Iranian community

Excellent article by Sahimi on the divisions within the Iranian community.

Akhundzada switched his militia's allegiances

Mr Akhundzada, a former mujahideen fighter against the Russians, was governor of Helmand from 2001 to 2005 until he was dismissed.

He was a member of a prominent southern Afghan clan and was tainted by association with the drug industry. Nine tons of opium were found in his cellars in 2005.

After being removed, Mr Akhundzada claims he had no choice but to stop cash handouts to his substantial support base and said they would be better off with the Taliban.

"When I was no longer governor the government stopped paying for the people who supported me," he said. "I sent 3,000 of them off to the Taliban because I could not afford to support them but the Taliban was making payments.

President Karzai is known to share the view that Mr Akhundzada's removal was a disaster and has publicly praised the senator for holding the Taliban at bay.

"We removed Akhundzada on the allegation of drug-running, and delivered the province to drug runners, the Taliban, to terrorists, to a threefold increase of drugs and poppy cultivation," Mr Karzai declared three years ago.

Mr Karzai is now rumoured to be considering restoring Mr Akhundzada, who is now an Afghan senator, to his old job in a forthcoming reshuffle. Experts believe he is one of a number of former warlords promised a post in return for supporting him in the August election.

Pakistan's dilemma

This article says that Pakistan faces a dilemma: either it can do Washington's bidding and attack insurgents in Pakistan to contribute to US plans to fight Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan; but by doing so it jeopardizes the possibility that Pakistan could use those insurgents as allies (proxies) to do its own bidding Afghanistan, for example when the US will leave, so it shouldn't upset those militants today.

Canada doesn't care about torture

The Harper government is dismissing calls for a public inquiry into damning allegations that the military handed over prisoners to face torture in Afghanistan.

OXfam Afghan opinion survey

Oxfam's survey found the following:

• one in five Afghans have been tortured since the wars began in 1979; just 1% reported receiving any form of compensation or apology for the harm done to them.
• three quarters of Afghans have been forced to leave their homes since then.

New archives declassified on Taliban

New archives were declassified on the Taliban in 1996-2001.

Iraqi refugees in the US

The US is supposedly doing more to get Iraqi refugees come to the US. Whatever the US is doing, it's not enough, being the invaders themselves...

US arms Middle East

Arab countries getting air power from Western suppliers.

Business fleeing Afghanistan

An article on business and corruption in Afghanistan.

Canada covered up torture in Afghanistan

Canada's government covered up reports of torture in Afghanistan that could involve Canadian troops as they handed prisoners to Afghan prisons where they could be tortured.
Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan were ordered in 2007 to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners, say defence and foreign affairs sources.

Canada hires private militias in Afghanistan

Canada spends millions of dollars to hire private militias in Afghanistan for "security". Many of those are dodgy and have a record of criminality and human rights abuses.

Obama's new military commissions

An article summarizing some of the changes and the flaws.

In 2006, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the Military Tribunals set up by the Bush administration to try terror suspects at Guantánamo. Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, "To authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war." But the MCA was also declared unconstitutional two years later. Now, it is possible that Obama's new 2009 amended version of the MCA will also be ruled to be unconstitutional.

Provinical elections in Afghanistan

At the same time as the presidential elections on August 20, the provincial elections were held in Afghanistan, but the results are still not out. Corruption is also a problem at this level.
Karzai appoints the provincial governors, but provincial councils are elected.

Jordan's services to US control of Middle East

An article about the center for training police for the Middle East in Jordan. US officers train police for Iraq, for instance. Also, police are trained to support Fatah against Hamas, showing that Fatah collaborates with the US and Israel to implement US goals in Palestine.

Since graduating its first class in November 2003, JIPTC has trained more than 50,000 police officers bound for Iraq. The academy has trained four battalions of the Palestinian security forces, deployed under the auspices of US security coordinator, General Keith Dayton, to back the "caretaker" Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad in the West Bank.

With little fanfare, JIPTC has Jordan's regime playing a frontline role in the US project to transform the Middle East.

"Jordan continues to be a key partner and to play a positive role in the region," General David Petraeus, the US commander responsible for the region, told a Senate Armed Service Committee meeting in April.

"Jordan participates in many regional security initiatives and has placed itself at the forefront of police and military training for regional security forces."

The Palestinian forces have an open agenda to target Hamas and other Palestinian factions. In May, six people were killed when Dayton's forces attacked Hamas activists in the West Bank town of Qalqilya, sparking a gun battle that lasted several hours and took place without Israel's interference.

Hamas characterized the attack as "an awful crime" committed by "collaborators", while Abbas declared that his forces would continue to strike opposition groups "with an iron fist".

Dayton, in his only major policy speech to date, told the stridently pro-Israel think-tank, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), that JIPTC-trained Palestinian security forces had engaged in a series of violent raids that were "surprisingly well coordinated" with Israel. Dayton characterized the results as "electric".

"They have caught the attention of the Israeli defense establishment for their dedication, discipline, motivation and results," Dayton said. "The Jordanian-trained guys are the key."

To this end, Dayton told the WINEP audience: "You might ask, why Jordan? The answer is pretty simple. The Palestinians wanted to train in the region, but they wanted to be away from clan, family and political influences. The Israelis trust the Jordanians, and the Jordanians were anxious to help."

50 million hungry in US

President Barack Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as "unsettling" the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US – one in six of the population – were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year, in large part because of escalating unemployment or poorly paid jobs. That is a rise of more than one-third on the year before and the highest number since the survey began in 1995.
More than half of those affected are minorities, principally black people and Hispanics.

Millions more Americans do not go hungry only because they are so poor they receive government food stamps or rely on handouts from food banks such as Feeding America. In some states, such as West Virginia, one in six of the population is on food stamps.

"Although these new numbers are staggering, it should be noted that these numbers reflect the state of the nation one year ago, in 2008. Since then the economy has significantly weakened, and there are likely many more people struggling with hunger than this report states," she said.