Eideard

We are sitting in Badam Bagh, or Almond Garden, Afghanistan’s only prison for women in the capital Kabul.

The prison is a window on a world where, outside these walls, women are constantly judged against a standard that makes many of their stories difficult to fathom.

Sixteen-year-old Sabera, with a pretty yellow head scarf, frets that she is missing school.

“I was about to get engaged, and the boy came to ask me himself, before sending his parents. A lady in our neighbourhood saw us, and called the police,” she explains.

She was sentenced to three years but, in an act of mercy, it was shortened to 18 months.

Fellow inmate Aziza was accused of running away from her husband. She says she was acquitted two months ago, but still languishes in prison.

A senior official in Afghanistan’s Ministry for Women’s Affairs told a recent UN workshop that about half of Afghanistan’s 476 women prisoners were detained for “moral crimes”. That includes everything from running away from home, refusing to marry, marrying without their family’s wishes, and “attempted adultery”.

“In many cases women run away because they can’t bear the domestic violence and then they are picked up and taken into custody for a long time,” explains Nader Nadery, a commissioner at Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission…

About 40 young children also share their mother’s fate, living in Badam Bagh…

Prison authorities say children are taken away to a boarding school after the age of five.

Regular readers know I generally support other nations’ independence from the rule of Western ideology and so-called morality. We usually can figure out how to be as corrupt and inhuman as anyone else on the planet – given the opportunity.

Treating women as chattel is over, folks. Lose the stupid hangups!

The arrest of a top Taliban commander in Pakistan highlights the militant nexus in Karachi, where crime bankrolls violence and the teeming metropolis offers the perfect hiding place.

Karachi, home to 16 million people, has two sea ports which are a gateway to the world and transit hub for NATO supplies heading to the war effort in neighbouring Afghanistan.

For decades Karachi has been connected with the criminal underworld and since the September 11, 2001 attacks, with extreme Islamist networks too…

While officials refuse to confirm details of how, when and where Taliban number two Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested, American media reported that US and Pakistani spies captured him in Karachi.

“The arrest of a top Afghan Taliban commander proves the premise that some Afghan Taliban are present in Pakistan,” said security analyst Hasan Askari.

“Karachi has become the most attractive hideout for militants because it is a massive city and there are all kinds of ethnic and linguistic groups, where Pakistani and Afghan Taliban can disappear,” he added.

Around 2.5 million Pashtuns from the northwest are estimated to live in Karachi, a migration that began in the 1950s but accelerates with each successive offensive against Pakistani Islamists in the region…

This also serves to illustrate the steady turnaround in Pakistan’s commitment to a fight for democracy and modernity in their own land – since the departure of Musharraf and his Bush League lackeys.

Injured Taliban fighters receiving medical care after capture
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

American, Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marja on Saturday, encountering intense but sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches.

More than 6,000 American, Afghan and British troops came in fast early on Saturday, overwhelming most immediate resistance. But as the troops began to fan out on searches, fighting with Taliban insurgents grew in frequency and intensity across a wide area.

The pattern suggested that the hardest fighting lay in the days to come…

American commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the city itself and seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the city’s main bazaars in the center of town…

From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters. This phase of the operation, considered the most dangerous, is expected to last at least five days. The biggest concern is bombs and booby-traps, of which there are believed to be hundreds, in roads, houses and footpaths…

What has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marja operation got under way on Saturday. After clearing Marja, American and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in. The first of those, about 1,000 Afghan paramilitary police, were scheduled to begin arriving within 24 hours…

Several aspects of this battle appear unique, differing greatly from standard – which means old-fashioned – U.S. military strategy and tactics. General MacChrystal is one of those advocating, studying, inventing new approaches in what is termed Fourth Generation Warfare.

I imagine that the Conservatives and teabaggers back in the U.S. – inside either party – are hoping for failure as strongly as they hoped for failure in the United States of the stimulus plan. Change which steps forward into history, even cautiously, strikes fear into cowards thoroughly committed to 18th Century ideology. And worse.

Fourteen suspected terrorists died Tuesday night when the bus they rigged with explosives blew up prematurely, police said.

The explosion occurred as the suspects were riding the bus in the province of Kunduz, said police chief Abdul Raziq Yaqobi.

Yaqobi said the suspects wanted to attack Afghan police or foreign soldiers.

That was his best guess, of course. There wasn’t anything/anyone left to interrogate.

Marines on patrol – “mine sweeper” leading – sure looks like Las Cruces!
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

U.S. and Afghan forces have killed 60 militants, almost half in air strikes, and seized one of the country’s largest ever drug caches over a four-day operation in southern Helmand province…

The troops were fighting for control of Loy Cherah Bazaar in Helmand’s Marjeh city, where they found 75 tonnes of poppy seeds, more than 17 tonnes of morphine, opium and heroin, and caches of weapons and equipment, the military said in a statement…

At least 29 of the militants died in air strikes on buildings used for drug making and strategic planning, which included attacks on foreign troops, the U.S. military said.

