|
MAY 2009
IS U.S. USING INCENDIARY WEAPONS
IN AFGHANISTAN?
REPORTER MEETS KARZAI'S BROTHER
AND IT ISN'T PRETTY
AF-PAK WAR DISPLACING A HALF MILLION
PEOPLE
AID AGENCIES LIVING HIGH IN KABUL
OBEY CHALLENGES OBAMA'S AF-PAK
WAR PLANS
PETRAEUS CLAIMS U.S. COLONIAL
POWERS OVER PAKISTAN
AMERICANS DIVIDED ON AFGHAN WAR;
DEMOCRATS OPPOSE IT
OBAMA PLANS SURGE IN MERCENARIES
FOR AFGHANISTAN
APRIL 2009
LIBERAL GROUP PUSHING FOR BIG
WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
NEWS FROM THE COLONIES: U.S. TO
DEMOTE KARZAI
HOLBROOKE CALLS AFGHAN ANTI-DRUG
POLICY MOST WASTEFUL HE'S SEEN
MARCH 2009
OBAMA TO EXPAND GITMO 2 IN AFGHANISTAN
EUROPE REFUSES TO JOIN OBAMA'S AFGHAN WAR ESCALATION
20 YEARS AFTER SOVIETS LEFT AFGHANISTAN, OBAMA
DIGS A DEEPER HOLE THERE FOR AMERICA
AFGHAN SUPPORT OF FOREIGN TROOPS DROPS BY HALF
WHAT LIES AHEAD IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN WANTS TO CLOSE KEY AIR BASE TO AMERICAN
TROOPS
FEBRUARY 2009
PUBLIC DIVIDED ON AFGHANISTAN
OBAMA'S VIETNAM IN THE 'GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES'
BIDEN WARNS OF MORE AMERICAN DEATHS IN AFGHANISTAN
Asia Times - [An] intelligence assessment shared by Moscow
reveals that almost half of the US supplies passing through Pakistan
is pilfered by motley groups of Taliban militants, petty traders
and plain thieves. The US Army is getting burgled in broad daylight
and can't do much about it. Almost 80% of all supplies for Afghanistan
pass through Pakistan. The Peshawar bazaar is doing a roaring
business hawking stolen US military ware, as in the 1980s during
the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. This volume of business
will register a quantum jump following the doubling of the US
troop level in Afghanistan to 60,000.
JANUARY 2009
GATES SAYS WE'LL BE IN AFGHANISTAN FOR YEARS
CNS - Defense Secretary
Robert Gates predicts the U.S. will be in Afghanistan for years
to come. In an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs,
Gates laid out the state of the U.S. military -- and how well
it is poised to face the future. . .
"To be blunt, to fail
-- or to be seen to fail -- in either Iraq or Afghanistan would
be a disastrous blow to U.S. credibility, both among friends
and allies and among potential adversaries," Gates wrote.
Gates said the number of
U.S. combat units in Iraq will decline over time - "as it
was going to do no matter who was elected president in November,"
he added. "Still, there will continue to be some kind of
U.S. advisory and counterterrorism effort in Iraq for years to
come," he said. In Afghanistan, however, troop levels will
likely continue to increase in the year ahead.
"Afghanistan in many
ways poses an even more complex and difficult long-term challenge
than Iraq -- one that, despite a large international effort,
will require a significant U.S. military and economic commitment
for some time," the defense secretary and former CIA head
wrote.
AFGHANISTAN: OBAMA'S IRAQ?
Tom Hayden, Huffington
Post - The war in Iraq already is fading from public view, although
more than 140, 000 American troops remain stationed there. The
major television networks have withdrawn. US casualties are far
fewer than in traffic accidents on American streets. Iraqi violence
is down as well, with 8,955 civilian deaths in 2008 compared
to 51,894 in the bloodiest years of 2006-2007. The shift is towards
a low-visibility counterinsurgency war like those that ravaged
Central America in the 1970s.
