✉️🇦🇫 A Letter to the Taliban

What happened in Afghanistan was not a mere change of government. A puppet state responsible for spreading subversion in the region was overthrown.

By Dr. Ejaz Akram, with Pepe Escobar @pepeescobar @PepeEscobarAnalyses

READ MORE: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/09/22/a-letter-to-the-taliban/

#Taliban #Afghanistan #politics

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🇦🇫🇺🇸🇨🇳 Can an America that off-shored much of its manufacturing capacity to China, for short-term profit, afford the de-coupling?

Washington isn’t quite sure what to do after the chaotic end to America’s ‘forever’ war. Some in Washington bitterly regret exiting from Afghanistan at all, and advocate for an immediate return; some just want to move on – to the China ‘Cold War’, that is. The cries from the initial Establishment ‘melt down’ and its articulation of pain over the Kabul withdrawal débacle, however, indicates the extent to which the almost obsessive focus on ‘Hobbling China’ nevertheless seems like an humiliating retreat to U.S. hawks, habituated to more global, and unlimited interventions.

It is a retreat. ‘Rome’ is relegating its ‘distant provinces’ to their own devices, and even its abutting loyalist inner circle is being downgraded to ‘benign’ indifference. It is a drawing-in towards the ‘hub’, a ‘circling of wagons’ – the better to muster energies for a lunge out at China.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/09/27/china-cold-war-will-unstick-america-glue/

#Afghanistan #China #NewWorldOrder

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🇦🇫🇮🇳🇵🇰🇺🇸 Biden and his hawks should pause to think where they’re trying to take the world, and consider an approach that could lead to compromise.

India and Pakistan share a long border and do not get along well, to put it mildly. The main cause of disagreement is the divided territory of Kashmir which as long ago as 1948 necessitated UN Security Council attention, resulting in a Resolution determining, among other things, that there should be a “free and impartial plebiscite to decide whether the State of Jammu and Kashmir is to accede to India or Pakistan.” This has not happened and the seemingly insoluble dispute could well lead to a fourth war between the countries, both of which are nuclear-armed.

It might be thought that in such circumstances the world’s “best-educated, best-prepared” nation that President Biden also declares has “unmatched strength” would apply at least some of its education, preparation and power to encouraging India and Pakistan to engage in meaningful negotiations and move towards rapprochement.

Not a hope.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/10/19/washington-wants-to-conquer-by-dividing/

#Afghanistan #India #Pakistan #UnitedStates

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🛑 Biden may believe that drone strikes contribute to justice and peace, but the effects of these atrocities on the wider world cannot be calculated.

On October 29 a Guantanamo Bay prisoner was reported as having testified about the torture inflicted on him over many years in CIA “black sites” and the U.S. military base in Cuba where among other things he was “suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved…”

A week earlier, on United Nations Day, the Biden White House announced that the United States is committed “to the original vision and values enshrined in the United Nations Charter” which involved “creating a rules-based international order” and ensuring “adherence to international law.” The declaration was made two months after a U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed ten civilians, including seven children. As the International Red Cross points out, the “arbitrary deprivation of the right to life” includes “unlawful killing in the conduct of hostilities, i.e., the killing of civilians and persons hors de combat not in the power of a party to the conflict not justified under the rules on the conduct of hostilities.” Consequently, according to Washington’s “rules-based international order”, it is unlawful to kill civilians.

But all the Pentagon has done about the Kabul kid-killing is to eventually and with reluctance admit that it did indeed slaughter an innocent man and many of his family — and it is most unlikely that anything would have been divulged if it hadn’t been for the work of the New York Times, which smelled a rat.

All that has happened, however, is that the Pentagon is wriggling round saying it is sorry and will throw money at the problem.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/11/02/washington-breaks-international-law-with-impunity-but-forgets-blowback-factor/

#HumanRights #Afghanistan #Guantanamo #UnitedStates #WarCrimes

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🇺🇸🇺🇦🇷🇺 The escalation of violence by the Kiev regime with U.S. and NATO support means that there is a directive from Washington for widening the war.

The United States is planning to redouble its weapons supply to Ukraine. What is shaping up is an intensified proxy war against Russia in which the Russophobic Kiev regime acts as Washington’s catspaw. The objective is to debilitate Russia in the same way the U.S. sapped the Soviet Union with a quagmire war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Read more by Finian Cunningham: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/12/18/us-proxy-war-against-russia-ukraine-afghanistan-syria-redux-option/

#UnitedStates #Russophobia #Ukraine #Afghanistan

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🇦🇫 New trends that have appeared in regional security since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan are highly consequential for regional politics.

The joint statement issued on February 6 following the four-day visit by the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to China has been an exceptional gesture by Beijing underscoring the highest importance attached to that country as a regional ally. Beijing feels the need to underscore that not only does it back the government in Islamabad to the hilt but is determined to boost the ties, especially by boosting the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Aside its overt emphasis on the launch of the CPEC’s Phase 2, the two highlights of the joint statement are: one, the affirmation that ’stronger’ defence and security cooperation will be ‘an important factor of peace and stability in the region,’ and, two, the joint initiative to take up with the Taliban government the holding of the China-Pakistan-Afghanistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue as well as the ‘extension of CPEC to Afghanistan.’

Read more by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/08/pakistan-in-eye-of-storm/

#Afghanistan #Taliban #Pakistan #AntiTerrorism #China #CPEC

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🇺🇸🇦🇫 America’s War in Afghanistan: Distribution of Casualties by Age, Race, and Gender

As of July 16, 2020, the U.S. casualties of the war in Afghanistan totaled 2,349 deaths and 20,149 wounded in actions. Here’s what the data on distribution of casualties be race and age says.

🔗 Follow this link to find the full high-res infographic.

✌️©You are free to repost, reproduce and print this infographic.

#Afghanistan #Gender #Pentagon #United States #War

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🇺🇸🇦🇫 Deadly night raids. Faulty U.S. intelligence. A “classified” war loophole 💢

Reporter Lynzy Billing’s investigation offers an unprecedented insight into the civilian casualties of Afghanistan’s Zero Units.

#Afghanistan #UnitedStates #war

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