There are any number of “Big lies” put forward by the USA in Afghanistan and slavishly repeated by our politicians and media. Here are a few of the “Big lies”:
– The Karzai government is democratically elected
– The Afghan anti-occupation fighters are all Taliban supporters
– Most opium is produced in Taliban controlled areas
– Women’s rights are now respected in Afghanistan
But I want today to tackle this particular “Big lie”:
– The Afghan National Army is ethnically balanced.
There has been a consistent parroting by the Western media of the line that NATO troops operate “in support of” the Afghan National Army, and that this is a genuine force reflecting the whole nation. This propaganda has gone as far as releasing falsified figures of the ethnic composition of the Afghan National Army. These false figures have reflected the “Eikenberry Rule” set out by the Americans.
Under General Karl Eikenberry’s rule, the Afghan army should be 38 percent Pashtun, 25 percent Tajik, 19 percent Hazara and eight percent Uzbek. That would bring it much closer to reflecting the nation’s ethnic composition.
But a very concerned serving British officer of some seniority has just leaked to me that the truth is that the Afghan National Army is now over 60% Tajik, and that figure is increasing. The Pashtun figure is hovering below 20% and may have been overtaken by the Uzbeks.
In other words the “Afghan National Army” is just the Northern Alliance in very expensive NATO provided uniforms.
By carrying the northern alliance with our troops into the solid Pashtun tribal areas as an alien occupying force, we are stoking still further the ferocity of a future civil war. Karzai of course will be safe in Switzerland counting his looted cash by then.
Don’t expect to see this in the mainstream media any time soon. Instead you will hear the “Eikenberry rule” figures repeated as if they were reality rather than a spectacularly failed target.
‘I am very sad that under Clegg the Lib Dems have not come out more strongly against the Afghan War..’
You yesterday??
If you read any of the tajik forums the hatred expressed towards the pashtuns is scarey! Time to revisit the Durand line perhaps?
There is no doubt that US policy in Afghanistan has been from the outset extremely dirty, as it was in Iraq.
In Iraq, Saddam had been enraged by Kurdish politicians scheming with outsiders against his Arabist, anti-oil-colonial stand. Hence Halabja, hence John Major and NATO, hence the Iraq invasion.
Iraq was sold to Iran, by the Kurdish leaders, replacing a predictable but paternal dictatorship with an unpredictable and untenable hell for many of the Sunni population. I don’t know about the politics of Afghanistan, but I do know that the Deobandis scholars of India/Pakistan support the Taliban.
In my opinion, in this country, the Deobandi scholars have made the most enourmous error of judgement about immigration policy to the UK. Their concept of British society was based on their experience of the stuck-up minority of colonial types who ran the colonial administration. Hence their policy in the UK has been to encourage establishment of Muslim power through subterfuge, through haram interest, through haram lying to the benefit system, through lying to obtain second mortgages, without criticism from the mosque. The result of this has been to alienate the law-abiding working people of the UK, who are the very people who with good example and patience would have warmed to and possibly embraced Islam.
Afghanistan is now a Northern Ireland in the minds of most people in the UK. Yes, we can see that the USUK alliance is using a very blunt instrument and every devious political device it possibly can. But who are the Taliban? Mostly they are people like you and me, as you have stated before, who want to defend their country from foreign invasion.
Why are foreigners there in the first place? Because they want to colonise and establish bases. Who gave them the excuse for going there? Usama bin Laden. Why? Because he wanted to make jihad against them. This is a war which has been imposed on Afghanistan by an outside party, on the shoulders of the intensely loyal Muslims of the Deobandi following. In my opinion it is a just war, but it is the Muslims who are to blame for its failing.
Same as in Northern Ireland, you can see that the colonisers have bad intentions and in addition they have dirty tricks, however clever they are at denying them.
Same as in Northern Ireland you can see that the initial cause of the problem was British colonial interference. The malicious emptying of Scotland into N. Ireland. The malicious subjugation of Islam in India, rivers of blood from the Islamic scholars who stood against them in Delhi, followed by a brutal separation.
The problem of Afghanistan is not just of the West’s making. Islam is not spread only by the sword. There is no point in launching a just jihad, firstly without fully comprehending your enemy and trying to teach them the principle of Islam, and secondly without explaining IN FULL what your just and legal grievance is against your enemy so that the reasonable people among your enemy can decide which side they are on.
