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
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Instead of Defense
Department, War Department
Instead of War on
Terror, War to Dominate World
Instead of Taliban,
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 Jan. 14, 2013
HAW,
Petition: End the War
Questions
for Kerry
More
Realities of Afghanistan (see preceding newsletters)
Silverstein,
Why Foreign Aid Has Not Reached Afghanistan
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
New
Children’s Book:
The Sky of Afghanistan
Contents of #20 August
17, 2013 What Is the “Taliban”?
Long
History of Pashtun Resistance, Violent and Nonviolent
Dick::
Afghanistan
Bala,
Pashtun Nonviolence
Arab
Nonviolence
Gregory-Barnes,
Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-89
Persecution
of Women in Afghanistan
Corruption
in Afghanistan
Ahmed,
War on Terror = War on Tribal Islam
Rising
and Faiez (AP), Taliban Penetrate to Center
of K a
Chandrasekaran
(WP), “Afghan War’s Whitest Elephant”
Hoh, Bring All Troops Home
RESISTANCE IN AFGHANISTAN
AND PAKISTAN
The
name of the general who commanded the Afghan Army’s rout of the British in 1842
is Wazir Akbar Khan. Of the several
thousand in the invading force, only one man returned alive. In the 1980s, the Russians ruled through
their Kabul US US to a
standstill, and the US US US
Is not the Pashtun
amenable to love and reason?
He will go with you
to hell if you can win his heart,
But you cannot force
him even to go to heaven. Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, quoted in Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent
Soldier of Islam (Nilgiri P, 1999), 95.
--Dick
“Waging
Nonviolence: Reflections on the History Writing of the Pashtun Nonviolent
Movement Khudai Khidmatgar.” Peace and Change (April 2013).
“…the
Khudai Khidmatgar movement [1924-1948] offered an example of radical nonviolent
action, drawing from Islamic principles, and dialectically engaging with
transnational debates.” --Dick
MARIA Stephan, ed. CIVILIAN JIHAD: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance
in the Middle East . Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Rev. Matthew Chandler in Peace and Change (April 2013):
“Arabs have an established, autochthonous tradition of unarmed,
civilian-based struggle against injustice and subjugation.” Chandler
The
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan 
$20.95
Published by: Osprey
Publishing
 |
·
Synopsis
The Soviet invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in December 1979 sparked a bloody
nine-year conflict with the Mujahideen until Soviet forces withdrew in 1988-89,
dooming the communist Afghanistan
government to defeat by Afghan popular
resistance backed by the USA USA Afghanistan
For over a year before the invasion the communist Afghan government, installed following a coup and intent on forcibly modernizing the country's civil law in the face of centuries of feudal practices, had called for Soviet armed assistance in its efforts to overcome the open rebellion of the Mujahideen. Fearing the international consequences should the Afghan government be toppled, the Soviets decided to invade. From the outset, though, they failed to understand that communist principles were incompatible with traditional tribal relationships - especially in a country notorious for its poor communications and resistance to centralization.
The Soviets found that their forces, largely made up of conscripts untrained in mountain warfare and counter-insurgency - and deploying 'conventional' weapons such as tanks and helicopters - could not defeat guerrillas enjoying the support of both the local population and powerful foreign allies such as the USA, and operating in harsh mountainous and/or desert terrain that favoured the defenders. The Soviets decided to stage a phased withdrawal of their own forces and concentrated on building up the Afghan government forces, but the Mujahideen soon prevailed, ushering in a new era dominated by the Taliban, an Islamist militia group that controlled large parts of the country from the mid-1990s.
Featuring specially drawn mapping and drawing upon a wide range of sources, this succinct account explains the origins, history and consequences of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, thereby shedding new light on the more recent history - and prospects - of that troubled country.
For over a year before the invasion the communist Afghan government, installed following a coup and intent on forcibly modernizing the country's civil law in the face of centuries of feudal practices, had called for Soviet armed assistance in its efforts to overcome the open rebellion of the Mujahideen. Fearing the international consequences should the Afghan government be toppled, the Soviets decided to invade. From the outset, though, they failed to understand that communist principles were incompatible with traditional tribal relationships - especially in a country notorious for its poor communications and resistance to centralization.
