Begin policy of Nonviolence

Asia with Southwest Central Britannica image

End U.S. occupation, war, “strategic partnership” pressure in Asia

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Notes from Kelly, Koehler and Afghan Youth on U.S. relations with Afghanistan

“We are startlingly, terrifyingly lost, and we’re getting ever more so,” Voices for Creative Nonviolence coordinator and frequent traveler to Afghanistan Kathy Kelly writes about the U.S. in Afghanistan. “If we see a sign here in the darkness, an opportunity to make contact with the people around us, we should take it gratefully.…”

From her travels, Kelly describes, “People in an Afghan village pass[ing] sleepless nights, anxious that their home might be targeted by a U.S. led night raid.

“Villagers enraged when they hear stories of elders and imams being roughed up and detained, of wives and children being killed, of belongings stolen and property destroyed.

“Increasingly, U.S. military battles against so-called insurgency create stronger resistance as more Afghans determine increasingly to fight back.”

In the news, NATO investigates early August NATO airstrike-killings of eight 

Afghan civilians among them seven children in Helmand province.

Central Asia Britannica image

Notwithstanding continuous slaughter, U.S. officials, Kelly recounts, are pushing on Afghanistan “a ‘Strategic Partnership Declaration,’” believed by many Afghans to be an agreement permitting the United States “to establish permanent military bases, permanent occupation that will provoke resistance groups to declare perpetual war.”

In his article “Common Sense in a Coma,” peace journalist Robert Koehler wrote in late August that the current relationship between Afghanistan and the United States is supposed to end in 2014 but the “nation wrecking” accomplished by the U.S. in the past decade is so extensive that something has to be done to repair the damage and restore stability. So “the Strategic Partnership Declaration” has been    crafted “to entrench U.S. presence well into the future”: establish permanent or long-term U.S. military bases in Afghanistan lasting two or three decades followed by periods of reconsideration talks, extensions.

In this partnership deal, Koehler says, the U.S. will keep the cash flowing “to makeshift Afghan governments installed by the U.S. so that, lacking actual legitimacy or popular acceptance, they stay propped up militarily.”

War without end — “We [The United States] would never have to admit defeat. … Public soul-searching wouldn’t flood the media, paralyzing the country and its military-industrial economy, with conscience.”

And people’s suffering in South and Central Asia would continue to deepen under protracted U.S. occupation. Enraged Taliban would refuse to come to a negotiating table. “The pretext for war — together with an Afghan government’s economically catastrophic security needs — would live in perpetuity.”

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, quoted by Kathy Kelly, responded August 9 to the U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Declaration — 

“The U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Declaration will perpetuate ‘terrorism’ and bring it to everyone’s doorsteps:

“The ‘partnership’ will allow permanent joint U.S.-Afghanistan military bases to launch and project hard power.

The ‘extreme’ Taliban will conveniently ‘use’ these bases as a stand-alone reason for their ‘holy jihad.’ …

This Strategic Partnership Declaration will kill any chance for our madness to slow down and our violence to calm down. …

It will doom ordinary Americans and Afghans to permanent terrorism. … Why can’t we quiet our nerves, look deep inside humanity, and begin healing?”

Awakening or reawakening “to the dreadful situation [in Afghanistan] and our role in it,” Kelly says, “we must act now to free our Afghan hosts of overstaying guests. Get the U.S. safely back to where it should be.”

In “Captives to the Logic of Violence,” Koehler writes that sometimes it seems that “what ended on Sept. 11, 2001, was human evolution.”

In the decade September 11, 2001-September 11, 2011, “The abyss has kept deepening.”

The wars begun in 2001 “continue letting blood and squandering treasure beyond all logic — except the logic of violence.”

Sources and notes

“More Lost By the Second” (Kathy Kelly), August 10, 2011, http://vcnv.org/more-lost-by-the-second; Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

A Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation is presently visiting in Kabul with The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. “Both groups are helping to organize for the October 6, 2011 ‘Stop the Machine — Create a New World!’ campaign to end wars.”

Peace lily Britannica image

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are young Afghans “dedicated to ending wars and inequalities in their country.”

Kathy Kelly

Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org), a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare, Kathy Kelly with small delegations intent on learning more about conditions faced by ordinary people has visited Afghanistan (suffering three decades of warfare) four times since May 2010.

Kelly is a recipient of the War Resisters Peace Award (2010) and the Global Exchange International Women’s Rights Award (May 2003), among others. Her writings have appeared in The Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune Magazine, The Progressive, Columbia Journal of International Affairs, The Jordan Times, The Washington Report on the Middle East; at Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Electroniciraq dot net, Voices In The Wilderness, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and Antiwar dot com websites.

