writings by Joshua Brollier

Workers fired from the Bureau of Statistics

Moving Beyond the U.S. National Interest

by Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly

June 18, 2010

“The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”

By Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

June 2, 2010

Islamabad— “Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around.” This sentiment, expressed by a young man from North Waziristan, has been echoed throughout many of our conversations with ordinary people here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Most are baffled that the United States, with the largest and most modern military in the world, can’t put a stop to a few thousand militants hiding out in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

by Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier

June 1, 2010

For six days in late May, 2010, Emergency, an Italian NGO providing surgery and basic health care in Afghanistan since 1999, welcomed us to visit facilities they operate in the capital city of Kabul and in Panjshir, a neighboring province. We lived with their hospital staff at both places and accompanied them in their weekly trips to various FAPs (First Aid Posts) which the hospitals maintain in small outlying villages.

by Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier

May 24, 2010
Refugee Family Living in Shah Mansoor Islamabad—Abir Mohammed, a refugee from Bajaur, says that the battles which raged in his home province since 2008 have dramatically changed his life. We met him in a crowded Islamabad café where he politely approached customers, offering to shine their shoes. He isn’t accustomed to shoeshine work. But, he needs to earn as much money as possible before reuniting with family members who await him, near Peshawar, in a tent encampment for displaced people.

May 18, 2010

by Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier

Islamabad—On May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.

Patient Waiting for War’s End

Islamabad—

Through the Soviet invasion and occupation, the Afghan civil war and now the United States war and occupation, a young man named Zainullah, around 25 years of age, has seen war his whole life. But you’d never know it by his engaging smile and his relaxed countenance. Zainullah currently lives at a paraplegic center in Hayatabad, Pakistan, a suburb of Peshawar, the capital city of the North-West Frontier Province. He is originally from the Helmand province of Afghanistan, which has been one of the most intense battlegrounds during the “war on terror” launched by the United States in 2001.

by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

May 14th, 2010 Schoolkids from Swat: Photo taken by G. Simon Harak In May of 2009, under tremendous pressure from the United States, the Pakistani military began a large-scale military operation in the Swat District of Pakistan to confront militants in the region. The UNHCR said the operation led to one of the largest and fastest displacements it had ever seen. Within ten days, more than two million people fled their homes.

Now, a year later, our small delegation visited the Swat District. After a breathtaking ride through the Hindu Kush mountains, traveling in a pick-up truck from Shah Mansour in the Swabi district, we arrived in Swat’s capital, Saidu Sharif.

A call for an end to more “quiet diplomacy” with Israel

A favorite professor of mine once told me that the more you learn about history, the more you realize how little you really know, and how much you still have to learn. Last night, I was both moved and angered to further learn about the ongoing destruction and blockade of the Gaza strip. The award winning Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Omer, showed photographs and told us many moving stories about his life and experiences in Gaza. These stories included the demolition of Mohammed’s home and loss of his brother and neighbors.

design by Kate Kelly

…No one expects a Hilton Hotel when going to jail, neither do I desire one when traveling. Many of us had been sleeping on the floor of a local church for the previous twelve days, and I found it quite comfortable. But the conditions at Central Cell Block were deplorable. The cells were hardly bigger than the bed frame and the grimy toilet and sink combo took up most of the floor space. The beds had no pads. They were just a slab of thin metal that made an obnoxious pop sound, similar to a gunshot, every time a prisoner so much as rolled over. It had to be close to ninety degrees in the cell and the massive overhead light, which remained on all night, was reminiscent of an interrogation lamp. The room had the look and feel of an oven. Cockroaches lined the walls and vied for space on our beds, now dripping with sweat. These irritating conditions were amplified by the fact that most of us were on the twelfth day of a liquids only fast to be, in some small way, in solidarity the men who remain on hunger strike at Guantanamo to protest the illegality of their detention.

February 12, 2010

On entering the Dane County Jail, the first holding cell that Brian Terrell and I were placed in had only one other person. We previously saw this man outside the cell during our initial booking. He was a man with dark black skin and a full beard. I thought I heard one of the officers say he was from Gambia. When we entered the cell, the man was in mid-ritual in what appeared to be a Muslim’s midday prayer. A young white guard, who had the accent of a Midwesterner, looked disdainfully at the man and then somewhat positively at Brian and me. The guard said, “Just ignore that,” as if the man was insulting or threatening us by his peaceful act of prayer. To which I replied, “It’s fine with me.”