As the Afghan government suffers more losses on the ground, a landmark peace conference hosted by Russia could mark a shift in the 17-year war. The Taliban is there in its highest level diplomatic engagement in years. We speak to author and historian Vijay Prashad
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Pakistan love Kashmir love Kashmir love Kashmir zindabad Pakistan love India tourist army movei India tourist
Pakistan love Kashmir love Kashmir love Kashmir
So called powerful malitary machine fail in Afghanistan thanks Pakistan ISI and mujahedeen
u r hiding my Pakistanis rep in this conf that is hypocrisy
whatever u do no peace without strong interjection
The hope of resolution is at US, they are beging for a way out, while continuing war of lies deception, cowards.
India has no dignity, they are vultures no oportunity at Afghanistan.
And "they" said that the Russians is isolated
It's not that the US loves war. It's the Deep State and New World Order. Trump is an isolationist, unlike 40 years.
As always India never fights against brothers. I know some will say about Pakistan but the fact is, it's not Pakistani army for what India is fighting against, India is fighting against terrorism which is trying to infiltrate through LOC border. India is with Pakistan but if Pakistani government seeks to understand and raise a strong and diplomatic action against the terrorist not only India the entire world would praise Pakistan and soonly India and Pakistan will reunite happily and remove all tensions and hatred which was illusioned by Western and Indian media too. LONG RUSSIA-AFGHANISTAN-INDIA-PAKISTAN relationship. ^_^
Rusové jsou v uvozovkách moji synové. Teroristické útoky nejsou Å™eÅ¡enÃ. Válka ekonomice neprospÃvá. MÃr a lásku!
For all the anti-USA commenters below: The US was founded on anti-tyranny and the unalienable right to equality for every individual on Earth. Nowhere near perfect, it is the closest to perfect found on the planet. During the last 100 years the US has freed more, fed more, and come to the aid of more human beings than all other governments combined.
This is bad news for India and good news for pakistan and China now there is new military challenge for India,, taliban is anti India
West is not interested in peace , as usual , so no western representative was present , despite invited on this meeting !
Thank Russian, Russia for your work toward peace in Muslim Afghanistan. Go out of curisader in Afganistan
I am a "leftist" from the cradle and know e.g. Noam Chomsky`s point of view. And I agree to 99%. But I also studied enough "ethnology" (cultural anthropology) to be at least a little aware that things are not that easy . "Afghan" is not like "French" or or "German" is now (and even those national identities were birthed by eradicating smaller identities in form of little "tribes" with different dialects or even languages). Afghanistan is a tribal country. It is not a monolith. Groups are seeking dominance over others. And this is not a new thing. Afghan society was always "belligerent" in historic times, the idea of being a warrior was always held in the highest esteem.
The "West" fighting a war against Afghan people was not the thing that upsets the minds of local leaders. War was in the "old world" (which includes Europe) a "normal" occurrence. (I am not saying that it was a good thing or that people did not suffer from it or that everyone "liked" it) It happened often; inside what we see now as a "country" (intertribal warfare or struggle for power) or coming from the outside (neighbours like Persia or "great conquerors" like the Arabs (bringing Islam, changing the culture completely) or Genghis Khan. Only in modern times (after two world wars and the debacle in Vietnam) we (leftists in the "West") finally see war as a thing that should be eradicated.
What DID UPSET THE MINDS of Afghan men was "modernisation". Some Afghan leaders tried to modernise the country. Modernisation was and is widely accepted (from infrastructure to high tech weapons), not only in Afghanistan but lots of tribal countries (e.g. in the Middle East and Africa) – EXCEPT if it means to give WOMEN RIGHTS.
What people in the West do not understand is that the "women`s question" is not a tangent to the real issues in the Middle East and other predominantly Muslim countries. It is a question of CRUCIAL importance in the eyes of the fighters themselves!
Traditional tribal societies in those areas are patriarchal in structure (this is not an ominous invisible system as feminists would describe it – it is actual patriarchy, where a father/head of the family CAN ORDER a death, e.g. of a daughter, and other members of the family will follow that order without much quibbling). Islam reenforces and enshrines that patriarchal structure. It "sanctifies" this oppressive mechanism, makes it impervious to criticism or change.
The horrible treatment of Afghan women that was described in my last post, is the result of a patriarchal (religiously sanctified) system asserting its dominance. In fact, in their eyes it is the "morally correct" thing to do to! Keeping women in an inferior position, deciding about their life and their death means to follow the morally correct path!
The conundrum remains: How to change Afghan society so that women are not victimized? How to make women true equals?
