Today's Stories

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

February 25, 2009

"For This I Blame America"

Afghanistan: Chaos Central

By CHRIS SANDS

As the summer of 2005 began its slow fade into autumn, a piece of newspaper wrapped around a kebab said Osama bin Laden had moved to Iraq. It seemed everyone had forgotten there was a war on here. American soldiers used those remaining days of sunshine to buy carpets in Kabul’s Chicken Street bazaar, not caring when they were charged over the odds. Elsewhere, mercenaries downed cheap Russian vodka in phoney restaurants before wandering up a few stairs to sleep with Chinese prostitutes whose pimps bribed local government officials. The brothels were often in the same neighborhoods as the mansions that militia commanders were building themselves with CIA funds and drug money.

Back then, this beautiful city was the ideal place for a bit of post-conflict profiteering. Hastily-created NGOs continued to flood in, eager for a slice of the action. So did journalists determined to write about democracy, the suave English-speaking president and the local golf course. It was the calm before the storm. Victory had been declared and, while Afghans were starting to feel the weight of its baggage, the rest of the world was still having fun at their expense.

But the decadence and ignorance were never going to be allowed to last for long, and the Taliban knew their time was coming again. The warning signs were around for anyone who cared to look.

I’d been in Afghanistan less than a week when aid groups revealed that deteriorating security had put their projects under threat. They feared they had become targets for the insurgency. A little while afterwards, the governor of Maidan Wardak, a province bordering Kabul, told me all was okay there. Then the PR finished and he cut loose. A new generation of militants had shown its face, he said. They were young men disillusioned with the occupation and some were trained in Pakistan. Trouble was also evident near the eastern city of Jalalabad, where a villager complained that his cousin had vanished since being arrested by the Americans roughly three years earlier. We talked in a dirt yard full of kids and I think they were the only ones who expected his return.

The south, though, was where the pieces of the jigsaw began to fit together. Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and in late 2005 the movement was again drawing strength from its birthplace. There, for the first time, I caught sight of a reality our politicians had made us believe did not exist.

A man working at the football stadium reminisced fondly about the old days when executions happened on the pitch. If capital punishment was still common, he said, the new government wouldn’t be so crooked. This was something I would hear repeatedly, until eventually it was said by Afghans across the country. The police were the worst offenders, looking for bribes at every opportunity to supplement their low wages. Another Kandahari had joined the Taliban as a teenager in the 1990s. “At that time we were very happy,” he said. “It was like we were very poor and had suddenly found a lot of money.” Talibs are good people and they can never be beaten, he continued. Now they have no choice but to fight because otherwise the Americans will send them to Guantanamo Bay. Most importantly for the future, he revealed that a number of local religious clerics had just declared a jihad.

Insurgent attacks and violent crime were already a problem in Kandahar by then. It was like “living under a knife” said a 53-year-old in the city. Yet even as civilians died, the Taliban were rarely the subject of people’s fury. Directly or indirectly, they blamed the government and its allies.

Taliban on the Rise

In the spring of 2006 Kabul’s imams decided to speak out against all this and more. Officials were lining their own pockets and alcohol was easily available, they said. They were also angry at the house raids conducted by foreign soldiers in rural areas and accused them of molesting women during the searches. Most said the time for jihad was approaching and one announced that armed resistance was now the answer.

So when rioters tore through the capital on  May 29, it was no big surprise. The spark for that particular day of unrest was a fatal traffic accident involving US troops, but the explosion had been primed long before. Protesters shouted “Death to America” and by the end of the anarchy at least 17 people had lost their lives. The situation was now ripe for the Taliban to harness national discontent and kick-start a major revolt, and this is exactly what they did.

When British troops had first arrived in Helmand that February, they had come ostensibly to allow reconstruction. The then defense minister John Reid said he would be “perfectly happy” if they did not have to fire a single shot. Instead, they soon found themselves bogged down in some of their worst fighting since the Second World War, at times being drawn into hand-to-hand combat. Over 100 have died in the ensuing years.

The Taliban’s remit also grew stronger in areas close to Kabul and two hours from the capital people were warning that the government might collapse. I couldn’t find anyone in Ghazni who admitted to taking the insurgents’ side: they usually said poverty and a lack of reconstruction were causing people to rebel. Looking at the broken roads and crumbling homes, it wasn’t hard to understand what they meant.

Not long before, police in one of the province’s districts had tried to stop the Taliban’s favorite mode of transport by banning the use of motorbikes. The militants responded by imposing travel restrictions on the whole of that area’s population. At night they would go to mosques and tell worshippers not to drive to the provincial capital. “They say ‘if you don’t cooperate with us we will kill you’,” was how one man described their tactics. “What would be the natural human response to that? Of course you will cooperate.”