The Soviets found that their forces, largely made up of conscripts untrained in mountain warfare and counter-insurgency - and deploying 'conventional' weapons such as tanks and helicopters - could not defeat guerrillas enjoying the support of both the local population and powerful foreign allies such as the USA, and operating in harsh mountainous and/or desert terrain that favoured the defenders. The Soviets decided to stage a phased withdrawal of their own forces and concentrated on building up the Afghan government forces, but the Mujahideen soon prevailed, ushering in a new era dominated by the Taliban, an Islamist militia group that controlled large parts of the country from the mid-1990s.
Featuring specially drawn mapping and drawing upon a wide range of sources, this succinct account explains the origins, history and consequences of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, thereby shedding new light on the more recent history - and prospects - of that troubled country.
High profile attacks on women in Afghanistan
[Nothing illustraters the destructive blowback of US anti-communist bigotry more than US arming Afghans (including Oxama bin Laden) to
expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan
1979-1989. The Russia ns made the same effort NATO has made in Afghanistan
since 2001 to liberate women and provide them with equal rights. But the utterly blind, Sovietphobic US leaders helped the Afghan tribes throw out
Soviet commitment to women’s equality, returning to the old oppression of women
by war lords and preparing for the victory of the Taliban (violent, warrior
Pashtun). The new Western invader and occupier—NATO—attempted to repeat the
Soviet effort the US
helped to defeat, and women are facing Taliban II! --Dick]
Related News
Sun, Aug 11 2013
Sun, Aug 11 2013
Sat, Aug 10 2013
By Jessica Donati and Mustafa Andalib
KABUL/GHAZNI, Afghanistan
(Reuters) - Taliban fighters
have kidnapped a female parliamentarian who was travelling by car through Afghanistan
Successive, often deadly assaults on women
working in state institutions are fuelling concern that hard-won women's rights
promoted by the United
States
Fariba Ahmadi Kakar's three daughters were later
released, the police commander said, but her kidnappers were demanding four
Taliban prisoners in exchange for the parliamentarian.
Kakar, a member of the lower house, was the
second female parliamentarian to be attacked in Ghazni in less than a week. Her
husband denied the attack had taken place, saying she was travelling abroad,
but the Kakar tribe's elder, Samad Khan, said attempts were under way to reach
an agreement with the Taliban.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he did
not know who staged the attack. "We are still investigating," he
said.
Under the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule, women were
obliged to wear the head-to-toe covering burqa, allowed only limited schooling
and prevented from leaving home unaccompanied.
Restoring the right to work and education has
been a cornerstone of the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai,
but patriarchal attitudes have remained entrenched.
GOING ABROAD THE ONLY HOPE
Survivors of attacks often say their only hope is
to leave Afghanistan
"I need to go outside the country for my
treatment and for my security," said Muzhgan Masoomi, a former government
worker stabbed 14 times last year. "I was hopeful that the media would
help me. More than one year has passed and no organization or media has
helped."
Masoomi still appears on the NATO-led forces
website in a article headlined "Afghan woman vows to resume government
career after stabbing".
Kakar's abduction follows the shooting last week
of female senator Rooh Gul, police said. The senator and her husband survived,
but their eight-year old daughter was killed along with the driver.
Last month, the most senior policewoman in
southern Helmand province, Lieutenant Islam
Bibi, was shot dead on her way to work in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
Bibi, touted as a rising star of the Afghan
National Police, said she received death threats even from within her own
family.
While the Taliban have often targeted senior
female government officials, honor killings by conservative male relatives
remain commonplace.
On Sunday, a woman in her twenties was shot by
her husband after going to the market alone, the 11th female in northern Kunduz
province killed by relatives this year, police said.
Concerns have also been raised about a rise in
Taliban-style edicts in some regions not overturned by the government.
In June, clerics in a region of Baghlan province,
north of Kabul
In the same month, female parliamentarians
discovered that conservative male members had removed a legal provision that
women make up a quarter of all provincial elected officials.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni in Kabul
|
How Operation
Enduring Freedom Mutated Into Operation Enduring Corruption
DILIP HIRO | In Western hands,  Share Dilip Hiro,
Op-Ed, NationofChange:
|
1.
Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and ...
2.
Pakistan on the Brink by Ahmed Rashid – review ... - The
Guardian
Apr 27, 2012 – Fatima Bhutto questions a study in
which power has replaced the people and western narratives elbow out the real
story.
3.
Pakistan on the Brink by Ahmed Rashid – review ... - The
Guardian
Apr 8, 2012 – This authoritative study of Pakistan
4.
Book review: 'Pakistan
on the Brink' by Ahmed
Rashid - Washington ...
Apr 6, 2012 – Five years ago, on a trip to South Asia , I asked a former Pakistaniambassador where Osama bin Laden
was hiding. The ambassador replied ...
5.
Pakistan on the Brink - Books by Ahmed Rashid - Penguin Group ...
www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/.../0,,9780670023462,00.html
Find Pakistan on the Brink by Ahmed Rashid and other Secondary Category
Placeholder books online from Penguin Group (USA)'s online bookstore.
6.
"Pakistan
on the Brink": Ahmed
Rashid on Perilous Ties
Between ...
www.democracynow.org/.../pakistan_on_the_brink_a...
Mar 28, 2012
Top U.S. and Pakistani military
officials meet today in Islamabad
7.
Pakistan on the Brink with Ahmed Rashid (Conversations ... - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyES8FZilP0
May 18, 2012 - Uploaded by UCtelevision
Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Conversations host Harry Kreisler
welcomes Ahmed Rashid,
author of "Pakistan
9.
Paperback review: Pakistan on the Brink, By Ahmed Rashid ...
Mar 22, 2013 – This serious-minded book – not as
fatalistic as its title – is just as much about Afghanistan
as it is about Pakistan
10.
Ahmed Rashid: Pakistan Lurches From Crisis To Crisis : NPR
Mar 20, 2012 – In his latest book, Pakistan on the Brink, journalist Ahmed Rashidwrites that he fears Pakistan
11.
Pakistan on the Brink by Ahmed Rashid | The New York Review of ...
www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jun/.../pakistan-on-the-brink/?...
Jun 11, 2009 – Pakistan
12.
Images for Rashid, Ahmed Pakistan on the Brink
DAVID RISING AND RAHIM FAIEZ (AP). “11
DIE IN ST
This circumstantial report on the penetration by Taliban
soldiers almost to the doors of Karzai’s palace, the Afghan Ministry of
Defense, and CIA headquarters can be interpreted in two ways. To the Taliban it was a victory (“able to
reach the most secure area of Kabul
THE WASH INGTON
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Staff Writer
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent
and associate editor. He was The Post’s national editor and has served as an
assistant managing editor. He was bureau chief in Baghdad
for the first two years of the Iraq Cairo
and Southeast Asia . He the author of Imperial
Life in the Emerald City , a best-selling account of the troubled American
effort to reconstruct Iraq Stanford
University
·
Latest by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Rajiv Chandrasekaran JUL 9
A brand-new U.S.
military headquarters in Afghanistan
Manpreet
Romana/AFP/Getty Images - U.S. Marines prepare to leave for operations
from Camp Leatherneck
in Afghanistan ’s Helmand province in June 2009.
·
More
The U.S.
military has erected a 64,000-square-foot headquarters building on the dusty
moonscape of southwestern Afghanistan
Everything, that is, except troops.
Video
The White House is
debating a complete pullout of U.S.
troops from Afghanistan
The windowless, two-story structure, which is larger than a
football field, was completed this year at a cost of $34 million. But the
military has no plans to ever use it. Commanders in the area, who insisted
three years ago that they did not need the building, now are in the process of withdrawing
forces and see no reason to move into the new facility.
For many senior officers, the unused headquarters has come
to symbolize the staggering cost of Pentagon mismanagement: As American troops
pack up to return home, U.S.-funded contractors are placing the finishing
touches on projects that are no longer required or pulling the plug after
investing millions of dollars.
In Kandahar province, the U.S.
