By Kathleen Kirwin, Esq.

On Saturday, March 30th, the Leadership Council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under its nom de guerre, The Taliban, declared the launch of this year’s spring military operations (the “Spring Offensive”) against the “invading Americans”, their foreign allies, internal supporters, high ranking officials of the Karzai government, including cabinet members and lawmakers, as well as heads of foreign and local companies who work with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In response to, and in anticipation of, the Taliban’s announcement, NATO officials in Brussels have advised that international forces in Afghanistan have tightened security, security services employed by “westerners” working in Afghanistan have issued lockdowns and travel restrictions, the Afghan government has tightened security across the country and security has been increased at military bases.

By Glen Greenwald

 A U.S. drone attack in Pakistan killed 23 people this morning, and this is how The New York Times described that event in its headline and first paragraph:

When I saw that, I was going to ask how the NYT could possibly know that the people whose lives the U.S. just ended were "militants," but then I read further in the article and it said this:  "A government official in North Waziristan told Pakistani reporters that five children and four women were among the 23 who were killed."  So at least 9 of the 23 people we killed -- at least -- were presumably not "militants" at all, but rather innocent civilians (contrast how the NYT characterizes Libya’s attacks in its headlines: "Qaddafi Troops Fire Cluster Bombs Into Civilian Areas").

Malalai Joya, Afghan women's and democracy activist and author of A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice, talks about her work and the prospects for peace in Afghanistan on The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC Radio: April 18, 2011). 

By David S. Cloud

Nearly three miles above the rugged hills of central Afghanistan, American eyes silently tracked two SUVs and a pickup truck as they snaked down a dirt road in the pre-dawn darkness.

The vehicles, packed with people, were 3 1/2 miles from a dozen U.S. special operations soldiers, who had been dropped into the area hours earlier to root out insurgents. The convoy was closing in on them.

At 6:15 a.m., just before the sun crested the mountains, the convoy halted.

We are posting Andy Worthington's series on the US prison at Bagram, Afghanistan here, as it appears. Bagram is "even more of a legal black hole than Guantánamo."

Part 1: Updating the Definitive Bagram Prisoner List — 200 Review Board Decisions to Release, Transfer or Detain Added

Part 2: Broken Justice at Bagram — for Afghans, and for Foreign Prisoners Held by the US

Part 3: Voices from Bagram: Prisoners Speak in Their Detainee Review Boards

Part 4: The “Dark Side” of Bagram: An Ex-Prisoner’s Account of Two Years of Abuse

Part 5: Bagram and Beyond: New Revelations About Secret US Torture Prisons in Afghanistan

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.

By Josh Steiber

One year ago, Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder video¹ created outrage over the actions of U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, including the platoon I deployed with. If that grisly video didn’t stop you in your tracks, the photographs and report on the “Kill Team,” released by Rolling Stone should be the wake-up call for truly examining what is being done in our name.²

Before making connections between the two events, it is important to note that I am not making a moral equivalency. Though innocent civilians were killed during the “Collateral Murder” incident, it did occur after a firefight, weapons were found on some of the bodies, and it was not premeditated. In contrast, the “Kill Team’s” murders were preplanned and carried out with no threat, and body parts of the slain were sadistically taken as trophies. That is not a moral excuse for the “Collateral Murder” case, but to evaluate the implications of both events, the context must be presented.

By Debra Sweet 

Could this be the Abu Ghraib Scandal of the U.S. War on Afghanistan? The Guardian reported last week on the first photos to be released from the group of 4,000 related to the "Kill Team" in Afghanistan now on trial by the Army, for murdering Afghan civilians under cover of war.

The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, recently confided to officials that he feared it might trigger the same kind of scandal as that at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where images of prisoners being abused by US soldiers sparked anti-American protests.  For weeks the US government has been working to pre-empt any outrage, with top officials, including the US vice president Joe Biden, in talks with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

Now, the Rolling Stone in The Kill Team has more photos.

Guardian UK: U.S. Soldiers Pose for Photos with Murdered Afghans.

By Jon Boone, in the Guardian UK  

The face of Jeremy Morlock, a young US soldier, grins at the camera, his hand holding up the head of the dead and bloodied youth he and his colleagues have just killed in an act military prosecutors say was premeditated murder.

Read more...