It has been "a bad year in Afghanistan," according to CBC News, with thousands killed, including hundreds of Afghan police, and large areas of the country still outside government control. The NATO forces battling Taliban guerrillas are stretched thin, unable even to guard key roads, and now some are asking, "Is it Mission Impossible?"
One problem is that NATO has never fought this far from its home bases in Europe. Another is that Afghanistan is twice the size of Germany, "with a rugged geography that dwarfs military efforts of any size and that seems to mock military planning."
Political writer Hugh Graham told CBC that there is only one main road in Afghanistan, which runs in a circle around the central mountains and connects the major cities. Most of the fighting has involved that road and the Taliban supply trails which cross it. "The road is the Achilles heel," said Graham, "and they can't really hold it. ... They don't have the numbers of troops."
NATO has only 41,000 troops in Afghanistan, including some from the US, while the US has another 7000 under separate command. The Afghan army is also considered to have a reliable core of about 20,000. Although the Taliban only fields about 15,000 or 20,000 guerrillas and cannot hold territory, it is able to play havoc through roadside bombings.
Kevin McCort, who heads CARE Canada, told CBC that "up to a quarter of the country ... is in this in between context of maybe having government control during the day but, say, Taliban control at night. ... At the moment, we're actually starting to contract in some key areas." Relief supplies are so routinely ambushed and looted that officials like McCort warn of a humanitarian crisis this winter.
British defense expert Michael Clarke told CBC that NATO's greatest weakness has been its failure to follow up on its military successes. NATO politicians play down these complaints, but some of the military leaders have begun to voice them openly.
"NATO miscalculated from the start," CBC explained, "believing the Taliban were thoroughly beaten for good back in 2002." As a result, many of the 37 nations participating in the NATO mission provided units that were unprepared for a combat role and reluctant to confront the Taliban when it reemerged in the south of the country two years ago.
This has largely left the US, British, Canadian, and Dutch forces to bear the brunt of active combat. NATO has even resorted to hiring helicopter services from private military contractors because risk-adverse member nations will not commit their own.
Despite having over 2 million soldiers under arms, the NATO nations have failed to come up with any reinforcements for an Iraq-like "surge." Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman of CSIS charges that NATO members are "allowing the situation to deteriorate" because they are unwilling to make sacrifices.
Michael Clarke commented that the more strongly the Dutch, Canadians, and British indicate their determination to keep fighting, it easier it will continue to be for the Germans, French, and Spanish to avoid making any greater commitment. "It is astonishing and scandalous that we have to negotiate in this way with our fellow-allies in NATO," he said.
"Historically, Afghanistan is the great breaker of armies," CBC concluded. "Could it also break NATO? That's no longer idle speculation."
From what I understand, NATO is fundamentally the outcome of the US Fascist 'coup' mentored by Harriman, Bush et al. I'm sure Cossiga could fill us in on the details.
As for Afghanistan/Baluchistan - history has the answer to this topic's query:
Remember the Khyber Pass vs the might of the British Empire.
Only 'we' didn't have nukes then... _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 1959 Location: South London
Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:20 am Post subject:
Afghanistan defeated Britain three times and the USSR once. No wonder Putin allegedly rubbed his hands with glee when Bush told him he was going to invade, possibly the more so because it was going to be a NATO invasion.
How far was Afghanistan responsible for the demise of the mighty USSR? In no small measure, I suspect.
Russia has never liked NATO which was formed to threaten it and has always feared being deprived of access to the oceans through being surrounded by alliances of others.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:34 pm Post subject:
If they're digging in the Mujahadeen (as I call the Al-Quaeeda, Talibanis ) will be getting the bulldozers out. What the hell are they risking our young lads lives for? Are the senior officers and politicians trying to destroy the British Army's morale by getting it to kill kids and protect opium crops?
The title is misleading. It already has, they haven't announced it yet.
Afghanistan is being used as a cash cow to achieve two things
a) pay for the occupation of Iraq through drug laundering
b) crush all opposition to the war in Iraq by flooding the youth with cheap drugs
Sarkozy, Merkel and all the other US lapdogs are rightly being berated by Gates. They sell America at home endlessly, they now need to pay with coffins.
Why are they balking? Their education system unlike ours didn't teach them that they won all the previous wars or that they were magnanimous in handing over their Empires.
To put it bluntly they realised when they were beat.
Loose talk of the last days of Saigon, the end of the great game, time to turn tail and flee, is wrong. But unless Nato does more now, unless there is more money, more effort, more help, then it will be true. That's what the reports warn.
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:34 pm Post subject: Europeans see what America cannot
Quote:
In short, most Europeans see no benefit in playing junior members in an alliance whose historic time has passed and that serves primarily as an instrument of U.S. power. Washington's sharpest geopolitical thinker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, calls NATO a "stepping stone" the U.S. uses to project power into Europe.
At this week's NATO conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, an angry U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates accused some Europeans of not being prepared to "fight and die" in Afghanistan in the battle against the Taliban.
The undiplomatic Gates is quite right. Most Europeans regard the Afghan conflict as a) wrong and immoral; b) America's war; c) all about oil; or d) probably lost.
To many Europeans, the NATO alliance was created to deter the real threat of Soviet aggression, not to supply foot soldiers for George Bush's wars in the Muslim world.
While Gates and the Harper government were pleading for more troops, the commander of the 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, landed a bombshell. If proper U.S. military counter-insurgency doctrine were followed, McNeill admitted, the U.S. and NATO would need 400,000 troops to defeat Pashtun tribal resistance in Afghanistan.
