Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Killed only 25. What a mediocrity! A medieval prince would have killed a much higher number of ‘baddies’. Wasted tax payers money by the MoD. The British Army had “trained me to ‘other’ them, and they had trained me well” "We'd been given a meta-narrative, which we now recalled: We were a Christian army, fighting a militia sympathetic to Muslims ," he writes. With his tour in Iraq prematurely over, Harry turned to the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol, particularly Southern Comfort and sambuca, to deal "with unsorted anger, and guilt about not being at war - not leading my lads". Harry recalls telling his commander that unless he was sent back to a conflict area, he would "have to quit the army". Harry recalls wanting to use an almost one-tonne bomb on his first attempted air strike on a suspected Taliban position, which even his American counterparts saw as too much, something he jokingly thought as "very un-American".

After their victory against the Taliban in 2001, with the support of the Americans, local warlords such as Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad Noor, and other militia commanders responsible for the murderous anarchy of the civil war, were to play a significant role in the new democratic Afghanistan. They were given immunity from prosecution for their alleged human rights abuses and war crimes, and the opportunity to enrich themselves from the immense inrush of foreign aid. Torture and mistreatment of prisoners in American jails helped turn these sites into fertile recruiting centres for future jihadis. “The memories of Bagram are hard on everyone, especially me,” Jawhar said. “We were three to five in each cell, we had no mattresses and we slept on the concrete floor. I became the imam of my cell, and the soldiers were always harder on the imams. Many times they called me to the door and then sprayed my face with pepper spray. Some [guards] tortured us for no reason, while others wou

A process of seizing assesses from Afghanistan to set up ‘humanitarian assistance’ Related The  ‘CIA’s army’

“ Western governments don’t have to do much to make the world a better place — in fact, all they have to do is stop what they’re doing.” I wonder why though one has to conclude an article with an indirect appeal to those very same regimes they condemn. US sanctions killing Afghans

Teetering on the brink of economic collapse

A déjà-vu? Many Afghans, and some foreign analysts, believe Isis-K is being supported by foreign forces, such as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI wants leverage to persuade the Taliban to co-operate in suppressing Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a jihadist insurgency that has targeted the Pakistan government. Others suspect US intelligence agencies, anti-Taliban warlords and even former members of the Afghan army of collaborating with Isis-K. “We know there are intelligence agencies and networks supporting Isis-K to challenge and create problems for the Taliban government,” Haqpal said. In India, government and intelligence officials have suggested that inter-Taliban rivalry — between the Haqqani network and a powerful Kandahar faction led by Mullah Baradar, the deputy prime minister — is stoking the violence. “There is clear factionalism in the Taliban,” an Indian intelligence source said. “It is possible that one faction is supporting the Isis-K to wipe out the dominance o

This  article requires individual or institutional subscription. Here is an excerpt: “ The West’s focus on armed violence gets in the way of understanding the phenomena of radicalisation and the commission of acts in its name. It presupposes a continuum between religious radicalisation, proclamation of jihad and international terrorism, as though going from the first to the third stage were inevitable, and conversely, as though international terrorism   created   local jihadism. Such reasoning leads to any reference to sharia law and any call for holy war being read as a precursor to global attacks. In this view, Islamist movements’ supposed proximity to terrorism is the sole criterion for determining western policy towards them. This proximity is defined on a scale of intensity that measures references to religion as much as — if not more than — actual acts of violence: the more Islamist groups mention sharia and the more they challenge the policies of the great powers, the more they

A good report by Anand Gopal

It is mostly from a British journalist perspective An account to refresh our memory

“ A former British soldier who helped dozens of people leave Kabul after the Taliban’s invasion is stranded in Afghanistan after the Foreign Office bungled the paperwork necessary to evacuate him.” The ‘Taliban’s invasion’? According to Tony Diver and propably The Telegraph itself, Taliban carried out an invasion. I scratched my head: Are Taliban from China or Russia? Or maybe the Taliban have just invaded themselves! No, it is their country you like or not, as it is the country of many who have just fled it.  And it is just a small example of the narrative of the corporate media. 

Afghanistan 1978-2021: A brief summary

The hidden hand of the market that cannot work without a hidden fist-McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. Similarly, selling an invasion, a war, ‘liberation of women’, ‘democracy promotion’, etc. cannot work without a (white) celebrity culture and liberal feminists. Afghan feminists never asked for Meryl Streep’s help—let alone US air strikes Related ‘Against White Feminism’

After 19 years the most powerful military power in the world and history, with the biggest annual GDP and powerful wealthy allies, has failed to defeat the Taliban, stabilise the country and ‘liberate women’. And it is leaving behind a weak government. 26,000 Afghan children killed or maimed since 2005

American (and German) state terror in Afghanistan

War photography by David Pratt

Did the US commit war crimes in Afghanistan

Beyond Today Let's not forget what happened 10 years ago when Taliban militants landed on the Isle of Wight and the bravey of our men in defending our country from bearded monsters who wanted to spread their medieval values in Britain by force. On the deadliest day 5 commandos lost their lives in repelling the invaders. Prince Harry, expressing a steely face , made a resounding speech in which he stated:  "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." But the militants kept coming in and a guerrilla war dragged on for weeks. K. still remembers how he lost his comrades. He now suffers from post traumatic stress disorder that makes him smash things in the kitchen sometimes. A captured Taliban militant, Ahmed Masood, was quite determined: " We fought you four times now. We will keep fighting you until we convert you to our values.&q

In post 9-11 the U.S. spent $6 trillion, killing half a million people The price was worth it! I live in a town with a statue of Richard Cobden, an English capitalist and "liberal. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cobden exclaimed, "We have been the most combative and aggressive community that has existed since the days of the Roman dominion. Since the Revolution of 1688 we have expended more than fiften hundered millions of money upon wars, not one of which has been upon our own shores, or in defense of our hearths and homes ... this pugnacious propensity has been invariably recognized by those who have studied our national charcter."  Quoted in Daniel Pick, War Machine , 1993, p. 21

Trailing ... The Mujahidin, Taliban and the CIA  (wikipedia) Sleeping with the devil (the Washington Post) The CIA and Islamic fundamentalism   (Weekly Worker) How the Taliban got their way in Afghanistan (the New York Times, a review of Ahmed Rashid's Taliban ) Political Islam in the service of imperialism (Samir Amin)

Pakistan A Marxist in Parliament dominated by feudals and capitalists