AFGHANISTAN: Task Force 42 and Task Force 121, the Other Secret Killers – Part 3

When Wikileaks, a whistleblower website, released 76,000 incident reports from the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the exploits of a secret military "capture/kill" team called Task Force 373 was revealed for the first time.

AFGHANISTAN: Task Force 373, the Secret Killers – Part 2

When Danny Hall and Gordon Phillips, the civilian and military directors of the U.S. provincial reconstruction team in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan arrived for a meeting with Gul Agha Sherzai, the local governor, in mid-June 2007, they knew that they had a lot of apologising to do.

AFGHANISTAN: Task Force 373, the Secret Killers – Part 1

"Find, fix, finish, and follow-up" - also known as F4 - is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these "manhunting" operations and the units assigned to them "capture/kill" teams.

Trial of “Child Soldier” Opens at Guantanamo

Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces in 2002 in Afghanistan. Now, eight years later, the 23-year-old is on trial in Guantanamo Bay, in the first military commission trial since the beginning of the Barack Obama administration.

ARTS: Walking in the Shoes of a Muslim in New York

A woman waits on a subway platform, head bowed, pretending to ignore the insults. Perched on bar stools, a group of friends listen to racist jokes, suppressing giggles. Kneeling, a young war veteran tells his fiancée of his decision to return to combat. Two men wait expectantly at a job interview. An old man and a young graffiti artist sit together on a bench, discussing the power of language.

Despite Iraq Withdrawal, Greater Mideast Not Looking Good

While President Barack Obama Monday touted the continuing U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq as a key marker in the success of his regional policies, the latest news from the Greater Middle East, as well as a new public opinion survey, is far less encouraging.

Pakistan Poll Finds Widespread Disillusionment

The recent Wikileaks dump of war-related documents has brought little new to the debate over Washington's ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan, but allegations that Pakistan's intelligence services are aiding the Taliban has brought renewed attention to U.S. concerns over its reliance on Islamabad in battling Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy Increasingly Under Siege

Monday's release by WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of classified documents detailing the travails of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Pakistan's secret support for the Taliban from 2004 through 2009 comes amid a growing crisis of confidence here in the nearly nine-year-old war.

Leaked Reports Make Afghan War Policy More Vulnerable

The 92,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan made public by the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks, and reported Monday by the Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, offer no major revelations that are entirely new, as did the Pentagon Papers to which they are inevitably being compared.

Q&A: Peru Wages ‘Slanderous Campaign’ Against Inter-American Court

Politicians and the military in Peru are verbally attacking the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in order to "debase the concept" of fundamental human rights and implicate the Court in an "alleged defence of terrorism", its president, Judge Diego García-Sayán, told IPS.

Mexican Govt Turns a Blind Eye to Orphaned and Disabled Children

A baby hits the floor when his father, who was holding him in his arms, is murdered in Mexico. A two-year-old watches from her stroller as six drug addicts are killed in a rehabilitation centre, including her mother. The mother of another three-year-old never makes it to collect him from his nursery.

Obama-Cameron Meet Overshadowed By BP and Libya

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Washington, DC on Tuesday was supposed to be an opportunity for the Conservative Party leader to build a rapport with U.S. President Barack Obama.

UN’s Big Five Facilitate Arms Transfers to Rights Violators

The five permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - are accused of facilitating the transport of conventional weapons and cluster munitions to countries where they could be used to commit human rights violations and war crimes.

Somalia Centre Stage Ahead of AU Summit

The African Union summit opens in Kampala on July 19 amid heightened security following twin bomb attacks a week earlier.

COLOMBIA: ‘Let’s Talk About the Disappeared’

Every day, Luz Marina Hache sees her disappeared husband, Eduardo Lorne, in their 25-year-old son. He sleeps the same way, is equally studious, and like his father, he is infuriated by injustice. He has the same beautiful face that she remembers.

Obama Says U.S. Will “Redouble” Efforts Against Al-Shabaab

U.S. President Barack Obama has said Washington will "redouble" its efforts against the Somali Islamist group al- Shabaab (The Youth), whose deadly bombings in Kampala Sunday are likely to result in stepped-up U.S. military and other assistance to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu.

EU: This Big Brother Is in the U.S.

Private information on innocent citizens will be handed over to U.S. law enforcement authorities under an agreement slated for approval by the European Parliament this week.

McChrystal Probe of SOF Killings Excluded Key Eyewitnesses

The follow-up investigation of a botched Special Operations Forces (SOF) raid in Gardez Feb. 12 that killed two male government officials and three female civilians, ordered by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal Apr. 5, was ostensibly aimed at reconciling divergent Afghan and U.S. accounts of what happened during and after the raid.

Death by Remote: But Is It Legal?

As the Barack Obama administration continues to roll out justifications for its policy of targeting U.S. citizens and others thought to be attacking U.S. troops, legal and national security experts are pondering a central question: What if there's a mistake and the wrong person gets killed?

‘This Is Worse Than Guantanamo’

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner at a refugee detention centre in Slovakia has said he is prepared to die in hunger strike after living five months in conditions he says are worse than in the infamous U.S. prison.

Britain to Probe Collaboration with CIA Renditions

Breaking from President Barack Obama's insistence on "moving forward, not backward" in investigating U.S. detainee torture, the British government appears poised to investigate its own complicity with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in "rendering" British citizens and residents and subjecting them to "enhanced interrogation" techniques.