I do not know. A stronger and "better" UN would surely be part of the answer. As are the many NGOs that try to better the lives of women in the developing world.
I just know one thing: Ignoring the harsh fact of Afghan women`s suffering will NOT bring about change for the better. "Cultural Relativism" is a dangerous cop out. It brings only pain and suffering. It is leaving vulnerable people (mostly women) all around the world in a inhumane situation. HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL. We have to act accordingly.
The situation in Afghanistan illustrates perfectly that most ongoing conflicts have no "good" sides. Both (or more) parties are "bad" in different ways. There is no happy end, even if the US would "leave all those countries alone".
Women are living in isolation and silence. We just hear the men from those areas, shouting loudly and angrily, blowing things up, shooting people down. Women are mute in the shadows. Their plight gets easily overlooked by us leftists who are supposed to care for the victims and for injustice. If we continue this WE ARE COMPLICIT.
Saving lives at all costs congratulations to our leaders on these efforts
This is another great kick in the balls for US by Russia. End the war, end the suffering for the people of Afghanistan.
Quote: There have been thousands of cases where women have been physically tortured, beaten severely, brutally mutilated, burned alive or had acid thrown at them—as well as being forced to marry at a very early age, raped or sold into prostitution, with many engaging in self-immolation as a result (…)
Why such overwhelming violence against women, such calculated misogyny? (…) Empowering girls and women would take that away from them or, at a minimum, force them to share the advantages that come with mobility, education and self-sufficiency. Hence, the status quo is preferable and many men resort to criminal behavior and violence to preserve it—knowing they can often act criminally with impunity in so doing. (…)
Afghanistan today sees more than 50% of Afghan girls married or engaged by the age of 12 and almost 60% married by 16. Almost 80% of Afghan girls are forced or “arranged†into marriage with men who are far older, some in their 60s. (…) Some girls are bartered into marriage to repay debt or resolve a dispute. And widespread poverty still compels many parents to have their daughters married to avoid the cost of caring for them.
The implications of child marriage cannot be overestimated as many girls do not continue their education and remain illiterate. They have babies while still young teenagers, increasing health problems and risking death for themselves and their children (the risk of death during pregnancy or childbirth for girls under 14 is five times higher than for adult women).
Education is the best strategy to liberate women from male domination. Only 40% of Afghan girls attend elementary school, and only one in 20 girls attend school beyond the sixth grade. Many Afghan families will only permit their daughters to attend all-girls schools close to home and few such schools exist. Other families believe it is unnecessary for girls to be educated. Schools for girls have been burned down, hundreds of teachers educating girls have been threatened or killed and girls have been physically harmed while attending or walking to or from school.
Almost every woman in Afghanistan is hidden and isolated from the outside world. Islamic extremists insist women and girls stay at home and can only leave if they are fully covered and accompanied by a male relative. In the cities most women wear a burqa, which completely covers them. The fact that girls live with their husband’s extended family often results in them being treated like servants or slaves, compounding their isolation. A culture prohibiting women to appear in public combined with a widespread lack of education means women enjoy few economic opportunities: in general, they are confined to housework. End of quote https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/shabnam-nasimi/devastating-truth-of-women%E2%80%99s-rights-in-afghanistan
ETC. ETC. Horrible. We cannot close our eyes without being COMPLICIT.
Quote: (…) Women are also admitted to the Herat unit who have been burnt by a family member. Fifty-year-old Laila from Ghor province was set on fire by her husband. “I was sleeping, after a fight where he accused me of being disloyal, when he poured kerosene over me and set me on fire; I woke up with this intense sensation of pain.†(…)
(…) having attempted suicide to escape domestic violence.
One of them, 28-year-old Farah*, agreed to speak to us, much to the displeasure of her husband who accompanied her.
As we waited for Farah in the office, a doctor explained her situation. Farah has been married for 17 years, a forced child marriage at the age of 11, to a man several times older than her. Whenever Farah refused to have sex with her husband it was seen not only as defiance, but also a sign of disloyalty – and she’d be beaten by her husband and his family for insubordination.
Farah was calm and composed when she arrived, lifting her sleeves to show us her scars from a few weeks earlier when she has tried to slit her wrists.* End quote
Just a taste, read the whole article. And go to e.g. The Guardian for more articles. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jun/26/oh-god-please-let-me-die-treating-women-who-have-set-themselves-on-fire-in-afghanistan
I am for peace. But we should never delude ourselves about the nature of some regimes (especially "theocracies"). It is a fact that women get treated abominably in Afghanistan already and it will only get worse under full Taliban rule. We leftists tend to close our eyes concerning women`s issues in other countries and cultures. Women`s problems just complicate situations; we want to see the world in black and white, i.e. "US interventions bad, local rulers good".
