I would like to hear what the FEMALE Afghan Leaders want.
"I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.
Already this year we have seen the impact of an increase in troops occupying Afghanistan: more violence, and more civilian deaths. My people, the poor of Afghanistan who have known only war and the domination of fundamentalism, are today squashed between two enemies: the US/Nato occupation forces on one hand and warlords and the Taliban on the other. "
Malalai Joya is an Afghan politician and a former elected member of the Parliament from Farah province. Her last book is Raising My Voice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/malalai-joya Zoya is a member of the radical underground organization RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. She fled Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion but later returned to her country to document life under Taliban rule. She has been an outspoken critic of the US and NATO invasion of Afghanistan.
http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2009/10/07/afghan-women-s-activist-zoya-speaks-out-on-eight-years-of-occupation.html " ZOYA: Unfortunately, in the past eight years, with thousands of troops, with billions of dollars poured in the country, and with the tens of countries present in Afghanistan, the foreign countries, we see that there’s no positive change in Afghanistan. Still our people are suffering from insecurity.
Our people are caught up from different sides by different enemies. From one side, our people are suffering from Taliban, who has almost 70, 80 percent of Afghanistan under their control. From the other side, the warlords and drug lords have a lot of power in different provinces. And from the third side, unfortunately, the US and NATO bombs are killing our civilians. So, the past few years, I think, taught the foreign countries a new lesson, that as long as they are not changing their policy of supporting and compromising with Northern Alliance fundamentalists, there would be no root change in the political situation. "
Pictures of US Forces
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/rawagallery.php?mghash=dc96d38caecd6694eb17fc894bb73212&mggal=6 
According to UNAMA, 595 (59%) of the deaths in the past six months were caused by anti-government elements, 310 (30.5%) were caused by international-led military forces, while the remaining 108 (10.5%) of the deaths could not be clearly attributed to any of the parties in the conflict. The UNAMA report noted that "if the non-combatant status of one or more victim(s) remains under significant doubt, such deaths are not included in the overall number of civilian casualties. Thus, there is a significant possibility that UNAMA is under-reporting civilian casualties."<42>
For the first half of 2009, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded 1,013 Afghan civilian deaths for the six months from January 1st to June 30.
2009
* February 12, 2009 - Australian special forces soldiers killed 5 Afghan children in an attack on a compound in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan.<20>
* March 2009 - A Danish smoke grenade that hit a kitchen during the course of fighting with insurgents flung a little girl against a wall, killing her. The Afghan child's death occurred at the start of March during joint military action with British soldiers in the province of Helmand.<211>
* April 9, 2009 - American-led military forces killed four civilians - a man, a woman, and two children - as well as an unborn baby in an overnight U.S. raid in the eastern province of Khost. The night raid killed the schoolteacher wife of Afghan National Army artillery commander Awal Khan, his 17-year-old daughter Nadia, his 15-year-old son, Aimal, and his brother, who worked for a government department. Another daughter was wounded. The pregnant wife of Khan's cousin, who lived next door, was shot five times in the abdomen, killing her nine-month-old unborn baby. "The coalition has to stop this cruelty and brutal action," a grieving Khan said. The US-led military initially said four people killed by troops were "armed militants", but later admitted that the people killed and wounded were civilians. International humanitarian organisation CARE said in a statement that the slain schoolteacher had been working at a school that it supports. "CARE strongly condemns the action and demands that international military forces operating in Afghanistan are held accountable for their actions and avoid all attacks on innocent civilians in the country."<75><76>
* May 4, 2009 - American B1-B bombers killed at least two dozen and possibly as many as 147 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan in what has been called the Farah massacre. Local Afghan officials in Farah province collected the names of 147 people that were killed in the airstrike.<85><212> After the Afghan government's investigation, the Afghan Defense Ministry announced an official death toll of 140 villagers. A government list with the names and ages of each of the 140 killed showed that 93 of those killed were children, while only 22 were adult males.<86> A U.S. military investigation, on the other hand, estimated that 26 civilians were killed, but also admitted in its report that they would never be able to determine precisely how many civilians were killed by the operation. The U.S. military report concluded that at least two airstrikes on buildings should not have been ordered, and called for changes in the U.S. military's rules for using airstrikes as well as retraining. The report was also critical of the military for failing to assess battle damage quickly, and called for the creation of an investigative team that can respond within two hours of a reported incident.<213><214>
* September 4, 2009 - As many as 70-90 people, most of them civilians, were killed in northern Kunduz province by a U.S. airstrike called in by German ISAF troops after militants had hijacked two fuel tankers headed from Tajikistan to supply NATO forces. The hijacked tankers got stuck in the mud by Kunduz River near the village of Omar Khel. According to Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid, the insurgents opened valves to release fuel and lighten the loads, and villagers swarmed the trucks to collect the fuel despite warnings that they might be hit by an airstrike. According to some Afghan officials, the militants encouraged local people to take advantage of the situation. Word spread quickly and about 500 people from surrounding villages flocked to the trucks. At 2:30 A.M., a U.S. F-15 fighter jet dropped two 500-pound bombs on the fuel tankers, triggering a huge fireball that incinerated many of the people nearby. Video footage filmed in the morning showed piles of charred bodies lying by the river. An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) team member and others said it was impossible to know how many people had died, with many bodies possibly having been washed away by the river. According to Afghan police, provincial officials, and doctors, most of those killed were civilians
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
