Fuente: RAWA News
Traducción: Sinfo Fernández, Rebelión

(Alisa Tang / AP)

por Tim King
27 de febrero, 2010

Su día comienza con una canción que brota a través de las ondas y con unas horas dedicadas al estudio en un aula amplia y luminosa. En cualquier momento puedes encontrarte allí con 70 niños y niñas al menos. Los más pequeños tienen sólo unos meses.

Esos niños son los hijos de las mujeres encarceladas por motivos tales como abandonar a sus maridos o negarse a aceptar matrimonios concertados. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch and the author

Source: TomDispatch

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army)

Three Fixes for the American Way of War

by Tom Engelhardt
March 2, 2010

Iraq remains a mess from which the U.S. military seems increasingly uninterested in withdrawing fully and Afghanistan a disaster area, but it’s never too soon to think about the next war.  The subject is already on the minds of Pentagon planners.  The question is:  Are they focusing on how to manage future wars so that they won’t last longer than the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II combined?

There’s reason to worry, especially since the lessons of both Iraq and Afghanistan are clear: it takes years after a war has been launched for the U.S. military to develop tactics that lead to stasis.  (“Victory” is a word that has gone out of fashion.) Read the full story

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso de América Latina en Movimiento

Fuente: América Latina en Movimiento

(Imagen: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adaptada de: The U.S. Army, yomanimus)

por Martín Lozada
26 de febrero, 2010

Hace tiempo que la guerra de agresión viene siendo disfrazada bajo el pretexto de operaciones destinadas a la salvaguarda de la democracia y los derechos humanos. Así ha sucedido con la última invasión a Irak y de ese modo ocurre desde hace muchos años con las violencias desplegadas en el territorio afgano.

Bastó escuchar los argumentos que el presidente norteamericano prodigó en torno a la “guerra justa” en Afganistán, en ocasión de recibir el Premio Nobel de la Paz, para comprender lo que está en juego en esta neomodernidad líquida: la normalización de la guerra hegemónica a través de un sistemático retorcimiento conceptual.

En el terreno de Afganistán se encuentra desplegada la fuerza de los ejércitos más sofisticados del planeta, con algo más de 100.000 soldados a su merced, bajo el nombre de Fuerza Internacional de Asistencia a la Seguridad en Afganistán (ISAF). En realidad, se trata de un importantísimo contingente militar que poco tiene de internacional, puesto que el 80% de las tropas son norteamericanas y se encuentran conducidas por un general de esa nacionalidad. Read the full story

Fuente: Peace Reporter
Traducción: Gorka Larrabeiti, Rebelión

Desde Helmand, testimonios de civiles heridos durante la operación Moshtarak

por Enrico Piovesana
1 de marzo, 2010

Los cazas vuelan bajo por el cielo sobre Lashkargah. Atrás y adelante, sin parar. Unos pacientes del hospital de Emergency los siguen con la mirada atenta. Han salido al jardín con sus muletas, sus sillas de ruedas o sus camillas a tomar un poco el fresco y el sol. También a recoger alguna flor, que luego llevan en la mano para olerla de vez en cuando o que se meten entre el vendaje de las heridas.

A los afganos les encantan las flores. La sensibilidad y la dulzura de estos  barbudos campesinos pastunes, jóvenes y viejos, pone en tela de juicio todos nuestros prejuicios acerca de este pueblo. Cada cierto tiempo, del otro lado del muro que rodea el jardín, de la parte del río Helmand, que pasa justo por detrás del muero, llega un estruendo en dirección de Marjah y Nadalí, como un trueno de un temporal lejano, pero más fuerte, triste y breve. Read the full story

Article published with permission from the author

Source: Common Dreams

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: hansvandenberg30, The U.S. Army)

by Tom Gallagher

With the September 11, 2001 attacks thrust back into the news by the controversy over trying their alleged masterminds in New York City, it’s not terribly shocking to hear legislators calling for the death penalty in the killing of innocent civilians these days. But there’s one cry for capital punishment making the rounds that might pull a few people up short: A group of Afghan legislators has backed the execution of those responsible for the deaths of Afghan civilians. And the perpetrators they have in mind are American military personnel. No, these legislators are not members of some Taliban shadow government calling for death to their enemies; they are representatives sitting in the elected parliament of Afghanistan, the very government the U.S. has put in place and maintains through massive force of arms.

