{"id":95314,"date":"2019-11-17T15:21:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T22:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=95314"},"modified":"2019-11-17T15:21:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T22:21:35","slug":"in-the-clutches-of-depression-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/11\/17\/in-the-clutches-of-depression-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"IN THE CLUTCHES OF DEPRESSION-AFGHANISTAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALI SUKHANVER<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

 Night raids and aerial strikes have led to\nmounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan,\u201d says a detailed report recently\nissued by the Human Rights Watch. The report reveals that CIA-backed Afghan\nstrike forces have once again made the lives of innocent Afghan citizens a\nhell. Night-time raids into homes in remote villages, forced disappearances,\nattacks on healthcare facilities and summary executions are the tools being\nused against the local people. In civilized societies such cruelties are termed\nas \u2018atrocities\u2019 and \u2018war crimes\u2019. The report has referred to at least 14 such cases\nacross nine provinces over the last 2 years. Analysts are of the opinion that the\nbasic reason behind this brutal behaviour of the Afghan troops is that most of\nthem got their professional training from the officers of the US Army and of\nthe US intelligence agencies. The training masters have taught them to show\nlittle concern for the local civilians\u2019 life. That is why this training has\nmade them callous and merciless to their own people. They don\u2019t hesitate in\nshooting them direct in their heads when they are in their custody during the\nnight raids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

is\nthe title of an article written by Mohammed Harun Arsalai and Mohsin Khan\nMomand jointly penned down an article with the title \u2018Civilian Deaths in\nAfghanistan Keep Climbing.\u2019 The article was published in the Nation USA last\nAugust, 2019. The article narrated the murder story of Syed Wali who ran one of\nthe only two shops in Sarkot village of Eastern Afghanistan\u2019s Nangarhar\nProvince. Wali sold sugar, soap, and cigarettes to everyone in town, including\nthe region\u2019s local Taliban members. A shopkeeper nowhere could stop anyone from\ndoing purchases from his shop particularly when there are no other shops in the\narea. The article says that \u2018The US-built\u2019 National Directorate of Security\n(NDS) one night raided the Sarkot village and stormed the shopkeeper\u2019s house.\nThe officers in the raiding party blamed Syed Wali of doing business\ntransactions with Taliban and before he could give them any answer, he was shot\nin head. And this way the story of Syed Wali\u2019s life reached a pathetic ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another\nincident of the same type was recently narrated by the Guardian also. The paper\nsaid, On 11 August this year, troops from one of the CIA-backed units\naccompanied by at least one US soldier and a translator \u2013 served as judge, jury\nand executioner for 11 men in Kulgago, a village in the south of Paktia\nprovince. Four were executed in the family compound of Dr. Ulfatullah, a\npharmacist who lost two sons and two cousins.\u201d According to media reports the\nyoung men in Kulgago were targeted as insurgents but the facts are otherwise.\nShafiullah and Hayatullah were the government employees and they were working\nas teachers in the Education Ministry of Afghanistan. A witness said talking to\nthe media-men, The Afghan soldiers who swept through Kulgago village one late\nAugust night shot three of Dr. Ulfatullah\u2019s relatives carefully, a single\nbullet through their left eye, faces otherwise untouched as blood pooled below\ntheir bodies on the floor of the family home. However the last killing was less\nprecise, and left the face of university student Ansarullah badly disfigured\nand deformed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reports\nsay that most of the time, the victims of the Afghan soldiers belong to the\nPashtun tribes as most of the Taliban are Pashtun tribesmen. The foreign\ninvaders know it very well that the Pashtuns would always remain a threat to\ntheir hegemonic designs as they are the hardest ones to be defeated. So the Afghan\nsoldiers are being \u2018misused\u2019 in the process of making the Pashtuns weaker. The\nrecent episode of harassing the Pakistani diplomats in Kabul is also a part of\nthe same \u2018Kill Pashtun Movement\u2019 as the Trainers have convinced the Afghan\nauthorities that Pakistan and Taliban are the two sides of the same coin. It\nmeans wherever the freedom fighters are fighting against the foreign occupation,\nthey would be linked with Pakistan; be it the Indian Held Kashmir, the\nKhalistan, the Nagaland and even Assam. This blame game is not fair; most of\nthe time the freedom movements are indigenous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nprinciple, on paper, yes we have reached an agreement \u2014 that it is done but it\nis not final until the president of the United States also agrees to it,\u201d said Zalmay\nKhalilzad, the American special envoy to Afghanistan talking to the Afghan\nchannel ToloNews, just two months back. He further revealed that the United\nStates would pull 5,400 troops from Afghanistan within 135 days of signing an\nagreement with the Taliban and this pulling out \nwould be the start of the expected gradual withdrawal of all 14,000\nUnited States troops that could end America\u2019s longest running war. Khalilzad\nhad been leading nearly a year of talks with the Taliban. People were expecting\nsomething marvelous coming out of these talks but still the political scenario\nin Afghanistan is not very hopeful and encouraging; it is rather frightening\nand depressing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ALI SUKHANVER  Night raids and aerial strikes have led to mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan,\u201d says a detailed report recently issued by the Human Rights Watch. The report reveals that CIA-backed Afghan strike forces have once again made the lives of innocent Afghan citizens a hell. Night-time raids into homes in remote villages, forced disappearances, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ali-sukhanver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}