On 7 October 2001, despite the pleas of Pax Christi International and many others around the world, US and US-allied forces launched airstrikes on Afghanistan and its Taliban government. The US accused the Taliban of harboring Osama Bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind behind powerful and highly symbolic attacks a few weeks earlier on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Ten years later, the war in Afghanistan continues,violence with horrific loss of life grips the region and intensified insecurity prevails. (Independent Catholic News)

From before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when US aid to resistance fighters gave birth to the Taliban, through the past ten years of a US led war, the Afghan people have endured unimaginable suffering. Bombings, increasingly from unmanned drones, and open ground warfare; repeated, heartbreaking instances of civilian deaths and injuries from misguided bombs and terrorist attacks; intense inter-tribal conflict; rampant corruption; an economy dependent on trade in opium; and intensified poverty have marked daily life for far too long.

On 20 September 2011, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council that was to begin negotiations with the Taliban, was killed in a suicide attack at his home in Kabul, casting into disarray hopes for peace talks in the near future and raising fears of ethnic divisions among Afghans fighting the Taliban.

FULL STATEMENT

After 10 Years War in Afghanistan – Pax Christi International statement (Independent Catholic News)

LINK

Pax Christi International