The conditions for a massive
social movement against the Iraq War are ebbing, for now, unless
large-scale fighting suddenly resumes or President Obama unexpectedly
caves in to the Pentagon and blatantly breaks his promise to
withdraw combat troops in 16 months and all troops by 2011.
That makes Afghanistan
the growing focal point for public debate over what counterinsurgency
gurus call "the long war" against Islamic jihad. .
.
The Pentagon paradigm is
to defeat al-Qaeda militarily while refusing to address, and
thereby worsening, the dire conditions that gave rise to the
Taliban and al- Qaeda operatives in the first place. . .
There are some 36,000 US
troops stretched across Afghanistan, another 17,500 under NATO
command, and 18,000 in counterinsurgency and training roles.
It costs the Pentagon $2 billion per month to support the American
troops. . .
Even Afghanistan's client
president, Hamid Karzai, complains of extra-judicial killings
and civilian casualties from the American air war, a pattern
of repression and suffering which will only worsen with more
American troops pouring into combat zones.
Meanwhile, the war in Pakistan
and other Central Asian countries will expand as the additional
US troops seek to recover supply lines closed by recent Taliban
attacks. [. . .
The question is not simply
a moral one, but whether the expanding war in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, fueled by troop transfers from Iraq, is winnable, and
in what sense?
Transferring an additional
20, 000 American troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, which Obama
proposes, is symbolic, a step on the treadmill of escalation.
The American troop level will be pushed to 58,000, in addition
to 30,000 other foreign troops. Obama may be proposing an escalation
simply in order not to lose, a pattern well documented in Daniel
Ellsberg's history of the Vietnam War.
The questionable premise
of the coming escalation is that military success must precede
any political solution. . . But it could deepen the quagmire
and turn more Afghans against Obama and the US as well. . .
If Obama appears to be
negotiating a diplomatic solution with some success, he will
enjoy wide support within the media and Congress. If the additional
20-30,000 American troops appear to be "stabilizing"
the situation, public criticism may be modest in scale. But there
is widespread, if latent, public opposition to anything resembling
an occupation or quagmire in Afghanistan-Pakistan, especially
with the American economy in dire straights. The time is coming
when these will be known as Obama's wars, and seen as an unproductive
distraction from his main mission as president. . .
DECEMBER 2008
AFGHANISTAN: OBAMA'S IRAQ?
BRITISH ENVOY SAYS MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN IS DOOMED
ACLU UNCOVERS MORE U.S. TORTURE IN AFGHANISTAN
REPORT FINDS TALIBAN IN CHARGE OF MORE THAN HALF
OF AFGHANISTAN
THE OTHER WAR THE WEST CAN'T WIN
AFGHAN DRUG BUSINESS BOOMING
NOVEMBER 2008
IRAQ LITE: AFGHANISTAN
SEPTEMBER 2008
AFGHANISTAN:
THE MYTH OF THE GOOD WAR
AUGUST 2008
AFGHANISTAN: PROTECTING A NARCO STATE AGAINST TERRORISM
JUNE 2008
AFGHANISTAN: THE OTHER WAR WE'RE LOSING
ULLRICH FICHTNER, SPIEGEL,
GERMANY Forty nations are embroiled in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan.
Anyone who travels through the country with Western troops soon
realizes that NATO forces would have to be increased tenfold
for peace to be even a remote possibility. . .
Good days are in short
supply in Afghanistan, a country at war -- or involved in several
wars, to be exact. There is constant fighting on many fronts,
hard and soft. The newspapers, and there are many of them in
Kabul now, serve up pages of chaotic images every day. Their
reports are about bombs and drinking water, holy warriors and
wheat prices, NATO air attacks and schoolbooks, kidnapped children,
refugees and bandits.
Almost seven years have
passed since the overthrow of the Taliban regime, and in those
seven years half of the world has tried to bring a better future
and, most of all, peace to this new country, the Islamic Republic
of Afghanistan. As part of the NATO military operation known
as the International Security Assistance Force, 40 nations have
60,000 soldiers deployed in the country. There are 26 United
Nations organizations in Afghanistan, and hundreds of private
and government agencies are pumping money, materials and know-how
into the country's 34 provinces. But anyone seeking success stories
or asking about failures will encounter reports that do not seem
to be coming from the same country.
