Troops Out Now!

Bleeding Afghanistan reviewed by Harold Lavender

Spring 2007 Issue of New Socialist. Download PDF.

Canadian troops may be fighting in Afghanistan, but (war propaganda aside) many of us know little of the real history and impact of foreign intervention. Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence is therefore a work very much worth reading.

This 2006 work by Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls, coordinators of the US non-profit Afghan Women’s Mission, is rooted in the experience of the Afghani women’s movement, especially the Revolutionary Women’s Association of Afghanistan (RAWA). The book opposes the role of imperialism, warlordism
and Islamic fundamentalism. Instead, it raises the urgent need for a democratic and secular (though not anti-Islamic) society that respects and promotes women’s rights.

It does an excellent job of exposing the huge gulf between imperial rhetoric and the reality of women’s lives in Afghanistan. The authors …

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ISR Issue 52, March–April 2007
R E V I E W S

The “good occupation”

Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls
Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence
Seven Stories Press, 2006
304 pages $19

Review by NICOLE COLSON

WHILE OPPOSITION to the Iraq war continues to grow, the other U.S. occupation—in Afghanistan—is still considered by many to be the “good occupation.” Indeed, the argument from many conservatives and liberals alike is that the cardinal sin of the Bush administration in invading Iraq was to divert resources and attention from the real “ground zero” of the war on terror in the “failed state” of Afghanistan.

This point has been driven home as prominent Democrats, including Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who have called for a troop “surge” in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has publicly signaled a willingness to consider it.

Amid these calls for more war, Kolhatkar and Ingalls, co-directors of the non-profit …

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Book Review: Building Pipelines, Supporting Warlords and Bleeding Afghans

Written by Richard Alan Leach

Wednesday, 21 March 2007

(this review appeared in the journals, “Toward Freedom,” and “Third World Traveler“)

Less than four weeks after 9/11, on October 7, 2001, the US attacked Afghanistan in the opening salvo of what was later justified as a new “war on terror.” The US dropped more than 10,000 bombs, including air strikes from B-2 and B-52 stealth bombers and cruise missiles from submarines in the Arabian Sea.

During a period that ultimately led to between 3000-3400 civilians killed (1) outright - and thousands more from starvation and disease as a direct consequence of the attack - then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked by an admiring press corps if the US was running out of targets. He responded with a characteristic quip: “We’re not running out of targets. Afghanistan is.” The assembled journalists thought this …

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