Carlyle, Gabriel

The UN assistance mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) interviewed 379 randomly-chosen detainees in 47 facilities around the country between October 2010 and August 2011. Of these 324 were being held regarding offences related to the war. UNAMA found compelling evidence that:

46% of interviewees being held at NDS facilities had been tortured during interrogation; officials at the provincial NDS facilities in Herat, Kandahar, Khost, and Laghman, as well as at the national facility of NDS…

The website had asked people to assemble in front of St Paul’s cathedral at 12 noon precisely (“not early or late”), so of course everyone turned up at 11.45am, milling aimlessly with their banners. At noon a sound system was turned on, pumping out a furious electronic beat... and we continued to mill.

It was Saturday 15 October, and “Occupy London” were acting in solidarity with “Occupy Wall St”, initiated by Adbusters in New York on 17 September. The Wall St occupation, which is…

Andre Schiffrin, Words and Money (Verso, 2010; 128pp; £12.99).
Dan Hind, The Return of the Public (Verso, 2010; 256pp; £14.99).
Becky Hogge, Barefoot into Cyberspace: Adventures in Search of Techno-Utopia (Bookkake, 2011; 246pp; £8.99, or available for free download from barefootintocyberspace.com/book).

Imagine a world without small publishers or independent bookshops – perhaps without bookshops at all – where the only cinemas are multiplexes showing films like…

Indeed, according to a recent report for Inter Press Service (IPS) by journalist and historian Gareth Porter, the Taliban’s leadership is prepared to negotiate a peace settlement as soon as the US “indicates its willingness to provide a timetable for complete withdrawal.”

Ready to withdraw?

Taliban officials explained the movement’s position in late July during a meeting in Kabul with the former Afghan Prime Minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai.

“They said once the Americans say…

PN: In February 2000, after more than 30 years of working for the UN you resigned to protest the sanctions on Iraq. Why?

H: If we reported on the humanitarian situation it was ignored. If we tried to suggest measures that would improve the flow of humanitarian supplies either it wasn't acted upon or only with much delay.

When we reported on the conditions in Iraq, the US State Department and the British Foreign Office would give a totally different interpretation even though…

Recent claims by Afghan president Hamid Karzai that the US has started “peace talks” with the Taliban – and official US confirmation that it has been engaged in “very preliminary” contacts with them – have fuelled media speculation about the possibilty of a negotiated end to the war, the option long favoured by the majority of ordinary Afghans (see PN 2530).

Though US officials have publicly justified military escalation by claiming that it is needed to force the Taliban to the…

British forces are likely to remain in Afghanistan long after David Cameron’s 2014 deadline for the end of Britain’s “combat” mission, according to the commander of British forces in the country, general James Bucknall.

Bucknall told the Guardian, “December [2014] is not a campaign end date but a waypoint – a point at which the coalition security posture changes from one that is in the lead to one that is mentoring and advising, but is still here.”

Following press reports that…

The sit-down protest, which closed the route for two days, was against US drone strikes in north-west Pakistan, and was organised by Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf party, with the support of other opposition and Islamist groups as well as tribal elders. It came a day after two drones were reported to have killed 25 people, including women and children in the North Waziristan tribal region.

Khan has demanded that drone strikes end by June, threatening a permanent closure of the Khyber pass and…

"On December 23, April 6 activist xxxxxxxxxxxx ... alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011; we are doubtful of this claim" – secret cable from the US Embassy in Cairo to Washington [1]

"Nonviolent action is not just about non-violence, but also about joy and happiness ... [People] saw in Tahrir what Egypt could possibly be in the future and they wanted to be part of this new Egypt" – Wael Adel, Academy for…

Originally published (for Burmese dissidents) in 1993, From Dictatorship to Democracy has since been translated into at least 28 other languages, and has now been reprinted in English by Housmans Peace Bookshop.

Sharp’s analysis – and this short book in particular – has reportedly played a significant inspirational role in a whole series of nonviolent uprisings, from Serbia to Egypt. Nonetheless, his leaden prose, the extremely general nature of much of the analysis and the lack of…

“On December 23, April 6 activist xxxxxxxxxxxx … alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011; we are doubtful of this claim” – secret cable from the US Embassy in Cairo to Washington [1]

“Nonviolent action is not just about non-violence, but also about joy and happiness … [People] saw in Tahrir what Egypt could possibly be in the future and they wanted to be part of this new Egypt” – Wael Adel,…

“[W]e must talk to the Taliban. Without that, we will leave a broken country. Our present strategy, says one official who has been at the heart of it, “is all a big, big lie”” - Guardian columnist Julian Glover.

Following “extensive interviews in Washington with many of the key players involved in Afghan policy”, renowned Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid recently reported that the US is “preparing for extensive diplomatic initiatives in the next few months to take the fledgling peace…

Can a book of “tweets” (140-character-or-less micro-messages) really be readable? The answer is a resounding yes (and don’t worry if you’re not Twitter-savvy, I certainly wasn’t).

Through careful selection the editors have created an inspiring and coherent narrative that not only explains the evolving strategies of both sides but also allows personalities to shine through. Nonviolence played a crucial role throughout, especially in the early decisive confrontations with the police (“…

The involvement of US arms giant Lockheed Martin (LM) in this year’s census – due to take place on 27 March – has spurred calls for both a boycott and creative obstruction. One of the world’s largest arms companies, LM makes cluster bombs and Trident nuclear missiles, and is involved in surveillance for both the CIA and the Pentagon.

That its UK subsidiary has been awarded a £150m contract to process the census questionnaires for England and Wales has therefore angered many peace…

An attempt to discover more about the circumstances of British drone strikes in Afghanistan has been blocked on the grounds that disclosing this information “would prejudice the capability, effectiveness and security of the armed forces in Afghanistan”.

Peace activist Chris Cole, who co-ordinates the Christian peace group Fig Tree and maintains the invaluable blog Drone Wars UK, first filed a Freedom of Information Act request about the strikes in November 2009.
The ministry of…