Free Range International

I have written on this topic many times before; most of you have by now seen this article from the New York Times: Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints.  Here are the first two paragraphs:
American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and [...]

Editors Note:  Chim Chim wanted to provide his perspective on the recent CIA versus contractor story which exploded in the main stream media last week. He knows of what he speaks:
The World has changed. I hear that a lot. As a matter of fact, I have heard it since I was in grade school. [...]

I have been waiting for this; At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency.  It was a matter of time before the losers in Washington DC and Kabul took their bureaucratic infighting  public by leaking to the press.  You send in the Marines, ask them to do a job nobody else [...]

I’m still on the road trying to make my way back to Jalalabad from a big implementation work group meeting in Lashkar Gar.  Step one of the journey back was to hitch a ride on the CADG plane to Kandahar where Panjawaii Tim promised to pick me up and take me out to his project [...]

I have been putting in considerable travel time over the past month both inside and outside Afghanistan, which is why the blogging has been so light lately. On the plus side I have a lot of material backed up in the brain housing group but in the past that has resulted in disorganized posts of [...]