An emerging pattern

A pattern was emerging. The more the Taliban turned to violence, the more they came to be regarded as an omnipresent force that could not be stopped. The bloodshed made people long for the stability of the old regime, if not its repressive laws. Villagers across the south and east had gained almost nothing from the US-led invasion and, in fact, many had lost the little they previously had: good security. Among people in Logar, another of those sad provinces bordering Kabul, the anger was palpable. “Our biggest problem is with the foreigners – we just hate them. Our families, our children, our women – everyone hates them,” said an elder. “Let’s pretend I’m a young man,” said someone else. “I have graduated from school but I can’t go to university and there is no factory to work in. So how can I feed myself? I can just join the insurgents – it’s easy.”

The Taliban first rose up in 1994 when Afghanistan was controlled by warlords still high from the CIA support they had been receiving a few years earlier. A similar thing was happening again and the movement’s original members were quick to see that.

Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil lost his father during the Soviet occupation and joined the Taliban, he said, “to give the country freedom”. He went on to become Mullah Omar’s spokesman and later his foreign minister. We talked on a freezing January morning in 2007 when Mutawakil was being kept under watch in Kabul. He knew his government had made mistakes, particularly in letting jihadis from across the world train and fight here. But he was adamant that the international community’s decision to isolate the regime had only made it more extreme. “The interesting thing from that time, and lots of people are remembering this now, is the tight security,” he said.

Kandahar was frightening that spring of 2007. The police were accused of carrying out kidnappings and robberies, and the scars of suicide bombings pockmarked the streets. There was a lot of anger, despair and black humor around. Residents expressed a grudging admiration for the old ways of the Taliban simply because the alternatives had come to appear so dire. To them, democracy meant virtual anarchy and, in the villages, a brutal occupation. “If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us,” said a father-of-two. He had fled Kandahar during the Taliban government because he was against its restrictions on education. “But I was never worried about my family,” he added. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried.”
Comments like this came thick and fast, mixed in with jokes. Some of the men insulted the president, Hamid Karzai, and his wife, laughing and swearing as they did so. A woman I met was sure the city had been better under the Taliban. “If we did not have a full stomach we could at least get some food and go to sleep,” she said.

Slipping into Chaos

On and on it went, a litany of complaints and stories that portrayed a nation slipping deep into chaos. A religious leader from the district of Panjwayi described how 18 of his relatives had been killed in an air strike. Then three Talibs from Helmand defended the insurgency as being a natural reaction to events. Basically, they felt they had nothing to lose.

Reports of civilians getting bombed from above came regular as clockwork that spring and summer. First some villagers or local officials would say innocent people were dead and the Nato or US-led coalition would deny it. Then all parties would agree civilian blood had been spilt, but argue over casualty figures. Hamid Karzai kept demanding that the carnage stop, but it never did.

In Kabul, a senator from Helmand said it was killing the entire country. He was among members of parliament’s upper chamber who had called for a ceasefire and negotiations with insurgent groups. They had also said a date should be set for the withdrawal of foreign forces. By then the parliament, supposedly the shining light of a new democracy, was actually a symbol of the Taliban’s resurgence. Police in riot gear stood watch and the building was falling to pieces, with paint flaking away and the walls starting to crack. Not only was there sympathy for the militants inside, there were also men whose viciousness had caused the movement to form in the first place. Most Afghans wanted the warlords brought to justice, but instead the international community had let them stand for election, and here they were showing off their power yet again.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef knew the impact that was having. He used to serve as the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan and, after initially being sent to Guantanamo, he was another of the old guard now living under constant surveillance in Kabul. He refused to talk about his stint in US custody, but he was quick to highlight that men with blood on their hands were now the West’s great hope. “At the time of the Taliban if someone killed another person it was possible to capture him, send him to court, punish him and execute him. Today, if someone goes to a village and kills 100 people, tomorrow he is given more privileges by the government,” he told me. “The Americans and the world community brought the warlords to power. They are supporting them for their benefit against the Taliban, but they know these people are not liked.”

By summer 2007 the horror could not be ignored, even in Kabul. Suicide bombings were the main weapon of choice and they struck fear into Afghans like nothing else, having been unheard of during the Soviet occupation.

For all their rhetoric about fighting for freedom, justice and the Almighty, it was also obvious that some in the Taliban were willing to murder anyone to achieve their aim.

