Afghanistan

'''Afghanistan''' (Pashtu/Dari (of Afghanistan)|Dari: '''Afğānistān افغانستان''') is a country in Central Asia. It is bordered by Iran in the west, Pakistan in the south and east, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the easternmost part of the country. It is among the poorest countries in the world. More...

Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
by Fran Shor
Consider the following eyewitness accounts from distraught villagers in Bandi Temur, Afghanistan. As reported in the May 27, 2002 edition of the New York Times: "They shot my husband, Abdullah, and they beat me and bound my hands and eyes." From a wailing mother came the cry: "They shot my son, Muhammad Sadiq. He was 35. They shot him in the legs." Most distressing was the story of another mother whose 3 year old daughter ran in fear from the soldiers. "They were shooting....I could not see anything but she was running. We only found her the next day. She was in the well, she was dead."

Meet the Press: The Corruption of Journalism in Wartime
by Ted Rall
MADISON, WISCONSIN - When I arrived in Afghanistan last November, Operation Enduring Freedom-the American bombing campaign that eventually toppled the Taliban-was being hailed by the U.S. media as an unqualified success. Precision bombing and first-rate intelligence, the Pentagon claimed, had kept civilian casualties down to a few dozen victims at most. Long-oppressed Afghan women burned their burqas and walked the streets as the country reveled in an orgy of liberation. Or so we were told.

RAWA Statement on International Women's Day
When celebrating March 8th last year, RAWA expressed the fond hope that in the coming year, i.e. 2002, we will be celebrating International Women's Day inside a free and liberated Afghanistan. During the course of the past year the world community was shocked by events emanating from Afghanistan and contemporary history has been drastically changed by them. Many things have come to pass in Afghanistan -not the least of which is the fumigation of the Taliban pestilence and their al-Qaeda carriers- but it is with bitter disappointment that despite all these momentous changes our unhappy land is still far from enjoying freedom and liberty.

Is the Time Finally Ripe for Afghan Women's Rights?
WOMEN'S RIGHTS are not exactly a new idea in Afghanistan. The same year the United States passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race or sex, Afghanistan adopted a new constitution granting women full suffrage and access to political institutions. As a result, four women were elected to parliament and one woman was given the cabinet position of health minister in Afghanistan. The new constitution and expanded rights followed on the heels of more than fifty years of various attempts at modernization by the Afghan monarchy.

Critically Supporting the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan
I spent two and a half years living in Afghanistan from 1976-79 and I have maintained close relations with dozens of my Afghan friends as well as international aid workers who continued to work in the region in the subsequent two decades. My comments on RAWA are based on this experience and knowledge gained both through these contacts and extensive reading. I also teach a section on Afghanistan in my foreign policy course.

RAWA Statement on Bombing; Calls for Uprising
Again, due to the treason of fundamentalist hangmen, our people have been caught in the claws of the monster of a vast war and destruction. America, by forming an international coalition against Osama and his Taliban-collaborators and in retaliation for the 11th September terrorist attacks, has launched a vast aggression on our country.

The tragedy of Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a tragic country. The Soviet-backed coup and subsequent invasion in 1979 ushered in more than two decades of brutal war. During the 1980's, the US supplied at least USD 32 billion [1] of military aid to the mujahadeen, the Islamic opposition to the Soviet regime.

From the 1998 MSNBC report.
www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp
Sen. Orrin Hatch on CIA-backing of Bin Laden: "It was worth it"

Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said.

[from Slate, 1999]

"A prime example of an outmoded policy is the Clinton administration's response to the African embassy bombings. Even with a bunch of terrorists conveniently assembled in a single spot, the cruise missile strike in Afghanistan was self-defeating: It no doubt guaranteed Osama Bin Laden 10 new recruits for every terrorist who was killed. And torching that Sudanese pharmaceutical plant didn't do much to dampen anti-American sentiment in Sudan.

"So what's a few radicalized Sudanese in the scheme of things? Several decades ago, the answer was: not much. Several decades from now, the answer could be: 10,000 deaths in midtown Manhattan."

Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Organizations

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

Free Earth

Independent Media

Sabawoon Online

Women

HUMANITY DENIED: Systematic Violations of Women's Rights in Afghanistan

Against War and Terrorism
We refuse the choice that is offered by both sides in this conflict - you are either for us or against us. As anarchists we obviously see little attraction in the sort of religious state fantasised about by bin Laden and enacted by the Taliban, where the individual is controlled right down to forbidding the trimming of beards! But we also oppose the fake democracy of the western states where politicians are bought by oil companies, refugees are criminalised and where corporations rule.
Read or download the pamphlet

Bibliography

Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid (Yale University Press, 2002)

The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism? by Ahmed Rashid (Oxford University Press, 1994)

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism by Ahmed Rashid (Yale University Press, 2000)

To Afghanistan and Back by Ted Rall (NBM Publishing, 2002)