems written by the Afghan Taliban that give an insight into the
lyrical souls of the members of this miltant group. Kandahar-based researchers
and writers Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix
Kuehn have translated and edited more than 250 poems, sourced
mainly from contemporary media -- specifically the Taliban's official website.
The collection also includes samples of older poetic works that date back to
the 1980s and 1990s.
Rather than presenting a cohesive ideology, the poems represent a melange of voices. Going beyond
political and militant propaganda, these poems reflect a diversity of emotions such
as "unrequited love, bloody vengeance and the thrill of battle, religion
and nationalism, even a desire for non-violence," that are expressed
through "images of wine, powerful women, song, legend and pastoral
beauty." This anthology presents a
complex image of the Taliban, one that complicates our sometimes monolithic
image of the Taliban. "It was refreshing to be able to think about Afghanistan
outside the usual tropes and patterns," say the editors.
Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn have lived and worked in Afghanistan
since 2006. Together they founded AfghanWire, a network
for researching and monitoring Afghan media. Poetry of the Taliban is on sale
in the United Kingdom and
will be available in the United States on
July 17, 2012.
Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn discussed their book over email
from Kandahar .
MORE FROM
Afghanistan has a rich tradition of oral storytelling, poetry and
music. Why do you think this aspect of Afghan culture has generally been
overlooked by the West when trying to understand the Taliban?
A certain narrative
of the war in Afghanistan Afghanistan ,
rather than on Afghanistan United States or in Europe ,
especially when these more marginal stories have to compete with events that strike
closer to home such as dead or injured servicemen and women. That said, there
have been people working in this field for many years, regardless of whether
they've been covered in the media or not. Their efforts are available online to
browse through, from Afghan women's short story writing and poetry to paintings
and music.
What kind of experiences do these poems speak about?
As you might expect
from a collection of over 250 songs, there is a diversity of themes covered. We
split it into five individual sections, covering love and pastoral themes,
religion, politics and social discontent, the battlefield, and the costs of war
in human terms. You will probably find all the things you might expect to be
here, but sometimes not in the form you had imagined. In "Hunter,"
for example, the poet imagines that he is a deer in a forest, and thinks of the
relationship between the foreign soldiers trying to kill him as if they are
hunters trying to bag a deer. Or there is a poem written by a woman chastising
the men around her for failing to fight properly.
What were your criteria for selecting the poems in the anthology?
Were you trying to encompass a certain range of subject matter and styles, as
well as a historical span?
We had two separate
selection methods for this volume. The poems written pre-2001 were chosen to
represent the thematic and authorial diversity of the period. The poems written
post-2001 are an almost complete collection of everything published on the
Taliban's website between December 2006 and February 2009. In this respect,
it's a representative sample for that time period. We felt it was important to
include the earlier (pre-2001) examples to show some of the context out of
which this emerged; we could have gone back even further to examples of talibs writing poems in the 19th century, of course.
The anthology has already been criticized for promoting sympathy for
the Taliban. How do you respond to such commentary?
We understand where
these criticisms are coming from. Troops from 50 different countries are
currently fighting in Afghanistan Afghanistan
The average reader in the West probably regards the Taliban as
being profoundly hostile to culture. How do we reconcile incidents like
the destruction of the Buddha statues at
Bamiyan with the outpouring of poetic sentiment documented in your book?
There is a
difference between the formal pronouncements or edicts of the Taliban's
leadership and the fighters on the ground. That is as true for the Taliban as
it is true for the British Army. In our introduction we also note the
contradiction between the formal edicts issued by Mullah Mohammad Omar
(banning most kinds of music) and his private consumption of those same songs
that he had banned. This is to be expected. The Taliban are not a monolithic
movement, with fixed and unchanging attitudes. In many ways, our difficulties
understanding the movement say more about us than it does about the Taliban.
What implications, if any, does this anthology have for seeing an
end to the war in Afghanistan
This collection was
not conceived or published with a political agenda. In fact, it was refreshing
to be able to think about Afghanistan Afghanistan
This article originally appeared at Asia Society, an Atlantic partner
site.
www.poetryofthetaliban.com/
Poetry of the Taliban. UK US
www.amazon.com › ... › Literature
& Fiction › Poetry › Middle Eastern
$24.50 - In stock
articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/07/.../la-fg-taliban-poetry-20120708
Jul 7, 2012 – KABUL , Afghanistan
www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/taliban-poetry.../57213/
Sep 24, 2012 – In today's world tour of state media: The violent poetry of the Taliban is compiled in a book, Vietnam
www.csmonitor.com/.../Poetry-of-the-Taliban-will-it-find-an-audienc...
|
|
|
Jul
18, 2012 – Alex
Strick van Linschoten, one of the editors of the
|
May 25, 2012 – Daljit Nagra on a revelatory collection from Afghanistan
www.guardian.co.uk › News › World news › Taliban
May 13, 2012 – A new collection of verse from the Afghan frontlines has caused
much controversy, but it also provides a valuable glimpse of an otherwise ...
www.tnr.com/book/.../purple-darkness-poetry-the-taliban
|
|
Nov
13, 2012 –
|
www.alexstrick.com/2012/12/catching-up-poetry-of-the-taliban/
Dec 22, 2012 – The second book that came out this year — I co-edited it
together with Felix Kuehn — was Poetry of the Taliban. Some people weren't entirely ...
www.theatlantic.com/.../archive/.../taliban-poetry...poems.../258304/
Jun 11, 2012 – The Afghan militant group's collected literary works provide a
rare window into how they see the world.
THE SKY OF AFGHANISTAN
A young
girl dreams of the day peace will come to contemporary Afghanistan 
THE SKY OF AFGHANISTAN
A young girl dreams of the day peace will come to contemporary Afghanistan
Letting her imagination soar, a little girl looks to the sky and
visualizes flying the “bright kite of peace” across Afghanistan
Ardent
advocacy for Afghan peace. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2012 ISBN: 978-84-15503-04-0 page count: 24pp
Publisher: Cuento de Luz Review Posted
Online: Aug. 29th, 2012 Kirkus Reviews Issu
Contents of #15
Taliban Peace Talks
Rolling Stone: McChrystal, Petraeus
Rolling Stone: Full Report
Chomsky: World Militarism
Voices for Creative Nonviolence: Women and Children
PBS Film: We Take Our Stand
Merkley Afghan Withdrawal Amendment Passes Senate
Cortright, Ending
Obama’s War
Protest New Military Budget
Petitions
Afghans Hungry This Winter
US Torture (3)
To End War Free 5 Prisoners
IED Soldiers’ Deaths
Contents of #16 April
27, 2012
Oppose NATO, Occupation, Warriors, War-Mongers in Chicago
Afghan Women
WAND, Rangina Hamidi
Sheehan, Afghans for Peace for Women
Robert Bales
Hedges, Murder in
War
Shea, Support These
Troops?
The War and Afghans
US Labor Against the War
Contents of #17 May 3,
2012
Letter to Representatives
Troops Out, Peace Process In
Since bin Laden Killed, 381 US Soldiers Killed
Peace Action Actions vs Obama’s Occupation Plans
Obama’s Speech and Agreement in Afghanistan
Media Benjamin, Anti-Drone Summit :
Pakistan
Assassination of bin Laden
END AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN NEWSLETTER #19
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