This was clear in the pieces of charred flesh and hair that lay scattered in the dust after a bus was blown up near a police headquarters in the city on  June 17. And it was evident amidst the smell of shit that filled Pul-e-Charkhi jail, where a prisoner was quick to declare his intentions. “I tell you, when I get out of here the first thing I will do is kill journalists and infidels,” he said. “I will kill journalists because they are all spies.”

‘For this I blame America’

As 2007 drew to an end, men who hated the Taliban were starting to resemble them. A former Northern Alliance commander from the province of Badakhshan summed it up nicely: “Now when any foreigner is killed every Afghan says ‘praise be to God’,” he told me. We were chatting at his home in an area of Kabul where the poor had been forced out so warlords and foreign contractors could move in. He owned a small house and, in front of that, a half-built mansion that he could not afford to finish off. Possibly, the only optimists left were the American ambassador and the locals who had the money to take long holidays in Dubai.

Afghanistan’s Sikh and Hindu community had been about 50,000 strong before 1992. Now it was down to 5,000. The exodus had been instigated by the Mujahideen, not the Taliban. With the same old faces back in power again, no one was happy. “The Taliban told us we had to do all our religious ceremonies in private, but they did not stop us from doing them. It was a government that was not recognised by the world, but it was better than now,” said a Sikh.

Even the section of society that should have benefited most from the US-led invasion was full of sorrow. Female MPs told me they felt ashamed for not being able to help their constituents. One said she was sure the time was approaching when she would be a prisoner in her own home again. “For all this I blame America. When the Russians were here the people picked up guns to fight them. Now people are picking up guns to fight the Americans,” she said. “Soon my daughter will finish school and then she wants to start private education,” said another. “But I cannot let her because I cannot give her a bodyguard.”

‘Everything is screwed up’

In January 2008 the streets were a bleak monochrome and the graveyards that dominate Kabul’s landscape gave me a glimpse of the future. I interviewed a judge at the Supreme Court who admitted what everyone already knew: certain people here are above the law. He was too scared to name names, but he described the control warlords have over his colleagues as “totally ordinary”. Barely had he spoken and the Taliban attacked a luxury hotel in the city. Foreigners were shocked. Afghans just shrugged.

Kandahar was so bad I felt sick before returning there in early spring. Luckily, a friend of mine reassured me that, as a Pashtun, he would offer unconditional protection. “Mullah Omar destroyed Afghanistan because of Osama bin Laden, but he didn’t give him up,” he said. A day later a Taliban commander from Helmand described how the resistance had struggled to find support in the early years. But after innocent people had been detained or killed the jihad had burst into life. Now even the Afghan army secretly gave them bullets and treated their wounded.

The story of the insurgency, though, no longer needed a great deal of travelling. In April I took the short drive from Kabul city to Paghman and all I found where the offices of Zafar Radio used to be was a pile of burnt trash. Masked men had torched the premises for being “un-Islamic”.

In the summer, it got worse. I met an Afghan American who said that “everything is screwed up”. Then on  July 7, a car bomber attacked the Indian embassy. The huge explosion left corpses scattered around and the wounded dazed and bloodied. By the next morning people were venting their anger at the government, saying it was unable to provide security. When Barack Obama arrived during his presidential campaign, optimism was hard to find. In an area of the capital where Hamid Karzai had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the spring, a qualified doctor sold samosas from a roadside stall because it was the only job he could get. “The politics will not change,” he said.
2008 was the grimmest year since the invasion. On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, the annual death toll for US troops here had reached new heights: the 113 killed up to September were two more than for the whole of 2007.

Civilians are paying a heavier price. Caught between a rapidly developing insurgency and an occupation force over-reliant on air strikes, they are dropping like flies: according to the UN, 1,445 were killed from January to August 2008 alone.

The Taliban’s strength is growing on Kabul’s doorstep, in the provinces of Maidan Wardak and Logar. The main highway south is a turkey shoot that no one sensible travels along. In the east of the country, the rebels have taken new ground as they move freely across the border. In the north, warlords are reasserting their dominance – raping and beheading at will. The violence affects us all. Kabul is a claustrophobic, paranoid place. Rockets occasionally land in the streets, ugly concrete barriers have appeared and Afghans kidnap each other for ransom. Last autumn, on a bright October morning, a British aid worker was murdered in a part of the city regarded as safe.

More foreign troops are due to be sent. But they risk the kind of backlash experienced by the Soviets, and the long-term aim is unclear. After all these years, there are no firm ideas about the way forward. For now the bitter cold has brought the usual lull. But how much more violence will come this spring?

Chris Sands is a British freelance journalist, and frequent contributor to CounterPunch, who has been working independently in Afghanistan since August 2005. This article appears in the February edition of this excellent monthly, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

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