Los talibán se habían declarado en la víspera dispuestos a disponer de una oficina política fuera de Afganistán para negociaciones de paz, un primer paso histórico tras diez años de conflicto con el gobierno afgano y sus aliados de la OTAN. ... read full story / add a comment

This weekend marked a new milestone for the war in Afghanistan: the total number of US troops killed in the war has doubled since President Obama took office, according to icasualties.org and our US Troops in Afghanistan: Obama vs Bush web counter. That means that two-thirds of the total US troop deaths have occurred in the last two years and eight months, which accounts for roughly a third of the duration of the war to date. ... read full story / add a comment

The US and NATO war in Afghanistan is in its tenth year, yet many fear the Taliban is poised to return to power. ... read full story / add a comment

On the recent election victory of the Nepali Maoists; how the Maoist leaders ended a revolution and joined the political establishment. The dangers of authoritarian leadership. ... read full story / add a comment

Les forces américaines en Afghanistan s’attendent à de possibles émeutes déclenchées par la publication de photographies montrant des «trophées de guerre» pris par des soldats américains posant avec les corps de civils afghans qu’ils ont eux-mêmes tué. ... read full story / add a comment

Many of the Canadian military, police, and civilian personnel who risk their lives in Afghanistan truly believe they are fighting a just war of good against evil. But America's and Britain's claims that the unsanctioned unilateral invasion of Afghanistan, which began the Global War on Terror, was justified by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are as credible as claims the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist justified Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia to begin WWI.

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Mike Skinner, co-founder of the Afghanistan-Canadian Research Group and a researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies in Toronto, believes a simple question is being left out of the debate about Canada's continued military involvement in Afghanistan: ”Why are we there?” It is a no-brainer to ask this but there are no easy answers it appears.

To understand the goals of Canada's role, he said, we need to examine the forms of intervention under current consideration as alternatives to Ottawa's combat mission in Kandahar. During extensive travels in Afghanistan in 2007, Skinner studied firsthand Canada's intervention, assisted by Afghan-Canadian reporter Hamayon Rastgar, and has written widely on this question. The two men formed, along with fellow-researcher Angela Joya, the Afghanistan-Canadian Research Group.

When considering the example of Canada's supposed “humanitarian” aid projects, which the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois propose as an alternative to a military mission, Skinner emphasises the limitations of the approach and the bad feelings it can engender.

“Canadian aid agencies in Afghanistan have to follow the orders of the military,” he says. “Aid is meted out as rewards to co-operative communities and withdrawn from others as punishment.”

It was not always the case. “Canadian development and aid agencies – like Care Canada and the Red Cross – had been working in Afghanistan, through all the upheavals in government, the Soviet occupation, and then, after 1992, the Mujahedeen period, and, after 1996, under the Taliban regime. They operated in very difficult conditions, negotiating with the government in power,” Skinner says. ... read full story / add a comment

The war has dragged on long after the public turned against it – but a rebellion in the US Congress could speed our exit ... read full story / add a comment

“You must come to Kathmandu with shroud cloth wrapped around your heads and flour in your bags. It will be our last battle. If we succeed, we survive, else it will be the end of our party.”

— General Secretary Badal of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
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The Marxist-Leninist tendency to centralise all power in one place, in one person, has proved both effective and ineffective. This tendency seems effective in countries like Nepal, where many people can neither read nor write, and the political tradition demands a single strong leader. In the leader, the people find a reflection of themselves, a leader who can say what they wish to say, and lead them to where they cannot go themselves. However, this form of leadership causes many problems, as the leader becomes more than human, and the person of the leader becomes inseparable from the political line. ... read full story / add a comment