Afghanistan & Pakistan
For More Than Ten Years the Richest Country in the World Has Been "At War" With the Poorest Country in the World
Find out more about covert drone warfare and the unjust, immoral occupation of Afghanistan:
Davis Arrest Throws US Undercover Campaign in Pakistan Into Disarray
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
US bluster, and some clumsy efforts to forge records that would purport to show Davis had diplomatic immunity--all widely exposed in the Pakistani media--have only served to further stoke public outrage. |
The ongoing case of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor facing murder charges in Lahore for the execution-style slaying of two apparent agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, is apparently leading to a roll-back of America’s espionage and Special Operations activities in Pakistan.
A few days ago, Pakistan’s Interior Department, which is reportedly conducting a careful review of the hundreds of private US contractors who flooded into Pakistan over the last two years, many with “diplomatic passports,” and many others, like Davis, linked to shady “security” firms, arrested an American security contractor named Aaron DeHaven, a Virginia native who claims to work for a company called Catalyst Services LLC.
American Murder in Pakistan
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
NATO Kills Nine Children in Afghan Air Strike
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
By Jason Ditz 
The Case Mounts Against the CIA's Raymond Davis
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
Pakistani and Indian Papers Say US Contractor is a "Terrorist" |
Pakistani and Indian newspapers are reporting that Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor in jail in Lahore facing murder charges for the execution-slayings of two young men believed to by Pakistani intelligence operatives, was actually involved in organizing terrorist activities in Pakistan.
WikiLeaks: US Lied About Bala Baluk Massacre, Red Cross Concealed Truth
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has published an article on NATO, US, and the Red Cross and the Bala Baluk massacre on May 4, 2009. The article features a cable that shows the Red Cross put together a report that raised significant doubt about military reports on the number of civilians killed. The cable reveals how a PR campaign kicked into gear to sell the idea that the deaths were not intentional and to skew coverage of the event to fit the interests of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.
The June 13, 2009 cable describes a remarkable meeting that took place at the US Embassy in Kabul. Leader of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, Reto Stocker, has compiled a report with exact figures on the deaths of civilians in an attack that just took place in the village of Bala Baluk Grenari region. US and NATO forces, which contend they were attacking Taliban, dropped bombs leaving a mosque in ruins. They turned the village into “an inferno of screaming, mangled and bloody people.”
Governor: NATO Offensive Killed 64 Civilians in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
By Jason Ditz
A four day NATO offensive in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province has left at least 64 innocent civilians dead and several others wounded, according to both the provincial governor and the provincial police chief.
Gen. Ziayi, the police chief, said that of the slain, 15 were men, 20 women and 29 were children. The governor later confirmed the overall total but reported only 26 children, with 16 men and 22 women.
Increased Drone Strikes in Pakistan
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
...at least 607 people were killed in 2010, which would mean that a single year has accounted for nearly half of the number of deaths since 2004, when the program began. |
By Greg Miller
CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed at least 581 militants last year, according to independent estimates. The number of those militants noteworthy enough to appear on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists: two.
Despite a major escalation in the number of unmanned Predator strikes being carried out under the Obama administration, data from government and independent sources indicate that the number of high-ranking militants being killed as a result has either slipped or barely increased.
US Drone Strikes Kill 15 in Pakistan
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
Residents of Razed Afghan Village Dispute U.S. Case for Destruction
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
Also see:25 Tons of Bombs Wipe Afghan Town Off Map |
By Shah Noori and Gareth Porter*
KABUL/WASHINGTON, Feb 18, 2011 (IPS) - The commander of U.S.-NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. James Terry, asserted last month that the homes systematically destroyed by U.S. forces across three districts of Kandahar province as part of Operation Dragon Strike in October and November "were abandoned, empty and wired with ingenious arrays of bombs".
But in interviews with IPS at the site of the destroyed village of Tarok Kalache, now nothing more than a dusty plain surrounded by orchards, former residents disputed that account of the circumstances surrounding the destruction of their village.
Justice Remains Elusive for Many at U.S. Prison in Afghanistan
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
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By In the summer of 2008, the United States military captured a 16-year-old Pakistani boy and imprisoned him at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. According to his lawyers, for over a year his family had no idea where he was. When he was finally allowed to speak to relatives nearly two years later due to intervention by the Red Cross, Hamidullah Khan told his brother that he had had a hearing in the U.S. prison. The U.S. military judges had admitted lacking any evidence against him and recommended he be returned home to his family in Pakistan. Months later, he remains imprisoned at the U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan.
Shattering the Myth of Taliban / Al Qaeda Ties
- Category: Afghanistan & Pakistan
The central justification of the U.S.-NATO war against the Afghan Taliban - that the Taliban would allow al Qaeda to return to Afghanistan - has been challenged by new historical evidence of offers by the Taliban leadership to reconcile with the Hamid Karzai government after the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001.
The evidence of the Taliban peace initiatives comes from a new paper drawn from the first book-length study of Taliban- al Qaeda relations thus far, as well as an account in another recent study on the Taliban in Kandahar province by journalist Anand Gopal.
Afghanistan & Pakistan