In the fog of confusion, fear and blame that has settled over government-controlled parts of Afghanistan, there is perhaps just one thing that the entire political spectrum can agree on: no one foresaw the scale or speed of the collapse of the Afghan security forces in recent weeks, even those wh...
In its desperation to stem the losses, the government has summoned one of the darker spectres from the country’s recent past, urging warlords and regional strongmen to call up militias that fought the Taliban – but also each other – during the all-out civil war of the 1990s. As recently as ...
Instead of retrenchment there was collapse, and intelligence agencies have ripped up their assessments of the strength of the Afghan military. The US now fears Kabul could fall within months.
Less than a year later, swathes of the country – including those remote outposts and many more – have fallen to the Taliban, and thousands of soldiers have fled the country or surrendered to the militants, handing over their equipment and weapons.
Ghani and his national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, who have multiple prestigious degrees but no battlefield experience, refused. “We’re not giving up one inch of our country,” Mohib reportedly told the assembled officials at one point, according to multiple sources with knowledge of ...
The men urging this strategic retreat had, between them, years of experience fighting in the different iterations of Afghanistan’s civil wars, which have now stretched on for more than 40 years in a kaleidescope of shifting enemies and allies.
Troops and ammunition drawn back from these areas could focus on the fight for more important assets, such as key roads and border crossings, as forces adapted to the loss of the US air force and other technical support that had been critical to fighting the Taliban, they argued.
The Afghan army and police needed to retrench, figures including the then defence minister, Assadullah Khalid, told Ghani. Remote outposts, and rural areas where troops held little more than the cluster of government and security buildings that make up a “district centre”, should be abandoned.
Last autumn, with the departure of American troops from Afghanistan looming after the US signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban, several of the most senior security officials in Kabul urged President Ashraf Ghani to make some hard choices.
More than 1,000 have fled across the border, and hundreds more have handed over weapons to the Taliban
The announcement from the Penelakut Tribe comes ahead of an expected report from Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation on Thursday. The First Nation says it will provide greater detail on the 215 unmarked graves discovered using ground penetrating radar in late May.
“We are at another point in time where we must face the trauma because of these acts of genocide. Each time we do, it is possible to heal a little more,” Brown wrote.
The community plans on holding two healing sessions in the coming weeks, as well as a march to commemorate the generations of children lost to the residential school system.
“It is impossible to get over acts of genocide and human rights violations. Healing is an ongoing process, and sometimes it goes well, and sometimes we lose more people because the burden is too great,” Brown wrote.
During the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, survivors recounted being “kidnapped” and forcefully brought to the school and the fear many felt within the institution’s walls.
Former employee Glenn Doughty, who worked at the school from 1967 to 1986, was convicted of sexually abusing students in 2002. He was sentenced to three years, after serving other sentences for sexual assaulting students at other residential schools.
Two sisters drowned while trying to flee the school in the 1950s, and another student died by suicide in 1966, according to the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.
On Tuesday, prime minister Justin Trudeau said his “heart breaks” for the Penelakut Tribe and for Indigenous people across the country. “The reaffirm a truth they have long known,” he said.
Those familiar with the systematic neglect and abuse at the schools had predicted more unmarked graves would be uncovered after the first discoveries in British Columbia and Saskatchewan shocked the country last month.