Afghanistan

Impasses in Iraq and Afghanistan

On balance, the US military withdrawal from Iraq still looks on course, but Iraq's semi-parliamentary quarter-democracy looks very shaky. On 31 August the USA announced the end of "combat operations" in Iraq and a reduction to 50,000 troops there. It reaffirmed US plans to remove all troops and hand over all bases by the end of 2011, though a huge US civilian presence, tens of thousands of "security" mercenaries employed by US contractors, and large US bases just over the border in Kuwait will remain. But six months after Iraq's election on 7 March 2010, talks for a new government remain...

Afghanistan: Obama's "surge" will turn into a bloody escalation

Barack Obama’s decision to send a further 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, coupled with a (conditional) commitment to begin withdrawing troops in 18 months’ time (a political concession to Democrats and an increasingly war-weary American public) has been described as a “gamble”. That puts it charitably. The US’s strategy for Afghanistan — a massive overall increase of NATO forces, including an extra 500 British troops — has some of the elements of the 2007 military “surge” in Iraq. That was about damping down conflict long enough allow the building up of the local army and police and the...

Obama's Afghan "surge"

Barack Obama’s decision to send a further 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, coupled with a (conditional) commitment to begin withdrawing troops in 18 months' time (a political concession to Democrats and an increasingly war-weary American public) has been described as a "gamble". That puts it charitably. The US's strategy for Afghanistan — a massive overall increase of NATO forces, including an extra 500 British troops — has some of the elements of the 2007 military "surge" in Iraq. That was about damping down conflict long enough allow the building up of the local army and police and the...

Statement from the US Campaign for Peace and Democracy on Afghanistan

We Call for the United States to End Its Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan! A Statement from the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, October 2009 This may be a turning point for the expanding U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a time when speaking out clearly and unambiguously against war can make a crucial difference. Today we see signs all too reminiscent of the step-by-step deepening of the U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam in the 1960’s. In response, we declare ourselves firmly against military escalation in the region and for the withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from...

Afghanistan: from bad to worse

On 4 September, a NATO air strike killed about 90 civilians in northern Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, NATO and US operations killed 828 Afghan civilians in 2008, and the Taliban killed 1160. Other sources give higher estimates for both NATO/US and Taliban killings. Back in 2001, as the US and its allies were preparing to bomb Afghanistan, we wrote: "The US-British alliance will not defeat, or cut the roots, of terrorist-fundamentalism. Its stated aim in Afghanistan is to replace the Taliban regime by a "broad-based" government around the king, the Northern Alliance - and...

Afghanistan: deeper into the mire

There are now almost as many US and allied troops in Afghanistan as there are in Iraq — 100,000 in Afghanistan, including 62,000 Americans, and 120,000 in Iraq. For the present those troops in Afghanistan have one overriding immediate aim: to try to make Afghanistan’s presidential election on 20 August look plausible. That it should actually be plausible is more or less ruled out. In a country dominated by warlordism and traditional hierarchical allegiances, votes measure not democracy but who is best at doing deals with power-brokers. But 2004’s presidential election looked plausible, with a...

New US offensive in Afghanistan

US troops, backed up in a small way by British troops, have launched a big offensive in the Helmand district of southern Afghanistan. The offensive is part of US president Barack Obama’s military build-up in Afghanistan. He has sent 21,000 extra troops already this year, and by the end of 2009 US forces are due to number 68,000, double the 2008 level. The immediate objective of the offensive is to secure the area so that voting for the scheduled Afghan presidential election can take place on 15 August. According to press reports, Taliban fighters in Helmand have mostly ducked the blow...

Support Pakistan’s labour movement against both Taliban and army!

More than 800,000 people have now fled fighting in the Swat district of Pakistan. They join a total of around 1.3 million refugees who have fled recent fighting in other parts of the North-West Frontier Province, fleeing, on the one hand threats of violence from the Taliban against people who do not join their “jihad”, and on the other the gunship helicopters of Pakistan’s army. Since the end of the US’s 2001 war in Afghanistan, the North West Frontier Province, along with Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, have become a base for a resurgent Taliban. This in turn has created a...

Kabul’s first women’s protest since the 1970s

On 15 April 1,200 women took to the streets of Kabul in protest against President Karzai's Shia Family Law, which severely limits women’s rights and legalises marital rape. For the most part, the demonstrators were young women, many of them students, who consider the new legislation backslides in the direction of the kind of anti-women legislation employed by the Taliban. Karzai’s administration have so far refused to make the precise wording of the new laws public. However, it is known that the law’s Article 132 requires wives to submit to their husbands’ sexual demands, and that, furthermore...

Afghanistan - Obama’s policy: really “realistic”?

The USA’s new vice-president, Joe Biden, has announced that Washington is conducting a “strategic review” on Afghanistan with a view to setting “clear and achievable” goals. The Guardian reports a senior Nato official present at Biden’s briefing as saying Washington’s emphasis on Afghanistan was shifting to “being much more realistic”, adding: “It doesn’t need to be a democracy, just secure.” In his election campaign, Barack Obama pledged to withdraw US troops from Iraq (something that the Bush administration had already committed the USA to, in the deal it signed last year with the Baghdad...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.