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US Troops Executing Prisoners in Afghanistan: Seymour Hersh |
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The journalist who helped break the story that detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being tortured by their US jailers told an audience at a journalism conference last month that American soldiers are now executing prisoners in Afghanistan.
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Muslim woman fined £430 for wearing burka in Italy |
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A Muslim woman in Italy has been fined 500 euros (£430) for wearing a burka in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
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Getting away with murder? The impunity of international forces in Afghanistan |
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I want justice. I want the international community to capture and punish my brothers’ murderers.
--brother of Abdul Habib and Mohammed Ali, brothers apparently killed in their home by international forces in Kandahar on 16 January 2008
Millions of Afghans face violence and insecurity worse than at any period since 2001, when the USA and its allies ousted the Taleban from power. The conflict between the Afghan government and its international supporters, on the one hand, and on the other hand a loose coalition of Taleban, anti-government groups like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, and criminal militias, has now escalated to cover more than a third of Afghanistan, including areas just outside Kabul. In 2008, more than 2,000 Afghan civilians died as a direct result of the conflict, while tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes, and millions more suffer the indirect impact of insecurity in the form of significantly restricted access to education, health care, and even their farms and markets. It was the activity of anti-government groups that injured most civilians in 2008, as in past years. But some 40 per cent (795) of civilian casualties were due to operations by international and Afghan security forces— a 30 percent increase from the 559 reported in 2007.1 Most of these civilians killed and injured by international forces suffered as a result of airstrikes and raids of homes by international and Afghan forces.
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Aid agency Oxfam memo to President Obama |
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In a report published by an International aid agency, Oxfam, President Obama is warned not to miss an opportunity to chart a new course for US policy in Afghanistan by taking the urgent steps needed to reverse the slide into a major humanitarian crisis. The aid agency estimates that U.S. and NATO forces were responsible for 800 civilian deaths in the past year alone. This figure is in stark contrast with NATO's recent estimate that only claimed responsibility for 100 civilian deaths.
Memo to President Obama:
As an aid agency implementing rural livelihood programs and supporting partner
organizations for close to 20 years in 32 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, Oxfam has grave
concerns that the current course of events is leaving Afghans less safe and placing
extraordinary pressure o their livelihoods.
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'I Was Still Holding my Grandson's Hand - The Rest Was Gone' |
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"We were walking, I was holding my grandson's hand, then there was a loud noise and everything went white. When I opened my eyes, everybody was screaming. I was lying metres from where I had been, I was still holding my grandson's hand but the rest of him was gone. I looked around and saw pieces of bodies everywhere. I couldn't make out which part was which."
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