Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Our education legacy in Afghanistan is mired in corruption and nothingness
Shameful: Hayatollah is supposed to be teaching history and geography for grades six to nine at the Kahrezak Secondary School, located 60 kilometres from Chaghcharan, the provincial centre of Ghor province in central Afghanistan . But when asked to identify Ahmad Shah Durrani, the first king of Afghanistan, the 22-year-old teacher replied with a smile…
This is what military contractors think of journalism in the US
A disturbing story that reveals the danger real journalism poses to the vulture capitalists in our “democracies”: A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created…
We invaded your country and after more than 10 years we can’t even get a t-shirt?
More than 10 years occupying Afghanistan and the US remains mostly incapable of providing security to the Afghan people. That’s what you call failed imperialism. I saw it myself during my recent visit to the country, large areas where the presence of foreign troops only brings instability. A good example of this is revealed in…
Private militias polluting Pakistan
My following investigation is the lead story on Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar English: The past decade has seen a significant increase in foreign investments in the private security market around the Middle East. Pakistan is one of the countries that attracted the most attention in this global mercenary business. The American killing of Osama bin Laden last…
What I saw in Afghanistan researching disaster capitalism
I’ve just returned from Afghanistan where I was independently investigating the role of the war economy and vulture capitalism since 2001. I’ve never been to a country like it; Beautiful, suffering under Western occupation, Taliban attacks, deep conservatism, poverty and US-empowered warlords. I met Afghan civilians who had suffered at the hands of private mercenaries,…
American wars killing soldiers in the thousands
Shocking (via the New York Times): An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at… a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since…
We are being lied to over Afghanistan says senior US army man
US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis: Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable.
Pakistan: private security is a state within a state
My following investigation appears in Australian publication Crikey today: The Pakistani city of Peshawar is situated an hour from Afghanistan. Driving there from Islamabad, the landscape was mostly lush green fields, poor villages and mud houses. After being stopped at five checkpoints along the way, an attempt to intercept foreigners and militants entering the sensitive…
Australia sharing disaster capitalism skills with Afghanistan
Dispiriting news. Australia, apparently so proud of exploiting resources, now wants to share this knowledge with a poor nation such as Afghanistan that is open to vulture capitalists. The Australian reports: Afghanistan is looking to the Australian mining industry for instruction and investment as the war-torn nation stakes its stability and economic future on the…