The Voices for Creative Nonviolence works closely with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in search of non-military solutions to end the war.

“Common Sense in a Coma” (Robert C. Koehler), August 25, 2011, https://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/common-sense-in-a-coma/

“Captives to the Logic of Violence” (Robert C. Koehler, COTO Report Full Spectrum Defiance), September 7, 2011, https://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/captives-to-the-logic-of-violence/#more-18298

 

Robert C. Koehler, peace journalist

In his self-description, Robert Koehler writes, “I embraced the concept of peace journalism, the lodestar of my maturity as a journalist, a deceptively simple practice unbelievably rare in a 24/7 media stream that flushes through our lives, peddling horror and fear; …” where news and entertainment are reactive, without depth or reflection and with intensely troubling consequences.

“Nonviolent response to conflict is the foundation of civilization,” Koehler writes…; and although “conflict — between and among people, between species, with our planet and universe — is inevitable, violent response belittles the conflict, shatters the complexity, perpetuates the problem, endangers the innocent and often blows up in our faces. …

“Violence is an industry, shrouded in mythology and consensus. … Working to undo the mythology of violence is the most responsible act a writer can commit.”

Captions

Britannica: Peace Lily A large, white leafy spathe underlies a spadix in Spathiphyllum.  © Sydney Karp—PHOTO/NATS.  Also Britannica maps

Pop Pun: Feel free to download and share Top Pun's cool "Free for All" stuff with friends and enemies alike! http://toppun.com/Anti-War-Designs.html

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Atrocities against civilians — foreigners injure, insult

From Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Excerpting, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett

Terrorized goaded to violence

Imagine the sorrow and horror afflicting each individual whose tragic story is told in the ‘timetable’ of atrocities committed against innocent people. How can we compensate people who have endured three decades of warfare, whose land has been ravaged that … The $33 billion dollar supplemental funding bill passed by the U.S. Congress to pay for U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been directed toward helping Afghanistan replant its orchards, replenish its flocks, rebuild its irrigation systems.

A partial November-October list describes, in part, the suffering and agony that people in Afghanistan have endured since April 2009 . Focusing on this particular list does not excuse atrocities committed by Taliban fighters but it does indicate our own responsibility to urgently educate others and ourselves about a deeply disturbing pattern: U.S./NATO officials first distribute misleading information about victims of an attack and later acknowledge that the victims were unarmed civilians.

November 14, 2010, Kandahar province
Circumstances: “Also on Sunday, ISAF said one Afghan child had been killed inadvertently and one wounded by artillery fire. The wounded child was taken to an ISAF hospital for treatment. An ISAF patrol had come under fire in the Zharay district of southern Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold, and returned fire with artillery, the coalition said” http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6AD0GK.htm.

U.S./NATO initial response/acknowledgment: “Following the engagement, the combined force confirmed that two Afghan children were inadvertently caught in the engagement, one was killed and one was wounded. The wounded child was medically evacuated to an ISAF medical facility. “Our thoughts and concerns are with the families of this terrible accident,” said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center director.”
http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/isaf-investigates-civilian-casualty-incident-in-kandahar.html

November 10, 2010, Sangin district of Helmand province
Circumstances: “the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said it was investigating whether its troops had inadvertently killed three Afghan civilians on Wednesday while its forces fought insurgents in the south of the country.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A941I20101110

U.S./NATO initial response: International Security Assistance Force is looking into the possibility that three Afghan civilians were inadvertently killed and one wounded by ISAF forces during combat operations with insurgents in the Sangin district of Helmand province Wednesday. Four Afghan civilians were brought to a nearby ISAF base following the engagement, three died and one was wounded. “Our thoughts and concerns are with the families of this terrible accident,” said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center director.
http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/isaf-looks-into-civilian-casualties-in-helmand.html

Saturday, October 23, 2010, Maidan Shahr district, Wardak province
Circumstances: NATO forces killed two civilians, including a teenage boy, during a fight with insurgents Saturday in Wardak province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Mohammad Halim Fidai, the governor of the province. Fidai condemned the killings. The deaths prompted hundreds of residents to stage a demonstration that blocked a highway for nearly an hour.

