鈥淵ou have to put more pressure on your government to allow Afghans to decide their own future,鈥 Afghan democracy activist and former MP Malalai Joya told a 150-strong public forum on April 11. 鈥淣o nation can liberate another nation,鈥 Joya said. 鈥淭en years of war should have made this clear. It's better the troops leave.鈥
Afghanistan
The massacre of 16 people in the Panjwai District of Kandahar province in Afghanistan on March 11 re-ignited widespread calls, inside and outside Afghanistan, for Western forces to leave.
US army spin has not quelled anger or questions over how the massacre took place, who was involved and how to deal with those responsible.
Witnesses say US army staff sergeant Robert Bales, along with 15-20 others, went on a rampage 鈥 sexually assaulting, then massacring and burning mainly women and children from the remote farming villages of Najeeban and Alkozai.
Malalai Joya, a former MP and one of Afghanistan鈥檚 best-known democratic leaders, recently survived the sixth attempt on her life. Taliban gunmen attacked her office at 3 am on March 10, wounding two of her guards. In an exclusive interview, she told 91自拍论坛 Weekly鈥檚 Pip Hinman that 鈥渟uch terrorist acts will never stop my fight for freedom, democracy and justice鈥.
For the US military and the pro-war Western corporate media, the March 11 slaughter of 16 civilians, nine of them children, as they slept in their homes in the villages of Alkozai and Najeeban in Panjwai district, Kandahar province, was an aberration.
For Afghans, it was just the latest massacre.
There are differing accounts of what happened. The US maintains the killings were the work of a single 鈥渞ogue鈥 soldier. Eyewitnesses, however, insist there was more than one attacker.
The released the statement below on March 13.
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The 1968 My Lai massacre of at least 500 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam was a turning point in the US war on Vietnam. Most of the victims of the US platoon outrage were women, children (including babies) and elderly people.
It was not until the following year when investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of this atrocity that it became one of the tipping points in finally ending the US-led war on the Vietnamese people.
The case of the soldier who went berserk in Afghanistan and killed 16 people must be utterly baffling to psychiatrists.
Who can imagine what might cause someone in a stable environment such as Kandahar, with reliable role models training you to distrust the entire local population as terrorists, and no access to weapons except automatic machine guns, to flip like that? Still, they say it's always in the tranquil places that these things happen.
There has been a surge in protests and attacks against the US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan since February 20. The catalyst was the discovery by Afghan workers of burnt copies of the Koran at the waste disposal facility of the US military-run Bagram prison.
More than 30 unarmed protesters have been shot by occupation and puppet forces since February 20 (or, as the Western media prefer to phrase it, 鈥渄ied in the riots鈥). Six occupation soldiers have been killed in attacks 鈥 not by insurgents but by members of the Afghan security forces.
The US-led international occupation force in Afghanistan (ISAF) is in the country to fight the Taliban as the ally of the Afghan state headed by President Hamid Karzai.
The ISAF鈥檚 primary mission is training and mentoring the Afghan government forces so they can take over the fight, allowing the foreign forces to leave.
That is the official story.
But casualties suffered by ISAF soldiers are increasingly being inflicted not by the Taliban but by the soldiers they are meant to be mentoring.
The article below is a joint statement released by left parties from Pakistan and Afghanistan, who took part in a conference in Lahore over December 21-22. It is reprinted from .
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The progressive and democratic forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan met in Lahore for two days in the first ever joint conference.
The letter below will be distributed at the upcoming ALP national conference, December 3-4, 2011. To add your name to the open letter please visit the Stop the War Coalition Sydney .
We, the undersigned, call on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to rethink the government鈥檚 support for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan.
Specifically, we call on her to remove the Australian troops, and to send massive amounts of untied aid to the war-ravaged nation.
On the eve of US President Barack Obama鈥檚 visit to mark 60 years of the ANZUS military alliance, PM Julia Gillard is not convincing people that Australia must 鈥渟tay the course鈥 in Afghanistan.
A November 4 Roy Morgan poll, taken six days after an Afghan army trainee killed three Australian soldiers and wounded seven, said 72% of people want troops out, the biggest opposition since the war began 10 years ago.
Supporters of the pro-war parties polled closely: 69% of ALP voters and 67% of Liberal-National Party voters want troops out. Among Greens supporters, the figure is 80%.
In a grim piece of political theatre that is becoming more frequent, and more surreal, a sombre PM Julia Gillard on October 30 acknowledged the latest three Australian fatalities in Afghanistan by claiming that Australia was winning a just war there.
The death toll of Australian soldiers in the decade-long war is now 32.
Military deaths in Afghanistan are unusually bipartisan events in Australian politics. Gillard鈥檚 claims were unreservedly backed up by the Liberal-National opposition.
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