OMNI
AFGHANISTAN NEWSLETTER #25,
August 22, 2021.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/08/omni-afghanistan-newsletter-25-august.html
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice
(#8 April 15, 2011; #9 June 10, 2011; #10 July 3, 2011; #11 July 13, 2011; #12 Sept. 5, 2011; #13 Oct. 2, 2011; #14 Oct. 15, 2011; #15 Feb. 14, 2012 ; #16 April 27, 2012; #17 May 3, 2012; #18 Oct. 20, 2012; #19 Jan. 14, 2013; #20 August 17, 2013; #21, Feb. 4, 2014; #22, Feb. 22, 2015; #23, August 22, 2017; #24, Dec. 27, 2020)
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CONTENTS Afghanistan Newsletter #25, August 22, 2021
AFGHAN HISTORY
Reza Behnam, Pashtun
Mustafa Ariaie, an Afghan
David Swanson, US Antiwar
DECISION TO INVADE
Tariq Ali, International Consensus
Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies, Opposition
Array, Opposition: Criminal
OCCUPATION
Margaret Kimberley, 40 Years of US in Afghanistan
RETREAT
Jack Rasmus, Why?
Roger Harris, New Stage
Kathy Kelly, We Must Leave
FUTURE
Rashida Tlaib, Help the Refugees
Ann Wright, Keep US Embassy Open
M.K. Bhadrakumar, Continue Aid
Kathy Kelly, Reparations to the Afghan People
TEXTS
AFGHAN HISTORY
Aghan History from Pashtun Perspective and the US War Against Them
M. Reza Behnam . The U.S. in Afghanistan: Graveyard for Another Empire?
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2020, pp. 40-41, 51
https://www.wrmea.org/afghanistan/pakistan/the-u.s.-in-afghanistan-graveyard-for-another-empire.html
THE UNITED STATES has been in a state of perpetual war in Afghanistan since Oct. 7, 2001. In the minds of most Americans, Afghanistan did not exist until 9/11. The American public is rarely asked to reflect on its elusive, distant and destructive war in a country they know little or nothing about, but are financing to the tune of roughly $4 billion a month. The absence of debate, evaluation and a coherent policy in Afghanistan has contributed to the quagmire the United States finds itself in today.
Since the U.S. invasion, Afghanistan has been portrayed as a chaotic country in need of improvement and order, which only the United States can provide. But more than 18 years of U.S. occupation has left the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan poor, traumatized and ecologically damaged. History has shown that imperial powers know little about the countries they invade, although the repercussions of their interventions shape the destinies of both.
[Important Afghan History seldom mentioned by US gov. or mainstream media. --Dick] To understand why the U.S. military operation was destined to fail, it is essential to reflect on Afghanistan’s resistance to foreign domination throughout its history. Afghanistan has been rightly spoken of as the “graveyard of empires.” At the crossroads of Asia—connecting the Middle East with Central Asia and India—it was caught in the Anglo-Russian power struggle of the 19th century, known by historians as the “Great Game” period. The U.S. is the latest great power to become mired in that graveyard.
Competition for dominance by the British and Russian empires in the 19th century fostered an abiding xenophobia and hostility to outside powers, especially among the Pashtuns, who ruled Afghanistan, off and on, for more than 300 years. Today, they make up over 40 percent of the population; the Taliban are predominantly Pashtun.
The British imperium left a legacy of conflict and hostilities that lives on in Central Asian countries today. Particularly consequential, was the British decision in 1893 to arbitrarily fix a border between British India and Afghanistan.
The boundary, which came to be known as the Durand Line,effectively divided the Pashtun population between Afghanistan and British India (now Pakistan). The division destroyed tribal structures and Pashtun demographic superiority in Afghanistan. By establishing the border, Britain made permanent its control over Afghan territory, gained through three wars, including the Northwest Territories and Baluchistan; whose loss meant that landlocked Afghanistan was cut off from its vital access to the Arabian Sea.