When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan, they deployed 160,000 troops and about 200,000 Afghan Communist troops -- yet failed to crush the mostly Pashtun resistance. Now, the U.S. and NATO are trying the same mission with only 66,000 troops, backed by local mercenaries grandly styled the Afghan National Army.
Canada's calls for 1,000 more NATO troops, and the U.S. decision to send 3,200 marines, will not alter the course of this war, which is turning increasingly against the western occupiers. In fact, the war is spreading into neighbouring Pakistan, a nation of 165 million, stretching U.S. and NATO forces ever thinner.
A primary reason for Gates's recent call for U.S. troops to begin attacking pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen inside Pakistan is due to their growing attacks on allied supply lines to Afghanistan.
As this column has reported, over 70% of U.S./NATO supplies come in by truck through Pakistan's tribal belt known as FATA, including all of their oil and gas. Attacks by pro-Taliban tribesmen against these vulnerable supply lines are jeopardizing western military operations inside Afghanistan.
HUNTERS NOW HUNTED
The hunters are becoming the hunted. Cutting off invaders' supply lines is a time-honoured Pashtun military tactic. They used it againstAlexander the Great, the British and Soviets, and are at it again.
What angry Gates fails to see is that by pushing NATO into a distant Asian war without political purpose or seeming end, he is endangering the very alliance that is the bedrock of U.S. power in Europe.
Europeans increasingly ask why they need the U.S.-dominated military alliance, a Cold War relic, in which they continue to play foot soldiers to America's atomic knights, to paraphrase the late German statesman, Franz Josef Strauss.
Why does the rich, powerful European Union even need NATO any more? The Soviet threat is gone -- at least for now. Nuclear-armed France and Britain are quite capable of defending Europe against outside threats. Why can't the new European Defence Force take over NATO's role of defending Europe and protecting EU interests?
In short, most Europeans see no benefit in playing junior members in an alliance whose historic time has passed and that serves primarily as an instrument of U.S. power. Washington's sharpest geopolitical thinker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, calls NATO a "stepping stone" the U.S. uses to project power into Europe.
By pushing NATO towards a bridge too far, the Bush administration may end up fatally undermining the alliance and encouraging anti-American forces in Europe.
In fact, it's becoming evident that the cash-strapped U.S. needs the EU more than the EU needs the U.S.
CONSCRIPTION
Final point. If impassioned claims by U.S. and Canadian politicians that the little Afghanistan war must by won at all costs, then why don't they stop orating, impose conscription, and send 400,000 soldiers, including their own sons, to fight in Afghanistan?
Of course they won't. They prefer to waste their own soldiers, and grind up Afghanistan, rather than admit this war against 40 million Pashtun tribesmen was a terrible mistake that will only get worse.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:39 pm Post subject:
The most disturbing thing about NATO is it was stuffed full of Nazis and the far right as soon as it was formed after World War II.
That's most likely the main reason the French wisely withdrew its military forces from NATO in 1966. Charles De Gaulle (see film: The Day Of The Jackal) ordered all US & other foreign troops to leave France whilst remaining a part of NATO's political structures.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:08 pm Post subject:
A chilling dispatch from Afghanistan: It's a war that CAN'T be won
By DAVID JONES - Daily Mail - 22/02/08 - News section
The two dogs didn't seem to want to fight at all. When the green tarpaulin that separated them fell - the signal for battle to commence - they gave one another a friendly lick and engaged in some playful sparring.
Gathered in a scenic natural amphitheatre in the snow-clad foothills of Kabul, however, the crowd of some 3,000 Afghan men were incensed at this 'cowardly' display.
They showed their disapproval by jeering and hurling great slabs of ice at the beautiful Asian breeds, whose ears had been lopped off to stop them being chewed, and whose luxuriant fur had been daubed with purple-and-gold paint to make them appear more ferocious.
So, after being prodded and cajoled by their owners, these most reluctant warriors were forced to join battle. For ten stomach-churning minutes the blood and spittle flew as they bit and clawed at one another with terrifying ferocity, spattering the slushy ring with crimson.
It was only when one yelped so shrilly that his cries echoed around the mountains that the judge - a ghoulish figure in muddy white robes with a chest-length grey beard - brandished his whip to call a halt to the carnage.
Watching this Friday morning Afghan "sport" (a popular prequel to noon-day prayers) at the behest of my interpreter - an enthusiast who thought it would be rather like attending a British football match - I began to wonder what sort of people our soldiers were fighting and dying for.
Indeed, it even fleetingly occurred to me that Afghan society might not have been a mite more civilised under the tyrannical Taliban, who banned dog-fighting and other forms of traditional entertainment as "anti-Islamic".
But then, two days later, came the atrocity that reminded everyone what compassion really means to the men in black turbans. Infiltrating the almost non-existent security at another dog-fight, a suicide bomber slaughtered more than 100 spectators, including a regional military commander presumed to have been the prime target, plus 35 of his men.
It was the bloodiest Taliban attack since December, 2001, when they were ousted from power; and viewing the devastation on TV, one could only be thankful that it had happened 300 miles away in Kandahar, and not Kabul.
Such is the deadly lottery of life in Afghanistan, more than six years after coalition forces arrived with a mission to eliminate the architects of 9/11 and pave the way for democracy: something the country has never enjoyed in the 130-odd years since the British and Russians turned it into a I first set foot in this haunting, benighted country five years ago this month. Back then, flying into a Kabul airport whose potholed runway was still flanked by the burnt-out relics of jet-fighters, and where the only adornment was a poster warning of landmines, there was an air of optimism.
In the bombed-out ruins, families may have shivered and starved around braziers, but they were free, at least. It seemed only a matter of time before they would have sufficient to eat and live without fear, after three decades of subjugation and civil war.
