Kill Teams in Afghanistan

The Afghanistan Rights Monitor a Kabul-based independent human rights organization has asked the United States government to investigate its military units in the wake of publication by German news magazine Der Spiegel of US soldiers posing with the corpses of Afghan civilians they allegedly killed.

"Details of the kill team's shocking crimes are unclear as the US military has kept everything in the dark apparently in order to protect its image and to avoid potential social unrest in Afghanistan,' Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a statement.

'The kill team's crimes are utterly unjustifiable and so are the efforts to conceal or camouflage them..."

The Afghans for Peace web page has more background to the story.

The soldiers involved belonged to a Stryker Brigade Combat Team dubbed 'kill team' for its disproportionate killings operated in the volatile southern province of Kandahar in Afghanistan in 2010.

A couple of wars ago I was on a panel organized by the First Person arts festival here in Philadelphia with Colby Buzzell. He was promoting his new book ‘My War: Killing Time in Iraq.” He was a part of a Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Iraq. Currently 12 members of a Stryker Brigade are now on trial for murder in Afghanistan.

What was clear from his book - and his comments - is that the broad open-fire orders and a mission "to locate, capture and kill all non compliant forces" created an environment where everybody was seen as the enemy.

Additional Resource: War in the Digital Age

Global Day of Listening

"live without wars"
March 19-21*, 2011

Make time this weekend to be a part of an extraordinary three-day global listening project. The schedule is designed to allow you to join for hours of just minutes. Don’t be intimidated. I have been on past calls and was transformed. The vision is to bring people together, hear and share testimonies, and strengthen our strategies for nonviolent social change.

Here is a link that has the schedule of activities and the call-in numbers to join this inspiring community.

Three full days of dialogue gives you a lot to choose from, here is a detailed schedule.

There will be reports from the international solidarity delegation in Afghanistan, updates from members of Our Journey to Smile, presentations from Afghans for Peace, and moments of silence to commemorate the beginning of the 2003 war in Iraq.

You will hear testimonies from Iraqis working with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams, and updates from peace activists from around the world seeking to end their government’s roles in the wars. These stories, these testimonies, and these lives are why we work to end the wars.

Make time this weekend to be inspired.

Here are some links to the incredible groups that will be featured.

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (blog)
Afghans for Peace
Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

C.I.A. Drones Kill Civilians in Pakistan

ONE day after a CIA contractor (Raymond Davis) was absolved by a Pakistani court of a double murder charge, Pakistan and US relations were plunged into a new crisis over a CIA-directed drone missile strike that Pakistan said killed at least 36 civilians. Here is some background to the case involving the former special forces soldier.

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Pir Zubair Shah from New York.

Several missiles fired from American drone aircraft on Thursday struck a meeting of local people in northwest Pakistan who had gathered with Taliban mediators to settle a dispute over a chromite mine. The attack, a Pakistani intelligence official said, killed 26 of 32 people present, some of them Taliban fighters, but the majority elders and local people not attached to the militants.

The Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, issued an unusual and unusually strong condemnation of the attack. “It is highly regrettable that a jirga of peaceful citizens, including elders of the area, was carelessly and callously targeted with complete disregard to human life,” the statement said.

About four missiles fired from one or more drones hit the meeting, known as a jirga, of two tribes and Taliban mediators who had gathered on open ground at a market in Datta Khel, in North Waziristan, according to two residents who live nearby in Miram Shah.

“The Taliban will never gather in such a large number in broad daylight to be targeted by the drones,” according to a resident who did not want to be identified for fear of running afoul of the militants. “It has been a big mistake to target the jirga, as it will have severe consequences.”

The drone strikes on Thursday were the second such barrage in two days in Datta Khel, and the sixth in the tribal areas in the past week, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Resource: Emphasis Regional Diplomacy

Windows and Mirrors

Windows and Mirrors is a travelling mural exhibit that makes a powerful statement on a nearly invisible reality. Take a moment to see if it is coming to your city.

The forty-five unique panels created by international artists and US students help us imagine the experience of Afghan civilians - from death and destruction to hopes for peace. Drawings by Afghan students in Kabul – collected in June 2010 – provide an up close look at life in a war zone.

