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Bin Laden's stunning victories - Part I Afghanistan
« on: 2005-11-10 07:31:23 » |
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Afghanistan
Afghanistan is more challenging to deal with than Iraq. You see, the US is trying very hard to be invisible in Afghanistan. It isn't working. But it makes getting authoritative numbers a little trickier. And of course, few people remained to document the long, nasty developments in Afghanistan when the drinking holes of the Green Zone in Bagdad opened up for business. Still some things are obvious enough to be able to start drawing conclusions.
- Afghanistan under America's puppet government is once again the number one supplier of heroin and morphine in the world. New upper management, but the middle management remains the same.
- 5,500 U.N. peacekeepers from 22 nations patrol Kabul, but no U.S. troops.
- U.S. forces stay out of country except for one notable exception. President Hamid Karzai is protected by U.S. Special Forces and mercenaries.
- Kabul is supposedly stabilized, but even there, firefights and violence break out almost daily between rival factions feuding for power.
- The Afghani national army being trained right now consists of around 3,000 troops. Marshall Fahim, the Afghan Defense Minister has about 85,000+ troops in northern Afghanistan, completely controlling the Pan Jeer valley, a major drug smuggling route used since ancient times. Fahim also has 15,000 troops in Kabul itself and he is not friendly towards Hamid Karzai in any way. Fahim was a Northern Alliance warlord commander during the fight against the Taliban. He has stated his opposition to the current U.S. puppet government and the US is tiptoeing around him.
- UNICEF, the U.N., Save The Children, and many other aid groups have made many airlifts and insanely dangerous truck deliveries into the country in an attempt to alleviate suffering. Yet they estimate that they deliver less than 15% of what is needed.
- Nevertheless, too little food is better than no food. We can surmise that like the Iraqi, we know why the Afgans turned out to vote. Or perhaps it was medicine. No matter. As in Africa, the Afghans know that the monitors will eventually leave. So they will vote for the nastiest group around that is on the ballot on the grounds that that way they might not get shot immediately after the monitors pack their bags having certified the elections "Free and Fair".
- The Americans, having been caught with their hands dirty more than once or twice, like the Russians before them, now rely on the Afghan Special Forces housed in the former Khad secret police torture center in Kabul (and paid by the Americans) to beat and torture prisoners - largely Pashtun - for information largely fale and misleading (at least, most information extracted under duress comprises what the subject imagines the interrogater want to hear).
- What happens in Bagram, where the prisoners from other regions, particularly the Pushtun from Kandahar are delivered for interrogation, nobody is saying. It is, after all, a secret base in the (chimes and harps please)
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- At least 6.5 million people out of the population of between 21 and 26 million are dependent on food aid, and there is a very real risk of famine.
- Afghanistan has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world - just 44.5 years.
- A fifth of children die before they reach the age of five. Around 700 children under the age of five die every day in Afghanistan due to preventable diseases (think of it as a 911's worth of corpses per week – but of course with their population being a tenth of ours, it is more like 3 911s worth of corpses a day).
- One woman dies every 20 minutes due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth.
- About two million Afghans are still refugees living abroad, most of them in Iran and Pakistan. Others are being repatriated from Europe and Australia over the protests of refugee bodies, to face an uncertain future, often including random arrests and brutal enforcement of barbaric law (refer e.g. Mohaqiq Nasab, the male editor of a women's rights magazine in Afghanistan, was sentenced to two years in jail for blasphemy for questioning such punishments as 100 lashes for adultery, and death by stoning for converting from Islam to another religion. The prosecutor had asked for the death sentence for Nasab.).
- In Kabul, an estimated 500,000 people are homeless or living in makeshift accommodation.
- Only 40 per cent of Afghan children are vaccinated against major diseases, and just 25 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. There is just one doctor per 6,000 people, and one nurse per 2,500 people.
- Some 72,000 new cases of tuberculosis are reported every year. Women account for most TB deaths.
- Up to 100 people are killed or wounded by mines and unexploded ordinance every month
- Every year an estimated 400,000 Afghans are affected by natural disasters.
- Meanwhile, for various reasons, perhaps not entirely unrelated to the above, the general population seems sympathetic to calls from the Taliban for a Jihad against all Americans, civilians and military alike. The Taliban have announced they will “cleanse” Afghanistan of American occupiers and all foreign imperialist occupation. Generally speaking the population believe them. In case you missed it, the last time there was a Jihad in Afghanistan it was against the Soviet communist occupation during the 80’s. The war that took place over many long years was one of the bloodiest guerrilla actions to be fought in the last century.