For we British, and indeed any Western visitors in those days, the welcome was almost embarrassingly warm. After all, we had not only played a major part in vanquishing the then universally detested Taliban, but promised generous military and financial aid: essential building blocks for this new, democratic Afghanistan.
On returning this month, I hoped to find signs that a prosperous, secure, egalitarian country was starting to take shape. Yet, depressingly, I have discovered an Afghanistan that is, in many ways, darker, more bitterly divided - and certainly far more dangerous - than the place I remember.
An Afghanistan where gratitude towards the international community has faded, and a growing number of ordinary people are hostile to our presence - even though our departure would, inevitably, see the Taliban return to power.
Chris Alexander, the UN Secretary General's deputy special representative in Afghanistan, plays up the positives: six million children back in school (including two million girls banned under the Taliban); more than 85 per cent of the country served by local health clinics; a sizeable weapons disablement programme; 14 banks where none existed before; the hope of Afghanistan paying for her own budget by 2011.
However, Matt Waldman, head of policy for Oxfam International, paints a gloomier picture. He reminds me that one-in-five Afghan children still dies under the age of five; half are malnourished; and this winter more than 750 died from hypothermia.
A staggering $15billion of humanitarian aid may have been pumped in since 2001, but of that, some 40 per cent has gone straight back into the pockets of foreign contractors making fat profits from the reconstruction effort.
But it doesn't take statistics to tell you that Lord Ashdown (humiliatingly rejected for the post of UN special envoy to Afghanistan by the increasingly anti-British President Hamid Karzai) was right when he described it as a "failed state".
Nor will it wash, any longer, for the holier-than-thou Karzai and his ministers to heap all the blame for this failure - which the Taliban are exploiting to maximum effect - onto Britain, America and the rest.
That much is clear from the moment you step off the plane.
If it is true that an airport is the window on a nation - New York's JFK with its paranoid security; Heathrow with its endless queues and ranks of black cabs - then heaven help Afghanistan.
Merely to negotiate one's way to the car park at Kabul International, one must run a menacing gauntlet of spivs, chancers and hand-out merchants.
You want to avoid having every item of clothing removed from your suitcase in a 'security' check? That'll be $20 "baksheesh". Want to clear customs quickly, no questions asked? "That's another $10."
So what became of the new Afghan police force, whose first batch of eager young recruits I watched being trained by the Germans five years ago?
You might well ask. Sadly, they lead the demand for cash backhanders from the public they are supposed to be protecting.
"Robbers in grey uniforms," sniffed my oldest Afghan friend, now employed by one of the international security companies whose muscle is all that protects the government, aid agencies and businesses from Taliban insurgents and the new Afghan Mafia barons.
Or at least they did until last week, when Karzai summarily announced that these foreign protection firms were to be banned so that his cronies could run their own monopoly.
Small wonder, then, that Kabul - where I once felt safe enough to go jogging alone at dusk - is now a city under virtual siege, particularly for foreign visitors.
Almost every major building is surrounded by a high, razor-topped wall. And at night, when the streets are bathed in an eerie halogen glow, weaving through the rat-run of concrete barriers manned by balaclava-clad gunmen is an unnerving experience.
You are never quite sure whether you are being stopped by a policemen, insurgent, or would-be kidnapper. In Kabul, kidnapping is the new epidemic, the most recent victim being a prominent trader whose severed ear was posted to his family along with a $1.5million ransom demand.
But after a recent wave of bloody attacks, the latest and most shocking of which claimed the lives of an untold number of foreign guests and staff at the new Aga Khan-owned Serena Hotel, no one is in any doubt about the Taliban's capability to strike at the heart of the city.
When they return from their safe winter havens in Pakistan, the consensus is that even more murder and mayhem is in store.
One senior Western diplomat told me that spring 2008 threatens to be "the hottest yet".
Inevitably this grim prognosis is having a devastating effect on business. Foreign investment, Afghanistan's lifeblood, has slumped by 50 per cent in the past year.
Chic new stores and restaurants face closure if sales don't pick up soon; but who can stomach haute cuisine after negotiating a security entrance as elaborate as Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie?
The sense of impending doom was given credence when, via my resourceful fixer, I found myself talking to Abu Tauyeb, a notorious Taliban commander who claims to control 14,000 fighters in six provinces from Kabul to Kandahar.
An articulate graduate in his mid-30s whose cousin holds down a high-powered job in London, Tauyeb spoke via an echoing mobile phone from his base across the snow-capped Khyber Mountains.
"This spring I will lead a massive offensive to drive the infidels out of Kabul," he said in measured tones. "You will see us engage them in street fighting for the first time, and we will employ other tactics which I won't disclose.
"We can see that the resolve of the infidel forces is weakening but we are growing stronger every day."
It would please me greatly to dismiss his dire warning as bragadoccio. Disturbingly, though, the evidence suggests the commander's assessment is right.
Five years ago, the coalition forces in Afghanistan numbered around 15,000. Today there are more than 42,000 troops, including 7,200 from Britain, and thousands more will soon be deployed.
Yet according to the Senlis Council, a respected international think-tank, some 54 per cent of the country is already back under de facto Taliban control, and their avowed aim of retaking Kabul in 2008 "appears more viable than ever".
This bleak view is supported by Ehsan Zahine, director of Afghanistan's Tribal Liaison Office. "The Taliban have now set up alternative governments in almost every part of the country," he told me.
"In many places, what they say counts for more than the official administration. They are winning people over with a clever mixture of persuasion and intimidation."
I saw what he meant when journeying from Kabul to the chaotic frontier town of Torkham (where the passport-less droves crossed in and out of Pakistan virtually unchecked, and even the official commander told me he did not recognise the legitimacy of the British Raj-created border).
