Afghanistan

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar sign a peace agreement during a ceremony in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, 2020. BYMarjorie Cohn, Truthout PART OF THE SERIES Human Rights and Global Wrongs It’s true that the Trump administration signed a “peace deal” with the Taliban — something that eluded both George W. Bush and Barack Obama — but a closer look at the agreement reveals it to be riddled with conditions that are fraught with obstacles. The terms of the deal suggest that Trump is more interested in boasting that he’s fulfilling his campaign promise to bring the troops home than he is committed to achieving real peace in Afghanistan. This fact has also been noted by Trump’s former ...

U.S. Army soldiers retrieve their duffel bags after returning home from a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan on December 10, 2020, at Fort Drum, New York. BYChris Walker, Truthout President Joe Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, bringing to an end almost 20 years of U.S. occupation in the country, albeit with some potential caveats. Sources with knowledge of the plan for the withdrawal, speaking anonymously to The Washington Post, said Biden’s goal is to begin a phased withdrawal of the 2,500 remaining troops in Afghanistan over the course of the next few months. By September 11, 2021 — the 20th anniversary of the attacks in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania that led to former President George W. Bush...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), talks with reporters while leaving the U.S. Capitol on Monday, August 9, 2021. BYSharon Zhang, Truthout Progressive lawmakers are calling on the U.S. to accept Afghan refugees as the Taliban has taken over the country, forcing at least thousands of residents to attempt to flee. After the Afghanistan government collapsed, the Kabul airport has been flooded with Afghans desperate to flee the country. Particularly striking footage Monday showed hundreds of Afghans attempting to cling to a U.S. Air Force plane that was taking off. Meanwhile, earlier that day in Afghanistan, five people were killed at the Hamid Karzai International Airport amid chaos. The United Nations (UN) has warned of a coming refugee crisis as conditions&nbs...

Afghans seek shelter from fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security forces on August 14, 2021. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times) "We've spent billions on war. Now, let's spend to bring Afghans to safety." JAKE JOHNSON As the Biden administration faces criticism for not doing enough to assist those fleeing Afghanistan, an analysis released Monday showed that the roughly $19 billion the Pentagon budgeted for the U.S. occupation of the country in 2020 alone could cover initial resettlement costs for 1.2 million refugees. "We have a duty to save lives—and to do so, we must welcome many, many more refugees as quickly as possible."—Rep. Cori Bush Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project estimated that the $18.6 billion the Pentagon alloc...

Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Oval Office on January 16, 2020, in Washington, D.C. BY: Marjorie Cohn, Truthout PART OF THE SERIES Human Rights and Global Wrongs The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all routinely lied to the American people about the success of the 18-year war in Afghanistan. They exaggerated progress and inflated statistics to create an illusion that that the war was winnable. But after the deaths of 157,000 people at a cost of $2 trillion, corruption is rampant and the carnage continues. “There’s an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue … mendacity and hubris,” John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during his January 15 testimony. In the la...

President Joe Biden speaks about the situation in Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 8, 2021. BYWilliam Rivers Pitt,  Truthout Former president George W. Bush recently took a break from painting portraits of the wounded soldiers he fed into the maw of dual wars 20 years ago to complain about the end of one of those wars. In a rare interview, given to German news agency Deutsche Welle (DW), Bush had himself a nice little sad about the fact that the Biden administration was finally shutting down U.S. military involvement in the two-decade bottomless pit that was, and will ever be, his Afghanistan conflict. Calling the withdrawal a “mistake,” Bush said, “I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably...

Afghans make their way to the military entrance of the airport for evacuations in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 19, 2021. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) "After pursuing 20 years of failed policies that have done incredible harm to Afghans, the United States and its NATO allies have a responsibility to accept every Afghan seeking refuge." KENNY STANCIL A coalition of more than 60 progressive advocacy organizations, led by Afghans For a Better Tomorrow, on Thursday released a letter detailing what the Biden administration can do "to save Afghan lives and prevent further harm to the Afghan people." "Given the two decades of U.S. involvement in this devastating conflict, the United States' moral obligations do not ...

Waving their credentials, a crowd of South Vietnamese citizens gathered around a U.S. Embassy bus on April 24, 1975, ahead of the fall of Saigon. BY: Matthew Rozsa, Salon Earlier this month, I compared Joe Biden to John F. Kennedy, who salvaged his image after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 by admitting his mistake — and learning from it. I acknowledged that the parallel was imperfect, since “foreign policy and domestic policy mistakes are obviously very different kettles of fish.” How quickly things change. Thanks to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban takeover, those two kettles of fish suddenly look awfully similar. As with Kennedy, it is likely that Biden’s presidency can avoid being defined by this fiasco. Providing, of course, that Bide...

CODEPINK Members Midge Potts and Medea Benjamin march during a protest against escalation of the war in Afghanistan in front of the White House on December 1, 2009, in Washington, D.C. BYMedea Benjamin & Nicolas J.S. Davies, Salon America’s corporate media are ringing with recriminations over the humiliating U.S. military defeat in Afghanistan. But very little of the criticism goes to the root of the problem, which was the original decision to militarily invade and occupy Afghanistan in the first place. That decision set in motion a cycle of violence and chaos that no subsequent U.S. policy or military strategy could resolve over the next 20 years, in Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the other countries swept up in America’s post-9/11 wars. While Americans were reeling in shock...