In northern Afghanistan
But some senior officers see the giant headquarters as the
whitest elephant in a war littered with wasteful, dysfunctional and unnecessary
projects funded by American taxpayers. A hulking presence at the center of Camp Leatherneck
in Helmand province, it has become the butt of jokes among Marines stationed
there and an object lesson for senior officers in Kabul
and Washington
The top Marine commander in Helmand sent a memo to the U.S. headquarters in Kabul
The building’s amenities also have prompted alarm among
senior officers. A two-star Marine general who has toured the facility called
it “better appointed than any Marine headquarters anywhere in the world.” A
two-star Army general said the operations center is as large as those at the
U.S. Central Command or the supreme allied headquarters in Europe .
“What the hell were they thinking?” the Army general said.
“There was never any justification to build something this fancy.”
Both generals spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In a letter sent Monday to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel,
the special inspector general for the reconstruction of Afghanistan , John F. Sopko, called it “the best
constructed building I have seen in my travels to Afghanistan
“Unfortunately, it is unused, unoccupied, and presumably will
never be used for its intended purpose,” Sopko wrote. “This is an example of
what is wrong with military construction in general — once a project is
started, it is very difficult to stop.”
·
Continued
·
1
·
2
The building was completed this year at a cost
of $34 million. But as the military draws down, it will sit empty.
MORE BY CHANDRASEKARAN
Rajiv Chandrasekaran JUN 1
It is a battle to confront the cost of pay
raises, benefits programs and other taxpayer-subsidized services.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran JUN 1
Concerned Veterans for America
Rajiv Chandrasekaran MAY 29
Investigation focuses on whether top Marines
bear responsibility for lax security at base targeted by Taliban.
More by Rajiv Chandrasekaran : 2013
Tue Aug 6, 2013 6:41 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
Mike Woloshin, AMH-2, USN
ATKRON 86, onbd USS Coral Sea (CVA-43)
Vietnam (Yankee Station) 1969-1970
From: Horace Coleman <hcoleman4@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 11:29 AM
Subject: [vvawnet] In Afghanistan, a second Guantanamo
To: VVAW list <vvawnet@vvaw.org>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-afghanistan-a-second-guantanamo/2013/08/04/e33e8658-f53e-11e2-81fa-8e83b3864c36_story.html?hpid=z1
[Washington Post]
In Afghanistan, a second Guantanamo
By Kevin Sieff, E-mail the writer
KABUL — Of all the challenges the United States faces as it winds down
the Afghanistan war, the most difficult might be closing the prison
nicknamed “The Second Guantanamo.”
TheUnited States
described as hardened al-Qaeda operatives seized from around the world
in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. More than a decade
later, they’re still kept in the shadowy facility at Bagram air base
outsideKabul
Closing the facility presents many of the same problems the Obama
administration has encountered in its attempt to close down the
Guantanamo Bay
detention center in Cuba U.S.
that Bagram’s resolution is even more complicated — and more urgent.
TheU.S.
authorities this year. But figuring out what to do with the foreign
prisoners is proving to be an even bigger hurdle to shutting the
American jail.
“Is there a plan? No. Is there a desire to close the facility? Yes,”
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the topU.S.
general in Afghanistan
in an interview.
With the United States’ nearly 12-year fight in Afghanistan due to end
next year, the State Department and the Pentagon have been unable to
come up with a strategy for the trial or repatriation of men from more
than a dozen countries held at Bagram. Meanwhile, the population in
the prison is growing because of the apprehension of foreign fighters
in joint U.S.-Afghan Special Forces operations. The newest detainee
was sent to Bagram last month.
None of the prisoners have been formally tried. Many have been cleared
for release by informal military review boards, but most of those were
never freed.
Because the detention center is on Afghan soil,U.S.
technically obliged to shutter it when their combat role here formally
ends in December 2014. But someU.S.
that would pose an enormous security risk.
The best solution, they say, is to keep the facility open underU.S.
oversight, possibly for decades. It is not at all clear, though, that
the Afghans will permit that.
As atGuantanamo , U.S.
prisoners too much of a threat to send home to countries that can’t or
won’t keep them locked up. Officials worry that it might not be
possible to convict the men inU.S.
classified or seen as weak.