The line was used to finalize Pakistan’s boundaries during the partitioning of India in 1947. Angry over Britain’s action, the government in Kabul shifted its foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. Since then, successive Afghan governments have refused to accept the legitimacy of the Durand Line, arguing that the Pashtun territories in Pakistan should be part of Afghanistan. Many Pashtun nationalists, on both the Afghan and Pakistan sides of the mountainous border, have called for an independent state of Pashtunistan.
Afghanistan only became significant to Washington during the Cold War, when the government in Kabul turned to the USSR for diplomatic and military support. Like the British, America’s main concern was the Soviet presence. Washington was determined to keep the Kremlin out of the oil rich Persian Gulf, especially after the overthrow of its ally, the Shah of Iran, in January 1979.
To counter Soviet influence, the United States allied with conservative Islamists to undermine the pro-Soviet government in Kabul. Little thought was given to the long-term consequences when the CIA plotted, in 1979, to lure the Russians into invading; to give, in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, “the USSR its Vietnam.”
American and Saudi money and weapons were funneled through Pakistan to support the anti-Soviet resistance. Initially known as the Mujaheddin, the fighters came mainly from the Pashtun tribal area in the Northwest Territories of Pakistan. Later, others, who were known as the Afghan Arabs, would join in their fight.
With U.S. and Saudi funding, Pakistan set up thousands of fundamentalist Islamic madrassas (religious schools) for Afghan refugee children on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Many future Taliban fighters were former madrassa students, well tutored in the extremist version of political Islam and war.
The Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) created the mayhem in the USSR that Washington had hoped for, even hastening the demise of the Soviet system. But it would, with time, also create tumult for the United States. The war left over one million Afghans dead, over four million injured, five million refugees, and two million internally displaced, and thousands of radicalized well-trained fighters. Under the Taliban regime (1996-2001), Afghanistan became a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and international terrorism.
Twenty years later, Washington found itself fighting the same forces it had helped create. America’s earlier proxy war prepared the ground for al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, 1993; Khobar Towers, U.S. military housing in Saudi Arabia, 1996; U.S. embassies in Africa, 1998; USS Cole in Yemen, 2000; and the World Trade Center and Pentagon, 2001. After 9/11, the United States invaded Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime. Taliban leaders, who escaped across the border to Pakistan, have been fighting a prolonged insurgency against the latest foreign intruder.
Since 9/11, the United States has spent $6.4 trillion on wars and military actions in the Middle East and Central Asia fighting its “war on terrorism.” Although the military tries to keep the figures secret, there are roughly 800 U.S. military bases around the world in other people’s countries.
As with the prolonged war itself, little attention was paid to the December 2019 publication by The Washington Post of the “Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” which disclosed the enormous destruction and cost of a war constructed on Washington’s ignorance of Afghan political culture and on muddled, counterproductive policies. Also ignored, was the March 2020 decision by the International Criminal Court to investigate American officials for war crimes committed in Afghanistan. The ICC announced that it had enough information to prove that U.S. military and intelligence personnel had committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, and other acts of violence in 2003, 2004 and later in clandestine CIA facilities. As concluded by the ICC chief prosecutor, in 2016, “The gravity of the alleged crimes is increased by the fact that they were reportedly committed pursuant to plans or policies approved at senior levels of the U.S. government, following careful and extensive deliberations.”
America’s war and occupation in Afghanistan have produced very little. Opium production, almost eliminated under the Taliban regime, has quadrupled. The country has grown more unstable, government corruption is rampant, most Afghans live in poverty, refugees number in the millions, land mines abound, infrastructure has crumbled and the Taliban continues to gain strength. American military power has not ended terrorism. Instead, terrorism has grown in direct proportion to U.S. military action following 9/11. Simply, America’s reliance on military power to “build a nation” in Afghanistan continues to be an abysmal failure.
