Death Squads, Collateral Murder, Cover-Ups

Dr. Zaher Wahab offers a view from Afghanistan on the impact of the war. The parallels to Iraq are striking. He has been in Kabul teaching for the last three months, and writes to the blog Dispatches from Afghanistan.

The US occupation of Afghanistan, which will enter its tenth year this fall, shows no signs of abating. In fact, both the brutal occupation and the resistance to it are intensifying. The human, financial, psychic and political costs to both countries have been enormous. More than 1,000 Americans have been killed, more than 4,000 injured, thousands suffering from various degrees of PTSD, and tens of thousands suffering from the militarization of their feelings. The war has cost the US about $270 billion so far, and is now costing the US taxpayers more than one billion dollars per week. On the Afghan side, unknown thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed, maimed, and/or are dying slow deaths. The society is impoverished, factionalized, sectarianized, brutalized, criminalized, gangsterized, traumatized, and militarized; it ranks at or near the bottom of every human development index. The country has been transformed into a hellhole with unimaginable poverty, disease, pain, and suffering.

Click here to read more.

Other Resources:

The Wounded Platoon
Frontline | 18 May 2010

U.S. launches criminal probe on soldiers in Afghanistan
Reuters | 20 May 2010