The coalition could not confirm the two civilian deaths. NATO said that after insurgents attacked a patrol with a homemade bomb, the troops stopped to investigate the explosion and clear any other bombs in the area. After they stopped, they received fire from an unknown number of insurgents, the coalition said in a statement. During the fighting, the coalition said two Afghans fell off a motorcycle and were taken away by villagers so their conditions could not be verified. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101023/aponreas/asafghanistan

U.S./NATO initial response: “a statement released by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said two civilians had possibly been killed in the Maidan Shahr district of Wardak province, west of Kabul, when insurgents attacked the patrol. However, it did not say whether they were killed by ISAF troops or by insurgents.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69M17N20101023

October 23, 2010, Regey village of Sangin district in Helmand province
Circumstances: “President Hamid Karzai said Monday that a rocket attack on a residential compound in the southern province of Helmand was carried out by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).” He said, “The attack by a helicopter gunship last Friday killed 52 people in Regey village, in Helmand’s volatile Sangin district.”
http://news.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/21-nato-says-cannot-verify-afghan-civilian-deaths-sk-02

U.S./NATO initial response: According to “ISAF public affairs officer Todd Breasseale, “We do not know where the information they say they have is coming from.” He said “We are looking into who was responsible for (the rocket attack), that is part of our investigation.”
http://news.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/21-nato-says-cannot-verify-afghan-civilian-deaths-sk-02

October 4, 2010, Kajaki district of Helmand province
Circumstances: Three Afghan civilians were killed along with 14 insurgents in a NATO air strike targeting a Taliban commander. The air strike in southern Helmand province came only a day after another air strike by foreign forces targeting insurgents in different district of the province, which Afghan police said also killed civilians as well as fighters.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6934AW20101004

U.S. NATO Initial response: “A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating the report of a strike, but did not have any information.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6934AW20101004

October 3, 2010, Baraki Barak district of Logar province
Circumstances: “Two Afghan civilians were accidentally killed Sunday by coalition forces after insurgents attacked an ISAF base in Logar Province, eastern Afghanistan. The incident, being investigated by NATO, occurred when coalition forces returned fire following an attack by insurgents.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/afghanistanunrest

U.S. NATO Initial response: “The civilians were killed when ISAF forces returned fire following a mortar or rocket attack by the insurgents, it said in a statement. The incident was under investigation.” http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6921BZ20101003

U.S/NATO acknowledgement: “ISAF said it had accidentally killed two civilians when insurgents attacked a military base in Baraki Barak district of Logar province south of Kabul.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6921BZ20101003

October 2, 2010, Helmand province
Circumstances: “At least three Afghan civilians were killed in a NATO air strike targeting senior Taliban commanders in southern Helmand province at the weekend, the provincial police chief said on Sunday.”

U.S. NATO Initial response: “The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was aware of reports of civilian casualties, but declined immediate comment on the total number of people killed in Saturday’s raid, or the number of possible civilian casualties”
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE692013.htm


Voice for Creative Nonviolence Kathy Kelly reports on civilian Afghans caught in U.S. war

August 26, Kunar Province
“Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to ‘engage’ the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children.

“General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination; but survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it’s unsafe for them to gather in the schools.…

“I think of Nur [11-year-old Nur Said] trapped in his misery at the Emergency surgical center — one among many thousands of amputees whose lives are forever altered by the war and poverty that afflict his country.

“Many of these survivors are likely to feel intense hatred toward their persecutors.

“Three hundred villagers in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province took to the streets in protest on August 12, following an alleged U.S. night raid. ‘They murdered three students and detained five others,’ one of the protesters said. ‘All of them were civilians.’”


Sources and notes

“Atrocities in Afghanistan: A Troubling Timetable Updated” (Afghanistan by Voices Co-coordinators)

“Since April of 2010, Voices activists have maintained a partial listing of civilians killed by U.S. led ISAF/NATO troops in Afghanistan.” All of the information assembled is available in mainstream news. “We realized that we ourselves were not paying close enough attention; we weren’t pausing to ask questions and absorb the details, so we’ve tried in the past several months to carefully update the ‘Afghan Atrocities’ timetable.” http://vcnv.org/atrocities-in-afghanistan-a-troubling-timetable-updated-1


The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection, Voices for Creative Nonviolence – Kathy Kelly, September 8, 2010, http://vcnv.org/the-indefensible-drones-a-ground-zero-reflection


Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare.

In 2009, Kelly lived in Gaza during the ‘Operation Cast Lead’ bombing. Later that year, Voices for Creative Nonviolence formed another small delegation to visit Pakistan, aiming to learn more about the effects of U.S. drone warfare on the civilian population and to better understand consequences of U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan. Kathy Kelly’s 2010 most recent trip to the region included a visit to Afghanistan, focusing on surgical centers serving victims of war.


Kelly and Voices for Creative Nonviolence companions based in Chicago believe that “nonviolence necessarily involves simplicity, service, resources sharing and nonviolent direct action in resistance to war and oppression.”