It is not that easy. Women suffer in silence, locked away in their (often even darkened so that no stranger can look in!) houses in Afghanistan. And we in the West will not hear about their suffering, because nobody will talk or report about it. How convenient for us! We can forget all about it and congratulate ourselves for our good, "culturally appropriate" way of handling the situation.
Men all over the world (including Afghanistan) protest loudly and violently whenever they are dissatisfied with a situation. E.g. they blow things up, they gun people down.
Not so women, especially in countries where they are really severely oppressed. Afghanistan is one of the worst (if not the worst!) countries in this respect. We in the West will not even register their plight. Again: How convenient for us…
Blaming the US for all ills that plague the world is too simple. Even if the US would never have interfered anywhere in the world, we would not live in a perfect paradise. Humans are humans. Violence would have happened regardless. The place may shift, the numbers too, but there would have been anyway people fighting for power, to oppress their neighbours or an ethnic or religious group inside their borders.
I am not saying this to justify the injustice committed by European imperialism or the US. But it is true. History and the present tell us that ALL HUMAN beings (to be precise: statistically mostly male human beings…) are perfectly capable of doing horrible things. History is blood and tears, all over the world. All "great civilizations" on all continents came from the oppression and murder of other people.
There is a trend in modern leftism to shift the blame completely towards white people. This is understandable, since in e.g. the US white people still hold nearly all the power and racism is a horrible real life experience of many. But there is the inherent danger to underestimate the dangers that lie in all of us.
In order to "tame the beast" in all of us, we fist have to recognize that this danger exists in all of us.
Otherwise, we would just replace one "bad overlord" (the "West") with another one.
We need global cooperation. This can only happen if we ALL stop seeing ourselves as different from each other. There is only one human species. And we are all capable of good and bad. Saying that the West should stop meddling in other countries is not a cure-all; there still will be religious wars, territorial wars, wars over power, civil wars, ethnic cleansing. Only us all evolving together will stop this.
Aggression is universal. But: HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL, also.
To all the people in this comment section: Blaming the US for all ills that plague the world is too simple. Even if the US would never have interfered anywhere in the world, we would not live in a perfect paradise. Humans are humans. Violence would have happened regardless. The place may shift, the numbers too, but there would have been anyway people fighting for power, to oppress their neighbours or an ethnic or religious group inside their borders.
I am not saying this to justify the injustice committed by European imperialism or the US. But it is true. History and the present tell us that ALL HUMAN beings (to be precise: statistically mostly male human beings…) are perfectly capable of doing horrible things. History is blood and tears, all over the world. All "great civilizations" on all continents came from the oppression and murder of other people.
There is a trend in modern leftism to shift the blame completely towards white people. This is understandable, since in e.g. the US white people still hold nearly all the power and racism is a horrible real life experience of many. But there is the inherent danger to underestimate the dangers that lie in all of us.
In order to "tame the beast" in all of us, we fist have to recognize that this danger exists in all of us.
Otherwise, we would just replace one "bad overlord" (the "West") with another one.
We need global cooperation. This can only happen if we ALL stop seeing ourselves as different from each other. There is only one human species. And we are all capable of good and bad. Saying that the West should stop meddling in other countries is not a cure-all; there still will be religious wars, territorial wars, wars over power, civil wars, ethnic cleansing. Only us all evolving together will stop this.
Aggression is universal. But: HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL, also.
There are no permanent friends or enemies. Only interests are permanent.
The Russian ,Iranian and Chinese Leaders should support the Taliban In Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to Regain their Country,Afghanistan Back from the Illegitimate occupiers of USA ,UK.Forces ,who are Fighting Taliban who are not Terror Groups,but the Real Afghani People ,also the US. is Trying Hard to occupy Afghanistan ,so will be a Military Bases for them in order to spy on Russia,Iran and India,also the US. wasted Billions of Dollars on the Military ad the Bribes of the Afghani Leaders who are a Puppets of USA, Dictators ,and they are the Killers of their Own People .
soooo, India is involved in this how ???????.. ( and btw- we never had any idea why we were there )
the Taliban is not a legitimate group in Afghan history. It is a myth, essentially a rag tag group of peripheral tribal forces and foreign criminal networks, that never would have existed if it were not for the Pakistanis and by extension, the US-PAK alliance. While I don't like the form of governance in AFG today, the weak rentier state dependent on foreign aid, much of the people in gov are legitimate tribal reps. The Taliban have no chance to be a leading element in the future gov of AFG. They will eventually be incorporated though. Lets hope hostilities will cease for good, and the US pulls out.
