by DOUG SAUNDERS - The Globe & Mail

"Last week, I saw a man sitting next to his poppy crop and crying,"..."He told me that he'd been paid in advance for his poppy, and how can he possibly pay it back now that it's been eradicated? He told me, 'I have no choice, but I have a 14-year-old daughter who I have to give to a smuggler as payment' "...[K]illing a poor farmer's crop can have nasty consequences.

DOUG SAUNDERS - Globe & Mail

Among the soldiers, diplomats and aid workers who live in Afghanistan, it is the problem that nobody dares mention...Among ordinary Afghans, it's a daily presence, the corruption that is rooted deeply in the Western-backed Afghan government and its appointed officials.

by Declan Walsh and Richard Norton Taylor - Friday, February 29, 2008

After six years of US-led military support and billions of [dollars] in aid, security in Afghanistan is "deteriorating" and President Hamid Karzai's government controls less than a third of the country, America's top intelligence official has admitted...Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control.

By David Wood - The Baltimore Sun

The Pentagon has characterized Afghanistan as an "economy of force" operation, meaning that it gets troops, equipment and strategic attention that are not needed in Iraq, which has been viewed as the more important conflict...But that view is increasingly in question, by outside critics as well as by Pentagon officials who see the growing and increasingly violent Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan as potentially more damaging to U.S. interests and regional stability than continued unrest in Iraq.

By David Orchard - February 23, 2008

The Harper government is seeking to prolong Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan. So far, Canada has spent six years, billions of dollars, 78 young lives (many more wounded) and inflicted unknown casualties on that country...The terms used to describe our occupation and ongoing war are remarkably similar to those used over a century ago by colonial powers to justify their ruthless wars of colonization.

By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN - Counterpunch

This essay argues that the internationally recognized crime of genocide applies to the intentional killings that NATO troops commit on a weekly basis in the poor villages and mute mountains of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban, a puritanical Islamic group...The dehumanized label of "Taliban" is used to cloak the nameless victims of NATO operations.

Liberal, Tory motions are virtual photocopies

Don Martin, National Post | Friday, February 22, 2008

Combat soldiers patrolling outside the Kandahar military base should shake their helmets in disbelief at the motion sickness rocking Parliament Hill in their name.

January, 27 2008 - Znet

The Pentagon has recently released optimistic figures about violence in Iraq. What they neglect to say is that while overall violence has declined there in the last few months, civilian deaths at U.S. hands increased approximately 70 percent in 2007 over the prior year. Non-combatant death at U.S. hands grew in Afghanistan by a similar percentage. This surge in non-combatant death directly caused by the U.S. accompanies the surge in U.S. led operations in both countries.

by GRAEME SMITH - February 6, 2008

The biggest firefight in Kandahar city over the past few weeks was not a battle against insurgents but a squabble among Afghan police...Three police were killed and five wounded...It's at least the third time in the past eight months that deadly gunfights have erupted within the ranks of Kandahar's security forces, even after Canada has focused attention on training the police...

Kandahar governor accused of beating and using electric shocks on detainees in secret Afghan prisons

PAUL KORING | Globe and Mail

Axis of Logic | George Aleman III | Jan 14, 2008

[W]hile moderate Muslims are urged to stand up to, and denounce, extremist conduct, it must also be stressed that moderate Christians stand up to their fringe counterparts as well. Failing to do so will only enable them further.

by John Pilger - January, 10 2008

"We [Afghan women]...only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorise, yet they hold seats in [Hamid] Karzai's government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands."

--Marina (not her real name) of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

Despite all propaganda by the Western media and [their] beneficiaries, lives of ordinary Afghans have worsened under the US-backed government [of Hamid Karzai] compared to the Taliban era conditions...The corrupt government, huge amounts of aid misused by a particular section of people, and the presence of foreign forces have all together contributed to the doubling of the miseries of the common Afghan.

“They killed 18 people that night. I swear none of them were Taliban fighters,”...“They killed civilians - people like me - with rough farmers’ hands. If you don’t believe me, then come with me to the cemetery. I will dig up the bodies to show you.”

Axis of Logic | By George Aleman III | Jan 1, 2008

The deified statement that “‘we’” must fight ‘them’ over there, so that ‘we’ do not have to fight ‘them’ over here,” so frequently uttered by the Radical Establishment, serves to divert our attention from the fact that “they” are already here, and pitch themselves as our “noble heroes.”