In February 2020, the Trump administration signed a conditional peace agreement with Taliban leaders. However, President Ashraf Ghani and his rival, Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, were left out of the talks; a clear indication that Washington has begun to move closer to the Taliban. The administration’s threat to withhold up to $2 billion in aid unless Afghan’s leaders put aside their differences and begin negotiations with the Taliban is further evidence of how expendable they are to Washington.
Since the peace agreement, violence has increased throughout the country, with nearly 55 attacks a day. The attacks on May 12, in two parts of the country, one on a maternity hospital and the other on a funeral ceremony, are just two examples of the relentless and continued violence. In a sign that the U.S.-brokered peace is coming apart, President Ghani ordered his security forces to discontinue operating in a defensive posture and to begin attacking Taliban insurgents.
Washington’s seemingly endless war in Afghanistan has become the scrim of American life. Incredibly, in the throes of a global pandemic, the Trump administration prevented a vote in the United Nations Security Council on a resolution calling for the cessation of hostilities around the world during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The economic impact of the war, financed through debt and fought by an all-volunteer army, has been largely invisible to most Americans. But the protective shield that has kept the public from comprehending the destructive effects of an economy built on war and conflict may be eroding as the country faces its own internal crisis; a crisis that requires building rather than destroying.
American invincibility has been shaken and its priorities exposed by the global pandemic. Washington’s inordinate investment in warfare, rather than the health and welfare of its citizens, has left Americans feeling wary and defenseless.
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To Achieve Better We Must Confront the Worst
aUGUST 17, 2021 BY DAVIDSWANSON
“Lies, Damn Lies, and What We’ve Been Told About Afghanistan”
It’s far from the longest U.S. war. There was no peace before or after it. There is no after it until they end it — and bombing has always been most of what it is. It has had nothing to do with opposing terrorism. It has been a one-sided slaughter, a mass killing over two decades by a single invading army and air force dragging along token mascots from dozens of vassal states. After 20 years Afghanistan was one of the worst places to be on Earth, and the Earth as a whole was a worse place to be — the rule of law, the state of nature, the refugee crises, the spread of terrorism, the militarization of governments all worsened. Then the Taliban took over.
When the U.S. armed the Afghan military with weapons costing enough to cause panic attacks in U.S. Senators had the expense been for anything other than murder, and predicted a happy little civil war, and then the Afghans refused to fight each other, the President of the United States denounced such reprehensible restraint, blaming the victims, instead of acknowledging the massive gift of yet more weaponry to the Taliban, instead of recognizing — after 20 years — anything about what Afghanistan is like. (Of course he still calls the war a “civil war” as U.S. voices have done for years and years because unless the U.S. military is regretfully helping out in a civil war waged by primitive people, it will be understood to be, you know, waging wars, smack in the middle of what U.S. academics call The Great Peace.)
The puppet government was never a government outside of the capital. The people were never loyal to the Taliban or the invaders, but merely to whichever set of lunatics was nearby waving guns. First the Taliban collapsed, then the Muppets in Kabul, and for 20 years in between every home and village switched sides as needed, with the U.S. developing permanent enemies, the Taliban making practical alliances, and people persistently noticing that they lived where they lived, while the strange-looking foreigners who killed, imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, urinated on, and threatened them for “human rights” lived somewhere else.
But millions of them were made homeless. Children froze to death in refugee camps. Approximately half the victims of the U.S. war were women. The puppet government passed a law to legalize spousal rape. Yet the hypocritical screech of “Women’s Rights” was heard over the agonized moaning of the injured, even as the U.S. government blissfully armed and supported the brutal militaries of such bastions of women’s rights as Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Ethiopia, Gabon, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Oman, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen.
The death, injury, trauma, homelessness, environmental destruction, governmental corruption, renewed drug dealing, and general catastrophe were kept quiet by an obsessive focus on the tiny percentage of deaths that were U.S. troops — but excluding the majority even of those deaths because they were suicides.
“There is no military solution” the generals and weapons-funded presidents and Congress members chanted for decades while pushing more militarism. Yet nobody asked what “solution” even meant. “We’re winning” they lied for decades until everyone announced that they’d “lost.” Yet nobody asked what “winning” would have been. What was the goal? What was the purpose?
