Pakistan Closes NATO Supply Route

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:00:32 GMT Pakistan has closed a vital supply route to NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan, preventing supply trucks from crossing into the country. Islamabad said Tuesday that the service via the historic Khyber Pass has been suspended over 'security reasons'. The move comes as Pakistani security forces launched a major operation involving artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships against the militants in the lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan. The operation, which is taking place in the Jamrud district, would continue until the route was fully secured, Khyber's top administrator Tariq Hayat said adding that the operation would be extended to other areas of Khyber if necessary. "Supplies to NATO forces will remain suspended until we clear the area of militants and outlaws who have gone out of control", Tariq Hayat said.. » read more

Iranians Ponder Their Future With an Obama Administration

Monday 29 December 2008  Traveling to Iran as a Citizen Diplomat for Peace     Just a month ago, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and US President George Bush met for the last time as heads of state in late November 2008 in Washington and continued their relentless bellicose rhetoric toward Iran, I and three activists from the United States were in Iran as citizen diplomats talking with Iranians on their views of a new American presidential administration and their hopes for their country. An Iranian woman holds up a lamp during a power outage in Tehran, Iran. (Photo: Morteza Nikoubazi / Reuters)     We went to Iran with no illusions. We knew well the history of United States involvement in Iran. We knew of Iranian support for organizations U.. » read more

Corruption Destroys Afghanistan

Saturday 20 December 2008 Just when you've finally gotten your mind around the enormous $700 billion financial bailout - even if none of us are really sure where all that money's going - there comes an even greater, breathtaking price tag. This photo of Afghan warlords was taken shortly after the Soviet troop withdrawal in 1989. (Photo: Heidi Bradner / AP)     The amount is $904 billion - that's how much we've spent on American military operations, including Iraq and Afghanistan, since the 9/11 attacks; 50 percent more than what was spent in Vietnam, reports the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment. Their study does not include the inestimable toll in human life.     Of that money, nearly 200 billion has gone to Afghanistan, where 31,000 American troops are nearly 60 percent of the NATO peacekeeping force.. » read more

Up to 30,000 New US Troops in Afghanistan by Summer

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Bill Moyers Journal --Interview with Sarah Chayes

Dec. 19, 2008 December 19, 2008 When Sarah Chayes left her job as an NPR reporter to help rebuild Afghanistan, she did so because she believed that Afghanistan had the potential to be a stable, lawful country. Seven years later, as the incoming Obama Administration looks to change course in Afghanistan and send in 20,000 more troops, Chayes joins Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL to explain what she thinks U.S. policy should be in the region.. » read more

Afghanistan: A Way Forward (with video)

Tuesday 16 December 2008  An interview with Stephen Kinzer.     Last week, with President-elect Obama's blessing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the beginning of a troop "surge" in Afghanistan. As the US embarks on a slow redeployment of troops away from the widely condemned occupation of Iraq - though that occupation is not by any means ending - it is easy to frame Afghanistan as a milder war, a war that can even, perhaps, be "won." However, sending more American forces to Afghanistan is a peculiar first project for a supposedly peacemaking president-elect, according to Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents, and has written extensively on US interventionism around the world. In the following interview, Kinzer puts forth a new approach to Afghanistan.. » read more

BUSH IN AFGHANISTAN

----- Original Message ----- From: JM To: Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 1:19 PM Subject: Bush in Afghanistan   President Bush said this morning for the corporate media to relay from Sea to Shining Sea, "Are there difficult days ahead? Absolutely. But are the conditions a lot better today in Afghanistan than they were in 2001? Unquestionably, undoubtedly they are better."   Unquestionably better?   There may be a million Afghanis dead as a result of the Bush invasion (according to some, although corporate media have buried any attempt to report deaths, the most important statistic in war), and heroin exporting has reached record levels.  Women say that rape has become common outside of the capitol, now that criminal warlords are in charge of provinces.  A primary difference in the landscape, Afghanis say, is that where there were once houses, there is now rubble.. » read more

UN Confirms Afghan Mass Grave Site Disturbed

Friday 12 December 2008 Kabul, Afghanistan - The U.N. confirmed Friday that a mass grave in northern Afghanistan has been disturbed, raising the possibility that evidence supporting allegations of a massacre seven years ago may have been removed. (Photo: Reuters)     The Dasht-e-Leili grave site holds as many as 2,000 bodies of Taliban prisoners who died in transit after surrendering during one of the regime's last stands in November 2001, according to a State Department report from 2002.     McClatchy Newspapers first reported the tampering with the grave site on Thursday.. » read more

Afghanistan Airdops Increase As Supply Risks Rise

Dec. 12, 2008 U.S. forces have sharply increased the number of airdrop supply missions in Afghanistan in the past three years, as roads have become more dangerous and allied troops have established remote outposts.   An Air Force loadmaster secures the ramp of a C-130 after an airdrop of critical supplies for Afghanistan ground forces in March 2007.. » read more

Fresh attacks hit Pak NATO terminals

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:22:50 GMT Unknown gunmen have attacked two separate NATO terminals in Pakistan's tribal northwest, destroying 37 Afghanistan-bound vehicles. Employees inspect trucks at a NATO terminal raided last week. This is the fifth time in the past 10 days that militants attack truck stands on Ring road area in the provincial capital of Peshawar, frequented by trucks that carry supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan. Peshawar police officials told Press TV that militants fired rockets at Bilal terminal late on Friday, destroying 10 supply trucks and 15 containers bound for Afghanistan. Numerous explosions rocked the NATO terminal while the gunmen flung petrol bombs at the terminal, where about a hundred supply containers as well as Humvee transport vehicles were parked, the officials added.. » read more

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