Sasha Lilley (born 1975) is an English-born radio host, writer and journalist based in Oakland, California.
Lilley is the editor of Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult, published by PM Press. [1] Lilley is a contributor to the Turbulence Collective's What Would it Mean to Win?, a collection of debates about the direction of the Global Justice Movement, published by PM Press. [2] She is the series editor of the political economy imprint Spectre. [3]
Lilley is a co-founder and host of the Pacifica Radio program Against the Grain. [4] From 2007 to 2009, she was the interim program director at KPFA. She directed Pacifica Radio's coverage of the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, [5] launched the War Comes Home, [6] about the human costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, curated the multimedia project “1968: The Year that Shook the World” commemorating 1968 with archival audio from the Pacifica Radio Archives, and launched the multimedia collaboration “Afghanistan 2008: Seven Years After the Taliban”. [7]
She has overseen national broadcasts, [8] including on torture under the Bush administration, [9] the testimonials of survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and on the global financial crisis. [10]
Lilley was an editor, staff writer, and researcher at CorpWatch, reporting on the World Bank, labor struggles, and agribusiness. [11]
She has worked as an academic researcher and investigative journalist, including into US contracts in Iraq [12] following the American-led invasion. [13]
Lilley is married to PM Press and AK Press founder Ramsey Kanaan.
The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a militant organization in Afghanistan with an ideology comprising elements of Pashtun nationalism and the Deobandi current of Islamic fundamentalism. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces, after nearly 20 years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country. However, its government is not recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been internationally condemned for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women and girls to work and to have an education.
The Rendon Group is a public relations firm headed by John Rendon.
Pacifica Foundation is an American non-profit organization that owns five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations known for their progressive/liberal political orientation. Its national headquarters adjoins station KPFK in Los Angeles, California.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad is an American diplomat and foreign policy expert. Khalilzad was U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation from September 2018 to October 2021. Khailzad was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, serving in the role from 2007 to 2009. Khalilzad was the highest ranking Muslim-American in government at the time he left the position. Prior to this, Khalilzad served in the Bush administration as Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005 and Ambassador to Iraq from 2005 to 2007.
Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, simply called Ansar al-Islam, is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al-Qaeda volunteers, which were coming back from Afghanistan in 2001 after the Fall of Kabul. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state around the Kurdistan region and to protect Kurdish people from other armed insurgent groups. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border.
Democracy Now! is a left-wing hour-long TV, radio, and Internet news program based in Manhattan and hosted by journalists Amy Goodman, Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live each weekday at 8 a.m. Eastern Time, is broadcast on the Internet and via more than 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide.
KPFA is an American listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on the air April 15, 1949, as the first Pacifica Radio station and remains the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network.
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and best-selling foreign policy author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.
Yvonne Ridley is a British journalist, author and politician who holds several committee positions with the Alba Party in Scotland. She was a former chair of the National Council of the now-defunct Respect Party. Ridley made global headlines when she was captured by the Taliban in 2001 after the events of 9/11 and before the start of the U.S.-led war. Two years later she converted to Islam. She is a vocal supporter of Palestine, which she took up as a schoolgirl in her native County Durham. She is an avid critic of Zionism and of Western media portrayals and foreign policy in the War on Terror, and has undertaken speaking tours throughout the Muslim world as well as America, Europe and Australia. She has been called "something close to a celebrity in the Islamic world" by the journalist Rachel Cooke, and in 2008 was voted the "most recognisable woman in the Islamic world" by Islam Online.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between early 1992 and 2001 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many non-Pashtun Northerners originally with the Republic of Afghanistan led by Mohammad Najibullah became disaffected with Pashtun Khalqi Afghan Army officers holding control over non-Pashtun militias in the North. Defectors such as Rashid Dostum and Abdul Momim allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud and Ali Mazari forming the Northern Alliance. The alliance's capture of Mazar-i-Sharif and more importantly the supplies kept there crippled the Afghan military and began the end of Najibullah's government. Following the collapse of Najibullah's government the Alliance would fall with a 2nd Civil war breaking out however following the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's (Taliban) takeover of Kabul, The United Front was reassembled.
James Bertrand Longley is an American filmmaker.
Pratap Chatterjee is an Indian/Sri Lankan investigative journalist and progressive author. He is a British citizen and grew up in India, although he lived in California for many years. He serves as the executive director of CorpWatch, an Oakland-based corporate accountability organisation. He also works for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. He writes regularly for The Guardian and serves on the board of Amnesty International USA and of the Corporate Europe Observatory
Sarah Chayes is a former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former reporter for National Public Radio, she also served as special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Fariba Nawa is an Afghan-American freelance journalist who grew up in both Herat and Lashkargah in Afghanistan as well as Fremont, California. She was born in Herat, Afghanistan to a native Afghan family. Her family fled the country during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. She is trilingual in Persian, Arabic, and English. She has done her master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Journalism from New York University. In 2000 she ventured into Taliban controlled Afghanistan by sneaking into the country through Iran. She lived and reported from Afghanistan from 2000 to 2007. Furthermore, She travelled extensively in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, and Germany, reporting on her experiences.
Khalil Bendib is an Algerian American fine artist and political cartoonist. Born during the Algerian revolution, Bendib spent 3 years in Morocco before returning to Algeria aged 6. After receiving his bachelor's degree in Algiers, he left Algeria at the age of 20. He currently resides in Berkeley, California.
Kimberly Ellen Kagan is an American military historian. She founded and heads the Institute for the Study of War and has taught at West Point, Yale, Georgetown University, and American University. Kagan has published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Weekly Standard and elsewhere. In 2009, she served on Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategic assessment team.
John Garrity is an officer in the United States Army. In 2009 he was appointed the camp commandant of the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Task Force Lone Star from Texas served as the operational command unit that COL Garrity used to maintain custody, control and care of over 2,ooo enemy combatants. SFC Bryan Bradley from the Texas Army National Guard and Chief Matthew Lacy from the United States Navy served as the Guard Force Commanders under COL Garrity. COL Garrity oversaw the closing of the old temporary facility built in a ruined hangar from the era of Afghanistan's Soviet occupation—that had nevertheless been in use since early 2002—and the opening of modern facilities. Prior to serving as camp commandant at Bagram he commanded the 16th Military Police Brigade (Airborne) at Fort Bragg.
The Afghan conflict refers to the series of events that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. Early instability followed the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the largely non-violent 1973 coup d'état, which deposed Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah in absentia, ending his 40-year-long reign. With the concurrent establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the country's relatively peaceful and stable period in modern history came to an end. However, all-out fighting did not erupt until after 1978, when the Saur Revolution violently overthrew Khan's government and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Subsequent unrest over the radical reforms that were being pushed by the then-ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led to unprecedented violence, prompting a large-scale pro-PDPA military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. In the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen received extensive support from Pakistan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in a joint covert effort that was dubbed Operation Cyclone.
Phyllis Bennis is an American Jewish writer, activist, and political commentator. Focusing mainly on issues related to the Middle East and the United Nations, she is a strong critic of Israel and the United States and a leading advocate of Palestinian rights.
On 15 August 2021, the city of Kabul, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, was captured by Taliban forces during the 2021 Taliban offensive, concluding the War in Afghanistan that began in 2001. The fall of Kabul provoked a range of reactions across the globe, including debates on whether to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, on the humanitarian situation in the country, on the outcome of the War, and the role of military interventionism in world affairs.