“They’re too dangerous to let go,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham
(R-S.C.), a reservist Air Force lawyer who was appointed last month by
Dunford to consider solutions to the detention dilemma.
“We’re a nation without an available jail in the war on terror, and we
need to fix that,” Graham said in an interview.
Keeping a U.S.-run prison inAfghanistan
permission of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has staunchly
resisted American-run detention facilities. TheU.S.
already hit significant stumbling blocks in negotiating a long-term
bilateral security agreement with the Afghans.
The Afghan government this year quietly agreed to allow the United
States to continue operating its detention center at Bagram for
“third-country nationals” — mostly Pakistanis — in exchange for
handing over the Afghan prisoners, who are now held in a separate
facility. But Afghan officials, including Karzai, assumed theUnited
States
Only a handful of the detainees have been repatriated, in part because
ofPakistan ’s reluctance to
provide security guarantees required under
U.S. U.S.
release, the Pentagon must assess “the threat posed by the individual
and the security environment of the country to which the individual is
to be transferred.” Such studies can take many months.
“For the past decade, theU.S.
has been able to hide Bagram behind the
shield of ongoing military conflict inAfghanistan
Foster, director of the International Justice Network, which
represents more than 30 detainees. “What’s happening now is that the
shield is disappearing and what’s left is the legacy of the second
Guantanamo
Lawyers such as Foster who represent clients at both Bagram and
Guantanamo
opaque. For years, there were widespread allegations of torture at
Bagram, many of them later borne out in military reports that were
made public.U.S.
Although attorneys say they haven’t heard the same accusations from
detainees since 2008, they also say they have a limited view into the
facility.
Unlike atGuantanamo , the detainees in Afghanistan
habeas corpus, a point Foster is arguing in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Pentagon officials say they expect most detainees to be transferred to
their home countries “once those countries have provided us assurances
that they will take appropriate steps to mitigate the threat these
individuals pose,” said Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon
spokesman.
“In some cases, we may seek to have individuals prosecuted for war
crimes or violations ofU.S.
But the process of repatriation has proved extremely slow and
complicated. As for prosecutions, none of the detainees captured
abroad since the Sept. 11 attacks have been tried in military
commissions in theUnited
States
the Afghans because they didn’t violate Afghan law.
Graham said it would be foolish to assume that all the detainees could
be sent to their home countries or tried before the end of next year.
Last year, some of the first Pakistani detainees were repatriated
after a year of fraught negotiations. According to their attorneys,
one was a 14-year-old boy picked up in a U.S.-led night operation and
the other was an employee of an Afghan military base whose colleagues
had turned him in after a personal dispute.
“If it takes a year to release those guys, whose innocence was never
in dispute, what does it say about the prospect for the others?” said
Sarah Belal, the lead attorney for Justice ProjectPakistan
advocated for the repatriation of Pakistani detainees at Bagram.
Until at least 2007, theUnited States
snatched high-level terrorism
suspects inPakistan
eventually, to Bagram.
Other detainees were kidnapped across the Middle East, Asia andEurope
and taken to the Afghan facility in the early years of the past
decade.
Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni citizen, was seized byU.S.
agents while he
was on a business trip inThailand
his home inYemen
later turned up at Bagram.
Both Yemenis have been cleared for release by military detainee review
boards on three occasions, beginning in 2010, according to Pentagon
records. But the Obama administration has declined to repatriate
detainees toYemen
potential terrorists without a serious trial.
“Amin is surely not charged with anything, and there is not a single
evidence that might keep him in prison all this time,” Khaled
al-Bakri, Amin’s brother, said in a phone interview. The Americans
“are denying him to see his children and wasting the best days of his
youth in prison.”
Graham said theUnited States
should focus on securing a guarantee
from the Afghan government that the Bagram detention facility will
remain open after theU.S.
“Radical jihadists are going to flow toAfghanistan
Graham said. “We need a system there that works.”
U.S. officials in Afghanistan
to be done — regardless of whether Bagram is closed or kept open
beyond 2014.
“We clearly need a transition plan on that issue,” Dunford said.
