Massacre in Kazakhstan: A Video the World Needs to See...And Understand

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT. Footage from Zhanaozen in Kazakstan of police attacking --- and murdering --- protesters. English subtitles.

Yesterday a video from the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan was released on-line. It shows security forces in Zhanaozen advancing against protesters, shooting them, and then beating and stomping on their bodies. The footage confirms earlier reports that a protest by oil workers on Friday, the Kazakhstan day of national independence, had climaxed in violence, with the death of 15 demonstrators and upwards of 100 wounded. Activists claim both figures are much higher, suggesting as many as 55 deaths.

The footage, seemingly shot by two women from the window of a high-rise apartment block, captures the moment that a wave of police fire on unarmed demonstrators, clearly fleeing for their lives. A man, who appears to have collapsed after being shot in the leg, is viciously attacked by a policeman with a baton. As one of the women filming comments, "Look at them, they are just beating them to death." The police continue to advance, hitting the fallen protesters as they pass them, before converging in a group, perhaps to take stock of their carnage.

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Yemen: The Dangerous US Game (Scahill)

Hillary Clinton and Ali Abdullah SalehThe prospect of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s departure is a source of great anxiety for the White House, but the United States has unintentionally played a significant role in weakening his regime. For more than a decade, US policy neglected Yemen’s civil society and development, focusing instead on a military strategy aimed at hunting down terrorists. These operations not only caused the deaths of dozens of civilians, fueling popular anger against Saleh for allowing the US military to conduct them; they also fed Saleh’s corruption while doing nothing to address Yemen’s place as the poorest country in the Arab world, which proved to be major driving forces behind the rebellion.

A serious case could be made that the stakes are much higher for the United States in Yemen than in Libya, yet its response to the repression of protests in the two countries has been starkly different.

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Afghanistan-Pakistan Special: Obama's Review Upgrades Situation from "Quagmire" to "Morass"

My initial reaction to the much-touted Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review, both in the release of five unclassified pages summarising the study and in the unclassified video conference of President Obama and his advisors, was the one that my father and grandfather would give to any grand proclamation --- be it by a politician, a TV pundit, a salesman, a kid on the street corner --- that meant far less.

Big Damn Deal.

Perhaps that is too jaded. Maybe the better approach is to try the wit of The Borowitz Report: "Defense Dept. Upgrades Afghanistan from Quagmire to Morass". Perhaps a twist of an aphorism might do, as in this from the Afghanistan Analysts Network: "Stamping Out the Fire by Pouring on Gasoline".

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Afghanistan: Taking Apart the Latest "We're Routing the Taliban" Story

On Wednesday, Carlotta Gall of The New York Times posted a glowing account of progress in the war against insurgents in southern Afghanistan, "

The unadulterated story of victory --- "The Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base" --- was accompanied by other cheers of We're Winning, almost nine years after the US had supposedly won in Afghanistan.

Specialist observers, however, thought that the real victory might be that of a propaganda offensive by the US military, and they were not ready to join in the celebration. Joshua Foust wrote, "This disconnect between military spin and ground reality is not only dangerous, it is insulting."

We asked EA's new Afghanistan correspondent David Fitzgerald to look over the evidence and give us an analysis.

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Afghanistan: How Peace Was Lost in the North (Foust)

Staunching the north's slide into chaos doesn't require the same investment as it would in the south and east. But the consequences of inaction are just as severe. If we can't at least preserve the local government's sovereignty, then the north's downward slide can only continue, adding a new front in our efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan -- and a new complication for our hopes one day to leave it.

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