Category Archives: Afghanistan News Wire

At the end of the first week of the painfully slow progress of counting – hardly 20 percent of votes have been counted so far – most of Karzai’s opponents are leading the tally, spelling trouble for the US-backed president. Continue reading →

Afghan police have found mass graves of hundreds of communist troops killed after surrendering to mujahideen forces in the 1980s, a crime in which at least two election candidates are implicated. Continue reading →

The United States has supposedly created new “democracies” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these endeavors give democracy a bad name. Sure, the two countries have some ingredients of representative democracy, such as elected officials and a constitution. But both countries are still beset by grinding poverty, insurgencies, and entrenched militia forces that make the exercise of democracy either impractical or dangerous. Continue reading →

The recent wave of demonstrations are not something new. Actually in the past one year many Afghan cities witnessed such huge demonstrations mainly organized by people who oppose the policies of Mr. Karzai and want to show their opposition to his pro-warlord actions. Continue reading →

In Kabul, one of the first places we visited were the sites of the U.S. bombing. This was very important for me. I thought it was so important for me to witness the destruction wrought by our tax dollars in Afghanistan on the ground, what it looked like, and what were the places affected. This, of course, was done several years ago: the bombing began on October 7th, 2001. I liked to look at this scene as our tax dollars at work. It was very cold when we were there in February; it was snowing. This was near the airport in Kabul, but there were a lot of residential areas that had been bombed as well, like this house. Continue reading →

Visions of Afghan women throwing off their burqas in the name of freedom helped fuel the Bush administration’s case for war against Afghanistan. Just how free are women in today’s Afghanistan? Was removing their burqas ever really the issue? Continue reading →

”The Afghan government has the responsibility of protecting women from violence, committed not only by the state but also by private individuals and groups,” Amnesty said in a statement issued after sifting reports of Amina’s stoning to death.

Amnesty, citing eyewitnesses, said Amina’s husband and local officials dragged her out of her parents’ house before stoning her to death in public. The man accused of committing adultery with her reportedly was whipped one hundred times and freed. Continue reading →

If Iraq has been the disaster zone of Bush foreign policy, Afghanistan is still generally thought of as its success story — to the extent that anyone in our part of the world thinks about that country at all any more. Before the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan experienced a relative flood of American attention. It was, after all, the liberation moment. Possibly the most regressive and repressive regime on Earth had just bitten the dust. The first blow had been struck against the 9/11 attackers. The media rushed in — and they were in a celebratory mood. Continue reading →

In the past two years the US media have drastically reduced their coverage of Afghanistan. According to the American Journalism Review only three news organizations–Newsweek, Associated Press and The Washington Post–have full-time reporters stationed in Kabul. What little is published focuses mostly on feel-good stories, superficial change and unopposed reportage of the Bush administration’s claims. Continue reading →

When I was in Afghanistan, I noticed that in Kabul, certainly schools were open, women were walking around fairly openly with not as much fear. Outside of Kabul, where 80% of Afghans reside, totally different situation. There are no schools. I visited the Farah province, which is a very isolated, remote province in western Afghanistan and there were no schools except for the one school that Afghan Women’s Mission is funding that is administered by our allies, the members of RAWA. Continue reading →