Afghans killed for demonstrating against NATO violence

This video from the USA is called US Forces Admit Killing Two Pregnant Afghan Women & Teenager.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Three die at Afghan anti-Nato demo

Friday 05 August 2011

by Our Foreign Desk

Afghan police opened fire on an anti-Nato demonstration in Zabul province today, killing three civilians.

Zabul police chief Mohammad Nabi Elham said angry residents had taken to the streets as word spread that Nato troops had killed three people in a raid on homes in Qalad district the previous night.

“A night raid by Nato forces killed three civilians and that provoked people to go out on the streets,” Mr Elham said.

…

A Nato spokesman in Kabul said that there had been an “operation targeting insurgents” in the Qalad district of Zabul province on Thursday night – but he insisted that the Western military alliance had “no reports about civilian casualties during this operation.”

The Nato raid in Zabul was mounted on the same day that the Belgium-based International Crisis Group think tank released a damning report which contends that the US-led counterinsurgency campaign in the underdeveloped country “has been at best unsuccessful, if not counterproductive.”

Before anyone dismisses the ICG as “anti Western” blah blah … they have, quite the contrary, a history of lobbying for “humanitarian” neo-colonial wars. Their trustees etc. include US neoconservatives with Bush administration pro-war histories, Saudi royals, etc. So if even they criticize this war of the USA and its allies now …

The Aid and Conflict in Afghanistan report, which was released on Thursday, warns that, “as security deteriorates further, entire communities could be denied access to humanitarian assistance and basic services.”

The ICG report notes grimly that the amount of international aid disbursed in Afghanistan since 2001 – $57 billion (£35bn) against $90bn (£55bn) pledged – “is only a fraction of what has been spent on the war effort.”

It contends that the impact of aid from outside “will remain limited unless donors, particularly the largest, the US, stop subordinating programming to counterinsurgency objectives, devise better mechanisms to monitor implementation, adequately address corruption and wastage of aid funds, and ensure that recipient communities identify needs and shape assistance policies.”

Britain: War veteran Ben Griffin will join peace campaigners at a vigil ouside Colchester Military Prison tomorrow to show solidarity with Michael Lyons, who is detained there for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan: here.

The Obama Doctrine and the Dangers of the $185 Billion Increase in US Nuclear War Preparations. Dr. Joseph Gerson, Truthout: “Let me begin with a few words about the US political landscape, the fluid state of the global (dis)order and the emerging Obama Doctrine. The sad truth is that President Bush has been succeeded by another US war president. The US remains at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama escalated the Pakistan and Yemen wars and the aggressive military exercises in the Yellow and South China Seas. Washington has deepened its alliances across the Asia-Pacific with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and India and in Europe with NATO’s new ‘strategic concept'”: here.