The rhetoric, official and amateur, that launched the war was about bombing a nation full of people as revenge for the crimes of a small number of individuals who had spent some time in the place. “Hey Mr. Taliban” song lyrics were racist, hateful, and genocidal celebrations of bombing the homes of people who dressed in pajamas. But this was pure murderous bullshit. Crimes can and should be prosecuted, not used as excuses to commit worse crimes. The Taliban was willing to turn Bin Laden over to a third country to be put on trial, but the U.S. government wanted a war. It had long-since planned the war. Its motivations included base construction, weapons placement, pipeline routing, and the launching of a war on Iraq as a continuation of an easier-to-start war on Afghanistan (a war that Tony Blair insisted on starting prior to a war on Iraq).
Soon the U.S. president said that bin Laden didn’t matter at all. Then another U.S. president said that bin Laden was dead. That didn’t matter either, as anyone paying the slightest attention had known it wouldn’t. In fact, that same president escalated the war on Afghanistan three-fold in terms of troop presence but more than that in bombing, principally because he was largely keeping his predecessor’s deal to scale back the war on Iraq. One can’t just end a war without backing a different one. That’s part of why the world’s worried about a war on China right now.
But, then what was the excuse for the unending war on Afghanistan?
MORE https://davidswanson.org/lies-damn-lies-and-what-weve-been-told-about-afghanistan/
DECISION TO INVADE
Afghanistan: Mirage Of The Good War
By Tariq Ali, New Left Review. Popular Resistance (8-18-21). Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Support for the war was universal in the chanceries of the West, even before its aims and parameters had been declared. NATO governments rushed to assert themselves ‘all for one’. Blair jetted round the world, proselytizing the ‘doctrine of the international community’ and the opportunities for peace-keeping and nation-building in the Hindu Kush. Putin welcomed the extension of American bases along Russia’s southern borders. -more-
Not Everyone Wanted War In Afghanistan
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, FPIF. Popular Resistance (8-18-21). America’s corporate media are ringing with recriminations over the humiliating U.S. military defeat in Afghanistan. But very little of the criticism goes to the root of the problem, which was the original decision to militarily invade and occupy Afghanistan in the first place. That decision set in motion a cycle of violence and chaos that no subsequent U.S. policy or military strategy could resolve over the next 20 years — in Afghanistan, Iraq, or any of the other countries swept up in America’s post-9/11 wars. -more-
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OCCUPATION
By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Popular Resistance (8-22-21).
The scenes of people desperately trying to board planes in Kabul, Afghanistan, hanging from and even falling from landing gear, are reminiscent of past United States exits, most notably from Vietnam. Yet these images should not be surprising nor should they change anyone’s views about the terror that the U.S. brought to that country. The turmoil in present day Afghanistan is the end result of more than 40 years of U.S. involvement and it should not be discussed without an analysis of that history. Liberals in this country, even those who had expressed opposition to the war, now... -more-
RETREAT FROM AFGHANISTAN
Afghanistan And The US Imperial Project
By Jack Rasmus. On August 16, 2021 President Biden addressed the nation to explain why the US military is pulling out of Afghanistan. To a lesser extent, he also tried to explain why the Afghan government and its 300,000 military forces imploded over the past weekend. With the Afghan State’s quick disappearing act, in a puff of smoke up went as well the more than $1 trillion spent by the US in Afghanistan since 2001. Biden glossed over the real answer to the first point why the US is now pulling out. The second he never really answered. The real answer to the first point is simple: the USA as global hegemon can no longer... -more-
Afghanistan - Longest US War Continues To A New Stage
By Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. (8-18-21). In recent weeks, the Taliban military rapidly advanced, taking provincial capitals in Afghanistan and then the capital city of Kabul on August 15. The US-backed former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in a helicopter packed with cash, the US embassy took down the stars-and-stripes, and Western governments evacuated personnel. In the leadup to the debacle, the US bombed a country, which has minimal air defenses, in a war that has cost at least 171,000 to 174,000 lives. Along with Qatar-based long-range B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships... -more-
Kathy Kelly, “Afghanistan’s Ongoing Grief.” The Catholic Worker (Jan.-Feb. 2021). The US Must Leave Afghanistan. Here’s her conclusion: “Year after year, president after president, the US continues to pretend the despair and futility we’ve caused in Afghanistan isn’t our fault. We don’t hold ourselves accountable. But the forever wars, illegal and immoral, bankrupt our economy and our society as well.” [Kathy Kelly, one of the steadiest, heroic advocates of peace in all the world, appears frequently in TCW. –D]
FUTURE
Sign if you agree: We must welcome Afghan refugees ASAP
Rashida Tlaib 8-21-21 10:42 AM
Dick,
Right now, as the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan draws to a close and the Taliban has surged back to power, hundreds of thousands of Afghan people in grave danger are trying to evacuate their country.
