Pen Farthing ‘so happy’ as rescue workers escape

Source: BBC

Former Royal Marine Paul “Pen” Farthing said the campaign to evacuate workers at his animal shelter from Afghanistan has been “a complete success”.

Last month, Mr Farthing was forced to leave behind 68 staff and family members when he and some 150 animals were evacuated from Kabul.

The staff are now in Pakistan in the care of the British High Commission.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said they would be brought to the UK in the coming days.

Read full article

John Pilger: The Great Game of Smashing Nations

As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.

In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.

Continue reading John Pilger: The Great Game of Smashing Nations

‘They will kill you’: a future leader of Afghanistan on the price he paid for freedom

Source: Guardian

Mohammad Zaman Khadimi was forced to make an impossible choice as he fled the Taliban for sanctuary in Australia

On an August morning, Mohammad Zaman Khadimi walked out of class and into a world entirely changed.

“I heard the news that the Taliban were coming,” he says. “They had captured Herat and Lashkar Gah and they would come to Kabul. Nothing would stop them. Everything changed. I knew I would be vulnerable.”

Within 48 hours, the Islamist group would seize control of Kabul and sit in the presidential palace. The Taliban would be the government.

Read full article

Afghanistan, 20 Years After the September 11 Attacks

Source: Voice of America

ISLAMABAD – Twenty-four-year-old Tamana Zaryab Paryani is too young to remember the last Taliban rule, from 1996-2001, but she recalls the horror stories her mother told her.

“My mother said Taliban were a terrorist group … it was a brutal time. They used to stone people to death,” Paryani told VOA in a WhatsApp call from Kabul, where she and nearly 20 other women are regularly protesting in the streets against the very group her mother warned her about.

Read full article

Where did the $5tn spent on Afghanistan and Iraq go? Here’s where

Source: Guardian

While Washington bickers about what, if anything, has been achieved after 20 years and nearly $5tn spent on “forever wars”, there is one clear winner: the US defense industry.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military relied to an unprecedented degree on private contractors for support in virtually all areas of war operations. Contractors supplied trucks, planes, fuel, helicopters, ships, drones, weapons and munitions as well as support services from catering and construction to IT and logistics. The number of contractors on the ground outnumbered US troops most years of the conflicts. By the summer of 2020, the US had 22,562 contractor personnel in Afghanistan – roughly twice the number of American troops.

Read full article

The Afghan view of 9/11: ‘This is the day the bad times started’

Source: Guardian

In Afghanistan 9/11 is remembered as a trigger for decades of war which this year have come full, grim circle. The Taliban who controlled the country and sheltered Osama bin Laden at the time of the attacks are once more in command of Kabul and most of the country.

“This is the day when the bad times started for Afghanistan and Afghans,” said Haizbullah, a grocer in the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s heartland and original capital.

Read full article

US war on terror is still omnipresent

Source: Deutsche Welle

“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history.” These were the words of President Joe Biden on August 31, one day after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was concluded.  

Notably, however, Biden asserted in the same speech that “we will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it. We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, very few if needed.” 

Read full article