Afghanistan often comes up in our threads, but we don't have an "Afghanistan thread".

I'm starting this one so that the discussion can be continued in a more focused way.

I posted before on Aafia Siddiqi, the US Pakistani woman being brought to trial in New York after several years in jail in Bagram in highly controversial circumstances. Since I last posted the US has admitted that they are holding at least one of her children, a boy now aged 11. It appears highly probable that she and her children have been held prisoner since 2004. There are rumours that not all the children are still alive and that she has been tortured to the point of insanity.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/09/stories/2008080955100900.htm

Quote :

US claims Dr Aafia eldest son still in Afghan custody

Washington, Aug 27: The 11-year old boy who was captured along with 'terror suspect' Pakistani-American doctor Aafia Siddiqui is her son and presently under Afghan authorities' custody, said US authorities in a letter written to Siddiqui's family. The whereabouts of her two other children - one six-month and the other 5-year old - are still not known.

In the letter, the US authorities also maintained that the photos and DNA tests of the boy strongly suggest that the youngster in Afghan custody was Siddiqui's son "Ahmed", the Daily Times quoted a report in the Washington Times as saying.

According to Dr Aafia's lawyers, Siddiqui is likely to petition a federal court in US to have Ahmed placed in the custody of her brother in Texas.

The boy was reportedly detained on July 18 when Afghan police arrested Dr Aafia near a government compound in Ghazni. Siddiqui and her three children disappeared in 2003 in Karachi. She had set out from her mother's home on her way to the airport to take a flight to Islamabad, but she never arrived.
Inexplicably, her family did not lodge a missing person report with the police. She is now in a federal prison in New York, charged with attempted murder, added the paper.

Siddiqui's lawyers and family members have questioned the US government's account that Siddiqui had resurfaced five years after disappearing with her three young children in Pakistan. Her family contends that she and her children were "imprisoned during at least some of that time at a secret site", possibly by Afghan or Pakistani officials working with the CIA.

Her lawyer Elizabeth Fink said, "something is really dirty here. Everything about the government's story smells", and that her client was psychologically traumatised over an extended period of time. "Whatever happened to this woman is terrible, and it's incumbent on us to find out what it was," said her other attorneys.

There are is a lot of talk at the moment about the integrity of states and evils of military intervention. It is high time that that the occupying forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan and reparations paid for the damage inflicted.

With thanks to Ard-Taoiseach, from the graphs thread.

Someone suggested on RTE news this morning that these crops sould be bought for legal pharmaceutical use.

Last week there were a number of odd reports from the US in Afghanistan that the media should expect to hear about a lot of civilian deaths, but the stories would be fake. Then a string of deaths started to be reported. This is one report from Breaking News. Also tonight, another missile attack from the NATO force in Afghanistan killed 30 civilians in Pakistan.

Quote :

08/09/2008 - 20:45:28
The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets appear in videos released today, lending weight to Afghan and UN claims that a US-led raid last month killed more civilians than the US reported.

The sounds of wailing women mixed with the voices of men shouting inside a white-walled mosque in the western village of Azizabad, where an Afghan government commission and UN report said some 90 civilians – including 60 children and 15 women – were killed.

The two grainy videos, apparently taken on mobile phones, showed bodies lying side-by-side on the mosque floor, covered by floral-patterned blankets and shawls.

One young boy lay curled in a foetal position, while others looked as though they were asleep. One child had half its head blown off.

There appeared to be several dozen bodies lying on the mosque floor, though a precise count was difficult because of the poor quality of the images.

The videos do not provide proof that 60 children died in the operation by US special forces and Afghan commandos, but the images do appear to contradict a US military investigation that found only seven civilians were killed in Azizabad, along with up to 35 militants.

The US said yesterday it would reopen the investigation because of emerging new evidence.

Today, a Pentagon spokesman said that over the weekend new “imagery evidence” came to the attention of General David McKiernan, the American commander of the Nato-led force in Afghanistan.

“There is some evidence that suggests that the evidence that the US military used in... its investigation may not have been complete,” Bryan Whitman said.

Big, very angry demonstrations in Afghanistan today over the killing of 15 women and children by US missiles.

It's hard to know what Obama hopes to achieve by doubling troop numbers.

cactus flower wrote:

It's hard to know what Obama hopes to achieve by doubling troop numbers.

Pretty obvious really. To try and secure Afghanistan as a pro Western State in the region and also to crush these guys who haven't gone away yet. Of course whether he'll be successful is an entirely different matter but the rationale is clear enough.

It isn't anything like that simple. The Taliban have been US backed for decades. Reagan supplied them with Stinger missiles.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html

This is an inside picture of the Taliban, written by socialist opposition to both the Soviet backed government, and the islamic fundamentalists that ousted them with foreign backing.

http://www.marxist.com/Asia/afghanistan.html

Absolutely, nobody denies that the Taliban was backed by the US Government, owing to the cold war. That does not detract from the fact that quite clearly the USA wants rid of them and they want to consolidate a State with US sympathies in the region. That is the end game. I don't dispute your links above. That is the aim of increasing troops. I don't see how your links dispute that.

johnfás wrote:

Absolutely, nobody denies that the Taliban was backed by the US Government, owing to the cold war. That does not detract from the fact that quite clearly the USA wants rid of them and they want to consolidate a State with US sympathies in the region. That is the end game. I don't dispute your links above. That is the aim of increasing troops. I don't see how your links dispute that.

The US will do whatever they think expedient for their own interests. They would be back in bed with the Taliban any day that it suits them.

cactus flower wrote:

It isn't anything like that simple. The Taliban have been US backed for decades. Reagan supplied them with Stinger missiles.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html

This is an inside picture of the Taliban, written by socialist opposition to both the Soviet backed government, and the islamic fundamentalists that ousted them with foreign backing.

http://www.marxist.com/Asia/afghanistan.html

Absolutely, you must remember the many marches organised by the Irish left to the embassy of the USSR in Dublin to protest at the wide scale slaughter of the Afghani people following the Soviets invasion of Afghanistan.

Flashman.

tonys wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

It isn't anything like that simple. The Taliban have been US backed for decades. Reagan supplied them with Stinger missiles.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html

This is an inside picture of the Taliban, written by socialist opposition to both the Soviet backed government, and the islamic fundamentalists that ousted them with foreign backing.

http://www.marxist.com/Asia/afghanistan.html

Absolutely, you must remember the many marches organised by the Irish left to the embassy of the USSR in Dublin to protest at the wide scale slaughter of the Afghani people following the Soviets invasion of Afghanistan.

Flashman.

Funny, tonys, but I don't remember seeing you there.

The second link I think gives a good critique of the Soviet-backed regime. The first link shows that the US was involved before the Soviet invasion. Afghanistan is not for the first time having a proxy war fought on its territory, with the US, Russia, Pakistan, the Saudis and Iran all fuelling the flames in different ways.

A plague on all their houses.