According to the speeches
and statements Western military officials, diplomats and politicians
are constantly churning out, the security situation has improved
substantially, the military successes are obvious and the Taliban
are as good as defeated. But peace and Afghanistan, say the Afghanis
when speaking to a domestic audience, are still two incompatible
words.
Last year, 1,469 bombs
exploded along Afghan roads, a number almost five times as high
as in 2004. There were 8,950 armed attacks on troops and civilian
support personnel, 10 times more than only three years earlier.
One hundred and thirty suicide bombers blew themselves up in
2007. There were three suicide bombings in 2004. .
There is no peace anywhere
in Afghanistan, not even in the north . . . which officials repeatedly
insist has been pacified. Anyone who travels the country -- making
the obligatory rounds to its ministries, speaking with Western
ambassadors, UN directors, ISAF commanders and provincial governors,
and meeting with women's rights activists, narcotics officers
and police chiefs -- is bound to return with many dark questions
and an ominous feeling that this mission is not a task to be
measured in years, but in decades, many decades.
MAY 2008
NEWS FROM THE COLONIES: A NEW SUPERMAX FOR AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: MISSION
ACCOMPLISHED?
PROGRESS REPORT In a press
conference, President Bush said, "I think we're making progress
in Afghanistan" -- days after President Hamid Karzai was
the subject of an attempted assassination plot. The Interior
Ministry said the Taliban, nearly vanquished from the country
in 2001, admitted to launching the attack. These rounds of violence
are the latest in what has been an eroding situation over recent
years. . .
2007 was the bloodiest
year in Afghanistan since 2001, with 6,000 killed in the country.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, who commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan,
said violence in 2008 "may well reach a higher level than
it did in 2007," as insurgents pour in from Pakistan. "This
year won't be different," he said. The attempted assassination
of Karzai "came as the latest sign of a trend" that
the insurgency in Afghanistan "is spreading from the Taliban
stronghold of the south to the central and northern regions of
the country," Christian Science Monitor reported this week.
Furthermore, "there is no security force in Afghanistan
that people trust," according to member of parliament Ramazan
Bashardost. He added that, after a recent attack, "the security
forces fled the area before the ordinary people did." Afghanistan
also has rates of illiteracy "among the highest in the world,"
a "weak and corruption-ridden government," and still
retains the world's largest opium poppy crop.
According the Agency Coordinating
Body for Afghan Relief, "Western countries have failed to
deliver $10 billion of nonmilitary assistance pledged to Afghanistan
over the last six years and the United States, by far the biggest
donor, is responsible for half of the shortfall." Funding
for Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which Bush "has called
the leading edge of stabilization efforts," is "ad
hoc and comes from so many sources that congressional investigators
were unable to determine how much has been spent," a House
Armed Service Committee report said last week. Overall, 42 percent
of Afghans rate U.S. efforts in Afghanistan positively,"
down from 68 percent in 2005 and 57 percent last year, according
to a December ABC News poll.
MARCH 2007
AFGHAN ANTI-CORRUPTION
CHIEF IS DRUG DEALER
JUSTIN HUGGLER, INDEPENDENT,
UK - Afghanistan's new anti-corruption chief has a shady past.
Izzatullah Wasifi served nearly four years in a US prison for
trying to sell heroin to an undercover agent in Las Vegas for
$65,000. It is not the ideal CV for a man appointed to root out
corruption in the country that is overwhelmingly the world's
biggest supplier of opium, from which heroin in refined.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2344759.ece
DECEMBER 2006
THANKS TO WAR, AFGHANISTAN
IS AMERICA'S MAJOR SOURCE OF HEROIN
GARRETT THEROLF, LA TIMES
- Supplies of highly potent Afghan heroin in the United States
are growing so fast that the pure white powder is rapidly overtaking
lower-quality Mexican heroin, prompting fears of increased addiction
and overdoses. Heroin-related deaths in Los Angeles County soared
from 137 in 2002 to 239 in 2005, a jump of nearly 75% in three
years, a period when other factors contributing to overdose deaths
remained unchanged, experts said. . .
