I seem unable to switch on a news channel nowadays without seeing a caption announcing the death of another poor young British soldier in Afghanistan. NATO has in June so far lost and average of precisely 3 soldiers killed every day, with a multiple of that injured.
Two events yesterday highlighted the deterioration in the NATO position. A Blackhawk helicopter was taken down, indicating that the Afghan resistance have regained access to effective missiles, while a 50 truck supply convoy was attacked and destroyed in Pakistan – not in Waziristan, but just outside Islamabad. That is perhaps the most significant news of all.
Afghans themselves are of course suffering much more than NATO,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/10/afghanistan-kandahar-wedding-party-explosion
All of this to maintain in power the fraudster Karzai and the gang of heroin warlords who make up his government, and promote the “Northern Alliance” tribes who comprise the laughably named “Afghan National Army” against the Pashtuns.
By my calculation, this month Afghanistan overtakes Vietnam as the United States’ longest running war. I haven’t seen that referenced anywhere, so grateful for views on that. The international consequences of this war are still more disastrous, while there is no reason to believe it will be militarily more succesful. The attempt to impose by brute military force an alien ideology on the Afghan people, is doomed to failure.
forget about democracy in afgansitan-the anglos want their stooges and drug trade to destablise Russia and central asia and then India.
The CIA isn’t going to give up its’ opium profits that easily…
Opium production EXPLODED after the US invasion.
Ever wonder why?
CIA Heroin has a premium over generic in the world market. Good profits too!
Posted by: Ydotheyhateus on Jul 16, 2008 8:28 AM
“”
There was a point in Afghanistan’s tortured history when the future looked bright, when a determined effort to lift the country and its people out of backward agrarian feudalism almost succeeded.
It began with the formation of the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) back in the sixties, which opposed the autocratic rule of King Zahir Shar. The growth in popularity of the PDPA eventually led to them taking control of the country in 1978, after a coup removed the former Kings’ cousin, Mohammed Daud, from power.
The coup enjoyed popular support in the towns and cities, evidenced in reports carried in US newspapers. The Wall Street Journal, no friend of revolutionary movements, reported at the time that ‘150,000 persons marched to honour the new flagthe participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.’ The Washington Post reported that ‘Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.
Upon taking power, the new government introduced a program of reforms designed to abolish feudal power in the countryside, guarantee freedom of religion, along with equal rights for women and ethnic minorities. Thousands of prisoners under the old regime were set free and police files burned in a gesture designed to emphasise an end to repression. In the poorest parts of Afghanistan, where life expectancy was 35 years, where infant mortality was one in three, free medical care was provided. In addition, a mass literacy campaign was undertaken, desperately needed in a society in which ninety percent of the population could neither read nor write.
The resulting rate of progress was staggering. By the late 1980s half of all university students in Afghanistan were women, and women made up 40 percent of the country’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers, and 30 percent of its civil servants. In John Pilger’s ‘New Rulers Of The World’ (Verso, 2002), he relates the memory of the period through the eyes of an Afghan woman, Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who escaped the Taliban in 2001. She said: “Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian movies. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. It was sad to think that these were the people the West had supported.”
Under the pretext that the Afghan government was a Soviet puppet, which was false, the then Carter Administration authorised the covert funding of opposition tribal groups, whose traditional feudal existence had come under attack with these reforms. An initial $500 million was allocated, money used to arm and train the rebels in the art in secret camps set up specifically for the task across the border in Pakistan. This opposition came to be known as the mujaheddin, and so began a campaign of murder and terror which, six months later, resulted in the Afghan government in Kabul requesting the help of the Soviet Union, resulting in an ill-fated military intervention which ended ten years later in an ignominious retreat of Soviet military forces and the descent of Afghanistan into the abyss of religious intolerance, abject poverty, warlordism and violence that has plagued the country ever since.
Brzezinski confirms: “Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”
“”============================================ ==
For those members of the US military in Afghanistan the most enlightening lesson they could receive is that their government’s plans for that land of sadness have little or nothing to do with the welfare of the Afghan people. In the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, the country had a government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women; even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women’s rights in the country. And what happened to that government? The United States was instrumental in overthrowing it. It was replaced by the Taliban.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US oil companies have been vying with Russia, Iran and other energy interests for the massive, untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The building and protection of oil and gas pipelines in Afghanistan, to continue farther to Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, has been a key objective of US policy since before the 2001 American invasion and occupation of the country, although the subsequent turmoil there has presented serious obstacles to such plans. A planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support from Washington because, amongst other reasons, the US is eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. But security for such projects remains daunting, and that’s where the US and NATO forces come in to play.
In the late 1990s, the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines.[6] Zalmay Khalilzad, later chosen to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan, worked for Unocal[7]; Hamid Karzai, later chosen by Washington to be the Afghan president, also reportedly worked for Unocal, although the company denies this. Unocal’s talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society, continued as late as 2000 or 2001.
As for NATO, it has no reason to be fighting in Afghanistan. Indeed, NATO has no legitimate reason for existence at all. Their biggest fear is that “failure” in Afghanistan would make this thought more present in the world’s mind. If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. “Out of area or out of business” it was said.
These little devils at play again I see. They play for keeps. They are making their diabolical stew again and have plans for WWIII. Every government is compromised and the good have always been outflanked in the past. These diabolical devils the illuminati are desperate because their plans are coming to light. Their destined to defeat. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.
But it’s all about keeping folks safe and secure back home in Blighty. You know, so you don’t all ‘ave yer throats cut by ‘orrible Muslim terrorists. David Cameron just said so:
“I can sum up this mission in two words. It is about our national security back in the UK. Clearing al-Qaida out of Afghanistan, damaging them in Pakistan, making sure this country is safe and secure ?” it will make us safe and secure back home in the UK.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/jun/11/david-cameron-troops-noble-mission-afghanistan
Long live the Coalition goverment.