Sonali Kolhatkar interviewed on GRITtv, on September 12, 2008
Watch the entire interview here.
According to Human Rights Watch, civilian deaths from U.S. and NATO action have tripled in the past year. Ninety civilians were killed in just one day August 20 and now there’s news of US action claiming lives on the Pakistan border provoking a “strong protest†from the Pakistani government who this week said they reserved the right to retaliate.
Yet …
“Bleeding Afghanistan is without a doubt the most realistic and sincere reflection of the ongoing tragedy in my ill-fated Afghanistan, covering every aspect of life under the US domination and its fundamentalist criminals and warlord hirelings.” – Malalai Joya, member of Afghan Parliament
Sonali Kolhatkar interviewed on Democracy Now, on August 22, 2008
Read/watch/listen to the entire interview here.
Interview Transcript
JUAN GONZALEZ: NATO has denied a report in the French newspaper Le Monde that ten French soldiers killed in Afghanistan earlier this week died as a result of friendly fire from allied planes. A NATO spokeswoman said Thursday that Le Monde’s claims were “completely unfounded.â€
The Le Monde report had quoted French soldiers who had survived the Taliban ambush. The soldiers told the newspaper that NATO planes arrived four hours after the ambush and accidentally hit French troops.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited survivors in Kabul earlier this week and vowed to continue the fight against terrorism. He said no regrets about the sending of 700 additional troops to Afghanistan, despite the soldiers’ deaths.
At a memorial service in France Thursday, Sarkozy justified maintaining the French presence in Afghanistan.
…
Sonali Kolhatkar remembers Afghanistan, even if the rest of us don’t
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO in the OC Weekly
Thursday, May 17, 2007 – 3:00 pm
http://www.ocweekly.com/culture/
books/that-other-quagmire/27160/
Remember Afghanistan? The Taliban? Hamid Karzai? That weird game Afghans play involving a goat carcass? Of course not. If the Iraq War is our latest Vietnam, then Dubya’s Afghanistan adventure is our Philippine-American War: a major incursion that became a quagmire no one talks about.
One of the few media figures who bother to pay attention is Sonali Kolhatkar, host of KPFK-FM 90.7’s popular Uprising morning show. She’s involved with various Afghan charities and is the author, along with her husband, of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. Kolhatkar will talk about the book and show slides from her visits this Saturday at the Centro Cultural de México. But first, she talked to the Weekly.
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Give us a …
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 …