According to a Drug Enforcement
Administration report obtained by The Times, Afghanistan's poppy
fields have become the fastest-growing source of heroin in the
United States. Its share of the U.S. market doubled from 7% in
2001, the year U.S. forces overthrew the Taliban, to 14% in 2004,
the latest year studied. Another DEA report, released in October,
said the 14% actually could be significantly higher.
Poppy production in Afghanistan
jumped significantly after the 2001 U.S. invasion destabilized
an already shaky economy, leading farmers to turn to the opium
market to survive.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/25/ap/health/mainD8M85H6G1.shtml
NOVEMBER 2006
U.S. ENGAGED IN MASSIVE
BOMBING OF AFGHANISTAN
[The "growing demand
for American air cover' presumably doesn't from those being killed
or injured by it]
DAVID S. CLOUD, NY TIMES
- The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 air strikes in
Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing
that reflects the growing demand for American air cover since
NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, Air Force officials
said. . .
To carry out the heavier
mission load, the Air Force's entire complement of B-1 bombers
was shifted over the summer from the British air base at Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a Middle Eastern airfield closer
to Afghanistan. . .
The 2,095 attacks by American
aircraft since June is many times greater than the number of
air strikes in Iraq, where the terrain and nature of the conflict
are less susceptible to bombing campaigns. There have been only
88 attacks by American aircraft in Iraq since June, according
to Air Force figures. Unlike in Afghanistan, insurgents in Iraq
are largely in urban areas and do not often mass in groups large
enough to warrant use of airstrikes, Air Force commanders said.
. .
This year in Afghanistan,
American aircraft have dropped 987 bombs and fired more than
146,000 cannon rounds and bullets in strafing runs, more than
was expended in both categories from the beginning of the American-led
invasion in 2001 through 2004, the Air Force said. During those
years, a total of 848 bombs and just over 119,000 bullets were
used by aircraft, according to Air Force figures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/asia/17bomber.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
BLAIR'S FAVORITE GENERAL
CALLS AFGHANISTAN EFFORT 'CUCKOO'
NED TEMKO AND MARK TOWNSEND, OBSERVER - Tony Blair's most trusted
military commander yesterday branded as 'cuckoo' the way Britain's
overstretched army was sent into Afghanistan. The remarkable
rebuke by General the Lord Guthrie came in an Observer interview,
his first since quitting as Chief of the Defense Staff five years
ago, in which he made an impassioned plea for more troops, new
equipment and more funds for a 'very, very' over-committed army.
The decision by Guthrie, an experienced Whitehall insider and
Blair confidant, to go public is likely to alarm Downing Street
and the Ministry of Defense more than the recent public criticism
by the current army chief Sir Richard Dannatt. 'Anyone who thought
this was going to be a picnic in Afghanistan - anyone who had
read any history, anyone who knew the Afghans, or had seen the
terrain, anyone who had thought about the Taliban resurgence,
anyone who understood what was going on across the border in
Baluchistan and Waziristan [should have known] - to launch the
British army in with the numbers there are, while we're still
going on in Iraq is cuckoo,' Guthrie said.
In a unprecedented show of scepticism towards Blair, he said
the Prime Minister's promise to give the army 'anything it wants'
was unrealistic. 'I'm sure he meant what he said. He is not dishonest.
But there is no way you can magic up trained Royal Air Force
crews, or trained soldiers, quickly. You can't magic up helicopters,
because there aren't any helicopters,' said Guthrie, promoted
from chief of army staff to become overall head of the military
for Blair's first term of office.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1934382,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=15|
UN CHIEF: NATO CANNOT
DEFEAT TALIBAN BY FORCE
GUARDIAN - NATO "cannot
win" the fight against the Taliban alone and will have to
train Afghan forces to do the job, the UN's top official in the
country warned yesterday. "At the moment NATO has a very
optimistic assessment. They think they can win the war,"
warned Tom Koenigs, the diplomat heading the UN mission in Afghanistan.
