Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Record 50 Million Children Now Displaced as Wars, Climate Crisis Rage

“When children lose their homes, they lose almost everything: their access to healthcare, education, food, and safety,” one advocate said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 2-20-2024 by Common Dreams

Children in the area of Shangil Tobaya, Sudan. Photo: United Nations Photo/flickr/CC

The 10 biggest global crises—including Israel’s war on Gaza—forced more than 10 million children to flee their homes in 2023.

That figure likely puts the total number of displaced children at more than 50 million, a new record, Save the Children said in an analysis published Tuesday. The number of children displaced worldwide has also more than doubled from around 20.6 million in 2010. While the number of displaced people overall reached a record 114 million in October 2023, children are being pushed from their homes at an even faster rate than adults and face unique vulnerabilities.

Continue reading
Share Button

Bombings Kill Dozens in Pakistan on Eve of Contentious Elections

As Pakistanis prepare to head to the polls with the country’s most popular politician behind bars on dubious charges, human rights groups sounded the alarm on a wide range of election-related repression.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 2-7-2024 by Common Dreams

Screenshot: YouTube

Dozens of Pakistanis were killed Wednesday in two bombings targeting political offices on the eve of highly contentious parliamentary elections from which the country’s most popular leader—who is jailed on what critics say are politically motivated charges—is banned.

The blasts both occurred in the southwestern province of Balochistan, homeland of the nomadic Baloch people, who also inhabit a large swath of southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. Government officials said the first bombing, which targeted independent candidate Asfandyar Khan’s office in the Pashin district, killed 18 people. A second blast approximately 80 miles away then killed at least 12 people at the Qilla Saifullah office of the Sunni fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema Islam party, which has close ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Continue reading
Share Button

22 Years, 4 Presidents, and Just 1 Conviction Later, Dozens Still Jailed at Guantánamo

“The Biden administration needs no new authority or ideas” to close the notorious torture prison, one rights group argues. “All it needs is the political will and a willingness to do the work.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 1-11-2024 by Common Dreams

Protest in front of the White House on the 17th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay, 1/11/19. Photo: Victoria Pickering/flickr/CC

Human rights defenders marked 22 years since the opening of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba with renewed calls for President Joe Biden to fulfill his stated intention to close the notorious torture camp, where 30 men—16 of them cleared for release—remain behind bars.

Like most of the roughly 750 prisoners released from Guantánamo, the majority of remaining detainees have never been charged with any crime. Only one—Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul, a Yemeni national—has ever been convicted of terrorism-related charges under the highly controversial military commission regime established by the George W. Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Continue reading
Share Button

If this is Israel’s 9/11, we should remember what happened next

The US achieved nothing in the Middle East, but millions of civilians paid the price – the same will be true now

By Paul Rogers. Published 10-9-2023 by openDemocracy

Gaza Photo: @Yasssha00/X

After the devastating failure of the Israeli intelligence to foresee the sudden Hamas assault at the weekend, many Israelis are describing the huge loss of lives as ‘Israel’s 9/11’.

Although the two events cannot be fairly compared, given the attack on Israel came from a country it has occupied and inflicted a deadly and brutal regime of apartheid on for many decades, the assault by Hamas has had a similarly visceral impact.

Continue reading
Share Button

Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner Ramzi bin al-Shibh Unfit for 9/11 Trial, Says Military Judge

“This decision by the military judge today does mark the first time that the United States has formally acknowledged the CIA torture program produced profound and prolonged psychological harm,” said al-Shibh’s lawyer.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 9-22-2023 by Common Dreams

Ramzi bin al-Shibh holds a document while posing for this 2010 photo. 
(Photo: International Committee of the Red Cross)

A U.S. military judge on Thursday found Guantánamo Bay prisoner Ramzi bin al-Shibh—who stands accused of being a key 9/11 organizer—unfit to stand trial because he suffers from mental illness his attorney says was caused by CIA torture years ago.

Air Force Col. Matthew McCall severed al-Shibh, a 51-year-old Yemeni, from the conspiracy case involving four other defendants who allegedly organized the cell of militants in Hamburg, Germany who hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and flew it into the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. Al-Shibh had been charged as an accomplice in the case.

