Afghanistan

Afghanistan-feature-web

While Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency on an antiwar platform in relation to the Iraq War, his administration has led a major escalation of military operations in Afghanistan. This includes a troop surge, as well as increased drone attacks over the border in Pakistan. While civilian deaths and displacement are rising, public support for the policy in many NATO countries is eroding. Democracy Now! speaks with independent journalists, civilians living in the conflict zones, scholars, and grassroots activists on Obama’s policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the realities on the ground.

  • Tariqali_button

    Tariq Ali: Obama’s Expansion of Af-Pak War "Has Blown Up in His Face"

    January 20, 2012 | Story

    Amid ongoing U.S.-Pakistani tensions and fears of a military coup in Pakistan, we are joined by British-Pakistani political commentator, historian, activist, filmmaker and novelist, Tariq Ali. Ali discusses Pakistan’s internal turmoil, as well as Pakistani attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy, the GOP presidential contest, and the prospect of a military strike against Iran. "[Pakistanis] are basically suffering because Obama, arrogantly, escalated the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and thought he could get away with it. That has now blown up in his face," Ali says. [includes rush transcript]

  • Michael_hastings_marines_urinate

    "The Operators": Michael Hastings on the Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan

    January 18, 2012 | Story

    We speak with reporter Michael Hastings about the "disastrous past year" in Afghanistan and the mentality a decade of war has bred there. The U.S. has "funneled billions of dollars in weapons and training into a chaotic place like Afghanistan, training these young guys to kill people, and then are shocked when they see the results," Hastings says of the outcry that followed last week’s appearance of a video showing four uniformed U.S. marines urinating on the corpses of three Afghan men, which has been widely condemned by officials in the United States and in Afghanistan. His new book, "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan," originated with his 2010 Rolling Stone article, "The Runaway General," about Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of the war in Afghanistan, and his inner circle. McChrystal was fired after the article was published. [includes rush transcript]

  • Michael_hastings_ndaa

    Expansion of Indefinite Detention under NDAA Compounds Extradition Fears of WikiLeaks’ Assange

    January 18, 2012 | Story

    Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings was with WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange when the pretrial military hearing for accused Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning was taking place in Fort Meade, Maryland, last month. Hastings says the military’s case against Manning, coupled with President Obama’s recent authorization of a measure expanding indefinite detention anywhere in the world in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), has added further urgency to Assange’s effort to avoid extradition from Britain. "Julian Assange’s fear is that he will be extradited to Sweden...and then there will be some kind of media campaign where the U.S. government or the Swedish government starts leaking things about 'Oh, Assange helped the Iranians' or 'Assange helped the Taliban with this information,'" Hastings notes. "And then they’ll say, 'Well, you know, we need to try him as a spy.' And though that case might be very, very difficult to prove, it’s the threat of it that, in my mind, is so damning." [includes rush transcript]

  • Chris_hedges_ndaa

    Journalist Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA

    January 17, 2012 | Story

    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has filed suit against President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes controversial provisions authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world, without charge or trial. Sections of the bill are written so broadly that critics say they could encompass journalists who report on terror-related issues, such as Hedges, for supporting enemy forces. "It’s clearly unconstitutional," Hedges says of the bill. "It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing." We speak with Hedges, now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and former New York Times foreign correspondent who was part of a team of reporters that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. We are also joined by Hedges’ attorney Carl Mayer, who filed the litigation on his behalf in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. [includes rush transcript]

  • Gitmo

    Guantánamo Detainees Launch Hunger Strike to Protest Prison’s 10th Anniversary

    January 10, 2012 | Story

    Detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay launched a hunger strike today marking the prison’s 10th anniversary, inspired in part by U.S. activists who have called for a national day of action. "They will be staging a series of peaceful protests that will involve sit-ins with signs and banners in the part of the prison that has communal areas, as well as hunger strikes," says Ramzi Kassem, counsel to a number of Guantánamo prisoners. He notes his clients pay "particularly close attention to any gestures of protest in the United States... And they’re always very moved by the fact that Americans stand in solidarity with what they’re going through and what their families are experiencing." On Wednesday, a major demonstration is planned in Washington, D.C., where organizers say they will form a human chain stretching from the White House to the Capitol, with participants wearing orange jumpsuits to represent the prisoners at Guantánamo and at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan who are still held without charge or trial. [includes rush transcript]

  • Morris_davis_omar_deghayes_gitmo_2

    Guantánamo Exclusive: Former Chief Prosecutor, Ex-Prisoner Call on Obama to Close Prison