"But there is no quick fix."
In forthright comments
which highlight divisions between international partners as NATO
battles to quell insurgency, Mr Koenigs said that training the
fledgling Afghan national army to defeat the Taliban was crucial.
"They [the ANA] can win. But against an insurgency like
that, international troops cannot win."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1951222,00.html
SEPTEMBER 2006
BUSH REGIME A GIFT TO
OPIUM GROWERS IN AFGHANISTAN
CARLOTTA GALL, NY TIMES
- Afghanistan's opium harvest this year has reached the highest
levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent
from last year, the executive director of the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday
in Kabul. He described the figures as "alarming" and
"very bad news" for the Afghan government and international
donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce
the poppy crop since 2001. He said the increase in cultivation
was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels
in the south, the country's prime opium growing region. As the
insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged
and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers
if they expanded their opium operations. . . He said the harvest
increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically
outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999
while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased
by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with poppies
in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
JUNE 2006
JUST WHAT AN AFGHAN
FARMER NEEDS
PR WATCH - Hill & Knowlton
will head "a complex $3.8M PR effort" for the U.S.
State Department, "targeting Afghan citizens and stakeholder
groups to dissuade Afghan farmers from cultivating poppies and
boosting global drug trade." Poppy production has soared
since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Afghanistan provided 86 percent
of the world's heroin in 2005, and "planting has significantly
increased in 2006," according to a State Department official.
Hill & Knowlton will "deploy communications through
seven Afghan provinces" and "build capability"
within the Agriculture, Interior and Counter-narcotics Ministries,
by providing "communications professionals" and developing
each ministry's own communications office. "Foreign and
domestic media will be brought along" on poppy eradication
missions, and "alternative livelihood efforts" will
be promoted in the PR campaign. Current messages include, "Growing
poppies is against Islam and harmful for the reputation of Afghanistan."
Previous U.S.-funded PR work, by the Rendon Group and others,
has been called costly and ineffective by Afghan officials.
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/
UN REPORT ACCUSES AFGHAN
OFFICIALS OF WAR CRIMES
DECLAN WALSH, GUARDIAN
- A controversial UN report that has been shelved for 18 months
names and shames leading Afghan politicians and officials accused
of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape and other war
crimes. The 220-page report by the UN high commissioner for human
rights, which the Guardian has obtained, details atrocities committed
by communist, mujahideen, Soviet and Taliban fighters over 23
years of conflict. Originally scheduled for release in January
2005, the report's publication has been delayed repeatedly due
to sensitivities over identifying former warlords still in positions
of power. . . Debate over the role of former warlords has grown
more heated since anti-foreigner riots rocked Kabul two weeks
ago, casting clouds over the $12bn western-funded reconstruction
effort. European diplomats are angered that days after the riots
President Hamid Karzai appointed 13 former commanders with links
to drugs smuggling, organized crime and illegal militias to senior
positions in the police force. The names were inserted at the
last minute into a list of 86 police chiefs that had been selected
by US, German and Afghan officers as part of a drive to professionalize
the corrupt force. . .
A European official said
the 13 appointments had strained Mr Karzai's relationship with
foreign donors and further eroded his credibility with ordinary
Afghans. "This is not acceptable to us. If we let people
who have committed human rights abuses and economic crimes slip
through, Afghans are going to start asking what we are doing
here," he said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13582.htm
APRIL 2006
OUR FORGOTTEN COLONY
PROGRESS REPORT - In a visit last month to Afghanistan, President
Bush depicted the country as an unqualified success story, describing
it as "inspiring." The reality is much more complicated
and troublesome. A report released this month by the Council
on Foreign Relations provides the grim details. The Council describes
a country "challenged by a terrorist insurgency that has
become more lethal and effective and that has bases in Pakistan,
a drug trade that dominates the economy and corrupts the state,
and pervasive poverty and insecurity."
Last year "was the
deadliest [year] in rebel violence since U.S.-led forces ousted
the Taliban in 2001." With the country on the verge of becoming
"a disastrous situation," the United States is withdrawing
troops and disbursements of financial assistance are declining.
