The Wire: Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2024. This is an annual award set up by English PEN in the memory of playwright Harold Pinter. Shortly after having been named for the prize, Roy announced that her share of the prize money will be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. She named Alaa Abd el-Fattah, British-Egyptian writer and activist, a ‘Writer of Courage’ who she would share her award with. The following is her acceptance speech for the prize, delivered on the evening of October 10, 2024, at the British Library.      Full news...

The Guardian: “So pervasive is the Taliban’s institutionalised gender oppression, and so slender are the spaces in which women and girls may live freely, that in Afghanistan today almost any act can be characterised as an act of resistance.” That conclusion from Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, encapsulates how unbearably suffocating it is to be female in Afghanistan today      Full news...

local12.com: SIGAR noted in its report that the risk of Taliban-created nonprofits receiving U.S. funds highlights the importance of the Department of State following its vetting requirements. As of September, many of the more than 1,000 organizations that have registered with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Economy have ties to the Taliban, according to the watchdog.      Full news...

The New York Times: General Abdul Raziq was one of America’s fiercest allies in the fight against the Taliban. He was young and charismatic — a courageous warrior who commanded the loyalty and respect of his men. He helped beat back the Taliban in the crucial battlefield of Kandahar, even as the insurgents advanced across Afghanistan. But his success, until his 2018 assassination, was built on torture, extrajudicial killing and abduction. In the name of security, he transformed the Kandahar police into a combat force without constraints. His officers, who were trained, armed and paid by the U.S., took no note of human rights or due process, according to a Times investigation into thousands of cases. Most of his victims were never seen again.      Full news...

Undark Magazine: In April 2017, the U.S. military dropped the most powerful conventional bomb ever used in combat here: the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, known unofficially as the “mother of all bombs,” or MOAB. “All the people living in Asad Khel village became ill after that bomb was dropped,” says Wali, a 27-year-old farmer, pulling up the leg of his shalwar kameez to show me the red bumps stretched across his calves. “I have it all over my body.” He says he got the skin disease from contamination left by the MOAB.      Full news...

Fox News: Issa said the cable also revealed that “there was no expectation” by the State Department that there would be sustainability in the region and knew that the billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment that was left behind was going to fall into the Taliban’s hands. Issa said the cable went out on July 13, 2021, the response came back a week later on July 20, and Kabul officially fell weeks later on Aug. 15.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: The Taliban’s failure to make the leap from insurgency to governance is coming under scrutiny this week as they meet with representatives of countries that are growing increasingly concerned that after almost year in power, the extremists have again transformed Afghanistan into a global terrorist haven. The July 25-27 conference in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, follows the latest report on Afghanistan by the United Nations Security Council, which contains alarming details on the activities of terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, now enjoying the Taliban’s protection in Afghanistan. The report indicated that Afghanistan has essentially reverted to the state it was in before Sept.      Full news...

Tolo TV: Family members claim that US forces took their wounded six-year-old daughter with them after the attack, and they have no information about her fate.“We raised our voices, but no one heard us,” said Safir Khan, a member of the family. “These children do not have a father and do not have a supporter,” said Hassan Khan, a relative of the family.      Full news...

The Intercept: IF YOU ARE waiting for an American general to resign or be fired over the drone strike that killed seven children and three men in Kabul last month, you will likely experience the meaning of infinity.You might think that the Pentagon would be scrambling to find a general to take the fall for what can no longer be denied: that the U.S. military killed 10 Afghans on August 29, called it a “righteous strike” against terrorists, and then had to admit the truth after journalists found out what happened. But don’t bet your bitcoin on it.      Full news...

AFP: "The rocket came and hit the car full of kids inside our house," said Aimal Ahmadi. He said 10 members of the family died in the air strike -- including his own daughter and five other children. On Monday, when AFP visited the scene, Aimal was impatiently waiting for other relatives to arrive to help him organise burials for most of his family.      Full news...

CNN: As many as five rockets were fired at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Monday local time, a US official told CNN.The C-RAM defense system installed at the airport engaged with the rockets, the official said. There are no reports of any casualties at this time.      Full news...

The Indian Express: The Pentagon said on Friday that a deadly attack at the gate to Kabul airport in Afghanistan yesterday was carried out by one suicide bomber, not two. “I can confirm for you that we do not believe that there was a second explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, that it was one suicide bomber,” Army Major General William Taylor was quoted as saying by Reuters.      Full news...

Yes: I am feeling a pervasive sense of déjà vu in reading the news of how the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan within weeks of the U.S. withdrawal. Nearly 20 years after the U.S. invaded one of the world’s poorest nations in a retaliatory response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the so-called enemy force is back in power. Afghan feminist activists have spent the past two decades warning the U.S. against resorting to violent solutions like war and collaborating with armed fundamentalists.      Full news...

Washington Post: On Aug. 15, the Taliban completed its conquest of Afghanistan by seizing Kabul. These events were tragically similar to those of 25 years ago, when Kabul fell to the Taliban in September 1996. Americans have recently watched chaotic scenes unfold in Afghanistan: panicked Afghans desperately clinging to evacuating U.S. planes; Taliban fighters going house-to-house hunting journalists, prominent women and Afghans who worked for the toppled government; and the Taliban beating Afghan protesters. While many Afghans face suffering under Taliban rule, women and girls have the most to fear — and lose.      Full news...

