Afghanistan Archives - Page 30 of 74 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?

by John Feffer, Conn Hallinan | Sep 10, 2009

One of the oddest — indeed, surreal — encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How can Washington avoid the kind of defeat it suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago?

Afghanistan: War Trumps Elections

by Frida Berrigan, John Feffer | Aug 26, 2009

The official results of Afghanistan’s presidential elections won’t be known for weeks. The ballots cast around the country need to be brought to Kabul — some by donkey and helicopter — and counted. Nevertheless, U.S. officials have rushed to celebrate the process, and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen heralded the elections as "a testimony to the determination of the Afghan people to build democracy." This despite more than 75 reported incidents of violence throughout the country, an estimated 26 civilians and security forces dead, reports of more than a handful of districts where no one voted, and complaints about impermanent ink, intimidation, and other irregularities.

Book Excerpt, ‘The Will to Resist’

by Daniel Atzmon, Dahr Jamail | Aug 4, 2009

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Dahr Jamail’s The Will To Resist: Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books). The testimonies below were collected at a national conference, "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan," held by Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Time for Effective Aid in Afghanistan

by Daniel Atzmon, Erik Leaver | Jul 30, 2009

In this interview, IPS intern Daniel Atzmon discusses the situation in Afghanistan with Gyan Bahadur Adhikari (G.B. for short), who is the country director for ActionAid Afghanistan.

Poem: “The Center for the Intrepid”

by Jenny Browne, Melissa Tuckey | Jul 28, 2009

(New $50M Rehab Center Opens on Fort Sam Houston, CBS News, Jan 2007) Wheeled onto the jet leaving my town, another soldier whose pruned body echoes earth liberating itself from gravity. Inside the cave of his grey -hooded shirt he sweats as might a ghost or cello. As in another war when a baptism and […]

Blood and Oil in Central Asia

by John Feffer, Conn Hallinan | Jul 15, 2009

In the past month, two seemingly unrelated events have turned Central Asia into a potential flashpoint: an aggressively expanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a nascent strategic alliance between Russia and China.

AfPak Blowback

by John Feffer | Jul 7, 2009

Pakistan has one of the largest, most sophisticated militaries on the planet. Its army is as large as the U.S. Army. It’s among the top 25 largest military spenders in the world. On top of the billions of dollars of weapons provided to Pervez Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, Washington is promising another $3 billion a year in military assistance over the next five years. And, to top it off, Islamabad has nuclear weapons.

Changing the Discourse: First Step toward Changing the Policy?

by Phyllis Bennis, Emily Schwartz Greco | Jun 4, 2009

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated Cairo speech reflected a significant shift away from the ideological framework of militarism and unilateralism that shaped the Bush administration’s war-based policy toward the Arab and Muslim worlds. His "not Bush" focus was perhaps most sharply evident in his public denunciation of the Iraq War as a "war of choice." Obama’s call for a "new beginning" based on "the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition" was followed by a move to shift the official U.S. discourse toward something closer to internationalism — particularly by pointing to parallels between historical (and some contemporary) grievances and treating them as equivalent. This included his reference to the U.S. "role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," along with Iran’s "role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians."

AfPak: Negotiate from Strength

by John Feffer, Sharad Joshi | Apr 15, 2009

This is part of a strategic dialogue on Pakistan and counterterrorism. See Fouad Pervez’s opposing argument here, and their respective responses here.

The Afghan Rubik’s Cube

by John Feffer, Conn Hallinan | Apr 2, 2009

Afghanistan is a gatherer of metaphors: "crossroads of Asia," "graveyard of empires," and the "Great Game," to name a few. It might be more accurate, however, to think of it as a Rubik’s Cube, that frustrating puzzle of intersecting blocks that only works when everything fits perfectly. The trick for the Obama administration is to figure out how to solve the puzzle in a timeframe rapidly squeezed by events both internal and external of that war-torn central Asian nation.