Thousands of Afghan students protest against US forces

[IndianaGreen]

Source: PAN/RAWA

PAN, December 9, 2009

Thousands of Afghan students protest against US forces

Hundreds of villagers on Tuesday brought the bodies to Mehtarlam and placed them in front of the Governor's House.

Javed Hamim Kakar

KABUL: Thousands of university students protesting against US forces in eastern Nangarhar province blocked the Kabul-Jalalabad Highway for hours on Wednesday.

The demonstration was staged by Nangarhar University students in Daronta district to denounce the US forces' operation in Laghman province, where 15 civilians were allegedly killed.

The operation in the village of Armal on the outskirts of Mehtarlam triggered a violent protest. Hundreds of villagers on Tuesday brought the bodies to Mehtarlam and placed them in front of the Governor's House. One person was killed when ANA soldiers opened fire at the protesters.

Local officials blamed the US Special Forces for conducting the operation, but the NATO-led ISAF insisted only militants were killed in the offensive.

President Hamid Karzai has ordered a thorough probe into the killings and directed the Ministry of Interior to submit a report in this regard.


DARONTA, Dec 9, 2009: Students of Nangarhar University
burn a US flag during a protest demonstration against
US forces for killing civilians in an operation in
neighboring Laghman province. Thousands of protesting
students blocked the Kabul-Jalalabad Highway for several
hours. (Photo: PAJHWOK/Abdull Moheed Hashimi)

Read more: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/12/09/thousands-of-afghan-students-protest-against-us-forces.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[OhioChick]

2. Google is your friend. n/t

[Forkboy]

4. More than the teabaggers events!

[ima_sinnic]

8. oh, you think the Afghan students couldn't possibly be demonstrating against US troops or something?

:wtf:

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ima_sinnic]

12. right--everybody loves foreign invaders stomping around murdering people

what's wrong with me that I couldn't see that?

[avaistheone1]

3. But, but, but the people want us there.

But they don't. This the way we bring democracy to a country.

Kumbaya anyone?

[Bigmack]

5. No wonder they love us everywhere we go! nt

[IndianaGreen]

6. singing and dancing in the streets

Our Afghan war will be a recruiting success for Al-Qaeda!

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

28. Doesn't that depend on how it's conducted?

[irislake]

7. God they are ungrateful!

Just like the bloody Iraqis. If I were American I would just vote to stay home and let the rest of the world go down the drain.

[ima_sinnic]

9. even without TV, I'm betting any amount of money this is not mentioned

in the lambrain media.

please prove me wrong (I really wouldn't know, since I booted the boobtube).

[bertman]

10. Who said our military can't learn lessons from Vietnam? They sure learned the dead civilian

equals "dead militant" (VC) equation really well.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

27. That's a bit unfair.

[bertman]

29. How so, YouTakeTheSkyway? There have been numerous reports of dead militants that the

Afghanis and Pakistanis have sworn were civilians who were "collateral damage".

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

30. The emphasis on tallying up a huge "score" that existed in Vietnam is largely absent

Sure, there are still instances in which there are conflicting reports regarding whether or not casualties have been civilians or militants, though that seems more due to the nature of this war than from anyone running mad with the idea of racking up points for evening news casts.

[bertman]

31. I think you are missing my point. I'm saying that we are classifying as a "militant" any civilian

who is killed in one of our attacks, regardless of whether they are really combatants or not. After all, they all dress like civilians, so who is to say they aren't militants? Except the locals.

This isn't about body counts. It's about pretending that whoever gets killed--who's not a woman or child-- is Taliban or al Qaeda.

There have been highly-publicized incidents where large numbers of civilians were killed in drone attacks but the U.S. military said they were fighters. The civilian leaders/village elders steadfastly maintained they were innocent civilians.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

36. I think a lot of the discrepancies are the results of the drone strikes

While surveillance is conducted prior to each strike, it's difficult to determine the status of each individual involved. And that's for a number of reasons, it's tough to tell from the air, there could be people in the buildings that the military didn't know about, etc. Hell, I don't think it's always necessarily clear to the people on the ground either.

[bertman]

39. I totally agree with that.

[bvar22]

13. K&R

Meet Hamid Karzai
or as Obama calls him, "The Government of Afghanistan".

He was appointed by Bush the Lesser to run Afghanistan.
He is one of the most despicable criminals in The World.

But NOW we like him so much
that our children will be sent to DIE in the deserts of Afghanistan
to keep him in power.

[ShortnFiery]

15. Hamid Karzai's Brother is the Biggest Drug Warlord within Afghanistan

Therefore, we are only going to kill and/or capture the Taliban who are NOT ALIGNED with the corrupt Mayor of Kabul, our THUG, the illegitimate leader of Afghanistan.

[bvar22]

18. Be careful.

The Karzai Brothers are now BFF with Obama and the Democratic Party "Centrist" Leadership.
We must gladly send our children to Afghanistan to DIE for them.


You are either with Obama and HIS WAR, or you are with Sarah Palin!

:patriot:

[EFerrari]

24. I'm "with" Dr. King.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation.

--- Beyond Vietnam
http://www.planetization.org/beyondvietnam.htm

[ShortnFiery]

14. They don't want us there. We've lost "the hearts and minds" through the ravages of WAR.

http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=1090

There's no POSITIVE way to "get our troops OUT" of Afghanistan ... but we need to GET THEM OUT!

