If one were to get into the head of Australian government MP Andrew Hastie, a security tangle of woe would no doubt await. Having been a captain with the Special Air Services and having also served in Afghanistan, he has been none too thrilled by the publicity soldiers he served […]
Afghanistan
Australian War Crimes In Afghanistan
The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry was always going to make for a gruesome read – and that was only the redacted version. The findings of the four-year investigation, led by New South Wales Court of Appeal Justice and Army Reserve Major-General Paul Brereton, point to “credible […]
Trump’s Afghan Drawdown Doesn’t Mean War Is Ending
The recent shuffle of the Pentagon top brass was indicative of Trump’s determination to force his will on the reluctant military commanders to comply with his order to withdraw troops before Christmas. The NPR has reported quoting US officials that Trump’s drawdown order reduces the American presence by about a […]
Impunity And Carefree Violence: Australia’s Special Forces In Afghanistan
In 2016, Australian Major General Jeff Sengelman approached the then chief of the Australian army Lieutenant General Angus Campbell with a nagging worry. The concern lay in allegations that Australian special forces had committed various war crimes in Afghanistan. Sengelman was then special forces commander; Campbell was chief of the […]
Dropped Prosecutions: The Afghan Files, Public Interest Journalism And Dan Oakes
In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages. They were “secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC”. These documents gave “an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australia’s […]
Quadrilateral Foreign Ministers’ Video Conference
China-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Nepal Quadrilateral Foreign Ministers’ Video Conference on Joint Response to COVID-19, was held on 27 July 2020. The meeting was chaired by State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China and attended by Acting Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar of Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and Federal Minister […]
China’s Silk Road Of Health Appears In South Asia
A virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of China, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal on July 27 becomes the third vector of Beijing’s ‘Silk Road of Health’ diplomacy in Asia. A Xinhua report on the event said China proposed that the four countries should “consolidate consensus of solidarity against COVID-19, carry […]
Russia, Bountiful Hoaxes And The New York Times
There is a delicious irony in the Russia Bounty scandal. The Russians, funding the very entity that was financed, at least in a previous incarnation, by the Central Intelligence Agency, to supposedly kill the warriors of a country that had funded them. The karmic wheel of boggled minds finds its […]
The Truth About Russian-Taliban Ties Is As Intriguing As The Fake News About Them
Russia doesn’t exploit the Taliban as a proxy for killing Americans, but seeks to nurture equally close relations with it along the lines of the ones that it presently enjoys with Pakistan. Moscow seems to believe that the group will likely return to power one of these days (ideally through […]
Spies Return To Reset US-Russia Ties
The sensational disclosure by the New York Times on June 26 that Russia’s military intelligence agency paid bounties to Afghan militants to kill American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, opens a can of worms. It pollutes the air of US-Russian relations with a powerful stench. The ramifications are going to […]
The Global Casino Economy (II)
I’ve been requested to write a second part of the article The Global Casino Economy about the basic principles and benefits of an Islamic economy and answer some questions. The principles of the Islamic economy are based on 5 basic essentials viz Fixed Zakat- collection and distribution- for the needy, […]
The Taliban Scores A Coup
It threatened to disappear under the viral haze of COVID-19, but February 29 saw representatives from the US and Taliban, loftily acknowledged as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, sign the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan”. After two decades of conflict, the agreement sets in motion the process that should […]
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