If when the Muslims had come here, the first Muslims most people had ever seen, they had come with good manners and dealings with the people, and their scholars had commanded them to the rules of Islam and forbidden usury and cheating, which are forbidden in Islam, 1,000,000% the Taliban and their Deobandi supporters would be winning the war in Afghanistan. The help of Allah will never be with the Muslims if they think they can raise Islam by politics and cheating.
The blame is 100% on the Deobandi scholars. What does Allah say in the Qur’an about using the excuse for relaxing from Islam because of Islam’s weakness? 1/ Don’t go to a non-Muslim country unless you are going to practise Islam and 2/ if you don’t practise it, DOUBLE punishment, firstly for not practising Islam properly when you knew Islam, and secondly for not showing a good example of Islam.
If 99.999% of the Afghans working with the West were against the Taliban and the Deobandis had taught their religion properly to the people as they were commanded in the Qur’an, the Taliban would be victorious Inshallah. The problem is not caused by the West. It is caused by the Deobandi scholars here in the UK whose minds are locked into the 18th and 19th century in Delhi and who have refused to adapt the realities of British society they found. The working Muslims know that until recently the British people were not racist, and respected Islam. The scholars have been deceived by the benefit system. They arrive for prayers in nearly-new BMWs and have several wives supported illegally not by themselves but by the benefit system, have refused to do their job properly.
As Jesus, peace be upon him, is said to have said about the Rabbis, ‘they had the key to salvation and they threw it away and prevented the people from entering as well’. As the Holy Qur’an says, Do not sell your reward in heaven for the miserable price of this world. Who are these bastards who have sold Islam?
Alas, the Lib Dems, like the other two parties, are the servants and enablers of the corporate elite who really run Britain, and they in turn, are the loyal and willing servants of the American Empire, to which they owe so much; for example men like Tony Blair.
Because the Lib Dems have no real power they are allowed to voice “radical” policies, under licence; the licence not to go to far, or stir things up too much. They are mostly, the rank and file, nice, liberal people; but hopelessly naive on whole raft of issues; but mainly their lack of understanding relating to the basic, structure of society and our economic and power system, which isn’t open to political change.
Britain is now a loyal province of the American Empire, and providing troops, or lambs to the slaughter, is a form of tribute paid in blood to the Empire, in return for its protection. So, Britain won’t be pulling its troops out of Afghanistan anytime soon, on the contrary, we are already preparing to follow our imperial masters in their next crusade for “freedom.”
The EU’s disastrous decision to lift the arms embargo on Dostum and Uzbeks/Tajiks like karimov will tear Afghanistan in to bits. The increasing tribal tensions will be used to justify and beef up troops, until there are enough to have a go at Iran from two/three ends.
NATO has got itself into a hole, it is now well entwined in the US led war on terror machine and is equally involved in their geo political strategic aims for resources.
Establishing bases along the Iranian border, points to the next aim of attack.
Any political party that supports such world flagrations and machinations, is effectively contemplating a third world war.
We all know of China’s reliance on certain oil reserves and contracts, to jeopardise their economic growth is akin to questioning their party state and its need to supply and service its people.
If China’s economic growth is put in jeopardy by an attack on Iran, and I’m sure the Lib dems would be swimming within the western maelstrom, thanks to ol’ Paddy hold on their military and strategic thinking, then, as a first scenario, Taiwan would be told to come back into mainland China, in no uncertain terms, China would be livid.
North Korea could also be a first line destabilisation, North and South Korea could go to war. China could take total control over the South China sea’s Sprattly islands oil reserves and it could also strenghten its ties further with a complacent oligarch russian government.
Afghanistan will return to civil war and NATO/EU policies are actively encouraging it. Too many bad news are coming together, Netanyahu is biting the hand that feeds him, turning the ME into another point of instability the EU could do without. It has a rogue nation armed with Nuclear weapons on its doorstep and we can only hope that the force de Frappe has a flexible approach to targetting.
Craig,
Afghanistan has been ridden roughshod over, for over a century.
I would recommend the book:
Invisible History Afghanistan’s Untold Story, by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould ( http://www.invisiblehistory.com/ ).
Thanks for highlighting the information.
It is plan two.
Plan one was to take control of Afghanistan as a whole. That failed so now they want to take control of certain areas.
The Persian speakers are the next biggest ethnic group so they want to support them. These People will have to be loyal to America because they will fear that when the Americans leave they will be ripped to pieces for the crimes they did during American occupation.