In Shinwari, where U.S. troops allegedly ran amok killing many civilians after being hit by a roadside bomb, we ate lunch to hostile stares and the strains of a Taliban cassette urging people to rise up against the "invaders".
At night in such places, the red, green and black Afghan flag is often hoisted down and replaced with the Taliban's white pennant, with its holy inscription; a telling reminder to people that the men in black turbans are among them.
Uplifting as it was to see smiling girls marching to school with their shiny new aid agency-provided satchels, hundreds of Western-built schools have been shut down because the teachers are too scared to venture inside.
In the southern province of Zabul, I was told, just three of the 170 schools are open. Yet there is a new pragmatism to the Taliban's tactics. To win support in more liberal areas, they allow some schools to be used - so long as they adopt a fundamentalist curriculum.
In these permitted classrooms, A is for Allah and T is for Tora, the sword with which to cut off the infidel's head; so runs the new alphabet of fear.
The Taliban's campaign to win over young Afghans has recently turned to popular culture. The nation's favourite TV programme is Afghan Star, a rudimentary version of The X Factor, complete its own Sharon Osbourne.
However, a young girl contestant is in hiding after receiving death threats because her headscarf slipped down on screen. Hard-line mullahs "encourage" viewers to watch Koran Star, an alternative show whose veiled contestants chant verses from the scriptures.
The coalition strives gamely to counter this propaganda offensive, of course, yet it hardly helps when they hand out free Barbie Dolls wearing skimpy mini-skirts; one of several faux-pas which have caused grave offence.
Apparently forgetting the night-time raids by the Vice and Virtue Police and the summarily chopped-off limbs, some Afghan men told me they were actually happier under the Taliban.
They preferred it when their women were compelled to wear burkas and remain confined to the home, they said; which explains why it remains rare to see a female face in public outside the big cities.
Another common complaint among ordinary Afghans is that they feel like second-class citizens in an "occupied" country.
Under the latest indignity, civilian vehicles are not permitted anywhere near the ubiquitous International Security Assistance Force convoys, in case they might be suicide bombers. Drivers must pull over to the roadside and wait for them to pass.
I understood how demeaning - and scary - this can feel when our four-wheel drive was forced to a halt by a French armoured vehicle, whose machine-gunner trained us in his sights and gesticulated furiously.
All this said, isn't it a bit rich for the Afghans to criticise the foreign troops who are protecting them with their lives, when their own government includes a deeply corrupt rabble of reconstructed warlords and brigands?
On the front page of the Kabul Times last week, for example, the main story centred on the latest outrage perpetrated by Abdul Rashid Dostum.
A sadistic northern warrior chieftain, reputed to have tied enemies to his tank tracks and crushed them alive (and shot one of his wives when he tired of her) he is now chief of staff to the Afghan Army; arguably the second most powerful figure in the Karzai administration
Angered by some perceived slur, it seems, Dostum allegedly sent henchmen to abduct the leader of the Turkmen tribe, Akbar Bay, and members of his family, imprisoned them in his Kabul mansion and personally beat them up.
The attorney general briefly considered pressing charges, but decided against it after being advised that it could spark all-out civil war.
A neat little snapshot of the new Afghanistan.
But how can Karzai even begin to stamp out such medieval behaviour, and nurture the sort of ordered society that would present an attractive alternative to the Taliban, when his own family are so deeply mired in scandal?
Embattled in the heavily-guarded presidential quarters, the so-called mayor of Kabul has belatedly sanctioned an anti-corruption investigation which, at the last count, embroiled eight different government ministries.
However, the nepotistic President refuses to allow the probe to extend to his younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is widely accused of running a lucrative drug smuggling racket from Kandahar.
Wali is unofficial governor of the southern province ... which just happens to be one of the main poppy growing regions, and supplies much of the heroin that finds its way onto British streets.
This week, two more British servicemen - Green Howard Damian Stephen Lawrence, 25, and Royal Marine Damian Mulvihill, 32 - were fatally wounded on the front line in Helmand; the 88th and 89th to be killed in Afghanistan.
We can only hope that, one day, the battle will be won, and the inhospitable mountains of Central Asia will give rise to a nation worthy of their courage.
However, after returning to a country that has been hijacked by the corrupt, self-serving officers of a propped-up regime, I fear we're in for a mighty long wait.
Safely beyond reach in their Pakistan sanctuaries, the Taliban and their friends in Al Qaeda must be rubbing their bloody hands with glee - and looking forward to the day when we in the West finally run out of patience.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:27 pm Post subject:
Why Britain's Afghan venture has failed
Six years after the invasion, the overthrow of the Taleban regime, the installation of a client regime that is now steeped in corruption, the deaths of thousands of people and an aid programme that is failing dismally,
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has set out Britain's 'plan B' for Afghanistan. Given the appalling record of destruction, matched only by the chaos that is Iraq, it is no surprise that people are sceptical about the likelihood of these new plans bringing peace and stability to the region, and cynical about the motives behind the ongoing intervention. Corruption, poverty and insecurity have all worsened in Afghanistan under occupation. This "free, democratic" Afghanistan has levels of poverty comparable to sub-Saharan Africa, as well as 120,000 women and 60,000 children who are amongst Afghanistan's new drug users, giving a meaning to the term "liberation" that is entirely in keeping with intervention by capitalist liberal states.
One has to ask if this is what western politicians mean when they boast that they have brought democracy to Afghanistan . People want more than a rigged vote labelled as democracy. They want stability, security and a decent standard of living. Not death, destruction and poverty. They want Islamic values, not to be liberated to enjoy cannabis and heroin.