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

26. It's too early to make that call, IMO

After all, we saw far larger, far better organized demonstrations in Iraq and it clearly wasn't evidence that things there deteriorated beyond repair.

[optimator]

16. Why doesn't Obama just kill them

they have the same motive as "Al-queda" and have the same lack of means to do anything about it.
So, basically they ARE "Al-queda."

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

25. Because they're not attacking and killing people?

[bluedigger]

17. I find it difficult to believe that there ARE "thousands of Afghan students".

[IndianaGreen]

20. Nangarhar University is second largest university in Afghanistan, nearly 4,000 students

and they do have a website:

http://www.nangarharuniversity.org/

Nangarhar University

The Nangarhar University is the second university in Afghanistan, founded in 1962. The main campus is located to the north west of historic city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province. The university has nine colleges, namely, Sharia, civil law and political science, engineering, agriculture, economics, veterinary medicine, education, literature and languages, and medicine. This is the only university for four provinces in eastern zone; however, 60% of the students come from provinces other than these four. The medical and education colleges are located in Jalalabad city, while the remaining seven colleges are placed in Daronta, 11 kilometers away from Jalalabad city. The Medical College is the first college of Nangarhar University. This university developed and established three other colleges, Engineering, Agriculture and Education in 1978. This University developed into five Colleges by establishment of College of Literature and Languages in 1985. The colleges of Economics, Law and Political Sciences, Shariah and Veterinary Sciences established in the year 1993 and it has nine colleges right now and they are: Medical Sciences Agriculture Engineering Education. Literature & Languages Economics .Shariah Veterinary Sciences Law and Political Sciences

http://www.nangarharuniversity.org/history.php

[bluedigger]

33. Are they BCS eligible?

Good on you for refuting snark with a link and everything. You even found the only thing on it that appears to have been spell checked.

"This is the facility for the usres to visit the current webpage and its properties and This page contain link of all pages of the current website.

Unless you face problem you can visit this page and solve the problems"

http://www.nangarharuniversity.org/sitemap.php

As they say down South, "Bless their hearts!"

[ShamelessHussy]

19. our gov doesn't care what we think let alone what 'they' think

we have our talking heads to tell us what is best for everybody, even them foreigners, 247.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

21. Ungrateful? hardly. They are protesting for MORE US troops. Obviously.

only librul socialistic frashist anti-christan, devul wurshipping, satanicalistic democrat party luvin, atni-amurican scum would thing anythink esle.

[Turborama]

22. Maybe they'd like their university to go back to being "just like a desert"?

They're probably too young to remember what their university was like then, though...

Afghan university gets help from SDSU

=snip=

Rafi Sayad, who is participating in the Summer Institute and who taught English at Nangarhar on the weekends for about a year, said the school essentially languished during the years of Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban control.

“It was just a disaster,” said Sayad, 37. “No professional teachers, no books, no libraries. There were students, but not that many. The university was just like a desert.”

Full article: http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080809/news_1m9help.html

They can forget the coed school and International Learning Center mentioned in that article too, if we let the Taliban take the reins again.

[IndianaGreen]

32. So you are advocating nation building, like we tried in Somalia

How about Saudi Arabia? Saudis oppress women and persecute gays, and they fund the global network of religious schools from which the Taliban comes.

[Turborama]

38. I usually refrain from using this phrase

But that's a strawman false equivalence which avoids the point I was making.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Provide_Relief">Operation Provide Relief wasn't nation building in Somalia, it was a humanitarian relief effort.

Did we send in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Origin">65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year to help the Mujahideen defeat the Russians, assist Osama Bin Laden with setting up his training camps and leave shortly after the Russians left and thereby allowing the Taliban to take over and http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4201322772364661561#">turn the country into a hell on earth in either of those countries? No.

Would pulling out now cause a humanitarian disaster and hand Al Qaeda and the Taliban a victory? Yes.

If we were to "pull out now!" the bloodbath would be like when Britain pulled out of India

The ensuing genocidal retributions and Pakistan and Iran having a failed state on their borders would lead to the world witnessing a horrifying humanitarian disaster owned by President Obama and those who pressured him to withdraw the troops irregardless of the consequences.

I credit President Obama with enough intelligence to know when the right time to pull out is or isn't and am confident that he would pull out now if he could.

Do you want to see this kind of thing happening again?

Afghanistan: Famine Threatens 1 Million People

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 22, 2001

NEW DELHI, Feb. 21 -- Nearly three-quarters of a million displaced Afghans are struggling to survive freezing temperatures in refugee camps with scarce supplies in various parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, prompting the United Nations to warn that many face imminent death unless drastic steps are taken to alleviate their misery.

An estimated 500,000 homeless people are huddled in frozen camps in western and northern Afghanistan, according to U.N. officials. Another 180,000 have crossed into Pakistan, where many are being housed in camps in that country's rugged northwest. In addition, relief officials say, an unknown number of other displaced Afghans may be wandering their country without food or shelter, or struggling with the effects of drought and economic hardship at home.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company
http://www.globalhealth.org/news/article/821

[EFerrari]

34. RAWA opposes Obama's surge. n/t

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

37. And...?

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

23. Is that....Bruce Springsteen?!?

[leftstreet]

35. K&R

[annm4peace]

40. thanks for post

and I hope the readers bookmark RAWA website. It is where I go for info since 1998.

[New Dawn]

41. K&R