“- The Karzai government is democratically elected
– The Afghan anti-occupation fighters are all Taliban supporters
– Most opium is produced in Taliban controlled areas
– Women’s rights are now respected in Afghanistan”
I can’t remember a politician or a member of the media ever saying anything like that.
Why the consistent dishonesty?
The whole of the chapter of the Qur’an Anfa’al, the spoils of war, is dedicated to the non-acceptability of taking booty before the Muslims finish the military job of establishing Islam. The Muslims arrived in this country – I have heard them in the mosque state it openly – in anticipation of receiving the reward of the Children of Israel, after the destruction of Pharaoh.
And what did the Children of Israel do, as soon as they were given their freedom? They worshipped the golden calf, for which the modern equivalent is the brand new Mercedes and the villa in the luxury parts of town. When they were commanded to enter Jerusalem, they were instructed to enter, asking for God’s forgiveness, which they refused to do. So yes, the Muslims are the Children of Israel. The war in Afghanistan is a lesson to everyone, that the Muslims cannot win unless they follow the instructions given.
The whole of the world is waiting for someone to have the courage to crush the destructive greed of Western superpowers, and the Muslims, who are the only challengers, are busy collecting booty. The scholars of the Qur’an who didn’t understand its meaning are described as donkeys who carry valuable possessions on their backs. They have become model little middle-class Englishmen, and I am expecting them to issue shares in Islam soon.
“”Eikenberry rule” figures repeated as if they were reality rather than a spectacularly failed target.”
Any system that requires a target quota of synthetic equality as its ‘solution’, must oppose natural equilibrium.
Or in other words, if it has failed in Soviet Britain, it must fail in Afghanistan.
I agree Writerman, we are part of the American Empire and it is very clear whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonised and becomes a threat and a target for military action.
We CERTAINLY are already preparing to follow our imperial masters in their next crusade for “freedom.” Today Iran says it has dismantled several U.S.-backed cyber warfare networks that were gathering information on nuclear scientists and provoking unrest in the country.
A judiciary statement says the networks were set up by American backed Iranian opposition groups, including the armed People’s Mujahedeen, and that 30 of their members have been arrested.
The real threat that Iran poses to the United States is its domination of this region of the world as well as a local rival to Israel which is hampering Israel’s dispossession and expansion program in the Palestinian Territories.
America is fully aware that if Iran did posses a small nuclear arsenal, it would have to be act more cautiously with the known regular cross-border attacks. Their longstanding domination of the Middle East, with its “overwhelming source” of strategic power, would be threatened.
From an American point of view, Iran has no right of self-defense, let alone deterrence.
America and nuclear armed Israel together with a Japanese head of the IAEA, have managed to transform a nuclear weapons free Iran into a viable “threat” that has provided the basis for organising sanctions that inevitably will lead to a U.S.-Israeli attack.
In the process it has provided a rationale for the installation of missile and anti-missile systems on the periphery of Russia and China, allegedly to counter the Iran threat, but really to bargain/force a consolidated veto by the UN Security Council as a prelude to invasion.
In the eyes of the global elite a preemptive attack on Iran will be another triumph of chutzpah in the same vein as the attacks on Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as the real “Axis of Evil” clears the ground for its ongoing programs of local dispossession and global expansion.
As I pointed out yesterday, Craig, why are you complaining about the Afghan adventure while having signed up to a party committed to continuing it? Maybe you could blog about ‘the logic’ of that.
– “We will do everything we can to support our Armed Forces in Afghanistan and ensure they have all the equipment and support they need. We will spend over £5 billion to April next year ?” around half a million per year per soldier serving in Afghanistan and will ensure not a penny will be cut from the Defence Budget in 2010/11 ?” in fact the budget will rise above inflation.” – Labour Party website
– “Under a Conservative government, the work being done in Afghanistan will be a priority for the entire government. Change is needed to bring about a whole government effort that will deliver results in Afghanistan.” – George Osborne, Conservative Shadow Chancellor
– “We support the mission in Afghanistan.” – Lib Dem Pocket Guide to Policy
At least mary and writerman get it.
You can’t keep writing anti-war stuff, Craig, moaning about propaganda, while being signed up to a party that is committed to continuing in Afghanistan.
Ask the LibDems if you can do a round of interviews in their colours elaborating on what you’re writing here, what you’ve said in the past. Maybe they can make you Shadow Foreign Secretary!
You are betraying what you have done these last however many years and are rejoining the establishment. The question is Why?