Given the deepening crisis in Afghanistan it is no wonder that Brown is suggesting this new plan. He has to win hearts and minds in Britain and justify the billions of tax payers money, as well as justify the many troop casualties. However, the hearts and minds in the Muslim world are already lost. The worsening security and worsening poverty prove this military venture has not been about ensuring a more peaceful world, or about humanitarian intervention, but has been about Britain fighting its corner in a new colonial Great Game. Sadly, the people of Afghanistan are the victims of this competition between Russia, Britain and the US, in this most strategically and materially important region.
On Security, Brown has proposed this be under the auspices of ISAF and the Afghan national army. Yet under their watch the UN estimates that violent incidents are up at least 20 percent since the previous year. In November 2007 they criticised international troops for killing civilians at 'alarming levels'. It is NATO troop presence that fuels the insecurity. Moreover the UN high commissioner also raised concerns about whether ISAF was turning detainees over to torture in Afghan custody. Amnesty International said that NATO forces in Afghanistan have handed detainees to Afghan security services (the NDS) despite reports that they torture their prisoners.
On economic development the current record is shameful. Almost half of the US ' aid budget goes directly to fatten the profits of five US contractors. Much has been squandered on profits for companies or subcontractors, or spent on high salaries and living expenses for expatriate staff (each full-time expatriate consultant costs up to $500000 a year.) Only $270 million of the $15 billion of aid has been spent on the agricultural sector when this is the major source of income for 80 percent of Afghans. Heroin production is up since the occupation, providing 93 percent of the world's opium supply. Tragically the rates of addiction within Afghanistan have increased sharply since 2003 to nearly 4 percent of the population.
On political development, even Karzai himself cannot hide the levels of corruption. The democratic parliament is packed with former warlords, who voted themselves an amnesty from war crimes earlier this year. Large profits from Afghanistan's $3-billion opium crop, funds skimmed from aid and reconstruction contracts and bribes for services all fuel official corruption. One elderly parliamentarian addressed Karzai saying. "The government and cabinet members are sucking the blood of innocent people; we can't tolerate the corruption in every government office."
The on-going western occupation and interference only fuels the desire for an independent Islamic Caliphate where authority lies with people; where elected representatives cannot vote themselves an amnesty from prosecution; where the laws and values are those based on the beliefs,heritage and values of the population; where the executive is wholly accountable and has to stand up for the interests of its citizens and not for those of foreign governments.
Western governments will never admit that their repeated interventions trying to "fix" what they themselves have broken only creates more problems. They show no signs of wanting to leave the Muslim world to shape its own future and political destiny. Stability can only come when a system of government enjoys the trust and confidence of the people and that will only come when Islam lies at the heart of the system. All people want to have the rulers they chose, and not be forced to accept stooges who represent foreign interests.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:01 am Post subject: Russia Accuses U.S. of Drug Trafficing in Afghanistan
So the old opium trade is finally back in the hands of the Russel Trust faction? Some addiction.
Narco Aggression: Russia accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan GlobalResearch.ca
The global proceeds of the Afghan drug trade is in excess of 150 billion dollars a year. There is mounting evidence that this illicit trade is protected by the US military.
Historically, starting in the early 1980s, the Afghan drug trade was used to finance CIA covert support of the Islamic brigades. The 2003 war on Afghanistan was launched following the Taliban government's 2000-2001 drug eradication program which led to a collapse in opium production in excess of 90 percent.
The following report, which accuses the United States of using military transport planes to ship narcotics out of Afghanistan confirms what is already known and documented regarding the Golden Crescent Drug Trade and its insiduous relationship to US intelligence.
Russia, facing a catastrophic rise in drug addiction, accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking from Afghanistan.
by Vladimir Radyuhin - 23Feb08 - GlobalResearch.ca
Afghan workers cutting open poppy bulbs, the first stage in the harvesting process, in Jalalabad. Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply.
One of the most ironic twists to the ongoing mission in Afghanistan emerged from the NATO meetings held in Brussels last week. With member countries either reluctant or unable to add military resources, NATO is now seeking assistance from Russia, its erstwhile Cold War enemy and one-time "evil occupier" of Afghanistan. In fact, the irony is so thick that we should first roll back decades' worth of propaganda and start at the very beginning.
NATO was formed in 1949 as a collective self-defence alliance to prevent any encroachment of the Soviet Union into Western Europe. The Soviets responded to this by creating their own defensive coalition of Communist countries (the Warsaw Pact) to protect them from any eastward expansion of NATO's influence. The nuclear arms race was at its zenith and even Europeans, still recovering from the massive destruction and carnage of the Second World War, understood the importance of maintaining large conventional armies. Troops and tanks were regarded as a preferable deterrent to an apocalyptic mushroom cloud.
The impasse that resulted in Europe did not prevent the U.S. and Soviets from waging war by proxy in non-aligned Third World countries around the world. Afghanistan, in fact, became a key battleground for the CIA and the KGB. Since it bordered the Soviet Union's central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the U.S. knew that Moscow could not afford to ignore events in impoverished and underdeveloped Afghanistan.
Throughout the '50s and '60s, Soviet engineers undertook several major infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, including the construction of the Salang tunnel through the Hindu Kush Mountains, which provided the first viable access between the country's northern and southern provinces. A full-scale program was introduced to train Afghan army officers and a large number of economic aid packages were extended to Kabul's Communist government.
The Americans decided things were going a little too smoothly for the Kremlin, so they decided to stir things up a little. By arming and funding Afghan Muslim extremists who were already resisting the social changes, the Americans sought to draw the Soviets into a full-scale military intervention.