Weapons and military equipment found included pressure plates used to make roadside bombs, ammunition vests which can be modified into suicide vests, 27 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, and military-grade explosives.

Civilians were escorted from the bazaar during the operation, and an unmanned aircraft is now “observing the scene to detect any attempts by militants and criminals to change the conditions to falsely claim civilian casualties,” the statement said.

Civilian deaths from U.S. and NATO air strikes are a major source of anger among Afghans toward the nearly 80,000 foreign troops in the country fighting Taliban militants.

Manufacturing civilian deaths – real or imagined – is one of those tricks of military conflict that extends back through recorded history. Unfortunately.

Those unwilling to confront the contradictions that drive war are often equally willing to believe the worst. It suits their failure to join a struggle on honest terms.

Afghanistan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta admitted that there are peace talks with Taliban in Saudi Arabia but emphasized that no official is representing the government in the talks.

Spanta, in a regular press conference in Afghan capital Kabul, described the talks as “informal”, saying former Foreign Minister of Taliban’s ousted regime Mawlawi Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil and its ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, President Hamid Karzai’s brother and some religious leaders from Afghanistan attended the informal meeting in Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, Spanta stressed that “any one wants to talk must accept the national constitution.”

“We talk to Taliban but there are some boundaries must not be violated,” he said, “these are human rights, women equity with men and freedom of press which have been envisaged and guaranteed in the national constitution.”

Moreover, the Afghan Foreign Minister maintained that war is not the solution adding “we should talk to the armed and unarmed oppositions.”

All of what we’re hearing, so far, are the paper cutouts, sound bites and snippets cut and folded for redistribution in the world’s press. Still – it’s a necessary and possibly useful beginning.

Signaling a major shift in strategy for the trans-Atlantic alliance, NATO defense ministers agreed Friday to allow direct attacks on Afghanistan’s drug networks.

The accord means that troops will be able to attack drug operations provided they obtain authorization from their own governments. NATO officials stressed that only drug producers aiding the insurgency would be targeted. [What? - our drug dealers are OK?] The alliance actions will not be open-ended, lasting only until the Afghan security forces are able to take on the task themselves.

“NATO can act in concert with the Afghans against facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency, subject to the authorization of respective nations,” an alliance spokesman, James Appathurai, said.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has repeatedly asked NATO to take on more responsibility for dealing with the drug lords. It is unclear, however, if the alliance will need a new UN Security Council resolution. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, operates under a UN mandate.

I’ve railed about destroying common sense with Western religious morality, forever.

Even if enough brains can’t be brought to bear on legalizing drugs and taking the criminal networks out of the loop – Afghan farmers probably don’t make a grand or two a year from their poppy crops while poppy farmers in New Zealand have a guaranteed sale to drugs manufacturers.

The Kiwis bring in $40-50K a year in US dollars.

Pakistani authorities have begun expelling Afghan refugees from a tribal region that has become the main battleground between troops and fighters linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

“They have to go. There will be no concession,” Safirullah Wazir, the government’s top administrator in Bajaur, told Reuters. “We have reports of their links with militants and their involvement in terrorist activities…”

A Pakistani general last month described Bajaur as a new “center of gravity” for militancy and said that if the security forces prevailed two-thirds of the militant problem in the region could be eradicated.

Afghan refugees were ordered last Thursday to leave the area within days or face a crackdown. Around 200 Afghans from 30 families had left so far, but Wazir said 30,000 remained in the region.

Some tribesmen were glad to see the back of the Afghans.

“They should have taken this step long before because whenever we tried to take action against militants these refugees supported them and sheltered them,” gray-bearded Mohammad Sher, a tribal elder, told Reuters in Khar, the main town in Bajaur.

Sheltering refugees is a two-sided coin – just like supporting illegal migrant labor. The latter are most often used to cut wages from local workers. The former may be part of an insurgent force affecting native politics as much as life back in their home country.

Yes, of course, the opportunism extends to all sides and their allies. Pakistan bureaucrats were glad of the U.S. dollars spread around the region when the Afghan-Society War dominated border life. Plenty of pockets were lined.

A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead…

Fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu in the eastern Nuristan province, but one missile went off course and hit the wedding party, said the provincial police chief spokesman, Ghafor Khan.

The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed…

The US is facing similar charges over strikes two days earlier in another border area of Afghanistan.

The nine-member inquiry team appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to look into the wedding party incident found only civilians had been killed in the attack.

There’s no shock and amazement here. Well, maybe, shock.

When, of course, we have our fair share of all of the above. But, the culture of complicity and corruption is so thoroughly a part of our everyday life and economy, we have become an nation of accepting, compliant sheep. Most of us.