I'm sure that some very clever Virian is going to say, “we have driven the Taliban out of Afghanistan”. Or “tortured them to death”. Or “killed them after they had surrendered”. “But they are gone.”
Not so. If the Taliban ever really left, the Taliban, like Freddy, is B A A A C K! The Taliban is starting to reclaim dominance and power in many of their old strongholds. How do we know. Keep track of the kidnappings and executions and map them to the locations. The west controls only Kabul and a small killing zone directly around the western bases. And of course, if the Taliban or Al-Qa’ida are stupid enough to congregate for any length of time,they will be eliminated. As will anyone in their vicinity. Or in any vicinity where they might be planning to be. Or once were. Or once were suspected to have been. Which might explain why we kill more and more Afghans every month as we deliver increasing amounts of munitions to less and less military effect, but with a devastating impact on the population at large. But the journalists are long gone, or so deeply embedded that they can't see it.
A few things are different.
- Hundreds of thousands of live U.S. cluster bomblets remain in some 130 Afghan cities, with Herat, Tora Bora, and Denar Kheil being worst off, but even the countryside, and especially the Shomali Plain, where the Taliban were hiding, is littered with thousands of live cluster bomblets. These kill and maim people, from toddler to grandparent. The long range plan to clean-up will remain only a plan until it is funded. No sign of that happening anytime soon. How sad.
- A few female doctors (but not in Pashtun country)
- A few female teachers (but not in Pashtun country)
- A few female pupils (but not in Pashtun country)
- A number of U.S. military bases have been established at great expense to the U.S. taxpayers. U.N. peacekeeping forces pop out of these bases for a while, and return to them once they have waved the flag.
- Our allies are withdrawing some badly needed airsupport, but, if all goes according to plan, doubling their presence and moving out of stabilize Kabul mode and into stabilize the country mode.
- Promised development funds have been stolen, misspent or spent elsewhere.
- Afghans are in a far worse predicament than they were in before the war - with an estimated 1.7 million internally displaced people and two million externally.
- Yet even in the midst of all this, the Afghans managed to find $100,000 to send to New Orleans to help with the flood work here. Nice people the Afghans.
Now the tie between Afghanistan and Mr Laden appears clearer than that which a few Americans have attempted to argue exists between Mr Laden and Mr Hussein. Mr Laden was living in Afghanistan where he was a respected man due to his charity and work organizing logistics for the mujahedeen. After 911, the Americans accused him, without providing evidence of his alleged complicity, of orchestrating 911 and demanded his head on a platter. The rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban (and a brutal bunch to be sure) raised the question of evidence for these allegations (as, had they had an extradition treaty like that between the UK and US they would be entitled to do). The US, which has a 1996 law on her books to use all necessary power (ie, up to and including war) to free any American brought up on charges before the Hague court was unhappy at having her word doubted (after all Republicons never tell lies). The US then invaded Afghanistan to force the Taliban to hand over Mr Laden, or perhaps, it never was entirely clear, to catch or kill Mr Laden themselves. Unfortunately, there was so much to do that by the time there were some opportunities when Mr Laden might have been within the grasp of US forces, they were so distracted that they clean forgot that he was wanted - and let him escape.
An aside that may interest some, it is worth noting that the American demands of the Taliban, and the Taliban's responses were, in many ways parallel to the Austrio-Hungarian Empire's intervention in Bosnia after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by Croatian “terrorists” (or freedom fighters depending on which side you were on) which ultimately lead to World War I.
Sources: (for all articles on this thread)
Colin Powell Believes U.S. is Losing Iraq war
U.S. in danger of losing the war
Tiger Force Atrocities in Vietnam
Google Reference Search for US intent to cause civilian casualtis in Iraq
US Genocide plans
US vs Iraq
Afghanistan: An Outright Humanitarian Disaster
Did the US military use chemical weapons in Iraq?
Rai News 24 Slideshow of Death (Just click " successiva" (next))
Rai News 24 Video
US Military confirms Phosphorus & Inciendiary Use in Fallujah
Diving Into falluja Mark Manning
NSA Archives - Iraq
Bush critics conclude US losing war on terrorism
US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah
Advice to responders. Keep comments and responses dealing with the subject of this post, Afghanistan, on this thread. Cite sources. Write arguments. Do not engage in cut and paste marathons. Don't make blanket assertions.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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