By 1979 events had escalated to the point where the instability, lawlessness and flourishing drug trade along their shared border could no longer be ignored by the Kremlin. Following a coup staged by the KGB in Kabul, the newly appointed Afghan Communist president invited Soviet troops to deploy a security assistance force to help him stabilize Afghanistan.
It would have been high-fives all around for the CIA planners watching the Soviet tank columns rolling south through the Salang tunnel. The Russian bear had taken the bait and put his paw squarely on the American trap.
On the surface, the U.S. vehemently denounced the invasion of Afghanistan and in protest they pulled their athletes out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Behind the scenes, the U.S. ramped up military aid to the Afghan guerrillas and assisted in bringing in foreign mujahedeen fighters - such as a young Saudi Arabian zealot named Osama bin Laden - to bleed the Soviets white.
The stated objectives of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were to provide a secure environment, equality for women, a centralized education and medical system, and the training of a self-sufficient Afghan army. While this may sound eerily similar to the current wish list for the NATO coalition in Afghanistan, a friend of mine at the American embassy was quick to point out one fundamental difference: "The (Soviets) were Communists," he emphatically stated, as if that in itself made any further explanation unnecessary.
The U.S. plan worked like a charm and by the time the last of the Russian troops retreated out of Afghanistan in 1989, they had left behind 50,000 dead comrades, the Moscow treasury was bankrupt and the Soviet Union was in a state of dissolution. The U.S.-equipped Afghan warlords finally triumphed over the Communist regime in Kabul and then turned on each other in an orgy of destruction and bloodletting. Whatever Soviet-built infrastructure was still intact in Kabul in 1996 was destroyed when the Taliban movement forced the mujahedeen warlords north of the Hindu Kush.
In the wake of 9-11, the planners in the White House must have suffered from short-term memory loss as they rushed to throw their troops into the very same trap they had built to destroy the Soviets. After using military force to topple the Taliban, the Americans appointed Hamid Karzai as president. His first act as leader was to invite the U.S.-led coalition to deploy a security assistance force to prop up his regime. Unlike the Soviets, the Americans didn't need to deploy in support of this request - they were already on the ground.
Now into the seventh year of their occupation and with the American economy on the point of collapse, NATO is looking to Russia for help in transporting troops and equipment into Afghanistan. With the skyrocketing oil prices boosting the Russian ruble to dizzy new heights and no one asking for their troops to fight and die in Afghanistan, it would seem that the wheel of fate has turned a full circle.
If you want to drive this point home, go out and rent an old copy of Rambo III. That's the sequel wherein Sylvester Stallone fights alongside the guerrillas, and the final credits dedicate the movie to "the brave mujahedeen in Afghanistan."
Other losers in this geopolitical game are the United States and the European Union. Gazprom's compliance with the Central Asian states' demands for a higher price makes it difficult, if not impossible, for all other negotiations.
The war is lost, asking Russia to help NATO "win" in Afghanistan means the great oil/gas war was fought for nought.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:14 pm Post subject:
US commitment to Nato 'at risk'
US commitment to Nato risks being undermined because some European nations are unwilling to deploy more troops in Afghanistan, MPs have warned.
The Commons Defence Committee said there was a lack of political will among European governments...........
Alarmed at the expected shift towards a negotiated and peaceful handling of the problem of militancy in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, two senior US officials arrived in Islamabad on March 24, hours after Makhdoom Yusuf Raza Gilani was chosen Prime Minister by the newly elected parliament.
The Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher held separate meetings with President Pervez Musharraf, Co-Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party Asif Ali Zardari (whose nominee is now the Prime Minister) and Mian Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister and leader of a major coalition party in the coalition government of Pakistan.
John Negroponte, believed to be the architect of much talked about power-sharing deal struck between Late Benazir Bhutto and President Musharraf which is believed to be still intact, also called on army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
The Negroponte’s talks in Islamabad came amid persistent reports that the new government would seek a negotiated settlement to resolve the current unrest in the tribal territories that resulted in the deterioration of security situation in the country with frequent suicide bomb attacks.
After meeting with Negroponte, Nawaz Sharif said that he told the American envoys there was ''no longer a one-man show in Pakistan'' and that the new parliament - elected in February polls that dealt a crushing defeat to Musharraf's allies - would decide after exhaustive debate how Pakistan should approach extremism.
He held Musharraf's U.S.-backed policies responsible for the wave of suicide bombings and argued the security of Pakistan must not be sacrificed to protect other countries. ''It is unacceptable that while giving peace to the world we make our own country a killing field.'' ''If America wants to see itself clean of terrorism, we also want our villages and towns not to be bombed,'' he said, alluding to recent air strikes near the Afghan border apparently carried out by U.S.
[L]eading newspaper the Nation commented: “For Pakistan the best course is to tackle the situation with persuasion and for the US to beat a quick retreat from the Afghan arena. Otherwise if it continued to follow a hard line approach, the pervasive anti-US sentiments would get even more entrenched….It is quite clear that the military operations and Pentagon Predator missile attacks on Pakistan's soil, perhaps in complicity with Islamabad, have roused anger against the government and intense hatred of the US not only among the inhabitants of the tribal areas, but also in the rest of the country.”
--
Author and journalist. Author of Islamic Pakistan: Illusions & Reality; Islam in the Post-Cold War Era; Islam & Moderism; Islam & Muslims in the Post-9/11 American. Currently working as free lance journalist. Executive Editor of American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com _________________ Simon - http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:44 pm Post subject:
Well, maybe this is all part of the plan... loads more cash for Mafia/organised crime and permanent NATO bases.
This was always gonna be the big one. How long until Putin smashes NATO here?
I wouldn't blame him if he already was RPG-running to ensure the Taliban could never lose.
