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Keywords: Afghanistan

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Dismembering the dead in Japan and Afghanistan

    • Walter Hamilton
    • 26 April 2012
    7 Comments

    The publication of photographs of American soldiers posing with the body parts of dead Afghani insurgents has provoked a lively exchange of opinion in the media. Just as in Afghanistan, American and Australian soldiers fighting the Japanese saw themselves pitted against an opponent who acted by a different — inhuman — set of rules.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Poets in wartime

    • Various
    • 24 April 2012
    2 Comments

    O for a day without comrades bloody fallen, lovers in guttural grief, shrieking, sobbing, and mothers in stoic dignity, mantillas drawn tight, our heroic flame, corralled colts brazenly waiting, cruelly snuffed. Have we learned nothing my friend? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Targeting aid workers

    • Duncan MacLaren
    • 03 April 2012

    Australian aid worker David Savage was severely injured by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The Taliban tried to kill him in revenge for the shooting of 17 unarmed Afghan civilians by a deranged American soldier. In more innocent times aid workers were regarded as angels by all sides.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Afghan terror past and present

    • Jan Forrester
    • 05 December 2011
    8 Comments

    In Afghanistan, the past isn't the past yet. The last 150 years bear directly on its present perilous state. Now that the US is leaving, some US lobbyists and Afghan women wonder what will happen if the Taliban return. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Insanity rules after ten years of war in Afghanistan

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 07 October 2011
    12 Comments

    Today is the tenth anniversary of the war on Afghan jihadists. We civilised Westerners decided we’d had enough of barbarians flying planes into our skyscrapers, killing thousands of our civilians. And hence we sent our own planes to drop huge bombs on their villages and towns.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Quitting Afghanistan cold turkey

    • Shahram Akbarzadeh
    • 25 May 2011
    7 Comments

    President Obama appears to have given in to domestic pressure for prompt withdrawal from Afghanistan. But a complete withdrawal could have major ramifications for the region and ultimately for US interests.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Osama bin Laden's wasted life

    • Brian Doyle
    • 17 May 2011
    25 Comments

    Imagine the same man, rather than consumed by hate, alert instead to humour, to the power of mercy, apology, simplicity, conversation, common ground. Imagine what he might have done for the religion he loved, to which he instead did more damage than anyone else in history.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Justifying Bin Laden's execution

    • Tony Kevin
    • 03 May 2011
    43 Comments

    Obama was admirably honest that Bin Laden had been killed after, not during, the firefight. Why wasn’t Bin Laden taken alive and returned from Pakistan to face US courts? Here is a case where the cutting of the Gordian knot through an on-the-spot execution may be justified as the lesser evil.

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  • MEDIA

    Shit doesn’t just happen

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 February 2011
    55 Comments

    While it is refreshing to hear politicians speak in unguarded colloquial language from time to time, any human misfortune is demeaned if we believe it is a sufficient explanation to say, as Tony Abbott said of the death of a soldier serving in Afghanistan, 'shit happens'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Refugee poems

    • Various
    • 16 November 2010
    1 Comment

    Go and open the door .. stare at the bright blue sea .. for boats .. struggling southwards from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. .. Feel the rippling fear of refugees .. wondering if supplies will last .. or a  hand reach out .. or turn and lock the door.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    John Howard shoe-thrower's moral miss-hit

    • Farid Farid
    • 29 October 2010
    9 Comments

    If smelly shoes are the last objects of resistance then the occupation of Iraq will never end. The culturally co-optive nature of benevolent groups to take on causes and speak on behalf of those who allegedly cannot speak for themselves is disturbing.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Understanding Afghanistan's complexities

    • Jan Forrester
    • 22 October 2010
    11 Comments

    The situation in Afghanistan is far more complex than the Australian parliamentary debate seems to credit. The international community and the Afghan government should be starting a bigger conversation about how a more transparent and accountable political culture can be encouraged. 

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