Author: Idrees Ahmad

I am a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. I am the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). I write for The Observer, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Al Jazeera, Dissent, The National, VICE News, Huffington Post, In These Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung (TAZ), Adbusters, Guernica, London Review of Books (Blog), The New Arab, Bella Caledonia, Asia Times, IPS News, Medium, Political Insight, The Drouth, Canadian Dimension, Tanqeed, Variant, etc. I have appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Alternative Radio with David Barsamian and several Pacifica Radio channels.

Chalmers Johnson on the Cost of Empire

book cover
"The Bases of Empire", By Catherine Lutz, NYU Press, 356 pages

Why does the U.S. government maintain over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories? How long can the American taxpayer support this far-flung force given the severely weakened economy? And why has there been no public discussion by the Obama administration over scaling back our imperial presence abroad? Chalmers Johnson seeks to explain.

In her foreword to “The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts,” an important collection of articles on United States militarism and imperialism, edited by Catherine Lutz, the prominent feminist writer Cynthia Enloe notes one of our most abject failures as a government and a democracy: “There is virtually no news coverage—no journalists’ or editors’ curiosity—about the pressures or lures at work when the U.S. government seeks to persuade officials of Romania, Aruba or Ecuador that providing U.S. military-basing access would be good for their countries.” The American public, if not the residents of the territories in question, is almost totally innocent of the huge costs involved, the crimes committed by our soldiers against women and children in the occupied territories, the environmental pollution, and the deep and abiding suspicions generated among people forced to live close to thousands of heavily armed, culturally myopic and dangerously indoctrinated American soldiers. This book is an antidote to such parochialism.

Continue reading “Chalmers Johnson on the Cost of Empire”

Caught in the crossfire – the Swat valley’s fleeing families

Farhad Bibi survived the jet attack on her home, but her one-year-old daughter, Hassina, was one of 11 people killed (Declan Walsh)
Farhad Bibi survived the jet attack on her home, but her one-year-old daughter, Hassina, was one of 11 people killed (Declan Walsh)

Declan Walsh seeks out the refugees trapped in a brutal war between Pakistan’s army and the Taliban after an uneasy and short-lived truce.

Army footage shows laser-guided missiles slamming into mountain buildings that explode into a fountain of fragments. Warplanes blast away at Taliban targets in the Swat valley and ground troops push towards the main town, Mingora. When Pakistani forces kill the Taliban, few complain – this is a popular war, for now.

“We are progressing well,” a spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said.

Sometimes, though, they hit the wrong target. Jan Nawab, a slightly-built man with a scraggly beard, stood outside the house where he has taken refuge, and sobbed softly under the weight of the calamity that had befallen him.

Last Monday morning a fighter jet screamed over Matta, a Taliban-overrun district in the heart of Swat. Its first bomb landed on Jan Nawab’s home, where his wife, four children, his sister-in-law and two other children, were sheltering. All were killed.

The plane curled in the sky, two witnesses said, and turned for a second pass. The second explosion crushed his neighbour’s house, where a woman and two children were killed. “Eleven people in total,” he said, in a faltering voice, knotting his fingers. Continue reading “Caught in the crossfire – the Swat valley’s fleeing families”

Here’s a broom, Mr Speaker

‘The MPs’ expenses scandal has exposed the House of Commons as an Augean stable – and I mean to get it cleaned up’, writes Mark Thomas.

As some readers may be aware, I have been working on the destruction of international capitalism and bourgeois parliamentary democracy for some time. However, even I have been taken aback by my recent run of success. Had I factored in the self-destructive culture of greed, I could have spent considerably less time handing out leaflets and waving placards and spent considerably more time on the champagne aspect of the “champagne anarchist” life style.

Frankly, no one could have quite predicted the depths to which parliament has sunk. And each release of information, similar to the release of Police Academy films, gets progressively lower and more vile.

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Guardian’s Man in Caracas

He doesnt just look like one, he also acts like one.

Gore Vidal once said of Truman Capote that his death was a good career move. I suspect that for the same reason Rory Carroll wishes deep inside that his encounter with the Mahdi Army in Iraq had also been fatal. That way, at least he would still have a reputation, since most people tend to instinctively assume the best of the departed.

This clown has been redeployed to Venezuela, and as is the wont of every tabloid hack who through whatever stroke of luck graduates to a putatively respectable publication, he appears to conflate the country with its leading demonized figure, in this case the person of Hugo Chavez. In his tortured attempts to make the Venezuelan leader appear buffoonish (no mean feat for someone who comes from a place which thrice elected Tony Blair its Grand Ayatullah), he invariably ends up making himself look ridiculous. For the past few days he has been running silly reports about how the name of a new affordable mobile phone produced indigenously may be a slang reference to a penis. I felt compelled to send him this email:

I am moved by the fact that you offer your readers some modest amusement in these hard times by making public your fascination with male genitalia . But you must take into account the possibility that some of your readers may have already entered their teens and expect that a reporter covering a country of 28 million people and nearly a million square kilometers would have more significant things to report than real or imagined penis references made by its leader. Besides, tautology is not good form; there is already a dick in the byline.

Don’t hesitate to convey your displeasure: rory.carroll@guardian.co.uk

The Writing on the Wall for Obama’s ‘Af-Pak’ Vietnam

Af and Pak at the press conference with Obama

Tony Karon–The Rootless Cosmopolitan–nails it in this excellent analysis of the myopic US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There was something almost painful about watching President Barack Obama last week reprising a track from his predecessor’s Greatest Hits when he hosted the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Just like Bush, Obama invited us to suspend well-grounded disbelief and imagine that Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari have the intent, much less the capability, to wage a successful war against the Taliban. Then again, there had been something painful even earlier about watching Obama proclaim Afghanistan as “the right war” and expanding the U.S. footprint there, reprising the Soviet experience of maintaining an islet of modernity in the capital while the countryside burns.