Counter-terrorism expert Steven Simon predicts, "There will
likely be a crescendo of violence, focused largely on Kabul,
this summer." It's time to face reality and change course.
Even the Bush administration
"has now admitted that the insurgency [in Afghanistan] is
growing and becoming more effective." Attacks "have
increased in lethality, with increased use of tactics seen in
Iraq, including suicide bombings, which...have quadrupled in
the past year, and improvised explosive devises, whose use has
doubled." . . . Some experts attribute the spike in violence
to "a vast canvas of weakly governed and unprotected territory
in which drug traffickers, feuding tribesmen and opportunistic
criminals -- as well as Taliban gunmen on motorbikes and mysterious
suicide bombers -- operate with increasing ease." Last year
"1,600 people, including 91 U.S. troops, were killed...more
than double the total in 2004." Violence is expected to
increase further as "insurgents will try to test the NATO
forces that are moving in to take over from more seasoned US
military troops.
In 2005, Afghanistan produced
87 percent of the world's opium. With the exception of 2001,
when coalition forces deposed the Taliban, opium production has
steadily increased since 1995. Last year, the export value of
the illicit opium was $2.7 billion, accounting for more than
50% of the Afghan economy. About 2 million Afghans (about 9%
of the population) is involved in opium production. It's not
hard to understand why. The average yearly gross income for an
opium-growing family ($1800) is about nine times Afghanistan's
average per capita GDP ($226). Ultimately, "efforts to stabilize
Afghanistan will fail if the licit economy does not expand fast
enough to provide enough employment, income, and investment to
more than balance the loss of income from opiates."
The key to economic expansion
in Afghanistan is reconstruction. In 2002-2003, per capita economic
assistance in Afghanistan "was far below all Balkan operations,
East Timor, and Iraq, and even below Namibia and Haiti"
during the first two years of stabilization operations in those
countries. . . One big problem: "much of the increase in
aid has gone to the security sector, which has cost far more
than projected." Richard Holbrooke, former Ambassador to
the UN, noted, "With so much at stake, it is surprising
that the administration asked for a pittance (about $40 million)
for Afghan reconstruction in its recent supplemental, after the
State Department and the U.S. Embassy requested about 10 times
as much. Still worse, Congress compounded the lowered funding
request by cutting the appropriation to $4 million."
FEBRUARY 2006
A United Nations report
concluded last year that Afghanistan remains one of the world's
least developed countries, ranking 173rd out of 178 countries
surveyed. For every 1,000 babies born in Afghanistan, 142 die
before their first birthday. An Afghan woman dies in pregnancy
every half-hour. Overall life expectancy is estimated at just
under 42 years. Three-quarters of adults are illiterate and few
girls go to school. But no problem haunts the country more than
its displaced peoples - the UN estimates four million Afghans
are refugees in Pakistan and Iran, and another two million are
uprooted in their own country. The total, a fifth of the population,
represents the largest refugee crisis in the world.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1702513,00.html
NOVEMBER 2004
BUSH GETS AFGHAN ECONOMY GOING
NY TIMES - Poppy cultivation
in Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on
Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the highest
levels in the country's history and in the world, the United
Nations announced on Thursday. . . Afghan officials and foreign
diplomats called the sharp rise in cultivation and production
a major failure for President Hamid Karzai and the international
effort to counter narcotics. More than 321,236 acres of land
were planted with poppy in 2004, a 64 percent increase over last
year, the United Nations survey found. Poppy has spread to every
province in the country, it said. . . The scale of poppy cultivation
is particularly alarming, because of the growing stranglehold
wealthy traffickers and drug lords hold over farmers, and their
influence over the economy and government, Afghan officials and
foreign experts said. The income from production and trafficking
of opium in 2004 was estimated at $2.8 billion, equivalent to
about 60 percent of the country's legal gross domestic product,
or more than a third of the total economy, the report said.
