Keeping Up With The Afghan Disaster 100


As of 1pm, the BBC were still running a piece recorded about twelve hours ago on McChrystal’s sacking. It included the observation that the military strategy was not plainly succeeding, given the 76 NATO dead in June alone.

Keep up. That was twelve hours ago. It is now 83 dead, including 4 more Brits.

That does not mention the 412 Nato wounded in June alone as well.

When will they stop this madness?


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100 thoughts on “Keeping Up With The Afghan Disaster

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  • Anonymous

    “Tony, what would you say if China were to colonise Afghanistan, rip out its mineral resources and kill as many Afghans as it takes to keep the place quiet?

    It’s a People’s Republic, a workers’ state, so wouldn’t it be fine and dandy?”

    Posted by: Michael at June 24, 2010 2:51 PM

    Meanwhile:

    The largest contract in history of Afghanistan is signed

    http://mom.gov.af/index.php?page_id=66

  • somebody

    Anonymous – Re the stated value of the minerals. The $1trillion is the BBC figure that’s 1,000,000,000,000 if I am correct. The other $2 trillion is for kickbacks and bungs.

    Anonymous – Re the number of civilian dead. Of course not. We will never know just like in Iraq where the Lancet figure was disputed in favour of the Iraq body count. They are just numbers to the coalition killers.

    Ingo – Interesting. Flights of Merlins and Chinooks going overhead here to the SE of London at noon flying east and then returning just before midnight. Also similar reported by a friend from Dartmoor. There is a large combined naval exercise going on reported to be offshore Virginia. But how can we be sure where this fleet is.

    2:41:42 PM

    When heroin is no longer profitable.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    Tony Rogers,

    With respect – that’s ‘war talk’ and has no basis in fact – A Nato spokesman said Iran’s support for the Taliban was “limited”.

    The Iranian embassy condemned the report as propaganda defaming Iran. “Iran was the first country to recognise Afghanistan and there is close co-operation and friendship between the two countries. The Taliban are enemies of Iran and have killed a number of Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan,” it said.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7474666/Iranian-weapons-seized-in-Afghanistan.html

    Unconfirmed reports that a Sudanese arms factory was trying to supply Iranian designed weapons meant for Gaza. The shipment was intercepted by an Israeli air-strike and Israeli intelligence personal were on the ground after the attack. – Who knows where the abandoned weapons ended up – so yes ‘it goes a lot deeper the Afghanistan.’

  • Julian

    @Neil Barker at the top of this page.

    Do you not understand that copying Craig’s work and spreading it around for free is akin to going round his house and nicking his telly?

    It takes a huge amount of effort to write a book, and you get paid a pittance. I am ashamed of you, and appalled at your gall in telling us all what you plan to do.

    I assume the wellwisher sent you a properly paid-for book. If Craig wanted to distribute his work for free, he could. I suspect he feels that the “worker is worthy of his hire” and that he deserves to be paid his rightful royalties from his creative work.

    I hope you will reconsider torrenting his book. Now I know you might be going to do it, I might feel like dobbing you in to FACT if I find it on a P2P site. OK?

  • somebody

    This from medialens. John Hilley’s question at the end says it all.

    Grown up thinking

    Posted by John Hilley on June 25, 2010, 4:47 pm

    “An ‘immature’ soldier has been jailed for fleeing his regiment shortly before they were due to take part in one of the bloodiest tours of duty in Afghanistan. Rifleman Lee Moxon was sentenced to two years in a military prison for desertion. The 26-year-old first went missing from 3 Rifles because his girfriend had a miscarriage, a court martial in Colchester, Essex, heard. He returned after five months but fled again because he feared what would happen to him when his regiment went back to war after losing 30 men on the last tour. ‘You were too immature to fact [sic] things sensibly,’ said judge advocate Emma Peters. Moxon admitted one charge of desertion and another of absence.”

    Metro, 24 June 2010.

    Is it even necessary to state the alternative interpretation of Mr Moxon’s “immature” actions…?

    John

  • glenn

    Craig: I’m sure you can tell which ISP that thief Neil Barker is coming from. In order to protect yourself from copyright infringement, you need to inform the ISP that Barker has stated an intention to illegally fileshare your work. The publishers might be interested in adding their weight to the request.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Mr ‘Neil Barker’ is a two-track, broken record. He has tended to do two things since he began to contribute posts to this site:

    1) Act as a vigorous and imperious advocate of the state of Israel.

    2) Constantly taunts Craig for being “a wealthy man” and repeatedly demands, in the caricatured manner of a fanatical ‘fan’, a free copy of Craig’s ‘Samarkand’ book. He’s clearly not at all interested in anything the host of this site may have to say; indeed Neil Barker’s views accord very well with some other ‘contributors’ in being close to the diametrical opposite; he’s simply interested in attacking what Craig Murray represents: dissidence.

    Neil Barker has answered none of the questions I put to him. Indeed, he studiously ignores my questions. Does this remind anyone of anyone?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    The aim of all of these disruptors is to hobble what is an anti-imperialist website which is not marginalised by the gravitational locus of its overall political worldview.

    The rulers are not threatened by the Revolutionary Communist Group (or whatever) writing screeds of perhaps very well-researched anti-imperialist polemic. But they well recognise the potency of an ex-UK ambassador constantly intoning, in a deeply literate and, dare I say, quintessentially British manner:

    “Enough torture, enough killing, enough war. Here is how the mechanism works. And here’s what you can do about it”

    That is the main reason why this website is the subject of unremitting attack by the likes of ‘Neil Barker’ and others.

    I agree with Vronsky (from another recent thread), the pressure being applied is indeed an emanation of what is a very professional operation.

