By Erica Gaston The UN issued its mid-year review on civilian deaths this morning. More than 1000 Afghan civilians have been killed so far this year — 24% more than in the first part of 2008. Two key take-aways from the report: 1) Numbers of those killed by insurgent attacks are way up (59% of…
The Iraqis I met a few weeks ago are still fleeing car bombs and sniper fire, but they’re not running for their lives. Instead, they are running for a living, earning money by playing distraught civilians in a fake Iraqi province called Ghanzi. Created by the U.S. military in California’s Mojave Desert, Ghanzi is part…
Spend some time in Brussels and Kabul with the soldiers and civilians of NATO and you’ll hear the same thing: If there ever was a place and a time when winning support of the local population would help win a war, the place is Afghanistan — and the time is now. Afghanistan is beginning to…
In Kabul a few weeks ago, I met Sahib Dad, an Afghan father. During the 2001 U.S. invasion, two of his girls were killed when a U.S. bomb missed its target and exploded in their playground. He says he never saw an American face, never received an apology. At the time, the United States had…
A year ago tomorrow, in Baghdad, a young woman from California was killed by a suicide bomb. Marla Ruzicka was working to get aid to Iraqi civilians harmed by U.S. military operations when her car and that of her colleague Faiz Ali Salim was destroyed on the now-infamous airport road. Marla’s legacy lives on in…