by Afghan Peace Volunteers
April 29, 2012

What is the Afghan Street Opinion?

“Today, Afghanistan and the U.S. initialed and locked the text of the strategic partnership agreement,” said Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi. “This means the text is closed…”

Why ‘lock’ or ‘close’ the future of Afghanistan to 30 million ordinary Afghan citizens?

While the world may accept that the U.S. and Afghan governments have some ’state’ or ‘noble’ considerations for not revealing the contents of the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, how about the democratic consideration of involving Afghans in their own future?

Even the Afghan Parliament was in the dark and uninvolved until they were recently given a peek when Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, read ‘portions’ of the Agreement to assembled parliamentarians on 23rd April, saying that the U.S. will defend Afghanistan from any outside interference via “diplomatic means, political means, economic means and even military means.”

Arrests began without warning; most were charged with violating a Town of DeWitt ordinance requiring a permit to march. How ironic that the real criminals who plan, fund and perpetrate drone strikes go free while citizens who are upholding the U.S. Constitution and international law are arrested. What is so dangerous and powerful about the Indictment that such an effort is made to prohibit its delivery?

and Hakim

Two Afghan youth taking refuge together with the Afghan Peace Volunteers

“Do they know,” I asked, “that the U.S. Air Force has hired 60,000 – 70,000 analysts to study information collected through drone surveillance? The film footage amounts to the equivalent of 58,000 full length feature films. The Rand Corporation says that 100,000 analysts are needed to understand ‘patterns of life’ in Afghanistan.” Hakim’s response was quick and cutting: “Ghulam would ask the analysts a question they can’t answer with their drone surveillance, a question that has much to do with their business, ‘terror’: “You mean, you don’t understand why I screamed?”

Researched, Produced and Directed by Abir Alsayed

A part of Asdekaa Al Arab series

Quite a day. I awoke to a clock radio announcing that deadly tornadoes had again ravaged the plains of the Midwest. Before I could think of the people I knew in their path, the next news item announced Taliban attacks in several locations of Kabul. It was a relief, a few minutes after logging in to my account, to receive a reassuring message from the Afghan Peace Volunteers, in whose apartment in Kabul I’ve several times had the privilege to stay. There were 12 of them together in the house in Kabul, and they were all okay. When I phoned them, my young friend Abdulai answered and told me, in English, “Kathy, there is war in Kabul today. Many bombs!”

by Jane Stoever

Many of us followed the three across the line of demarcation for the base, walking maybe 40 yards before officers approached us. Brian held up our indictment (attached) of President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Whiteman AFB’s Brigadier General Scott Vander Hamm, and every drone crew for “extrajudicial targeted killings” by reaper drones. Brian told the officers, “We want to go to the commander” to present the indictment. An officer answered, “We can’t allow you to do that.” Brian replied, “Our consciences won’t allow us not to.”

In these killing days, we in Afghanistan do not expect the interests of people to triumph over self-interests. But your efforts prove that another world is possible. However, respectfully, late May demonstrations are probably too late to request that the majority of public opinion against the Afghan war be placed on NATO’s table, so as to end the ineffectual wasting of tax money on a futile war strategy. War doesn’t work! By the time you take to the streets in Chicago on May 20, the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement for a long term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will have been signed.