    January 10, 2012 | Story

    On the 10th anniversary of when the United States began detaining terror suspects at its Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba, we speak with a former prisoner and the ex-chief U.S. prosecutor, who both call for the Obama administration to close the base. "People are locked up in isolation camps... People lost their hands, lost their eyes, lost their limbs," says Omar Deghayes, who was arrested in Pakistan as a terror suspect and held in U.S. custody from May 2002 until December 2007, most of that time at Guantánamo. "Some people were subjected to sleep deprivation. They weren’t allowed to sleep... And they had to live under those conditions for six years ... without being convicted of any crime, which is the most unacceptable thing." Asked if prisoners were tortured at Guantánamo, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at the military prison, answers, "I don’t think there’s any doubt." Davis resigned his position in 2007 in protest of what he called political interference in the military commissions of Guantánamo prisoners. "In many of the cases, we had evidence independent of that [torture] that was sufficient to establish guilt. But to use torture to gain intelligence and then also to turn around and use that as evidence in an American court is just not consistent with American principles," Davis says. [includes rush transcript]

  • Ndaa

    NDAA: Obama Signs Law Restricting Transfer of Guantánamo Prisoners and Expands Indefinite Detention

    January 10, 2012 | Story

    It has been 10 years since the United States began detaining people at its military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. We speak with someone who has worked to defend the rights of those prisoners for the last decade: Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. While dozens continue to face an unknown future at Guantánamo, we ask Ratner to comment on President Obama’s recent approval of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which some legal experts say would authorize the military to indefinitely jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect — without charge or trial. "The Center represented the first people out of Guantánamo over 10 years ago. At that time, the detention of people, the military trials, was all done by a presidential order. When Obama took office, he continued the same actions. And recently, in the NDAA, those actions, the ability to detain people, the ability to use military commissions, etc., were actually put into law, and Obama, contrary to his claim that he was going to veto it, signed it, making him the first president ever in the United States to sign into law indefinite detention as part of the policy of the United States." Ratner adds that "the NDAA puts very heavy restrictions on moving people out of Guantánamo... We are now in the longest period, almost a year, in which nobody has been transferred out of Guantánamo." [includes rush transcript]

  • Danny_chen

    Death of Private Danny Chen: Military Admits Chen was Target of Race-Based Hazing on Daily Basis

    January 09, 2012 | Story

    U.S. Army investigators have released explosive new details about the death of Private Danny Chen, who allegedly took his own life just weeks after he was deployed to Afghanistan last October. The family of the 19-year-old Chinese-American soldier says the Army told them Chen had been abused by comrades on an almost daily basis, including racist hazing, with soldiers throwing rocks at him, calling him ethnic slurs and forcing him to do push-ups or hang upside down with his mouth full of water. "This is not a situation where you can expect Danny to make complaints to his higher-ups, when they’re the ones that are causing this hazing," says Liz OuYang of the civil rights group OCA-New York. "It was incumbent upon the officer, the highest leader in this platoon, to take action... Had he reported it to higher-ups, there is a great possibility that Danny may still be alive today." Chen’s family and supporters have called for eight soldiers charged in his death to be tried in the United States instead of overseas. [includes rush transcript]

  • Drone

    Drones, Asia and Cyber War: Pentagon Shifts Priorities in New Review; Budget Still Exceeds Bush Era

    January 09, 2012 | Story

    During the Republican presidential debates this weekend, candidates took aim at the military strategy President Obama unveiled late last week, which vows cuts in military spending and a stepped-up focus on the Asia-Pacific region, as well as increased use of drone strikes that have targeted militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and throughout Horn of Africa. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, about Obama’s new strategy, which leaves spending at levels equal to the Bush administration, and examine alternatives presented by the GOP front-runner in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney. "His plan would be sort of laughable, if it wasn’t so obscene," Hartung says. "He’s talking about, let’s keep the military budget at 4 percent of gross domestic product, as if it was some sort of entitlement program for the Pentagon... He would spend something like $6.5 trillion over 10 years, which would be about a trillion-and-a-half more than the Obama plan... If he’s not going to raise taxes, it’s going to come straight out of domestic programs, which are already being hit quite substantially." [includes rush transcript]

  • Chen-play

    U.S. Troops Charged After Fellow GI, Hazing Victim Danny Chen Found Dead in Afghanistan

    December 23, 2011 | Story

    The family of 19-year-old Danny Chen has demanded an investigation after the Army private was found dead in Afghanistan of what military authorities say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Chen’s family says, before his death, he reported being subjected to racist hazing, with soldiers throwing rocks at him and calling him ethnic slurs. Now the Army has charged eight soldiers involved in his death with crimes ranging from dereliction of duty to manslaughter. We speak to Danny’s first cousin, Banny Chen, who says, "We still don’t know if [his death] was suicide or if someone else pulled the trigger." We’re also joined by New York City Council Member Margaret Chin, who helped Chen’s family obtain a meeting with the Pentagon and is demanding the military screen recruits for racial bias. [includes rush transcript]