The military wives of those who fight for queen and country sing an emotional chorus. The lyrics are compiled from letters to and from the servicemen and their wives written on a 6-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The SWP doesn't seem too pleased about it, though. An excellent writeup from Harry's Place

Unless you want crimes to be committed against you. Human Rights Watch has the scoop on how the Afghan Local Police program has helped create a police force that has mostly just contributed to lawlessness.

A September 2011 Human Rights Watch report, “Just Don’t Call it a Militia: Impunity, Militias, and the ‘Afghan Local Police,’” detailed abuses by the ALP and various militias created or supported by the US since the defeat of Taliban rule in 2001. The report, while acknowledging that ALP units had contributed recently to improved security in some areas, documented serious abuses by ALP and other US-backed forces in several provinces, including looting, illegal detention, beatings, killings, sexual assault, and extortion. The report also described how the establishment of the ALP had inflamed ethnic tensions in some areas.

In yet another attack which took place just last week in Afghanistan, a Muslim suicide bomber blew himself up and killed -- you guessed it -- fellow Muslims. 

It should be pretty unequivocal by now where the real problem in the region is coming from. The Taliban was massacring the Hazara population -- not because of their support for the Coalition, or hatred stemming from western foreign policy, but simply because of their belief in a different sect of the same religion.

Indeed, the United Nations stated in a report last year "attributing 75 percent of the deaths to attacks by Taliban and other insurgents rather than coalition forces". 

As the religionofpeace.com in 2006 stated, 

• Iraqi civilians killed (all deliberately) in 2006 by the Iraqi resistance: 16,791.
• Iraqi civilians killed (all accidentally) in 2006 by Americans: 225.

Granted, these above figures are pre-2007 surge numbers -- however, the difference between these two numbers, albeit extraordinarily tragic, is no small one. 

Why blame the Coalition, and not the insurgents, for such killings? Obviously -- because it's not nearly as convenient for those who believe the US and the West can commit no good.

Joseph Suh is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

Well, that's it. Pakistan has decided to cut off NATO's supply lines to Afghanistan. This staunch lukewarm traitorous ally took the extreme measure in retaliation for NATO firing on Pakistan's soldiers, no doubt carried out because the Pakistanis (again) were taking potshots at US troops in support of their real allies: the Taliban.

Barring a fast 180-degree reversal by Pakistan, the Afghan war in defense of a fragile new democracy against jihadist maniacs is pretty much done. NATO forces will very quickly run low on the fuel, food and ammunition that powers their modern advanced military. The Afghanistan war could be over a lot sooner than anyone, even the Pakistanis, realize.

A few weeks ago, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that in any war between the USA and Pakistan, Afghanistan would naturally take the side of their next-door neighbor. We may also soon see if he's so blind to the suicidal consequences of such as stance.

One suspects that the Taliban have temporarily relaxed their absolute prohibition on the consumption of alcohol to break out the bottles of champagne.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist

War
By Sebastian Junger
Twelve 2010, 304 pp.

From the first page, Sebastian Junger's War immerses the reader into the world of the soldiers in what has been dubbed “the most dangerous place on the planet” by President H.W. Bush: Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.

Fear, the first section of the book, establishes the necessary groundwork about the soldiers' thoughts on fighting an armed conflict and their emotions before and during battle. “Combat jammed so much adrenaline through your system that fear was rarely an issue; far more indicative of real courage was how you felt before the big operations, when the implications of losing your life really had a chance to sink in.”

Killing, in part two, explores the fundamental reason why soldiers kill and their reactions when that action is committed on one of their own. When Clinard, an infantryman, sees his commander lying lifeless at the top of a hill, he “stays bent double as if he's just finished a race and moans... in his strangle animal way”.

The final portion of the book, Love, is the most profound and chilling sections in the book. Like Junger so adroitly puts it: “The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.”

If you want an ideological book full of military strategies, condemnations of political incompetence, and pundit-bashing; indeed, go elsewhere. This book is for those who want to understand the life of these warriors.

Joseph Suh is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

An excellent review in Macleans of Terry Glavin's new book, Come from the Shadows: the Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan:

The book opens and closes with the students of Marefat High School, in the Daste Barchi slum of Kabul. In April 2009, they fought off a mob dispatched by a Khomeinist mosque whose members were furious because boys and girls at the school were studying together. The attackers threw rocks and sticks and demanded that the school’s principal, Aziz Royesh, be killed. Students barred the doors and stood their ground. The school remains open.

 

Glavin’s book is full of stories like this, from the sealed-off parts of Afghanistan. Blame for the obscuration that keeps so much of the country hidden can be cast widely, including among journalists. Glavin recalls speaking with a senior Canadian reporter who had been in Kandahar several times over a three-year period but had never interviewed an Afghan woman. I know of journalists whose bosses discouraged them from leaving Kandahar Airfield lest they miss a “ramp ceremony” for a fallen Canadian soldiers returning home.

I’m not sure that many of our diplomats see much more. Recently in Kabul I got a glimpse of the rules that govern travel for embassy staff. The security bubble is almost total. This is understandable, I suppose, but it’s also restricting. It means we don’t know the students at Marefat High School, and we’re less willing to fight for them. We should, and we must.

It has happened again. An Afghan supposedly working with the Americans who helped liberate his nation from the Taliban now turns on his supposed allies:

It also lies at the heart of the capital's heavily guarded military, political and diplomatic district, a virtual "green zone" that is almost impossible for ordinary Afghans to enter.

It was not clear if the U.S. citizens were victims of a rogue employee who had been won over to the insurgent cause, or just the escalation of an argument in a city where tensions are high and many people carry guns. There are precedents for both.

I can't conceive of a more demoralizing situation. And it just keeps happening. From the Afghan President on down, there needs to be swift and complete condemnation of this betrayal.

The Propagandist's Editor for Central and South Asia Lauryn Oates talks with Editor Jonathon Narvey about the progress that has been made so far in Afghanistan. There is no question that large parts of Afghanistan are better off now than they were under the Taliban theocracy. Women's rights are particularly improved, though that improvement is relative and is in danger of being pushed back entirely.

With the international community looking to largely leave Afghanistan to its own devices by 2014, what are the chances that Afghanistan will manage to make it through. It's not looking good.

The Taliban are attacking Kabul once again. They will fail... again. But most mainstream media are unable to differentiate between a battle with strategic consequences and an opportunistic raid by Taliban hillbillies hoping to kill some Infidels before they in turn are sent to paradise. So the Taliban will achieve their objective of making it appear that they are still very much an unstoppable military force.

On a crabbier note, I hate to be an armchair General from the safety of my living room halfway around the world, but notice the, er, interesting results from a decade of training Afghan police. They don't even bother trying to to fire from cover. No, they stand in the open, spraying bullets up towards a building where the attackers are hidden and safe behind reinforced concrete walls. Good luck with that.

When the cops run out of bullets, they turn to the side and sort of, um, wait for someone else to do something.

"Let those big strong ISAF troops risk their lives storming the building and clearing the Taliban room by room. Why should we do it? It's not our... country. Oh, wait."

"Oooooooh! So that's why your armies came here from halfway across the world. It all makes sense. Wow. I wish someone had showed me these pictures 10 years ago."