113 [BAGRAM CONTINUED—Dick]
Comments
drne
8/4/2013 10:01 PM PDT
Kidnapping people from around the world, indefinite detentions,
torture, no judicial remedies so innocents can be jailed indefinitely.
Such policies are the best recruiting tools for the militants and
despots not for the sole democratic superpower.
EvilOverlord
8/4/2013 8:31 PM PDT
We can't try these guys, because the evidence is too weak. - That is
the messageAmerica
sick to think how far we've sunk. And if the hypocrisy doesn't bother
you in itself, it also has a clear negative impact on our ability to
promote rule of law around the world.
Wildthing1
8/5/2013 11:20 AM PDT
That's the problem with being the only world super-power, you have to
be paranoid even of 3rd world people living in mud huts. A country
ruled by the rational fear that all of our immoral actions around the
world in favor of our strategic interest on the lives of others might
come back to us despite all the king men and all the kings horses.
_______________________________________________
vvawnet mailing list
vvawnet@vvaw.org
http://lists.shout.net/mailman/listinfo/vvawnet
*************************************************************
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc.
(773) 569-3520
vvaw@vvaw.org
www.vvaw.org
Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967
ATKRON 86, onbd USS Coral Sea (CVA-43)
Vietnam (Yankee Station) 1969-1970
From: Horace Coleman <hcoleman4@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 11:29 AM
Subject: [vvawnet] In Afghanistan, a second Guantanamo
To: VVAW list <vvawnet@vvaw.org>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-afghanistan-a-second-guantanamo/2013/08/04/e33e8658-f53e-11e2-81fa-8e83b3864c36_story.html?hpid=z1
[Washington Post]
In Afghanistan, a second Guantanamo
By Kevin Sieff, E-mail the writer
KABUL — Of all the challenges the United States faces as it winds down
the Afghanistan war, the most difficult might be closing the prison
nicknamed “The Second Guantanamo.”
The
described as hardened al-Qaeda operatives seized from around the world
in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. More than a decade
later, they’re still kept in the shadowy facility at Bagram air base
outside
Closing the facility presents many of the same problems the Obama
administration has encountered in its attempt to close down the
that Bagram’s resolution is even more complicated — and more urgent.
The
authorities this year. But figuring out what to do with the foreign
prisoners is proving to be an even bigger hurdle to shutting the
American jail.
“Is there a plan? No. Is there a desire to close the facility? Yes,”
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the top
in an interview.
With the United States’ nearly 12-year fight in Afghanistan due to end
next year, the State Department and the Pentagon have been unable to
come up with a strategy for the trial or repatriation of men from more
than a dozen countries held at Bagram. Meanwhile, the population in
the prison is growing because of the apprehension of foreign fighters
in joint U.S.-Afghan Special Forces operations. The newest detainee
was sent to Bagram last month.
None of the prisoners have been formally tried. Many have been cleared
for release by informal military review boards, but most of those were
never freed.
Because the detention center is on Afghan soil,
technically obliged to shutter it when their combat role here formally
ends in December 2014. But some
that would pose an enormous security risk.
The best solution, they say, is to keep the facility open under
oversight, possibly for decades. It is not at all clear, though, that
the Afghans will permit that.
As at
prisoners too much of a threat to send home to countries that can’t or
won’t keep them locked up. Officials worry that it might not be
possible to convict the men in
classified or seen as weak.
“They’re too dangerous to let go,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham
(R-S.C.), a reservist Air Force lawyer who was appointed last month by
Dunford to consider solutions to the detention dilemma.
“We’re a nation without an available jail in the war on terror, and we
need to fix that,” Graham said in an interview.
Keeping a U.S.-run prison in
permission of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has staunchly
resisted American-run detention facilities. The
already hit significant stumbling blocks in negotiating a long-term
bilateral security agreement with the Afghans.
The Afghan government this year quietly agreed to allow the United
States to continue operating its detention center at Bagram for
“third-country nationals” — mostly Pakistanis — in exchange for
handing over the Afghan prisoners, who are now held in a separate
facility. But Afghan officials, including Karzai, assumed the
States
Only a handful of the detainees have been repatriated, in part because
of
release, the Pentagon must assess “the threat posed by the individual
and the security environment of the country to which the individual is
to be transferred.” Such studies can take many months.
