This past Friday in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, Hazara girls joined young Pashto boys to sing Afghanistan’s national anthem as a welcome to Pashto men walking 400 miles from Helmand to Kabul. The walkers are calling on warring parties in Afghanistan to end the war. Most of the men making the journey are wearing sandals. At rest stops, they must tend to their torn and blistered feet. But their mission grows stronger as they walk.
(CD) — The Islamic State is claiming responsibility for twin suicide bombings in Kabul on Monday. The coordinated blasts—being described as the deadliest attacks on the media since 2001—killed over two dozen people including at least nine journalists. At least 45 people were also wounded in the bombings. The first blast in the central Shash Darak area […]
Political and business leaders have refined the art and science of lying about the economy. From their suites, chauffeur-driven limousines, private yachts and jets, they aren’t too concerned about whether the economy works for everyone, except in speeches and elections. As they tuck into their next fine dining experience, they know that it’s easier and more profitable to mummify the paralysis of spectacular inequality.
Here in Kabul, as the rising sun begins to warm our chilly rooms, I hear excited laughter from downstairs. Rosemary Morrow, a renowned Australian permaculture expert, has begun teaching thirty-five young students in a month-long course on low-resource farming.
In war-torn Afghanistan, there’s a desperate need to rebuild agricultural infrastructure and help people grow their own food. People verging on despair feel encouraged by possibilities of replenishing and repairing their soil.
(ANTIWAR.COM) — The UN has offered their official accounting of Afghan civilian casualties in 2017 on Thursday, with more than 10,000 casualties including 3,438 killed, and 7,015 wounded. The overall toll was 9% lower than the previous year. The decrease was mostly the result of fewer civilian deaths in the course of ground combat, likely because the fighting […]
Breathtaking view from Intercontinental Hotel, Kabul. (Photo: Andre Vltchek)
Andre Vltchek
RT OpEdge
Afghanistan is now facing mortal danger. It has to survive, but it is not clear how it can manage.
Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, which was attacked by gunmen last Saturday, used to fit like a glove, like a grandmother’s couch. Outside, the war has been raging. Millions of Afghan lives were aimlessly broken, hundreds of thousands lost. The price of more than 16 years of NATO occupation has exceeded $1 trillion, but instead of bringing peace and prosperity, it has reduced Afghanistan to rubble.
It is a dream come true being back among friends in Kabul! Streams of dented Toyotas (They are all Toyotas!) with windscreens cracked like bolts of lightning still jockey for position on roads where traffic lights and common sense hold little sway. Carts of vegetables drawn by donkeys or dragged by men without dreams continue clotting the already stuttering traffic, forcing it almost to a standstill. Stucco houses remain stapled to mountainsides, one tripping over the other as they race to the top. And smog, as thick and foul-smelling as only winter in Kabul can conjure up.
Surkh Gul with her daughter.
“My family’s water well has dried up,” 18-year-old Surkh Gul said.
“Ours too,” echoed 13-year-old Inaam.
A distressed Surkh Gul lamented: “We have to fetch water from the public well along the main road, but that water is muddy, not fit for drinking. I get bottled water for my two-year-old daughter. At least someone in the family should stay healthy.”
Referendum violence, the economics of bribery and political clowns + this day in history w/the start of the Beltway Sniper spree and our song of the day by Luna on your Morning Monarchy for October 2, 2017.
