Afghanistan

Durra - the world’s largest illegal firearms market

Julien — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:36:07 +0200

Gunfire echoes in the streets of Durra, Pakistan. Test firing a 9mm handgun or a Kalachnikov AK-47 rifle in the village’s main market is an every day sight.

Durra or Darra Adamkhel, a village in the country’s northwestern tribal zone, is renowned for its weapon-making expertise and is the world’s largest illegal market. Gunsmiths in the village manufacture replicas of ammunition and popular guns, which are then sold to arms dealers across Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan.

Durra is part of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The Pakistani central government does not directly control this region, known for harbouring Islamist insurgents. Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are said to be active in the region. While manufacturing arms within the FATA is legal, supplying them outside the tribal zone is prohibited. Durra’s weapons industry has existed for more than a century but the Soviet- Afghan war in the late seventies helped boost it.

Torture is "self-defense" according to the Pentagon

Julien — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:41:48 +0200

In 2003 the U.S. Justice Department sent a memo to the Pentagon in which it conceived torture as a "self-defense" for the purpose of interrogating an "enemy combatant". An Iraqi deputy and a French colonel specialised in the Algerian war react to the document, declassified yesterday and published here in full.

Written by a lawyer for the Justice Department, the memorandum basically said that the American president is entitled by the Constitution to authorise certain forms of torture against al-Qaeda militants for reasons of national security. The Justice nullified the statement nine months after it was sent. But according to the Washington Post, the article served as the "legal foundation for the Defense Department's use of aggressive interrogation practices at a crucial time, as captives poured into military jails from Afghanistan".

The cost of war comes as “a total surprise”

Julien — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:55:37 +0100

With presidential elections well under way in the United States the cost of war is a sensitive subject for the ruling Republicans. And every penny counts. The Center for arms control and non-proliferation tallies up every cent spent on the main U.S wars and publishes its findings online. And they have just been updated. World War II easily tops the table with a whopping $3.2 trillion (€2.2 trillion). But still climbing and currently in second place, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have almost reached $700 billion (around €500 bln) combined. The centre treats this information as a warning, they predict that if troops remain in both countries until 2018 as Bush said may well happen, the final cost will be over a trillion dollars. We spoke to the creator of the project about why he feels it's important to publish the figures.

Christmas, from Japan to Afghanistan

Julien — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:11:02 +0100

We could have done a world tour of ‘Christmas in...' But we decided on Kabul
and Tokyo. A little culture shock. Post your questions to Lee Chapman and Nasim Fekrat, our observers in the two cities.