“For the past decade, the
shield of ongoing military conflict in
Foster, director of the International Justice Network, which
represents more than 30 detainees. “What’s happening now is that the
shield is disappearing and what’s left is the legacy of the second
Lawyers such as Foster who represent clients at both Bagram and
opaque. For years, there were widespread allegations of torture at
Bagram, many of them later borne out in military reports that were
made public.
Although attorneys say they haven’t heard the same accusations from
detainees since 2008, they also say they have a limited view into the
facility.
Unlike at
habeas corpus, a point Foster is arguing in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Pentagon officials say they expect most detainees to be transferred to
their home countries “once those countries have provided us assurances
that they will take appropriate steps to mitigate the threat these
individuals pose,” said Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon
spokesman.
“In some cases, we may seek to have individuals prosecuted for war
crimes or violations of
But the process of repatriation has proved extremely slow and
complicated. As for prosecutions, none of the detainees captured
abroad since the Sept. 11 attacks have been tried in military
commissions in the
the Afghans because they didn’t violate Afghan law.
Graham said it would be foolish to assume that all the detainees could
be sent to their home countries or tried before the end of next year.
Last year, some of the first Pakistani detainees were repatriated
after a year of fraught negotiations. According to their attorneys,
one was a 14-year-old boy picked up in a U.S.-led night operation and
the other was an employee of an Afghan military base whose colleagues
had turned him in after a personal dispute.
“If it takes a year to release those guys, whose innocence was never
in dispute, what does it say about the prospect for the others?” said
Sarah Belal, the lead attorney for Justice Project
advocated for the repatriation of Pakistani detainees at Bagram.
Until at least 2007, the
suspects in
eventually, to Bagram.
Other detainees were kidnapped across the Middle East, Asia and
and taken to the Afghan facility in the early years of the past
decade.
Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni citizen, was seized by
was on a business trip in
his home in
later turned up at Bagram.
Both Yemenis have been cleared for release by military detainee review
boards on three occasions, beginning in 2010, according to Pentagon
records. But the Obama administration has declined to repatriate
detainees to
potential terrorists without a serious trial.
“Amin is surely not charged with anything, and there is not a single
evidence that might keep him in prison all this time,” Khaled
al-Bakri, Amin’s brother, said in a phone interview. The Americans
“are denying him to see his children and wasting the best days of his
youth in prison.”
Graham said the
from the Afghan government that the Bagram detention facility will
remain open after the
“Radical jihadists are going to flow to
Graham said. “We need a system there that works.”
to be done — regardless of whether Bagram is closed or kept open
beyond 2014.
“We clearly need a transition plan on that issue,” Dunford said.
113 [BAGRAM CONTINUED—Dick]
Comments
drne
8/4/2013 10:01 PM PDT
Kidnapping people from around the world, indefinite detentions,
torture, no judicial remedies so innocents can be jailed indefinitely.
Such policies are the best recruiting tools for the militants and
despots not for the sole democratic superpower.
EvilOverlord
8/4/2013 8:31 PM PDT
We can't try these guys, because the evidence is too weak. - That is
the message
sick to think how far we've sunk. And if the hypocrisy doesn't bother
you in itself, it also has a clear negative impact on our ability to
promote rule of law around the world.
Wildthing1
8/5/2013 11:20 AM PDT
That's the problem with being the only world super-power, you have to
be paranoid even of 3rd world people living in mud huts. A country
ruled by the rational fear that all of our immoral actions around the
world in favor of our strategic interest on the lives of others might
come back to us despite all the king men and all the kings horses.
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Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc.
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Senior Fellow, Center for International
Policy
Time to Take the U.S. Out of the Afghanistan
FollowWar Wire, Afghanistan, Iran, Barack Obama , Barack
Obama , Pakistan, Taliban, War,Diplomacy, Hamid Karzai, Peace, World News:
After a decade of fighting it is easy to forget
that America Afghanistan Afghanistan Afghanistan
Consider the troubling events that have occurred in 2013 alone. "Insider" attacks against
American forces persist, while the insurgency continues to mount suicide
attacks in Afghanistan
It is
time to rethink the wisdom of maintaining an American footprint. Some
stubbornly insist that U.S.
soldiers must remain in Afghanistan
The presence of U.S. Afghanistan Afghanistan and the U.S.
