Afghanistan

AnalysisFeatures Nicholas Stender August 20, 2021 5903 minutes read Download PDF flyer Photo: U.S. troops board a plane involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan After the lightning collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, the managers of the U.S. war machine and their cheerleaders in the corporate media have been scrambling to defend the image of their empire. The bulk of the corporate media and both Democratic and Republican politicians are condemning Biden’s handling of the withdrawal. Several Congressional investigations have already been announced.  Critics of the withdrawal claim to be appalled at the shocking scenes at the Kabul airport and the repressive policies of the Taliban. They play the part of outraged defenders of democracy or women’...

GUESTS Bilal Sarwary Afghan journalist based in Kabul. We go to Kabul for an update as the Taliban moves to secure control of Afghanistan. The group said Tuesday former government officials will not face retribution and that the rights of women and journalists will be upheld. The Taliban’s rhetoric and the relatively restrained behavior of its fighters in Kabul are starkly different from how the group governed Afghanistan after seizing power in 1996, when it imposed draconian restrictions on everyday life. Despite the Taliban’s pledges, many women across Afghanistan have not left their homes since the Taliban seized control over the weekend and as thousands of people attempt to catch flights out of the country. “The Afghan people would like to know where this road now le...

GUESTS Matthew Hohsenior fellow with the Center for International Policy, disabled combat veteran and former State Department official. “The only thing more tragic than what’s happened to the Afghan people is that in a few days America will have forgotten Afghanistan again,” says Matthew Hoh, a disabled combat veteran and former State Department official stationed in Afghanistan’s Zabul province who resigned in 2009 to protest the Obama administration’s escalation of the War in Afghanistan. He says much of the U.S. media coverage has been filled with “complete lies and fabrications,” despite decades of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. “You see the same people who’ve been wrong about this war trotted out over and over again,” says Hoh, a senior fellow with the Center for ...

GUEST We speak with Washington Post investigative reporter Craig Whitlock, author of the new book “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” which reveals how multiple U.S. presidents deceived the public about progress in the war despite widespread skepticism among defense and diplomatic officials about the mission. “The public narrative was that the U.S. was always making progress. All these presidents said we were going to win the war, and yet, in private, these officials were extremely pessimistic,” says Whitlock. He also discusses miscalculations in the initial invasion of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Afghan security forces and how U.S. defense contractors have benefited from the last two decades of war. Transcript This is a rush transcript. Co...

GUEST Mariam Safifounding executive director of the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS) and the co-director of the Afghanistan Mechanism for Inclusive Peace.Zahra NaderPh.D. student in gender and women’s studies at York University, freelance writer and former New York Times reporter. We look at how the rights of women and ethnic minorities will be impacted by the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan with two Afghan women who fled their country. Mariam Safi, who left Kabul last month and is founding director of the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies, says the Taliban’s rapid advance across the country surprised many people who had been hoping for a negotiated end to the war. “We had felt that there would be some space fo...

BY RON JACOBS Photograph Source: U.S. Secretary of Defense – CC BY 2.0 Speculation abounds.  The end of US-managed rule in the nation called Afghanistan has fueled a flood of warnings, blame, and just plain guessing about what comes next there.  Liberal and neocon warmongers in the media wring their hands looking for someone/anyone to blame beside their failed imperial strategy.  The far right in the US have yet to speak their piece on the so-called fall of Kabul.  Perhaps they are waiting for their two primary impulses of libertarianism and military imperialism factions to fight it out.  What’s left of the US antiwar movement and the antiwar left are for the most part calmly stating what they were saying twenty years ago.  In other words, just...