Following the latest incident of civilian deaths – 27 killed in an air strike by “US-led coalition forces” in a border area between Daikundi and Uruzgan provinces – the Afghan news agency, Pajhwok Afghan News, reported that Hamidullah Tokhi, member of parliament from Uruzgan, declared the Afghan government was currently doing little more than issuing routine condemnation statements following each incidence of civilian deaths and that henceforth, “Anyone killing an ordinary Afghan should be executed in public.” Another representative, Fatima Aziz of Kundiz, agreed, because, she said, foreign troops “time and again … killed innocent people.” Maulvi Abdul Wali Raji, senator from Baghlan province, added, “Being a Muslim, I would suggest Qisas (killing in retaliation) for such killers.” Read the full story

Source: Real News Network

March 2, 2010

US picks its drug lords as Pashtun tribe prepares to battle for control of poppy fields.

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

(DoD photo by Sgt. Freddy G. Cantu, U.S. Marine Corps/Released)

by Ramzy Baroud

Washington and its willing mouthpieces in the media have for years been trying to sell us the preposterous war in Afghanistan. While they attempt to convince us that the war is predicated on a faultless military logic and moral wisdom, it remains in fact a tragic adventure with no decipherable objectives, and involving several countries, private contractors, and all sorts of firms seeking to make a quick buck.

The intellectual cowardice of some should not blind the majority to the fact that the war in Afghanistan is morally indefensible and militarily unwinnable. Read the full story

Reportaje desde Helmand, Afganistán. La gente de Marjah denuncia que hay doscientos civiles muertos y explica por qué prefieren a los talibanes

Fuente: Peace Reporter
Traducción: Gorka Larrabeiti, Rebelión

por Enrico Piovesana
26 de febrero, 2010

En una guerra siempre es difícil contar la verdad, lograr separar la realidad de los hechos en la propaganda de una y otra parte. El único modo para tratar de entender lo que está pasando verdaderamente estos días aquí en Helmand, en el sur de Afganistán, escenario de la mayor ofensiva militar desde que empezara esta guerra, es hablar con la población civil, con la gente de Marjah que consigue llegar hasta aquí, hasta Lashkargah para ponerse a salvo o traer a familiares heridos en los combates.

Muchos de ellos están ingresados en el hospital de Emergency, única estructura sanitaria de alta calidad (y gratuita) en esta polvorienta ciudad rural y en toda la provincia de Helmand, que se ha convertido en el epicentro del conflicto entre las fuerzas de ocupación extranjeras y la resistencia talibán. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Untitled, by Jean Michel Basquiat

by Francis Shor

$2000 per dead child! That’s the amount of compensation offered by the Pentagon for the “collateral damage” which it has caused in Afghanistan. As the war escalates and more innocent victims of Washington’s aggressive actions accumulate in number, the US military calculates what it will take to placate grieving Afghan parents.

Eight years into a war deemed “necessary” by both Republican and Democratic Administrations, the death and destruction visited upon Afghan civilians seems reducible to neat and cheap compensation packages. And, yet, the real physical and psychological damage inflicted by the war-makers remains strangely abstract and without comprehension of the very real unintended consequences. The anger of Afghan families in the earliest days of US military intervention undoubtedly persists and may even fuel the continuing insurgency. According to a June 28, 2002 Los Angeles Times story about one Afghan who had lost his wife, mother and seven children to a US air attack, he bitterly lamented: “I put a curse on the Americans who did this. I pray that they will have the tragedy in their lives that I have had in mine.” Read the full story

Source: Democracy Now!

February 23, 2010

In Afghanistan, the number of civilian casualties continues to rise. On Tuesday, at least eight people died after a bomb exploded in the southern provincial capital of Lashkar Gah amid a major US-led offensive in the area. Local authorities said all those killed in the attack were civilians. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government has condemned a NATO air strike on a convoy on Sunday that killed twenty-seven civilians, including four women and a child. NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal went on Afghan television to apologize for the attack. Last year was the deadliest of the war for civilians and foreign troops. And while there is no reliable count of the number of Afghans killed, the number of US soldiers killed in the war has reached 1,000.

Part 2 below Read the full story