Afghanistan growing drug trade will prolong conflict 'for years to come'
By James Kirkup, Political correspondent
09Jun2008
Afghanistan's growing drug trade and the corruption of its government will prolong the Taliban insurgency against British troops for years to come, confidential Government documents have warned.
The private warning from UK diplomats emerged as Gordon Brown insisted that British troops would stay in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future despite the UK death toll in the country reaching 100.
The reaching of that milestone has put renewed focus on the 7,800-strong UK mission in Afghanistan and fuelled fears that Britain has been sucked into an unwinnable war in the country.
In a confidential Government paper seen by the Daily Telegraph, diplomats warn Mr Brown that the growing Afghan opium trade will prolong the Taliban insurgency and say the Kabul government's failure to tackle corruption is fuelling popular resentment.
The British deployment began in 2001 when Western troops entered Afghanistan, drove the Taliban regime from Kabul and ultimately cleared the way for Hamid Karzai's elected government to take office.
Publicly, Britain insists Mr Karzai remains a force for good in Afghanistan, the country's best hope for progress. But privately, doubts are growing.
In a briefing paper for the Prime Minister marked "Confidential," UK diplomats say that Mr Karzai is refusing to taken on the drug lords and has allowed major players in the Afghan opium trade to take up senior government posts.
Afghanistan's poppy fields have more than doubled in size since 2003. Last year, the country produced enough opium to make over 880 tons of pure heroin, roughly 93 percent of world output.
"Growing links between the drugs trade and the insurgency in the South will provide longevity to the Taliban," the UK document says. "In the south, the drugs trade is fuelling the insurgency."
It adds: "This is compounded by government corruption. Karzai chooses to avoid rocking the boat with powerful narco figures and has not blocked their appointment as governors or other senior officials."......................
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/2100476/Afg hanistan-death-toll-100-Drug-trade-will-prolong-conflict-'for-years-to -come'.html _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
British soldiers should leave Afghanistan now. No member of the Government has ever explained why they are there. This is because they do not know, and also because they don’t have the courage to admit they have made a foolish mistake.
All the arguments they put forward are false or absurd. It is not about stamping out terrorist bases. Even if we had the troops to do this, such bases might just as easily be in Pakistan, where we cannot send soldiers. Or they could be in West Yorkshire, thanks to our immigration policies, where our vaunted ‘security’ services probably couldn’t find them.
It is not about ‘defeating the Taliban’. The men we make deals with as tribal elders one week are ‘the Taliban’ a few days later when they ambush our troops.
More...
* Debate with Peter Hitchens
It is not about ‘bringing democracy and freedom’ to Afghanistan. This noble objective is a joke in a country run by tribal chieftains, whose ‘elected’ President barely has control over his own bedroom, let alone his capital, and certainly not his country.
Private Jeff Doherty and Lance Corporal James Bateman
Private Jeff Doherty and Lance Corporal James Bateman were two of five British soldiers killed in Afghanistan this week
It is not about saving Afghan women from wearing the burka. They still wear the burka, in sight of our troops, and an army of half a million could not free them from it.
Finally, it is pitiful beyond the point of embarrassment that a country which cannot control disorder on its own streets should be posing as a Global Constable in a part of the world from which we have already been violently expelled twice, and where we have no business.
Nobody can fail to be proud of the way our troops have behaved in Helmand. We have, in many ways, the last proper combat army in the world. But that does not justify the 102 deaths we have suffered there, or the many more that will follow as long as we continue this pointless, vainglorious adventure.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject:
just about the cheapest at source heroin ever produced - great if you're organised crime - Western intelligence agencies importing experts now to help run their social engineering refineries
Afghan drug lords hire foreign chemists
By Jon Boone in Kabul
Published: July 28 2008 18:44 | Last updated: July 28 2008 18:44
Drug lords in Afghanistan, where poppy growing has soared in spite of the billions that western powers have spent in trying to stamp it out, have started to recruit foreign chemists to help turn raw opium into highly refined heroin, the United Nations warned on Monday.
Most of the chemists come from Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, the UN says, and are going to some of Afghanistan’s most troubled areas to oversee the mixing of poppy resin with smuggled industrial chemicals to produce heroin of the highest quality.
Christina Orguz, Afghanistan country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said Afghanistan’s drug lords were behaving like businessmen and recruiting the best talent available. Afghanistan now supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin.
Last year, an estimated 60 per cent of Afghanistan’s poppy harvest was processed into heroin inside the country, but until now it was not known foreign chemists were helping produce such high-grade forms of the drug.
Widespread lawlessness in the south and east of the war-wracked country allows illegal drugs laboratories to operate with virtual impunity. However, the process requires vast quantities of chemicals to be smuggled into the country. The UN estimates some 13,000 tons of chemicals were required last year.
The most important chemical, acetic anhydride, is used in many legal industries, including paints and pharmaceuticals, and much of the material that finds its way to Afghanistan is made by blue-chip companies in Europe, South Korea and Russia.
But an international control system designed to prevent the chemicals from being misused is unable to prevent it being obtained in Pakistan, where criminal gangs use front companies to get hold of the chemical.
Officials say they have had some success in disrupting the illegal smuggling of chemicals to Afghanistan, which has almost no requirement for them.
Recent seizures – including three tons in Kabul – have helped to disrupt supply, causing the price of chemicals to soar in some regions and prompting traffickers to experiment with acetyl chloride, a highly explosive alternative.
However, the battle against Afghanistan’s drug lords has been hindered by endemic corruption and government weakness.
“Afghanistan has not had a well-trained police force for many, many years,” Ms Orguz said. “They are taking baby steps now.”
I lived there in the early 70's and opium was always there but never a big deal. A few drug tourists.
Nato is NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization formed to keep the North Atlantic free and open to shipping.