Counter Punch: As Taliban fighters enter Kabul, everybody from the US government to local policemen seeks to reach a deal with the new rulers of Afghanistan. Alternatively, they want to flee the country as soon as possible.      Full news...

Counter Punch: One of the doctrinal principles behind U.S. corporate-imperial news coverage and commentary and mainstream US politics is that the United States is a fundamentally benevolent force for good facing difficulties created by evil others and challenging situations not of Washington’s own making. Debate is permissible on immediate strategy and tactics but is not allowed on these core American Exceptionalist positions.      Full news...

Counter Punch: President Biden put a popular flag-waving wrapping on America’s forced withdrawal from Afghanistan in his 4 PM speech on Monday. It was as if all this was following Biden’s own intentions, not a demonstration of the totally incompetent assurances by the CIA and State Department as recently as last Friday that the Taliban was over a month away from being able to enter Kabul. Instead of saying that the massive public support for the Taliban replacing the United States showed the incompetent hubris of U.S. intelligence agencies – which itself would have justified Biden’s agreement to complete the withdrawal with all haste – he doubled down on his defense of the Deep State and its mythology.      Full news...

WSWS: US troops pulled out of the sprawling Bagram Air Base at three in the morning last Friday, without notifying the Afghan government forces meant to replace them, and cutting off the power on the way out, an act that triggered an invasion of the base by a small army of looters. This ignoble retreat is a fitting symbol of the debacle wrought by 20 years of US war and occupation in Afghanistan.      Full news...

CounterPunch: “We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and it will Help Bankrupt us. One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s modern history — to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947…” – Chalmers Johnson. Dismantling the Empire – America’s Last Best Hope      Full news...

CounterPunch: President Joe Biden, in announcing an ostensible end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, is continuing his streak of paying eloquent lip service to progressive causes while maintaining the implied status quo. In a televised address from the White House on April 14, Biden said, “it’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home.” But just a day later, the New York Times reported without a hint of irony that “the Pentagon, American spy agencies and Western allies are refining plans to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region.” This means we are ending the war, but not really.      Full news...

The Hill: While the peace talks in Afghanistan are stalled until the administration of Joe Biden takes new action, calls for more power sharing mechanisms to represent manifold groups in the political system are gaining momentum. This is a tempting idea, and Afghans have had a taste of power sharing in recent years, starting with the appointment of Hamid Karzai as president with the diverse ethnic cabinet, and then the deal between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah after an election dispute.      Full news...

Business Insider: Civilian deaths skyrocketed in Afghanistan under President Donald Trump, whose administration relaxed the rules of engagement for airstrikes in 2017, according to a new study from the Costs of War Project at Brown University."The number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent from 2016, the last full year of the Obama Administration, to 2019, the most recent year for which there is complete data from the United Nations," Neta C. Crawford, who led the study, wrote in a report on the findings.      Full news...

The Khaama Press: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent remarks on Twitter saying “no US servicemen have been killed in Afghanistan” sparked a backlash from politicians in the Afghan government. As no US servicemen were killed in the last year, thousands of civilians and Afghan security members were killed in the violence during 2020.      Full news...

Common Dreams:An extraordinary investigation by Australian journalist Andrew Quilty published Friday by The Intercept reveals U.S.-backed Afghan government paramilitary death squads have been waging a campaign of terror targeting civilians—including children—in Wardak province as part of the American military occupation of the nation that began nearly two decades ago.      Full news...

Common Dreams: The Trump administration's 2017 decision to loosen military rules of engagement meant to protect civilians was followed by a sharp increase in civilian deaths, a report released on Monday revealed.The report (pdf), by Neta C. Crawford of the Brown University Watson Institute's Costs of War Project—one of the premier authorities on civilian casualties in the 19-year so-called War on Terror—found a 330% increase in the number of Afghan civilians killed by U.S.-led airstrikes from 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, to 2019      Full news...

The American Conservative: Amere five months late, negotiations between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan are set to begin soon—well, probably.The talks were delayed by Kabul’s slow decision to release a group of 400 Taliban prisoners whose freedom, as part of a larger prisoner exchange, was a condition set by prior agreement between the Taliban and the United States. That decision was finally announced Sunday, and the next round of diplomacy is expected to begin within a week of the forthcoming release.      Full news...

The Guardian: The main hospital in Zabul, southern Afghanistan, was abandoned after a Taliban attack last September destroyed most of the building and killed nearly 40 people. But when coronavirus slipped into the province this spring, desperate health authorities, casting around for ways to fight this new enemy, settled on its shattered remains.      Full news...

Anadolu Agency: Amid growing calls for a cease-fire, the UN mission in Afghanistan on Monday revealed that raging violence in the war-torn country has killed 533 civilians including over 150 children, in the first quarter of 2020. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said the toll highlighted the urgent need for all parties of the conflict to do more to protect civilians from harm, especially in view of the looming threat posed by the novel coronavirus.      Full news...

Digital Journal: Nearly 75 percent of US veterans and almost 70 percent of their family members support a full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, a new poll released Wednesday by a conservative activist group shows. The US has about 13,600 troops in Afghanistan. It has already started withdrawing some under an agreement with the Taliban. Within 135 days they are to withdraw down to 8,600.      Full news...

The New York Times: KABUL, Afghanistan — Two gunmen opened fire on a crowded event in Kabul attended by the opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah on Friday, and officials said at least 32 civilians were killed and dozens wounded. The attackers struck Afghanistan’s capital less than a week after the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement aimed at ending the 18-year-old war.      Full news...