Update for Thursday, April 9, 2015

I held off yesterday because the shooting of a U.S. soldier by an ANA soldier was ubiquitously covered by the corporate media and I wanted to see if I could get any additional information. The Afghanistan Times does have a few scraps, which I have not seen reported elsewhere. The dead U.S. soldier has yet to be identified, but AT offers the following:

• The attacker was a 2-year veteran of the ANA, who had been in combat several times and had a clean record.
• His name is Abdul Azim, a native of Laghman province
• In addition to the dead U.S. soldier, 7 U.S. soldiers were injured (I have not seen this reported elsewhere)
• U.S. fire killed 2 ANA soldiers, one of whom may have been an innocent bystander (I have not seen this reported elsewhere either
• Azim has not been linked to insurgents and his motive is unknown.

Taliban assault on a court compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh province, kills 10, including 4 prosecutors and 5 police, and injures more than 60. The 4 attackers are also killed.

Amnesty International Report on Violence Against Women in Afghanistan

I thought this worth its own post.

Amnesty raises alarm over rising violence against female leaders and activists. Excerpt from al Jazeera:

Afghanistan is turning its back on women leaders and activists and leaving them vulnerable to violence, Amnesty International said Tuesday, urging the international community to stand up for women's rights.
Women politicians and rights campaigners have endured an escalating number of targeted car bombings, grenade attacks and killings of family members, the London-based rights group said in a report.
“Laws meant to support them are poorly implemented, if at all, while the international community is doing far too little to ease their plight,” the report said.
Most of the threats come from the Taliban and other armed opposition groups, but government officials and local warlords also commit abuses against women leaders and activists, the report added.

Update for Sunday, April 5, 2015

There is considerable confusion about the current state of the Taliban and the prospects for peace talks. Yesterday, NBC reported that Mullah Omar is preparing to enter peace talks, with an implication that Pakistan is sincere in saying that it will no longer harbor the Afghan Taliban and that this may have driven him to negotiations.

Today, however, Khaama reports that he may be dead,  or in any event has delegated authority to Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor; and that the Taliban may have split into three factions, perhaps because of his death. Another possibility is that Pakistan, which has obviously been harboring him, now has him in custody and has incapacitated him.

It is unclear whether all this bodes well or ill for the prospects for peace. Certainly the emergence of factions which no longer answer to Omar or his successors means that a comprehensive peace is not possible. Leaders who have adopted the Islamic State brand are apparently responsible for the kidnapping of 31 Hazaras in February. Meanwhile, a high level of violence continues.

A bomb kills 7 people in Logar.

A bomb near a police station in Kundoz injures 10.

Explosion in Helmand injures 3 soldiers and 3 civilians.

On Thursday, a suicide bomb attack on a protest in Khost killed 17 and injured dozens. Since then, the death toll has risen to 20 and the National Directorate of Security says the Haqqani network was responsible.

A sticky bomb injures an attorney in Kundoz.

100 insurgents storm police outposts in Farah, leading to death of 5 police, 4 militants and a clergyman. Communications in the area were also knocked out by damage to a radio tower.

Motorcycle bomb in Baghlan kills 4, injures 5.

Teachers at Nangarhar university go on strike  because money intended for their salaries was stolen by gunmen on the Kabul-Jalalabad highway, and evidently they have not been paid

Former member of a provincial council in southern Ghazni is injured by a would-be assassin.

Update for Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Iraq claims victory over IS forces in Tikrit, although in fact pockets of resistance remain.

State television showed Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, accompanied by leaders of the army and police, the provincial governor and Shi'ite paramilitary leaders, parading through Tikrit and raising an Iraqi flag. . . . With explosions and gunfire still audible, and columns of smoke dotting the horizon, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban told reporters that security forces were fighting to clear the city's last Islamic State holdout, the northern neighbourhood of Qadissiyah.

The city is nearly abandoned, and the "liberation" was accomplished largely by Shiite militias, as there is still no effective Iraqi national army. Unless Abadi can find a way for citizens to return and establish effective local governance, garrisoned and protected by forces they can trust, and receiving fair treatment and proportionate services from the Baghdad government, this will not be a victory but just the beginning of a new phase in Iraq's civil war. C

In Afghanistan, the Pentagon cannot account for $45 billion spent before 2010. How much of it was actually stolen or squandered is unknown -- they just didn't have a system to keep track of it. No, this is not an April fool joke.

Some powerful Afghans and government agencies have not paid their electricity bills for 10 years.

Anand Gopal says the Taliban tried to surrender in 2001-2002, but the U.S. needed an enemy to fight:

So you had a particular type of situation in January or February of 2002, where you had thousands of soldiers, mostly Special Forces soldiers, on the ground in Afghanistan, but you had no Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban as a military movement was essentially defunct. So in other words, you had thousands of soldiers on the ground without an enemy to fight.But we had a political mandate, and that mandate was that we're here to fight a war on terror, and you're either with us or against us. This Manichean worldview essentially categorized Afghans into two categories, which were either terrorists or good guys, really doing away with all of the shades of gray that make the reality of Afghanistan.And so this was a contradiction. How did that contradiction get resolved? Well, in a very profound and I would say very tragic way this contradiction got resolved, which is that the U.S. allied with the warlords. Local commanders and strongmen. And in effect, the enemies of those warlords became the enemies of the United States.

Parliamentary election will be postponed for one year, "due to some reasons."

