Hanan Habibzai

US in denial: Watershed in Afghanistan Diplomatic statements have ignored the strategic and psychological battles won by the Taliban. Marwan Bishara The senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. Doha, Qatar - In one of the first official US reactions to the attacks against Kabul and cities across eastern Afghanistan last weekend, Ryan C Crocker, US ambassador to Afghanistan, said: "The Taliban are really good at issuing statements, Less good at actually fighting." And after accusing (or crediting) the Haqqani network based in the tribal area within the Afghan-Pakistan borders' region, the ambassador added: "Frankly I don't think the Taliban is good enough." These declarations have come after the insurgents targeted sensitive installations in the country's most important population centres - including at least three prominent targets in Kabul - in one of the most coordinated and pronounced assaults since the occupation bega...

Hanan Habibzai If you are Afghan, you don't dare to write any facts about the atrocities American military is continuously committing in Afghanistan, but this is the time to speak out, because the future of the country is constantly under attack. There is no future for the current generation of Afghanistan, as American-led military is intentionally targeting children and women. This week's ( 02/06/2011 )massacre of 12 children and two women in southern Helmand province left no option, but provoked thousands of Afghans to either join the Taliban or express their sympathy towards them. Therefore, the Taliban are becoming anti-occupation heroes and their popularity is increasingly spreading across the country. American-led foreign troops do not help themselves, but they strengthen the Taliban's position, when they appear to kill civilians from the air through heavy bombs containing white phosphorous and other chemicals.  Al Jazeera reports on similar cata...

  NATO Killed Children in Afghanistan  By Hanan Habibzai  Kapisa district police chief Abdul Hamid Erkin told AFP that "Two nights ago foreign special forces carried out a raid on a house in Geyawa village in Nejrab district.” The next morning their plane carried out an airstrike on a house in the village as a result of which seven children and one adult were martyred ." He said commanders of French troops who operate in the area "claimed that the target was a group of Taliban facilitators, but we checked the area and there were no Taliban.” In fact the people in the area have very strong anti-Taliban feelings. We filmed the victims, who were children, and showed it to the French commanders," Erkin said.  Children are the main victims Presidential statement confirmed Thursday that NATO airstrike killed eight children in Kapisa province northeast of the capital Kabul. The children were aged between about seven and 15, he said, while the adult was a m...

The Times Remembers the Dasht-e-Leili Massacre By Prof. Edward Herman I t is always interesting and enlightening to see the New York Times picking up a story belatedly and tracing through the reasons for its early neglect and later resuscitation. This often fits the Orwellian Big Brother principle of using a story only when it is politically helpful and suppressing it when it is inconvenient—forgetting, "and then, when it become necessary again [drawing] it back from oblivion" ( 1984 ). My favorite case was the failure of the New York Times to mention the Salvadoran army death list of 138 left-wing and liberal politicians back in 1982, when the United States was supporting a "demonstration election" there and publicizing the death list would suggest unfavorable electoral conditions, but then mentioning that list in 1989 when the left was tentatively entering an election and the paper was anxious to put that election in a good light, contrasting it with t...