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

Global homicide — U.S., corporate DRONES

Bombers ‘mistake’ children.
Landmines maim them.
Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Many U.S. citizens now focused on the anniversary of September 11 and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should break ground near ‘ground zero’ [and the mass media’s affair with a mental incompetent in Florida] may be asleep at the wheel, Kathy Kelly writes in a September 9 opinion piece. Citizens may be oblivious to clear violations of international law, which we have obligations to prevent — at the very least, to discuss.

Corporate media fails substantively to aid ordinary people in understanding that drones hovering over potential targets every day — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other places — “create small ‘ground zeroes.’” Kelly tells the story of children cut down in a criminal war.

Eleven-year-old Nur Said was in a hospital ward for young boys injured by various explosions, she reports. Some of the injured boys sat in an outside garden talking about their experiences.

Nur Said stayed indoors because he was “too miserable to talk. [He] would merely nod…. Weeks earlier, he had been part of a hardy band of youngsters that helped bolster their family incomes by searching for scrap metal and unearthing landmines on a mountainside in Afghanistan. Finding an unexploded land mine was ‘eureka’ for the children.” When opened, the mine offered valuable brass parts the children could sell.

“Nur Said had a landmine in hand that suddenly exploded, ripping four fingers off his right hand and blinding him in his left eye.

Another group of youngsters scavenging for scrap metal in the Kunar Province on August 26 fared far worse. “Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to ‘engage’ the militants.… In this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six six- to 12-year-old children. “Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children.”

U.S. DRONES
PAKISTAN— Peshawar

On Wednesday, the infamous American drones killed eighteen people and wounded many others in parts of North Waziristan agency; the majority of the dead and wounded were alleged militants and fugitives. Predator planes also struck the Danday Darpa Khel and Datta Khel areas.

In the early hours of Thursday, according to the Pakistan Observer, another drone attack in North Waziristan Agency “left at least five more people dead and many others wounded. This was the notorious American spy planes’ fourth missile hit within 24 hours, the eighth in a week. “U.S. drones continued their killing spree in the Pakistani northern tribal belt even in the holy month of Ramzan and launched around a dozen missile attacks in North Waziristan agency often before or after Iftari and Traveeh prayers killing large numbers of people mostly among the faithful.”

As a rule, the U.S. military does not confirm drone attacks but, the Yemen News Agency reports, the “[U. S.] Armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region. More than 1,040 people have died in 122 drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, including a number of senior militants.”

U.S. DRONES, Counterattack
AFPAK

Ten civilians (est.) died Thursday and four suffered wounds when a roadside bomb exploded in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region on the Afghan border. In the renewed violence following the floods at least 150 people have died.

Fighters linked to al-Qaeda have recently stepped up bomb and suicide attacks in Pakistan after a brief lull amid the worst flooding in the country's history.

U.S. DRONES
AMERICAS

Inside USA
A U.S. military officer told the press on Thursday “an unmanned navy helicopter had flown out of control towards the U.S. capital last month before communications were restored.” This drone “headed right for the heart of the national capital region.…

“The episode came as the military presses civilian officials at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ease restrictions on the use of unmanned aircraft over the United States.”

On Texas./MEXICO border
Six drones had been operating along the U.S./Mexico border. This week, for the first time, the U.S. government launched an unmanned aircraft from a Corpus Christi, Texas, Naval Air Station.

Sources and notes
Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org), a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. In 2009, Voices for Creative Nonviolence formed a small delegation to visit Pakistan, aiming to learn more about the effects of U.S. drone warfare on the civilian population and to understand better the consequences of U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan. Kelly’s most recent trip to the region, in 2010, included a visit to Afghanistan, focusing on surgical centers serving victims of war, http://vcnv.org/speaker-bio/kathy-kelly

“The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection” (Kathy Kelly, t r u t h o u t
Op-Ed), September 9, 2010,
http://www.truth-out.org/the-indefensible-drones-a-ground-zero-reflection63096
“U.S. weighed shooting down runaway robotic helicopter: admiral,” September 9, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jpb2H3PrhxH4mjK1qXwEESB0IqJA
“Five more perish in drone attack” (Tariq Saeed), Pakistan Observer’s epaper, September 10, 2010,
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=51621
“U.S. Drone Strike Kills Six Militants in Pakistan,” Yemen News Agency (Saba), September 9, 2010, http://www.sabanews.net/en/news223801.htm
“U.S. drones kill 18 in latest missile strike on tribal area,” September 9, 2010, Morning Star, http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/95068
“Roadside bomb hits tribal region along Afghan border amid suspected U.S. drone attacks in North Waziristan,” September 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/20109964537209244.html
“Drones Patrol Our Border — U.S./MEXICO BORDER - A drone aircraft is finally on patrol along the Texas-Mexico border,” September 10, 2010, http://www.ktsm.com/news/drones-patrol-our-border