But our current limited options for Afghan citizens to relocate to the U.S. mean that even people who worked with the U.S. military are still stuck in Afghanistan. They have no time to spare: The Taliban will target them first for retaliation. Others at risk include human rights defenders and journalists.
We have a moral obligation to shelter refugees who are trying to flee the consequences of a devastating war that we brought to their land.
Please sign now if you agree: The Biden administration must act immediately to save Afghan lives, before the August 31 deadline of fully withdrawing from the country.
SIGN NOW
This crisis comes after the U.S. spent trillions of dollars and 20 years in a brutal war that killed and traumatized many Afghan civilians on the ground. And let’s not forget that back in the 1980’s, the U.S. armed the resistance groups that became the Taliban.
The least we could do was plan a speedy process to provide sanctuary for any Afghan people in need. But the Biden administration has utterly failed at that, despite having had many months to plan for its scheduled withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.
As Adam Bates, policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said:
“There was no reason it had to come to this mad scramble in the last hours of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. These evacuations could have happened months ago and should have.”
Thousands of Afghan people who helped the U.S. military are still stuck in Afghanistan, in a bureaucratic backlog that’s lasted for years and through multiple presidential administrations.
And a new program to expand options for Afghans is insufficient. It still requires people to relocate to a third country before applying for U.S. refugee status, and support themselves for at least a year while in the application process. That’s practically impossible at this point.
Offering only these two options for Afghans to come to the U.S. is unacceptable. We must rapidly ramp up our ability to evacuate and welcome any Afghan seeking refuge.
That’s why we’re calling for swift policy changes to:
• Expedite visa processing for Afghans facing imminent threats. That includes Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans who worked for the U.S. government, as well as a new program for people who worked for U.S. organizations—which must allow processing in the U.S., rather than first requiring Afghan applicants to relocate to another country.
• Quickly prioritize accepting refugees, including using humanitarian parole to evacuate Afghans at highest risk and ensure their speedy entry into the U.S.
• Grant Temporary Protected Status to Afghans in the U.S.
• Increase humanitarian aid to those who’ve fled their homes.
Please sign now to tell the Biden administration: There is no time to lose. The administration can and must bring Afghans to safety.
In solidarity,
Rashida
Keep The US Embassy In Kabul Open
By Ann Wright, Popular Resistance (8-22-21). I was on the small U.S. Department of State team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December 2001 and strongly feel that if the U.S. really cares for the people of Afghanistan, it should keep the U.S. Embassy open. History reveals that generally when U.S. military strategies don't work such as in Cuba (1959), Viet Nam (1975), Nicaragua (1979 and 2018), Iran (1979) and North Korea (1953), the U.S. closes embassies and wrecks havoc through brutal sanctions on the economies of the countries to have some sort of soul-soothing revenge for the politicians that put the U.S. in... -more-
US and Foreign Aid: Should It Continue?
M.K. Bhadrakumar. “Don’t threaten Afghans—it will be counterproductive.”