ooo
EARLIER STORIES
BACK AGAIN: THE RENDON
GROUP TO SPIN AFGHANISTAN
DAILY SPIN - "The
Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to counsel and coordinate
communications for Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai,"
O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The U.S., according to the
New York Times, wants to bolster the leadership of Karzai by
promoting 'visible signs of reconstruction.' The paper reports
that Karzai's government, in recent weeks, has issued 'choreographed
announcements about hundreds of schools and clinics to be built
or rehabilitated in the next few months.' Karzai and U.S. Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad, the country's defacto CEO, made a media splash
on April 17 with a ceremony to celebrate the planting of 850,000
trees as part of the 'greening of Kabul' campaign." But
Afghanistan is far from the success story that the Bush administration
has been projecting, according to a recent New Yorker article
by Seymour Hersh. An unpublished report commissioned by the Pentagon
found that "the victory in Afghanistan was not, in the long
run, a victory at all," Hersh writes.
DISINFOPEDIA - The Rendon Group is a secretive public relations
firm that has assisted a number of U.S. military interventions
in nations including Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo,
Panama and Zimbabwe. Rendon's activities include organizing the
Iraqi National Congress, a PR front group designed to foment
the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In May 1991, then-President
George Bush, Sr. signed a presidential finding directing the
CIA to create the conditions for Hussein's removal. The hope
was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein
and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms
in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group
to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. Rendon's postwar
work involved producing videos and radio skits ridiculing Saddam
Hussein, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and radio
scripts calling on Iraqi army officers to defect. . . According
to ABC, Rendon came up with the name for the Iraqi National Congress
and channeled $12 million of covert CIA funding to it between
1992 and 1996. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh says
the Rendon Group was "paid close to a hundred million dollars
by the CIA" for its work with the INC.
WOMEN BANNED FROM AFGHAN BROADCASTS
MS NEWS - Female performers
in an Afghan province have been banned from performing on television
and radio. According to Reuters, female entertainers have been
declared un-Islamic in the Southeastern province. . . Earlier
this year, for the first time in over a decade a video with footage
of a famous Afghan female singer was broadcast on public television.
The footage of the female performer came just a few weeks after
the approval of Afghanistan's new constitution that endorses
equal rights for women and men. However, Afghanistan's Supreme
Court protested the video, stating that they were opposed to
women singing. From 1992-1996, during Afghanistan's civil war,
the Islamic mujahadeen did not allow images of women to be broadcasted
on television. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, they banned
television altogether
AFGHANISTAN GETS SHORT-CHANGED
IRIN - Less than one percent
of the money requested by US president George W Bush, in an overall
funding request of US $87 billion to cover post-war activities
in Iraq and Afghanistan, would go towards Afghan reconstruction,
the representative of a leading NGO in the country said on Wednesday.
. . A sum of just US$ 800 million has been earmarked for reconstruction
in Afghanistan, forcing CARE to promptly issue a press statement,
following the budget's announcement on Monday evening, suggesting
that more priority appeared to be attached to Iraq - a country
with at least some semblance of a physical infrastructure in
place - than to Afghanistan
AFGHANISTAN'S
ROAD TO RUIN
AFGHAN LIBERATION GREAT FOR DRUG LORDS
AFGHANISTAN FALLING BACK INTO OLD WAYS
AFGHANISTAN NO MODEL FOR IRAQ
TWO DECADES OF WAR TURNS AFGHANISTAN INTO ECOLOGICAL
WRECK
 MEET
YOUR NEW ALLIES
[Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum
is a nasty piece of work, an Afghan warlord and drug lord who
easily qualifies as an international war criminal. He'll be visiting
Washington soon and you can expect the media to overlook his
seamy side, perhaps giving the general a makeover much as the
National Geographic did describing a piece by its writer Robert
Young Pelton]
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Though Dostum's name is almost always preceded
in print by the seemingly oxymoronic "brutal warlord,"
Pelton paints a more benign portrait, calling the general "gentle"
and "shy." . . . Dostum's appointment [to the new government]
was met with understandable controversy, given his initial opposition
to the interim government and his reputation for political infidelity
- a reputation Pelton disputes. "Afghanistan is a collection
of alliances. It's like Survivor on steroids," says Pelton.