It requires a spectacular leap of faith in a kind of superheroic American exceptionalism to imagine that the invasion of Afghanistan that occurred in November 2001 will end any differently from any previous invasion of that country. And it takes an elaborate exercise in self-delusion to avoid recognizing that the Taliban crisis in Pakistan is aneffect of the war in Afghanistan, rather than a cause — and thatPakistan’s turmoil is unlikely to end before the U.S. winds down its campaign next door.

Continue reading “The Writing on the Wall for Obama’s ‘Af-Pak’ Vietnam”

Survivors of the Swat massacre

Fleeing refugees
Families flee from an army offensive against Taliban militants in the Shamuzai area of Pakistan's Swat Valley yesterday. More than half a million refugees have been registered (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

They have walked for days, forsaking their homes to escape Pakistan’s campaign against the Taliban. And these refugees are the lucky ones. Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich report from Swabi.

The old woman fell to her knees in the dust, her arms covering her head to show how she had tried to hide as the shells fell around them. “There was so much noise and chaos,” said the woman, Shirina, who said she was 80. “We walked over the hills on foot. Then we hired a car.” Asked if the bombardment had caused any casualties, she and her family responded as one: “The world was killed. Lots of people were killed. Too many.”

Two days earlier, the family from Pakistan’s Buner district had arrived in this makeshift refugee camp after fleeing the military’s increasingly forceful battle with Taliban militants. There are hundreds of thousands like them, driven from the war zone, and they tell similar tales of fear, anguish and loss. They talk too, of an unknown number of civilians being killed in what is in effect a hidden war.

Continue reading “Survivors of the Swat massacre”

Tariq Ali: Conversations with History

While I agree with much of what Tariq is saying, he presents a less nuanced analysis of the origins of the Afghanistan war than he does in his book. He repeats the Leftist conventional wisdom on the subject. It was neither Carter’s nor Brzezinski’s war. Yes, we all know Brzezisnki bragged to a French newspaper that he was responsible for trapping and defeating the Soviets. In actual fact, US support for the Mujahideen was token under Carter. It was only under Reagan and Bill Casey that it finally took off. (thanks Elisa)

Host Harry Kreisler welcomes writer and journalist Tariq Ali for a discussion of Pakistan and it relations with the United States. He places the present crisis in its historical context exploring the origins of the Pakistani state, the failure to forge a national identity, the inability and unwillingness of Pakistani leaders to address the country’s poverty and inequality, and the role of the military in the country’s spiral toward violence and disunity. In this context, Tariq Ali highlights the significance of the U.S. relationship throughout Pakistan’s history and he analyzes current US policy and it implications for stability in the region.

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New kid on the block

Anjum Niaz on the refugee crisis in Pakistan and the indifference/incompetence of the government.

Its name is IDP. It was reborn ten days ago. Baptized by Barack Obama while Asif Ali Zardari held it, the American president showered the newborn with a $1.9 billion cheque. Fearing that Pakistan may throw the baby out with the bathwater, the US Congress vowed to honour the cheque once the sum reached the recipient. With Musharraf government swiping over 12 billion dollars, the whole world knows, including Pakistanis, that our effete elite pocket the money meant for the poor. Flush times are here again. Paisa dey do is the signature tune played by the information minister of NWFP. Daily he begs for money. It doesn’t look nice. What would look nice are footage of his chief minister, governor and a cabal of cabinet colleagues and party loudmouths spreading out in the field.

Let all the fat cats sweat it out in the sweltering sun to visit IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). Show us first your humane handling of the crisis, even though it’s gargantuan. Take us each night with a candid camera to a camp. Randomly ask the IDPs how they fare. Demonstrate to us that you’ve resolved their complaints on the spot. You are then worthy of our worship and donations. But according to an Al Jazeera reporter, the grousing has already set in: “We went to an IDP camp today … there were no signs of officials from the provincial government. There has been a lot of talk, but they have not done anything. There is, understandably, reasonable justification for [the civilians’] anger at the government.”

The ANP leader Asfandyar Wali is missing from action. Is he in the cooler climes of London?

Continue reading “New kid on the block”

Obama’s Policies Making Situation Worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Sober advice for Obama from Graham E. Fuller, former CIA station chief in Kabul and author of The Future of Political Islam.

For all the talk of “smart power,” President Obama is pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by George Bush. The realities suggest need for drastic revision of U.S. strategic thinking.

— Military force will not win the day in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; crises have only grown worse under the U.S. military footprint.

— The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban — like them or not — as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist.

— It is a fantasy to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The “Durand Line” is an arbitrary imperial line drawn through Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border. And there are twice as many Pashtuns in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. The struggle of 13 million Afghan Pashtuns has already inflamed Pakistan’s 28 million Pashtuns.

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Becoming What We Seek to Destroy

Gates and soldiers
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, left, takes part in a re-enlistment ceremony for eight U.S. troops during his visit to Forward Operating Base Airborne in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, last week.

Chris Hedges on the futility of the Afghan war.

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.

We are morally no different from the psychopaths within the Taliban, who Afghans remember we empowered, funded and armed during the 10-year war with the Soviet Union. Acid thrown a girl’s face or beheadings? Death delivered from the air or fields of shiny cluster bombs? This is the language of war. It is what we speak. It is what those we fight speak.

Continue reading “Becoming What We Seek to Destroy”