The Taliban is effective because they know those mountains and have 1000s of small groups. Hard to beat a group like that being battle tested as they are.
Russia/India are trying to install Iranian Shias Taliban in Afghanistan by sidestepping Pakistan systematically …
That was a very good point, explaining, why that great superpower is so ineffective in Afghanistan, while Taliban fighters are quite effective fighting such a formidable enemy; — "The American soldiers don't seem to know what are they doing there, and their morale is very low, while Taliban fighters remain very motivated, because they are fighting for their country and to be free".
America would not agree to a solution negotiated in Moscow. They would rather keep fighting than let Moscow help bring an end to the fighting. America was so cocky at the beginning of the war, they were rubbing it in Moscow’s face, that’s how you fight in Afghanistan. Moscow left Afghanistan after eight years, America is still there seventeen years later. Their pride won’t allow them to end the war.
US manufactured this war to settle militarily and have strategic control in the region (Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran)
First, Russia stole the show, by arranging convention to bring the end to war, stability and reconstruction of Syria. It exposed USA as the villain, who doesn't want the war in Syria to end.
Mow, another huge MASTERSTROKE by Russia, with the Taliban leaders in Moscow, wanting to negotiate the end to 17 years of war, and American occupation!
Again, the whole world can see, that USA is not interested in ending that war, and instead, wants to continue occupation and killing the people of Afghanistan, who just want the aggressor to leave their country….
It is unbelievable, how Russia was able, in such a simple way, to completely destroy the paper thin, false facade, of USA, as the promoter of democracy and freedom.
I wonder if USA will ever recover from this total loss of any credibility, so easily destroyed by Russia.
Thing is America and the Western neocon alliance has conceded defeat that's it.
India always try to no peace in Afghanistan
India main reason in Afghanistan non peace but don't talban never leave one Indian in Afghanistan
Americans must hate this……… Peace? They hate it. They didn't even go to these talks. All those arms sales down the tube. USA!…… Europe and most of the world hates you!
Mate, what happen with Amy Goodman? I did not think that this job was for you. You had a hard face attitude, as if you were not happy. You never hardly or ever smile. A Journalist, has to smile and not look hard face. Good luck to you.
Despite their reputation, the Russians always understood the importance of keeping the communication-lines open….even with the worst enemy. The US is solely counting on its military potential to lay their rule upon the world….with the results we saw the past two decades.
This summit between Russians, Indians, Afghans….will not bring the immediate solution….but at least it may open the gateway that leads to the solution and allows the politicians envolved an honourable way out of the Afghan swamp. It’s high time that Russia, China, India, Brazil and put their first steps in international politics…..we can no longer allow that the US speaks, and acts, in our name. Away with them
I disagree was Prashad on many points, manly as a American I know that Americans take extreme proud in, sometimes trivial things, so keeping "moral" (aka swag or arrogance) up is not my military's issue. This is not the 1960's and not Vietnam, in all I'm just here for Buzzsaw Aaron Mate. Little reference to Jamarl Thomas
The US will continue the war/occupation & would rather see more American lives lost than stomach Russia brokering peace and pulling the rug from under US profiteering theft.
Great and informative session Aaron Mate and Vijay Prashad
Mother Russia is smart with this peace conference … May it work & be successful …
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE ✌✌
we are LITERALLY ruled by psychopaths. research it folks! start with I AM FISH HEAD
The question being brought is proof positive of ignorance. And it is the kind of ignorance that plagues this nation. I'm so sick of hearing the term "most powerful," for this country has never won a war. All it has ever done was to invade 3rd world nations, to whom they have also lost to for the most part. With the colonialist milking every drop of money out of situations made, (such as Afghanistan)it will of course change course at some juncture, usually with the aid of a Russia, or a China like nation. Neither of you have said anything about the loss of hegemony the US has suffered/planned either. When every empire has fallen in our pathetic history, it has of course affected its neighbors. Though our combined ignorance tells little, we are indeed global…so the term neighbors is even more relative now than ever.
Keep the Jews out all they do is cause problems
Wow. What a novel idea. Get parties with grievances around the table for talks instead of bombing them or threatening them with 'Fire and Fury' if they don't do exactly as we dictate.
Hope the Washington criminal filth don't try to worm their way in between the talks.
Ending the war will dry up revenue for secret operations of CIA.
Maybe Moscow will achieve what we haven't achieved in all these years.
Of course the MIC is not anxious to stop a source of income and
profit.