Update for Thursday, March 26, 2015

There have of course been some important developments in the last few days but they have been pretty well-covered by the corporate media so I didn't feel urgency to post here. But now I do want to put things in context. First, just to compile the highlights:

President Ghani concludes his trip to the U.S. with an address to Congress in which he gives thanks for $107 billion appropriated for the war in Afghanistan so far [Note: far less than the true cost to U.S. taxpayers -- C] and the 2,200 dead U.S. troops. He also views the Islamic State with alarm, although as we have noted previously it is not clear how much substantive significance there is to the adoption of this brand name by factions of the Taliban.

The major substantive outcome of the trip, of course, is president Obama's decision to delay the U.S. troop withdrawal and keep the contingent of 9,800 in Afghanistan through the end of this year in order to support drone strikes and the [largely secret] operations of U.S. special forces.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to be charged with desertion and "misbehavior before the enemy,"  potentially facing life in prison.

Meanwhile, the violence continues. Rockets fired from inside Pakistan hit civilian homes in Khost, killing 5 and injuring 2.

Suicide attack in Kabul on Wednesday kills 8 and injures 31. Although the location is near government buildings all of the casualties are said to be civilians.

Twenty civilians are kidnapped in Daikundi, apparently by Taliban. They are Shiites of the Baloch minority. There is a heavy Taliban presence in the area and the district governor fears it could fall into their control.

U.S. drone strike said to kill 11 Tehreek-e-Taliban in Kunar. (That's the Pakistani Taliban.)

Students in Kabul hold a candlelight vigil in response to lynching of a woman for allegedly burning a Koran. The incident has led to a substantial public outcry against religious extremism and the status of women in the country, at least in the capital.

In Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition provides air support for the first time in the battle for Tikrit, as Iranian-backed Shiite militias withdraw from the operation in protest of U.S. involvement, or maybe it's the other way around, their withdrawal was a condition for U.S. involvement. [This AP report seems to want to have it both ways, but the latter seems to be the true sequence of events. Note that the Iraqi government had previously said it did not want U.S. help with the operation, but it turns out that it is apparently needed after all.]

Update for Sunday, March 22, 2015

Preparing to travel to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, President Ghani talks to reporters. He portrays a perilous security situation as spring "fighting season" approaches. Among key points he makes:

• Pakistan's military operations in the border regions are pushing militants into Afghanistan. Nevertheless he sees Pakistan as a "key partner" in the peace process.

• Afghanistan is in talks with neighboring states to lay the groundwork for peace talks with the Taliban. However, the government has yet to have face-to-face meetings with Taliban representatives.

• He expects the fiscal situation of the Afghan government to be a key issue in his U.S. visit.

• He seems to find Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, which they don't like) to be rather scary. 

And indeed, it seems that the largely Shiite Hazara minority in Ghazni has actually sought protection from the Taliban from IS.  The Taliban have long persecuted the Hazara, but the commanders with whom the Hazara elders met agreed to help them. However, this is perhaps a bit misleading. "IS" in Afghanistan is apparently a brand name adopted by certain Taliban factions, as the movement fragments. The Hazara are seeking an alliance with particular Taliban factions. "'Whether Daish exists or not, the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities,' Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters."

Hundreds gather for the funeral of Farkhunda, a woman who was beaten to death by a mob in Kabul after accusations that she had desecrated a Koran. She is said to have been mentally ill. Although president Ghani and most other leaders have condemned the mob violence, some religious leaders have said it was justified. (For what it's worth, investigators have also said that the accusation that she desecrated a Koran is false. Not that it matters. Her brother also denies that she was mentally ill.-- C)

Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters. - See more at: http://thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Fearing+IS%26sbquo%3B+some+Afghan+Shi%27ites+seek+help+from+old+enemies&NewsID=448941#sthash.x7PR09FR.dpuf

the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities," Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters. - See more at: http://thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Fearing+IS%26sbquo%3B+some+Afghan+Shi%27ites+seek+help+from+old+enemies&NewsID=448941#sthash.x7PR09FR.dpuf

"Whether Daish exists or not, the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities," Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters. - See more at: http://thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Fearing+IS%26sbquo%3B+some+Afghan+Shi%27ites+seek+help+from+old+enemies&NewsID=448941#sthash.x7PR09FR.dpuf

"Whether Daish exists or not, the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities," Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters. - See more at: http://thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Fearing+IS%26sbquo%3B+some+Afghan+Shi%27ites+seek+help+from+old+enemies&NewsID=448941#sthash.x7PR09FR.dpuf

"Whether Daish exists or not, the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities," Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters. - See more at: http://thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Fearing+IS%26sbquo%3B+some+Afghan+Shi%27ites+seek+help+from+old+enemies&NewsID=448941#sthash.x7PR09FR.dpuf

Special post for Thursday, March 19, 2015

Today is the 12th anniversary of the event that led to the creation of this blog, which was originally called Today in Iraq. That is of course the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This is how George W. Bush justified his action on that day:

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.

We will meet that threat now with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

As we now know, these statements were lies. The inestimable Bill, at Daily Kos, provides a small sample of the lies that propelled the U.S. into an illegal war of aggression, a disaster for Iraq, the region, and our own nation, with horrific repercussions that are still metastasizing.

I probably should not be surprised that I find absolutely no mention of this anniversary anywhere in the corporate media. Think Progress, at least, posted a timeline of the war two days ago and has updated the post today. Lest we forget? We already have.