Could it be that with objectives of laying the oil pipeline and installing a puppet government, the US has shifted its focus as follows:-
A. Try for the main objective above.
B. When A has proven a lot more costly and harder to achieve than at first thought, then modify the policies – accomodate the drugs trade – bribe tribal leaders as highly as is necessary to give space and time for ensuring the short-term stability that gives the time for accomplishing the long-term goals for the oil pipeline and the geopolitical controls in that region that the US seeks.
C. If, B, still does not work, then Kosovo/ Yugoslavia style – fragment the country. In effect – divide – to rule.
What say you all of these – ye knowledgeable ones?
and mess up Pakistan in the meanwhile. Now that Pervez Musharraf is gone, they consider Pakistan too “unstable” to be left alone.
Except, I thought some/one pipeline deal had already gone to China?
Journalist attempts citizen’s arrest of Blair in EU parliament
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – A Brussels reporter attempted to place Tony Blair under a citizen’s arrest on Monday (22 March) for his role in the invasion of Iraq, during a visit by the former UK prime minister to the European Parliament for a hearing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the seventh anniversary of the invasion almost to the day, late afternoon, David Cronin, an Irish journalist with the Inter Press Service news agency and a regular writer on European Union affairs for The Guardian, the British centre-left daily, approached Mr Blair, as he was due to discuss with MEPs his current work as a Middle East special envoy …
Speaking to EUobserver after the event, Mr Cronin said he had been inspired by the attempts to arrest Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe by UK human rights activist Peter Tatchell in London in 1999 and in Brussels in 2001. The campaign launched in January by Guardian columnist George Monbiot to repeat the attempt on Mr Blair also featured in his thinking.
“My motivation in trying to arrest Blair is entirely based on my contempt for the crimes he has committed and abetted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Serbia,” he told this website …
“Mr Cronin said that if found to be eligible for the bounty, he would prefer that the money go to a Palestinian human rights charity in the Gaza Strip.”
http://euobserver.com/9/29739
I believe the clue, the reason we are fighting in Afghanistan is NOT to protect our shores from terrorism as Nick Harvey suggests; we are in Afghanistan to engineer a government that is opposed to joining the Shanghai cooperation Organisation (SCO). The SCO has given a platform offering several governments an opportunity to take shots at the ongoing US presence in Central Asia.
Afghanistan, while not an observer, is currently part of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group. The contact group was established in November 2005, and serves as a mechanism for SCO member states to jointly contribute to reconstruction and stability in Afghanistan.
Oil and gas in Kazakhstan is the jewel in the crown and Kazakhstan already plays a key role in the SCO. Kazakhstan is a supply route to Afghanistan and receives military assistance from Russia and America. A balancing act exists and anxieties are easily triggered.
There is little doubt that the SCO is an instrument for Russia and China to make the case for a multi-polar world based on regional security blocs that counterbalance American strategic hegemony.
So America and Britain will be concentrating on thwarting Kabul’s growing interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
Mark
Actually the SCO is a club of ultra-repressive tyrants devoted to keeping in abject slavery the Muslim peoples of central Asia. You seem much too bright to fall into the trap of thinking anything anti-American is a good thing.
Dear Craig
An excellcent post.
It reinforces the fact that we should get Nato troops out now.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Asia Times gave same info in Dec ’09
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL01Df02.html
The solution to central Asia isn’t to become a puppet of China, just as it isn’t
returning in to a colony of Russia and it isn’t remaining a puppet of America.
The solution has to be precolonial, not colonial.
They need unite amongst themselves, not with colonialists.
The only solution is their Khilafah, not Chinese communism, Russian servitude or American hegemony.
Mark
Did you know, in 2003 in Hyde Park, what we now know, that the invasion of Iraq was primarily about Israeli expansionism? Because that was not an issue in my mind at the time. It will become clear, millions of lives later, what the soaring extremism of UKUSIS terror is planning. Craig is possibly telling you the FCO version of SCO. Since they know what they are planning, you can use this as part of the jigsaw. But your imagination will never stretch to the level of evil which is required to comprehend their plans.
The Qur’an instructs us not to ask for information which is not beneficial to us. Maybe if you had the scale of evil at the centre of UKUSIS planning in your system, you would have a heart attack at the sheer scale of violence planned.
They want to put China back in its box, but the US debt won’t fit. You either make a schedule for paying back part of the debt, or you make the box bigger. The SCO is the bigger box. That would transfer Muslim countries from the violent oppression of former Soviet Communism to the capitalist oppression of Chinese Communism. As this blog clearly demonstrates, western capitalism has not been very succesful at keeping the minds of Muslims under control.
