Afghanistan

Afghan war whistleblower: 'I had to speak out – lives are at stake'

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Daniel Davis wrote detailed report claiming US generals 'have so distorted the truth … the truth has become unrecognisable'

Paul Harris – April 14, 2012

"I am – how do you say it? – persona non grata," said Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel Davis, as he sat sipping a coffee and eating a chocolate sundae in a shopping mall, just a subway stop from the Pentagon.

The career soldier is now a black sheep at the giant defence department building where he still works. The reason was his extraordinarily brave decision to accuse America's military top brass of lying about the war in Afghanistan.

Top court blocks government's effort to restrict Afghan human rights info

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Robert Hiltz – March 29, 2012

An appeal by the Department of Foreign Affairs to block an Ottawa law professor from getting a better look at reacted documents that detail the status of human rights in Afghanistan won't be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Department of Foreign Affairs had been trying to prevent University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran from gaining further access to the departmental reports.

In Afghan War, a Colonel Becomes a Whistleblower

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Daniel Davis

Scott Shane – February 5, 2012

On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public.

Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, where he sings in the choir. He watched his favorite movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” one more time, drawing inspiration from Jimmy Stewart’s role as the extraordinary ordinary man who takes on a corrupt establishment.

Federal Court tosses bid to limit final report into Afghan prisoner abuse

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Murray Brewster – September 29, 2011

The Conservative government has been dealt a major setback in its attempt to limit what a military watchdog puts in his final report on the handling of Afghanistan prisoners.

A Federal Court has dismissed an application that would, among other things, strike the testimony of diplomat-whistleblower Richard Colvin and block thousands of pages of documents from being used by the Military Police Complaints Commission.

NATO halts transfer of detainees to Afghan jails

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Paul Koring – September 6, 2011

Faced with new evidence of torture by Afghan police and security forces, NATO’s top commander has ordered an immediate halt to detainee transfers, a controversial practice for Canadian and other foreign contingents for years.

The order – only days before the publication of another report, this one from the United Nations, which is expected to detail brutal and systemic torture in Afghan prisons – comes after years of denials from Canada and other Western governments that they were complicit in subjecting detainees to torture.

Billions spent on Afghan police but brutality, corruption prevail

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Mirwais Harooni – August 24, 2011

An Afghan policeman shot dead taxi driver Mohammad Jawid Amiri six month ago, for no apparent reason. According to a Kabul police official, the shooting was an accident, and the offending policeman is now behind bars.

That's news to the family of 27-year-old Amiri. They say the only contact with the policeman they had since the shooting was when his family offered a sheep and three bags each of rice and flour as compensation, but only if the Amiris signed papers saying their son died a traffic accident, and not from gunshot wounds.

$360M lost to insurgents, criminals in Afghanistan

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Deb Riechmann and Richard Lardner – August 16, 2011

The U.S. military estimates that $360 million spent on combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has battled for nearly a decade: the Taliban, criminals and local power brokers with ties to both, the Associated Press has learned.

The losses, measured over the past year by a special task force assembled by Gen. David Petraeus, underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central part of the Obama administration’s strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to help improve quality of life and stoke the country’s economy.

Afghanistan's corruption permeates life

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William Marsden – August 13, 2011

Just off embassy row in the centre of Kabul is a neighbourhood called Sherpur. It's also spelled Sher Poor, but that's simply an irony. Because, aside from the streets, which in some places rival rutted mountain passes, there is nothing poor about Sherpur.

Behind the stone and concrete walls that frame Sherpur's neighbourhood blocks are marbled villas and mansions. They were built over the last five years by the warlords, drug traffickers, politicians, ministers, bankers and other businessman that have grown rich off the heroin trade or the billions of dollars in foreign aid that have streamed into Afghanistan since 2002.

Kandahar mayor killed for battling corruption, daughter claims

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William Marsden – July 29, 2011

Kandahar City Mayor Ghulam Haidar Hameedi, 63, was killed Wednesday because he was a fearless crusader against corruption at all levels of Kandahar’s governments, his daughter says.

“It was not the Taliban who killed him,” Rangina, 34, said in an interview. Rangina, who said she was her father’s closest confidante, said “criminals and thieves and corrupt people working for the government” killed her father.

Taliban kills Kandahar mayor who battled corruption

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Ghulam Haider Hamidi

July 27, 2011

The mayor of Kandahar was assassinated Wednesday in an attack that comes less than one month after Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother was murdered.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for both attacks, which come amid a wave of violence as NATO's military operations in Afghanistan begin to wind down.

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