When government creates institutions they are all gilded in glory, moral justification and direction. After a few years the real goals start to congel and like NATO you find they are out of control
Why is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization protecting the North Atlantic in a land locked desert nation 7000 miles from the Atlantic?
You might also note at this time that your president, Nick Sarkozy, has said that government institutions are not meant for people to vote for but governments to decide - that is why you have no say in the new overlords the EU. You have no real say in institutions that govern you only the right to complain.
SINCE 2003, the antiwar movement has anchored itself in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq, which was generally understood as a "war of choice" undertaken by the Bush administration. But the movement has been at best muted in its criticism--and at worst actually supportive--of the U.S. war on Afghanistan as a "legitimate" targeting of al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001, attacks. _________________ Simon - http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 10:07 am Post subject:
Mmmmm.
Not exactly.
Wasn't it North Atlantic Regional Security originally?
Maybe the originators were into David Icke's Atlantis Myths (whoooops, sorry, historical facts)?
BTW great piece from Seamus Milne the other day
The Afghan fire looks set to spread, but there is a way out
Far from being a noble cause, the occupation of Afghanistan is poisoning the region and will never bring peace or security http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/21/afghanistan.nato
911Eyewitness wrote:
Nato is NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization formed to keep the North Atlantic free and open to shipping.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 7:37 pm Post subject:
Revealed: Shocking footage that could prove 90 Afghans - not seven - died in U.S. airstrike
It said its reporter had seen cellphone images shot by a villager of at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries.
Ten days after the airstrikes, villagers dug up the last victim from the rubble, a baby just a few months old, it said.
An Afghan doctor who runs a clinic in a nearby village told the newspaper he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children and some of them his own patients, laid out in the village mosque on the day of the strike...........
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 8:10 pm Post subject:
I was interested to see that NATO have their own YouTube channel so I posted up the following comment on their channel. Waiting to see if they come clean on all the mayhem they're causing.
Can you explain what the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is doing attacking sovriegn nations? This contravenes your own charter of foundation since the North Atlantic Treaty is exclusively Defensive. You're also violating the UN Charter in Afghanistan signed after the defeat of Adolf Hitler's regime in World War 2.
Would you also like to explain NATO Intelligence's planning of Operation Gladio where you employed far right mercenaries to murder innocent civillians?
It's not a good track record and no amount of our money spent on your PR can make it look good. Your only choice is to 'fess up.
Despite the appalling conditions that seven years of U.S. occupation have produced for ordinary Afghans, the two U.S. ruling parties came together in August to plan the escalation of that sordid war with the goal of adding 10,000 more U.S. troops in the coming year.
Barack Obama chided his Republican rival during his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party convention on August 28, using a page from Bush's playbook: "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell--but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."
Obama did not utter a word of criticism about rising civilian casualties, rampant corruption, the flourishing drug trade or women's oppression in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan during that historic speech. On the contrary, he continued, "I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."
Ending the war in Iraq "responsibly" will allow a long-term U.S. military presence there--and the redeployment of 10,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan to "finish" the job started by George W. Bush.
In one fell swoop, the candidate whose slogan is "change" laid out a strategy bearing striking similarity to that of the neocons who invaded Afghanistan in 2001. This was not a surprise. Obama first expressed his willingness to bomb Iran and Pakistan in 2004, when he told the Chicago Tribune, "surgical missile strikes" on Iran may become necessary.
"On the other hand," he continued, "having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse." Obama went on to argue that military strikes on Pakistan should not be ruled out if "violent Islamic extremists" were to "take over."
Obama represents the dissenting ruling class view since 2003, which regarded the Iraq war as a "distraction" from the real war the U.S. should pursue. That war has little to do with al-Qaeda, but much more to do with Afghanistan's strategic location in Central Asia, and its borders with Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China.
The Russia-Georgia conflict this summer surely reminded U.S. rulers that they cannot afford to ignore their longstanding aim to establish U.S. military bases in this key region, a goal which long pre-dated 9-11. As the BBC News reported on September 18, 2001, "Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by mid-October."
The antiwar movement in the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore the war in Afghanistan without fading into irrelevance. The war on terror has been resuscitated, and as Obama has repeatedly emphasized in recent months, its "central front" is shifting back to Afghanistan.
The Afghan people have endured seven long years of misery thanks to U.S. occupation, and it is high time to take a principled stand against U.S. imperial aims in Central Asia. _________________ Simon - http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
With the Bush Administration reportedly conducting a major review of Afghanistan policy, a soon-to-be-finished National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan will remain classified and unavailable to the general public. Officials say that a draft version of the report paints a “grim” picture as the war approaches the seven year mark.
The documents are by default classified but with the recent conflicts certain reports have been declassified either in whole or in part. This has sometimes caused embarrassment for the administration, such as last year’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which directly contradicted the allegations made by the government about an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.
We’ve already seen some examples of America’s revised policy in Afghanistan, primarily the escalation of attacks on Pakistani soil and the report that the administration would seek sole control over NATO forces in Afghanistan. But support for the ongoing conflict is already waning in several key NATO nations, most recently France, and the attacks in Pakistan have alienated President Zardari’s administration and made the US increasingly unpopular with the Pakistani people.
With 2008 already the deadliest year for US troops in Afghanistan and the civilian toll soaring, Admiral Mullen has testified that he is “not convinced we’re winning in Afghanistan.” US commanders in Afghanistan are also predicting the Taliban will launch a winter offensive, making it unsurprising that the intelligence community would describe the situation as “grim.” The unanswered and indeed unanswerable question to those of us not privy to the classified NIE is exactly how grim the report is. _________________ Simon - http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
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