Which brings me to brother Arsalan. Which flavour of Khilafah would you like Brezhinsky to serve? Turkey was a convenient location for controlling the Ottoman Empire, but with modern communications, it could be located anywhere. What about a Shi’a khilafah? What about an all-Asia-Muslims-aren’t-white-SCO-khilafa? Or tutti-frutti flavour, which in Urdu I discover means ‘totally broken’ !? ( Indo European language: Total + Fractus = broken ) It could build on the Sufi tradition of Uzbekistan. Simple rules. Do whatever you like. Respect your elders and seniors. Sit in the Ahmadi madrassah all day chanting Buddhist yong yong. Play violent, non-virtual, martial arts to keep the population down. Once dead, go to heaven. Girls, go to work in factory, breed before, or if preferred, after husband dies, consume opium, die, go to heaven.
The BBC held an Any Questions in the South London Ahmadi non-mosque the other day. When I first came into Islam I went into Central Mosque in Birmingham, where I saw speaker after speaker shaking their fists and their white beards with passion about the Qadiyanis. Sometimes you can see the loudspeakers actually jumping up and down in the ceiling with rage. I thought maybe I had made a wrong decision about my conversion until I learned that they were angry about the founding of a completely false region in Islam’s name. False Qur’ans are being published all the time.
Heh anno,
Does the Qur’an tell you to do this?
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Omar-Hussain-Charged-Over-Honour-Killing-Of-Banaz-Mahmod-Whos-Body-Was-Found-In-A-Suitcase/Article/201003315577773?f=rss
anno: “Shi’a religion is nothing but grave worship and heresy.”
Wasn’t this just a matter of time?
anno, who treats women better and who treats them worse?
One of the larries copied and pasted these bullet-points from the UK Govt.:
“‘- The Karzai government is democratically elected
– The Afghan anti-occupation fighters are all Taliban supporters
– Most opium is produced in Taliban controlled areas
– Women’s rights are now respected in Afghanistan’
I can’t remember a politician or a member of the media ever saying anything like that.
Why the consistent dishonesty?”
ANSWER:
Democracy through the barrel of a gun is not democracy. The DDR had ‘democracy’ too!
As with Cambodia in the 1970s, the Taliban are the only show in town; the West destroyed the Left and Centre in that country.
The CIA trades in opium and cocaine on a massive global scale. Has done for decades.
Women’s rights were (relatively-speaking) respected under the King, the Republic and the Soviet occupation (I’m not supporting the last of these, simply pointing-out a fact). Women and children are the main victims of all wars. War is an attack on women and children. Women have a right to life. The West supports all kinds of misogynist warlords every bit as ‘bad’ as the Taliban. The West created the ‘Mujaheddin’ and the ‘Taliban’ via their client state, Pakistan an also directly. Create a problem and then claim to solve it. Miraculous logic!
UK politicians do nothing except state the larries’ copied-and-pasted manifesto.
Come on, Vauxhall, give us some real officers with which to contend on these threads, not some incompetant sweat-shop opponents! The real officers are too busy standing for Parliament.
Do you know that the Pashtun make more then 50% of the Afghanistan population, yet we are counted as 38% which is another blow to the Pashtun.
I am well educated yet I do not support the Afghan government.
God Willing, we will soon arise without Internat support and stand on our own feet.
Good luck. Watch out though for imperial policy: divide-and-rule. The Old Game. Now they want to partition Afghanistan.
May I ask when you objected that the “police” of your Nazi friends running Kosovo & & Bosnia, or indeed Montenegro on NATO’s behalf don’t contain as many of the Serbs (whose genocide they & we have been engaged in) as the historic population ratios would require?
The KLA et al are CIA militias and are involved centrally in the drugs trade and all facets of global organised crime. I do know Serbian and Croatian journalists and writers. I also know that the EU is a US agent.
The BNP is a Nazi party and it is a sick joke that your blog, Neil Craig, which links favourably with racist sites, posits itself as defenders of the Serbian people. You are an imperialist who is just as cynical as NATO. The West (and Russia) has screwed the people of the Balkans – including many Serbian people – in all possible ways. Disinformation ruled and continues to rule. Organised crime is the biggest business in the world and the West and Russia are run by organised criminals. You’re just as bad as NATO. Two sides of the same coin. The BNP is a UK hard state front organisation. The EDL is another.