Even as the war in Afghanistan re-escalates – with the UN reporting 14% more civilian deaths in the first half of 2013 compared with 2012 – the Taliban have been holding secret talks with Afghan government officials in an effort to restart the country’s stalled peace process.
This comes in the wake of the June opening of a Taliban political office in Doha – which was supposed to lead to direct talks between the US, the Taliban and the Afghan government, but instead collapsed for…
Then, just as suddenly, the talks seemed to be called off — by the Kabul administration.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai was said to have been offended by the way that the Taliban’s political office in Qatar had been officially opened on 18 June, with the raising of the white Taliban flag, and many references to the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’, the name used by the Taliban during its five years in government.
The Taliban officials who presided over the opening…
Susan Clarkson in Afghanistan with an Afghan Peace Volunteer Photo: VCNV UK
In December 2012, four of us, Susan Clarkson, Mary Dobbing, Maya Evans and Beth Tichborne, went to Kabul, Afghanistan, to stay with the Afghan Peace Volunteers. We went as the first UK delegation of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. VCNV are based in the US and were formed by Kathy Kelly. Several years ago, Kathy wrote in Peace News (PN 2527) about the APV, whom she had met in Bamiyan, and she…
Stepping down from his role as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, general John Allen declared: ‘Afghan forces defending Afghan people, and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory, this is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using these words.’
However, fresh reports of atrocities by Afghans linked to US special forces – and moves by the Afghan government to rein in both – have thrown a stark…
On 1 January, several thousand kilos of food was delivered to the Chamne Babrak refugee camp in Kabul. £1,150 for the aid came from the PN Kabul winter appeal; Maya Evans raised over £2,000 on her speaking tour last year.
Another two hundred families have joined the Chamne Barak camp, fleeing rocket attacks by the Pakistani army in Nangahar province on the border.
‘Your generosity has made a huge difference to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in…
The VCNV UK delegation was hosted in Kabul by the Afghan Peace Volunteers, who have fought for the UN to enforce a ceasefire in Afghanistan, bringing a peaceful end to the war.
The dialogues that VCNV UK has been holding with the Afghan Peace Volunteers and other similar groups has created a new discourse surrounding the war in Afghanistan, with VCNV UK writing on their blog: ‘Afghans are sick and tired of war and of living with fear and insecurity.… We heard from everyone that…
Please help an Afghan family survive this winter, by giving a donation to the Peace News Kabul Winter Appeal. Please make your donation before Friday 21 December to enable us to send your contribution directly to the camp, with nothing deducted for administration, at the beginning of January.
300 families live in the Chamne Babak refugee camp on a derelict site in District 2 of Kabul. They have no access to electricity or clean water. Most of them returned to Afghanistan in early…
16 August: In the little red book, Advices and Queries, used by Quakers in Britain, no 27 urges us to ‘live adventurously’. Recently, for me, this has meant the possibility of travelling to Afghanistan.
Last year my friend Maya Evans went to Afghanistan with Voices for Creative Nonviolence US and on her return gave talks about her experiences.
I had always thought that my days of travel abroad were over, after time spent in the United States, Madagascar and Cameroon. Indeed, I…
As the UK doubles its fleet of armed Reaper drones in Afghanistan and starts shifting their control to British soil, new figures have underlined the lack of credibility of UK claims concerning civilian deaths at the hands of these remotely-piloted killing machines.
On 26 October, Number 13 Squadron was reformed at RAF Waddington, from where it will start piloting five new British Reapers in early December. Until now, British Reapers have been piloted by RAF personnel from Creech air…
The British government is attempting to overturn a moratorium on the transfer of Afghans captured by British forces to the Afghan secret police (NDS), despite longstanding accusations by a Canadian diplomat that NDS director Asadullah Khalid ‘was known to personally torture people’ in a dungeon under his guest house in Kandahar.
In May, the UK was forced to halt all transfers…
Formerly the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief – and with over thirty years of reporting on Afghanistan with distinction — Jonathan Steele makes a comparative analysis of the US and Soviet occupations the backbone of his latest book. Alternating reportage with a careful dismantling of ‘Thirteen Myths About Afghanistan’ he finds many similarities and at least one crucial difference.
Both were essentially interventions in a civil war, pitching a high-tech military against a poorly…
While campaigning against drone strikes reached new heights this autumn, including the Imran Khan convoy in Pakistan, the last two months were dominated by two drone-related reports.
The British government has spent or committed £2bn towards developing and deploying pilotless military drones, and it plans to spend at least another £2bn on developing and deploying an armed drone called 'Scavenger',…
In addition to killing hundreds of civilians and fuelling anger and terrorism directed against the West, US and British airstrikes by pilotless drones could also be a major obstacle to negotiating an end to the war in Afghanistan, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Based on interviews with ‘four senior Taliban interlocutors’, the September 2012 briefing paper reports: that the Taliban ‘would be open to negotiating a ceasefire as part of a general…
The reduction of US troop numbers in Afghanistan over the past year — and the resulting sharp drop in military operations initiated by such forces — has ‘remove[d] the key driver of the [insurgents’] campaign’ and led to a substantial reduction in the number of Taliban-initiated attacks, according to a July report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO).
It has long been clear that military escalation has been fuelling the war and destroying the possibilities of a negotiated peace…
Lawyers acting on behalf of Afghan bank worker Habib Rahman, who lost five relatives in a September 2010 missile attack, look set to challenge the British government in the courts over its role in helping to draw up — and implement — a US ‘kill list’.
The US claimed 8-12 ‘insurgents’ were killed in the attack, but an investigation by the Afghanistan Analysts Network’s Kate Clark found that in fact 10 civilians had been killed, and that faulty intelligence had conflated the identities…