At over 900 square feet, this mural is not a single painting, but an oversized statement on the human cost of war. It is not the voice of one person, but that of an engaged artistic community. Their collective voice comes through with power and volume, speaking to us on both intellectual and emotional levels.

The "windows" they have created to help us feel the impact on the Afghan people, become "mirrors" reflecting our own identity as citizens of a nation at war — and call us to act.

***

Warrior Writers is a project to create a community among those returning from war, addressing the alienation they experience. Through spoken word, poetry and visual arts these former soldiers attempt to make sense of what they have done, and what they have seen.

Jen Pacanowski read We Are Not Your Heroes and Chantelle Bateman read Pretty Lady at closing session of the Philadelphia Windows and Mirrors exhibit. Check out the recordings.

People Power vs Washington

Juan Cole writes on the impact of US policy in the Arab World. Highlighting the power of non-military (people centered) alternatives that can transform oppressive governments.

“The claim that George W. Bush’s war of aggression against Iraq somehow opened up the Middle East to reform is an affront to the brave crowds that have risked their lives to change the American-backed order in that part of the world. Bush’s invasion was followed by no significant reforms in the region, whereas the outbreak of people power today has scared autocratic regimes into making unheard-of concessions. Iraq itself is no shining beacon on a hill for the people of the Middle East, but rather is a target of protests and an object lesson among the protesters of what to avoid.”

Wishful Thinking

General Petraeus is in Washington to testify to the wars. I have a prediction. The message will be one of progress - with conditions. After all, he will want more money, more troops and more weapons.

Sound familiar?

Josuha Foust looks into the annual declarations that we have reached a turning point. Mining a variety of sources going back to 2002 you see patterns of escalation always leading to the belief that the corner has been turned.

What each breakthrough has in common is the notion of crushing the enemy; at times Al-Qaeda at times Taliban. Collectively, this pattern exposes a myth. That military power can resolve a complex 30 year history of violence that has traumatized a people and damaged institutions of power.

“The sad fact of the matter is, the one year where there aren’t a bunch of stories about turning points in the war in Afghanistan is 2001, which is also the one year when there probably were a number of turning points in the war. That was the year the U.S. had the opportunity to corner the destroy al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but it chose not to. That was the year the U.S. had swept aside the Taliban and could have chosen to begin an era of responsible Afghan rule, but it chose not to. That was the year everything happened.

This year probably does mark another turning point in the war. The July 2011 deadline looms largely, though in a mostly symbolic sense. This is the year troop strength will peak, and is probably the last year in which the U.S. can have a definitive, nation-wide effect on the ability of the Taliban to wage war. It’s all downhill from here, in other words. A real turning point.”

That sober reflection on what might have been a 'military victory' in 2001 fails to note that the real turning point was in the weeks before the invasion. It was then that the US could have chosen to strengthen international institutions of justice to hold those accountable. Imagine where we would be today if we had invested a fraction of the war resources (and energy) in developing strong institutions that would protect all people. Not just the powerful.

Tip of the Iceberg

Every minute of every day the United States government spends $2.1 million on the military.

Over the weekend, the NYT’s featured a half page graphic on the back of the week in review section highlighting Pentagon weapons systems that are boondoggles...

“Unworkable or unnecessary systems [that] tend to have something in common: their costs are often uncontrollable. A 2009 Government Accountability Office study of 96 major defense acquisition programs found that almost two-thirds of them suffered major cost overruns — 40 percent above contract prices, over all — with average delays of nearly two years. Those overruns totaled close to $300 billion, about the amount of President Bill Clinton’s last full defense budget request a decade ago.“

The word mask's the real violence behind this weapons systems and the institution itself.

The author, John Arquilla is a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School and author of “Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of the American Military”. He is making the point that the proposed (long-term) cuts announced by Secretary Gates were not enough. His figures reveal the parameters of cuts and restraint that have insider support. Think bookends on the low end. Neither author is going to challenge the tremendous increase of power and money the Pentagon has received in the post 9/11 era.

But the reality is that the US Government spends more than $1 trillion dollars a year on the military. People around the world are not safer and we are not more secure. Take a look at the real numbers on the updated One Minute for Peace page.

AFSC Resource: End Reliance on Military Solutions