Continue reading
Share Button

Military alliances like NATO won’t solve our greatest security threat

Things may look rosy for NATO today, but climate breakdown, not wars, are the biggest threat to global security

By Paul Rogers. Published 7-14-2023 by openDemocracy

Finland accession to NATO ceremony. Photo: Estonian Foreign Ministry/flickr/CC

NATO really is on a roll thanks to Vladimir Putin, but even as its immediate prospects look good, the whole future of the alliance should be open to question.

For now, as Finland and Sweden join, Putin finds an enlarged alliance ranged against him. NATO’s reputation is so bound up with the fate of Ukraine that, in the unlikely event that Russia makes substantial military gains in the conflict, Kyiv cannot be allowed to lose. From Putin’s perspective, his warning early last year of the threat posed to Russia from NATO has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This does at least mean he can claim ‘I told you so’ – which is helping maintain some domestic support.

Continue reading
Share Button

Fearing Future Probes of US Atrocities, Pentagon Blocks ICC From Russian War Crimes Evidence

“The Ukrainian people deserve accountability. By blocking the sharing of evidence with the ICC, the administration, contrary to its stated position, is undermining it,” said one expert.

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 3-9-2023 by Common Dreams

Bucha after Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: rbc.ua, CC BY 4.0 GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons

The Pentagon is helping to shield Russia from International Criminal Court accountability for its atrocities in Ukraine, fearing such a reckoning could set a precedent allowing the tribunal to prosecute U.S. war crimes, a report published Wednesday revealed.

According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and other Pentagon brass are blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the objections of officials in those agencies, as well as in the State and Justice departments. Continue reading

Share Button

Ukraine war: Does Putin have his eye on the 2024 US presidential election?

A pro-Russian president in the White House would shift the outcome of a prolonged war in Putin’s favour

By Paul Rogers  Published 3-4-2023 by openDemocracy

Putin’s choice for US president: Donald Trump or someone like him. Photo: Trump White House Archived/flickr/CC

n the past few weeks, Russian forces in Ukraine have been attempting to take territory in intensive combat, but their progress has been minimal. This is adding to the sense that Russia is in difficulty and Ukraine is making progress in winning the war, with considerable support from the United States.

In its determination to consolidate this apparent advantage, Washington is warning forcefully of the actions it will take to counter countries willing to aid Russia. The G7 has also recently announced specific actions against some 200 companies and individuals across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, with part of the aim being to discourage those that have not yet been involved in sanctions-busting but are in a position to do so. Continue reading

Share Button

Pentagon Contractors in Afghanistan Pocketed $108 Billion Over 20 Years

Military contracting “obscures where and how taxpayer money flows,” and “makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed,” said the Costs of War Project report’s author.

By Jessica Corbett  Published 8-9-2022 by Common Dreams

Contractors from the Bagram Air Field Retrosort Yard load a water tank onto a contracted transportation truck. (Photo: 1st Lt. Henry Chan, 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion Public Affairs/U.S. Army)

Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two decades raked in nearly $108 billion—funds that “were distributed and spent with a significant lack of transparency,” according to a report published Tuesday.

“These contracts show the shadowy ‘camo economy’ at work in Afghanistan,” said report author Heidi Peltier, director of programs for the Costs of War Project at Brown Univesity’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Continue reading

Share Button

‘Totally Unacceptable’: US Rejecting 90% of Afghans Seeking Asylum Under Humanitarian Program

“We don’t feel safe,” lamented one Afghan asylum-seeker whose brothers translated for U.S. invasion forces. “We don’t know what will happen in an hour. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”

By Brett Wilkins  Published 6-20-2022 by Common Dreams

Seven Afghan citizens arrived in Luxembourg to start a new life – 2021. Photo: NATO/flickr/CC

As a coalition of human rights groups on Monday implored the international community to do more to help Afghan refugees, new reporting revealed that the United States is rejecting the overwhelming majority of Afghans seeking to enter the country under a humanitarian program—including relatives of those who aided the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of their country.

“Today, over six million Afghans have been driven out of their homes and their country by conflict,” the Alliance for Human Rights noted in its World Refugee Day statement. “These numbers have been exacerbated by the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and the critical humanitarian crisis Afghanistan is facing today.” Continue reading

Share Button