Common Dreams (11-24-20).Apr 10, 2020. This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
The principal deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) in the U.S. State Department, Alice Wells, dropped a bombshell on the Afghan government and the country’s political elites on April 4—and caught the international donors by surprise, too—by linking all aid to Afghanistan to the formation of an inclusive government in Kabul.
In a tweet from the SCA account, Wells wrote in a threatening tone: “It can’t be business as usual for international donors in #Afghanistan. International aid requires partnership with an inclusive government and we all must hold Afghan leaders accountable to agree on a governing arrangement.”
Prima facie, it is a call by Washington to the international community to join the recent move, announced on March 23 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to cut back aid to Afghanistan by $1 billion and to reduce the aid by another billion dollars in 2021 as well as to initiate a review of all U.S.-aided programs and projects in that country to identify additional reductions, and to reconsider U.S. pledges on the whole to future donor conferences for Afghanistan.
The punishing move on March 23 followed an abortive mission by Pompeo to Kabul on the same day to persuade Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and former chief executive Abdullah Abdullah to agree on an inclusive government. Pompeo’s appeals fell on deaf ears. It now seems that Washington’s threat to cut back bilateral aid also has been largely ignored by the Afghan elites.
Washington is ratcheting up the pressure on Kabul by forewarning that it will prevail upon the international community to join hands with the U.S. by making all aid to Afghanistan conditional on cooperative behavior by the Afghan political elites.
Will such hyped-up U.S. threats work? The high probability is that it won’t impress Afghan elites. As for the international community, Washington may have better luck. The U.S. has been the driving force behind marshaling international aid for Afghanistan.
Between 2002 and 2015, the U.S. and other international donors pumped about $130 billion into that country, but most of the money came from the U.S. (about $115 billion)—although more than half of it was spent on security. At the October 5, 2016, Brussels Conference on Afghanistan, the international donors pledged another $15.2 billion through the period up to 2020.
The unexpectedly high pledges in Brussels reflected a general recognition at that point that if the Taliban gained ground and/or if Afghanistan sank into greater poverty and despair, the region and the world would have a much higher price to pay. Equally, there was trust in Ghani as someone with a vision for Afghanistan whom major donors could believe in, despite the rampant corruption and political infighting, and the bloody conflict ending a huge number of Afghan lives.
Importantly, the U.S. was backing Ghani to the hilt. But four years down the line, the situation around Afghanistan has changed phenomenally. Despite all the money spent, the security situation worsened, and the Taliban is now resurgent. Afghanistan remains a basket case—one of the poorest countries on earth—with 80 percent of its budget financed by aid. The world community has come to accept that there is no alternative but to reconcile with the Taliban through negotiations and power-sharing.
Clearly, the earlier optimism, even if somewhat contrived, has been replaced by donor fatigue, and questions are being asked about where the money will end up. MORE https://mronline.org/2020/04/10/dont-threaten-afghans-it-will-be-counterproductive/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dont-threaten-afghans-it-will-be-counterproductive&utm_source=MR+Email+List&utm_campaign=36f4fb214c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_MRONLINE_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f879628ac-36f4fb214c-295821469&mc_cid=36f4fb214c&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
REPARATIONS
By Kathy Kelly on Aug 02, 2021 04:21 pm. CovertAction Magazine.
In mid-July, 100 Afghan families from Bamiyan, a rural province of central Afghanistan mainly populated by the Hazara ethnic minority, fled to Kabul. They feared Taliban militants would attack them in Bamiyan.
Over the past decade, I have gotten to know a grandmother who recalls fleeing Talib fighters in the 1990s, just after learning that […]
The post Reckoning and Reparations: U.S. Government Owes Afghan Civilians for Past 20 Years of War and Brutal Impoverishment appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
CONTENTS #24:The Last Four of19 Years of US invasion and occupation, 2017-20. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/omni-afghanistan-newsletter-24.html
END AFGHANISTAN NEWSLETTER #25