Another justification for keeping troops in Afghanistan U.S.
has attempted to create an American-style army that is not well suited to
confront either the insurgency in Afghanistan
The problems do not end at Afghanistan U.S.
and Afghanistan 's neighbors,
Pakistan and Iran Afghanistan America
maintains a presence on their borders, Pakistan
and Iran will focus on
undermining the U.S. -- by
promoting instability in Afghanistan Pakistan
and Iran are able and
willing to undermine any security gains made by U.S.
The best hope for resolving this deadly
stalemate is to take the United
States Afghanistan
The U.S. U.S. has accomplished all it can hope to do
militarily in Afghanistan
After almost twelve years of US war and occupation we owe it to the people of
Afghanistan
This article first appeared
on August 16, 2013 in the News & Observer and was proudly co-written with Usha Sahay, Director
of Digital Outreach for the Council for
a Livable World.
TWO NEWS ITEMS FROM PAKISTAN
Fri, Aug 9 2013
Fatima Bhutto questions a study in which power has replaced the people
and western narratives elbow out the real story
Fighting fire with fire … protesters in Balochistan , Pakistan Banaras
Khan/AFP/Getty Images
At the start of Pakistan on the Brink,
Ahmed Rashid confesses that he didn't really want to write the book and that it
was "forced" out of "a very reluctant author" by editors
and publishers. To which one might uncharitably reply: we didn't want to read
it either. The third book in a trilogy, following Taliban and Descent into
Chaos, is a compendium of statistics, bomb counts and Wiki
knowledge. If you've paid attention to the news during the past 12 years, you
already know most of this.
1.
Pakistan on the Brink:
The future of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West by Ahmed Rashid
2.
It's also a little out of date. The
killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the deadly attacks on Pakistan's naval and
military bases over the past year, the rise of the Punjabi Taliban, and the
murder of Afghan president Hamid Karzai's brother are only fleetingly
described; the coming US elections are ignored and Osama bin Laden's death in
Pakistan last spring is given only a cursory glance.
But the book's central
fault is that Rashid's teleology is dedicatedly western. And it is
precisely this sort of thinking that got us into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq West Point "). Rashid,
whom his fellow Pakistani author Tariq Ali once
called a "prize cock of the US
defence establishment and videosphere", may have soured slightly in his
views of the American government and its war in Afghanistan
For Rashid the problem seems to be not that US and European
troops are mired in a bloody, imperially designed and unwinnable war, but that
there aren't enough of them to get the job done in good time. Only once is the
conflict noticeably described in less than necessary terms, whenMullah Baradar of the
Taliban is quoted as calling it a "game of colonisation". Rashid
berates Obama for not "personalising" the war in Afghanistan
Rashid made his name by bringing to light
forgotten stories, but he has now become the story. The book's acknowledgments
offer thanks to "all manner" of "bureaucrats, politicians and
heads of state". Countless anecdotes begin with him advising the world's
most powerful men on how to run their war (only for them to do the opposite).
In his histories, power has replaced the people.
The chapter on the 2009 war in the Swat
valley between the Pakistani army and Islamist militants is titled "A
sliver of hope", but Rashid devotes hardly any space to the awful
conditions 1.4 million internal refugees were held in after they had fled from
the fighting. The UN called it "one of the world's worst displacement
crises" and journalists, both international and local, were deliberately
denied access. For Rashid, however, Pakistan
Sotto vocce, he tells us that
anti-American sentiment in Pakistan US
At least, if belatedly, Rashid has cooled off in his affection
for President Karzai. Gone are the days when he wrote articles entitled
"How my friend outwitted the mullahs", as
he did for the Daily Telegraph in 2001. Karzai, who has presided
over gross corruption, factionalism and dashed hopes for Afghanistan Pakistan
Readers of his previous work will know
that Rashid possesses a sophisticated understanding of Pakistan , Afghanistan
and the US Karachi
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 AFGHAN/PAKISTAN NEWSLETTER #20
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