afghanistan
Afghanistan (/æfˈɡænɪstæn, æfˈɡɑːnɪstɑːn/; Pashto/Dari: افغانستان, Pashto: Afġānistān [avɣɒnisˈtɒn, ab-], Dari: Afġānestān [avɣɒnesˈtɒn]), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country in Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south; Iran to the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north; and China to the northeast. Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is 32 million, mostly composed of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.
Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic Era, and the country’s strategic location along the Silk Road connected it to the cultures of the Middle East and other parts of Asia. The land has historically been home to various peoples and has witnessed numerous military campaigns, including those by Alexander the Great, Mauryas, Muslim Arabs, Mongols, British, Soviets, and by the United States with allied countries. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khaljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, and others have risen to form major empires.
The political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the “Great Game” between British India and the Russian Empire. Its border with British India, the Durand Line, was formed in 1893 but it is not recognized by the Afghan government and it has led to strained relations with Pakistan since the latter’s independence in 1947. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919 the country was free of foreign influence, eventually becoming a monarchy under Amanullah Khan, until almost 50 years later when Zahir Shahwas overthrown and a republic was established. In 1978, after a second coup Afghanistan first became a socialist state and then a Soviet protectorate. This evoked the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s against mujahideen rebels. By 1996 most of Afghanistan was captured by the Islamic fundamentalist group the Taliban, who ruled as a totalitarian regime for over five years. Following the September 11 attacks, an intervention by the US and its allies forcibly removed the Taliban from power, and a new democratically-elected government was formed, but the Taliban still control a significant portion of the country.
Afghanistan is a unitary presidential Islamic republic. The country has high levels of terrorism, poverty, child malnutrition, and corruption. It is a member of the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Group of 77, the Economic Cooperation Organization, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Afghanistan’s economy is the world’s 96th largest, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $72.9 billion by purchasing power parity; the country fares much worse in terms of per-capita GDP (PPP), ranking 169th out of 186 countries as of 2018.
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I can think of only a handul of times I have ever seen an Afghan interviewed about the 20 year US occupation of their country.
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/RTFanning/status/1204040181357129729Confidential documents reveal U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan https://t.co/UZeEMLhFoR
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/Deeyah_Khan/status/1204234889987534850In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.“Who will say this was in vain?”
Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.
They underscore how three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan.
With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.
Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, ..“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?”Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.
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Oz Katerji (@OzKaterji) tweeted at 6:41 AM – 29 Feb 2020 :
Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war https://t.co/9IncgdVTe6 (http://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1233749114275450880?s=17)The US and the Taliban have signed an agreement aimed at paving the way towards peace in Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict.
other ref’s shared same day:
Anand Gopal’s (2014) ‘No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes’ [https://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/0805091793]
Told through the lives of three Afghans, the stunning tale of how the United States had triumph in sight in Afghanistan―and then brought the Taliban back from the dead
Through their dramatic stories, Gopal shows that the Afghan war, so often regarded as a hopeless quagmire, could in fact have gone very differently. Top Taliban leaders actually tried to surrender within months of the US invasion, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government. Effectively, the Taliban ceased to exist―yet the Americans were unwilling to accept such a turnaround. Instead, driven by false intelligence from their allies and an unyielding mandate to fight terrorism, American forces continued to press the conflict, resurrecting the insurgency that persists to this day.
With its intimate accounts of life in war-torn Afghanistan, Gopal’s thoroughly original reporting lays bare the workings of America’s longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony. A heartbreaking story of mistakes and misdeeds
then found anand in 2009 doc rethink afghanistan: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/rethink-afghanistan/
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@iyad_elbaghdadi My God thank you. We are screaming to be seen as human beings.
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/kabuli07/status/1426686596057690119
there’s a nother way for 8b people to live
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via vinay rt
Wow, this seems to be really resonating with folks. I’m kind of blown away
I made this post into an article, if that’s a thing that people want:
https://t.co/PJsvy2EOmf
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/LauraJedeed/status/1426746317053861897Afghanistan Meant Nothing – A Veteran Reflects on 20 Wasted Years
By the time you read this, the Taliban may already be in Kabul. If not now, then soon.
I wonder if he’s dead now, for serving us food and dreaming of something different.. But if Cowboy is dead then he died a long time ago, and if Cowboy is dead it’s our fault for going there in the first place, giving his family the option of trusting us when we are the least trustworthy people on the planet
We use people up and throw them away like it’s nothing.
You can’t keep lying to yourself about what you sent us into.
No more pretending it meant anything. It didn’t.
trial of the chicago 7 et al.. war ness
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Former British Soldier DESTROYS Official Afghanistan Narrative @joejglenton https://t.co/gIR90vm9qI
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1430470041015816202
9 min video – on 20 yrs of waste/death/deceit
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via molly crabapple rt..
Erik Prince, ladies snd gentelman. Charging $6,500 per person to evac Kabul. Making one last score on the forever wars.https://t.co/P6WohVPuMI
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/bdentonphoto/status/1430455549540319233
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Everything we’ve seen over the last week in Kabul — horrific carnage, mass deaths of civilians, reckless bombing — has been going on in Afghanistan for 20 years. That only difference is people are paying attention now. That’s why the war needs to end:
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1432319706241896449
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afghanistan and jihad (doc) and othering.. and missing pieces
One night in 2019, the US blew up a house full of Afghan civilians, killing 5, including a mother & her 2 daughters.
The US never acknowledged the deaths, but it drove the surviving family members towards the Taliban.
Incredible @andrewquilty piece:
https://t.co/cgWTP70JDv
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/AASchapiro/status/1432205197816868865He had a better reason to join the Taliban than we did to stop him.
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be you. 