    I have attempted to delineate the bounds of this dynamic – and sometimes have been guilty of contributing to the skewed totals which Vronsky very assiduously brought to our attention, though it was in dogged and perhaps futile pursuit of these parameters rather than because of provocation or ego – and I think it is pretty clear to most people here, which posters are likely to be involved.

    Would one expect any less than a professional outfit? The rulers are engaged in war as a way of life and a machine for the generation of wealth for the wealthy. They would destroy the world to safeguard that. On reflection, that is exactly what they are doing.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Thanks, Abe. By “these parameters”, I mean the bounds within which, and the modalities through which, the outfit operates on this site.

    Their goals, on the other hand, are clear: to confuse, confound and dissuade. To obscure truth and impede clarity in relation to the nature of imperialism.

    I – and I’m sure many others here – know what is happening. I have been attempting to explore exactly how it’s happening and to induce the purveyors and mediators of the dynamic inadvertently to reveal something of their modus operandi.

    And thus, constantly all the more effectively to expose them and their likely job descriptions.

    But if it’s plain English you’re looking for:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp6-wG5LLqE&feature=related

    Enjoy.

  • Craig

    Neil Barker,

    I find it hard to believe you have an electronic copy of Murder in Samarkand as it is not available enywhere in that form.

    I made a decision to make “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo” available freely online.

    “Murder in Samarkand” is not available freely online and I think you would find Random House (who own Mainstream) get very exercised indeed if you have got a copy and seek to do what you say. They own the rights, not me. I only get a royalty (of 60p per paperback).

  • Malcolm Pryce

    Craig

    Your book doesn’t need to be available officially online for it to be pirated in the way this guy claims. Whoever supplied it to him could have simply scanned it himself and emailed it. As a writer myself I know how it makes you feel. He’s probably just winding you up, though. It takes a long time to scan a whole book, although plenty of people do it.

  • Tony

    Great quote from Washington DC Tuesday. Democratic leader of the House of Representatives Steny Hoyer, Maryland Democrat assessing the prospects for Afghanistan said he had “reticence on the probability of success”.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Here’s another one:

    “One would have to express a prudent caution in relation to the materialisation of possible trajectories.”

    Lt Gen. Windbag, circa 2010

    So is this an unknown known, a known unknown, a unknown unknown or a known known?

    Or perhaps, simply, it means, “We’ve lost.”

  • Richard Robinson

    “I’m saying nowt, and you can’t make me”, I think.

    I think von R got an unfair press for that, btw. Horribly expressed, possibly, but it’s important to remember you don’t even know how much you don’t know. I wish he could have realised it earlier.

  • Abe Rene

    In the immortal words of Sir Patrick Moore: ‘We just don’t know!’ I suspect that at times readers of this blog would prefer to apply his other immortal utterance: ‘I don’t believe a word of it!’ But that is not my position towards present US or UK politicians concerning the war in Afghanistan. I think General Petraeus has a most difficult task, but not hopeless, provided he can succeed in winning over the leaders of the Pashtun in the Afghan national interest. So let’s wait and see what happens.

  • Anonymous

    When i first heard General Petraeus’s name metioned on the radio, I though I heard “General betray us”. It wouldn’t be the first time for that!

  • avatar singh

    tony rogers wrote-“Our boys are killed with weapons supplied by Iran to people with considerable support in Pakistan and from many Muslims in the UK. This goes a lot deeper than Afghanistan.”

    what the hell are your boys doing in afganistan? picknicking? they entered army knwoing what they were in for-afgan war has been for last 9 years. so what do you expect the afgans to do to them welcome with garlands/ to thse foreing bastards who you call your boys? the cowards who bribe taliban not to attack the british troops-such low cowards!

  • avatar singh

    =compared the defeated Taliban in December 2001 to the Mujahidin in 1980, you would conclude that history had closed its books on them irrevocably.

    The Mujahedeen brought several advantages to their fight. All Afghan ethnicities opposed the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. They had financial, military and political support from all the Western powers. President Reagan honored them as freedom-fighters. They also had support from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran. In addition, tens of thousands of foreign fighters would join the Afghan mujahidin.

    In comparison, Taliban prospects looked quite dismal after their rout in November 2001. Nearly all the factors that favored the Mujahidin worked against the Taliban. Taliban support was confined mostly to one Afghan ethnicity, the Pashtoons. In the United States and its European allies, they faced a more formidable opponent than the Mujahidin did in the Soviet Union.

    There was not a single Muslim country that could support the return of the Taliban: the US forbad it. Worst of all, the Pakistani military, partly for lucre and partly under US pressure, threw its forces against the Taliban. Under the circumstances, few Muslim fighters from outside Pakistan have joined the Taliban.

    Their goose was cooked: or so it seemed.

    Nevertheless, the Taliban defied these odds, and now, some eight years later, they have taken positions in nearly every Afghan province, with shadow governments in most of them.

    “I was watching some documentary about Afgan warriors and they asked one of their komandants about who was stronger: Russians or Americans. He aswered in split second: Russians. I remember he said, “we split Russian in to 16 pieces ( i think he said 16) but we gonna split U.S.A in to 50 pieces”. The interview was about 3 or 4 years ago.

  • Larry from St. Louis

    “When i first heard General Petraeus’s name metioned on the radio, I though I heard “General betray us”. It wouldn’t be the first time for that!”

    That’s the best argument I’ve ever read on silly blog.

  • somebody

    An excellent piece in the New Statesman beautifully written by William Dalrymple with the historical context. Even the part played by the subject of Craig’s next book, Sir Alexander Burnes, is mentioned. It’s a ‘Last Man Standing’ type of piece and as Private Frazer, the undertaker in Dad’s Army used to say ‘We’re doomed’.

    Our friend Michael Petek is in the comments!!

    http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/06/british-afghanistan-government

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