Afghanistan

“Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain”

During visits to Kabul, Afghanistan, over the past decade, I particularly relished lingering over breakfasts on chilly winter mornings with my young hosts who were on their winter break from school. Seated on the floor, wearing coats and hats and draped with blankets, we’d sip piping hot green tea as we shared fresh, warm wheels […]
The post “Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

 ‘Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain’

People in the United States must recognize the suffering their country continues inflicting in Afghanistan. During visits to Kabul, Afghanistan, over the past decade, I particularly relished lingering over breakfasts on chilly winter mornings with my young hosts who were on their winter break from school. Seated on the floor, wearing coats and hats and draped with blankets, we’d sip[Read More...]

US pips regional states at race for Kabul

In a hugely consequential advisory, the US Treasury Department quietly signalled on Wednesday that it was “tweaking” the sanctions against the Haqqani Network. The international banks can transfer money to Taliban, including Haqqani Network without fear of breaching sanctions.  Washington simply issued clarifications dilating on the relaxation of sanctions announced in September and December for humanitarian work in Afghanistan. The banks[Read More...]

US Exacts Revenge on Afghanistan for its Defiance

Ever since the Taliban (an organization deemed terrorist and banned in Russia) took control of Afghanistan last August amid a shameful and chaotic US withdrawal, the country, ravaged by war and occupation for 20 years, has plunged deeper and deeper into disaster, causing new waves of displacement, further impoverishing it and raising the specter of […]

Special Privileges: Charlotte Bellis, Fortress New Zealand and the Taliban

Not wishing to be left out from the brutal closed border system that has characterised COVID-19 policy in Australia, New Zealand has also been every bit as extreme in limiting the return of its nationals.  Pandemic policy, if not logic, has taken issue with the nature of citizenship, which, truth be told, is simply not […]

The West co-opts the Taliban

The three-day conclave in Oslo on January 23-25 for interaction for a core group of Western diplomats with Taliban officials marks a new phase in the political situation in Afghanistan. The West was represented by the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy as well as the European Union.  Norway is uniquely placed to reconcile alienated parties. Apart from its strong[Read More...]

Blows Against the Empire

2021 was marked, from start to finish, as a year dominated by the pandemic and its attendant dramas, including vaccination, variants, and lockdowns. When the prior year had come to a close, journalists and writers had described 2020 as the “plague year” or the “lost year.” Although 2020 was defined by the onset of the […]
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After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy?

Getty Images President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to […]