September 29, 2005

Afghan police have found mass graves of hundreds of communist troops killed after surrendering to mujahideen forces in the 1980s, a crime in which at least two election candidates are implicated.

Initial trends spell trouble for Karzai in Afghan polls

September 29, 2005

At the end of the first week of the painfully slow progress of counting – hardly 20 percent of votes have been counted so far – most of Karzai’s opponents are leading the tally, spelling trouble for the US-backed president.

U.S. soldier jailed for Afghan abuses

September 29, 2005

A U.S. army interrogator has been sentenced to five months in jail for assaulting a detainee who later died at a military base in Afghanistan, BBC reported. Sgt Joshua Claus was the sixth U.S. soldier to be convicted or plead guilty to abusing prisoners following the deaths of two detainees at the Bagram Airfield detention centre, outside Kabul, in 2002.

Giving Democracy a Bad Name: Afghanistan’s Parliamentary Elections

September 16, 2005

The United States has supposedly created new “democracies” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these endeavors give democracy a bad name. Sure, the two countries have some ingredients of representative democracy, such as elected officials and a constitution. But both countries are still beset by grinding poverty, insurgencies, and entrenched militia forces that make the exercise of democracy either impractical or dangerous.