"You don't get to the top by being a traitor or by undermining
people or backstabbing people. You get to the top by forming
people around you who trust and support you." Among those
people who came to trust and support Dostum were the 12 Green
Berets assigned to the general. Pelton spent much of his several-week
stay in their company and was "blown away" by what
he saw.
[Now here is an excerpt
from a document filed in federal District Court by lawyers for
John Walker Lindh to support their motion that he be released
from jail pending his trial on charges of conspiring with Al
Qaeda to kill Americans]
JOHN WALKER LINDH
FILING: In early
November 2001, troops of the State of Afghanistan defending a
battle line against Northern Alliance advances in the Takhar
region retreated toward Kunduz. Mr. Lindh walked without rest
for about two days, covering approximately 50 miles through mountainous
terrain before arriving in Kunduz. Upon arrival, he was exhausted,
severely dehydrated and in physical and psychological shock that
impaired his ability to speak. On approximately Nov. 24, 2001,
Mr. Lindh and others surrendered their weapons to troops under
the command of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and were driven by truck
to the fortress at Qala Jangi near Mazar-i-Sharif.
At Qala Jangi, Mr. Lindh
was held prisoner by Dostum's forces. Dostum and his troops have
a reputation for massacring, raping and looting prisoners. That
reputation was known to Mr. Lindh and others. On or about Nov.
25, 2001, Mr. Lindh was seated on the ground in the area around
the Qala Jangi fort with his hands bound behind him. At that
time, he heard an explosion. When Mr. Lindh attempted to run,
he was hit by shrapnel or bullets and fell to the ground, where
he lay for some hours until he was helped into the basement of
the fort by other prisoners.
Mr. Lindh remained in the
Qala Jangi fort basement for about seven days until Dec. 1, 2001.
During that time, Mr. Lindh had almost no food and very little
drinking water. While Mr. Lindh was in the basement, Dostum's
soldiers threw grenades through ventilation ducts, killing prisoners
below.
At one point, Dostum's
soldiers poured oil or diesel fuel down a duct into the basement.
About 5 to 10 minutes later, Dostum's soldiers lit the fuel and
also poured it into another area of the basement, in which prisoners
were more tightly packed. Many prisoners died from the fire.
Dostum's soldiers also fired large rockets into the basement
through a ventilation shaft, killing many prisoners.
Toward the end of the week,
Dostum's soldiers directed ice cold water through the ducts to
flood the basement. As the water rose, Mr. Lindh was able to
stand up with the help of other prisoners to avoid drowning.
Around Mr. Lindh, other prisoners who could not stand were drowned.
Wounded, starved and freezing, Mr. Lindh emerged from the fort
on Dec. 1, 2001. He was dizzy and numb from the events and apparently
still had shrapnel or bullets imbedded in his body.
YURY RAZGULAYEV, PRAVDA,
November 2001: The Northern Alliance . . . have weaker funding
sources, so they were earning their income from selling drugs.
General Dostum had a factory producing heroin.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
- As the 1989 to 1995 civil war ground on, Dostum enjoyed an
increasingly ferocious reputation. According to Ahmed Rashid's
book, "Taliban," he once had one of his own soldiers
- accused of stealing - tied to the treads of a tank and rolled
to his death. In one Taliban attempt to take Mazar-e Sharif in
1997 - and again when they were retreating last fall - soldiers
who might have surrendered or been captured seem to have wound
up in mass graves. Only last month, prisoners being held in a
jail here were found near starvation . . .
[DOSTUM] WAS suspected
of earning huge profits by exporting drugs via Uzbekistan"
- Cooley, Unholy Wars
ASIA TIMES,
August 27, 1997 - The analytical unit of the Russian Federal
Security Bureau recently issued a classified intelligence report
on the current situation in the war-torn former Soviet republic
of Tajikistan. The report pins the primary blame for the present
aggravation of the military-political situation in the republic
on the powerful Afghan warlords, and the Uzbeki warlord General
Abdul Rashid Dostum in particular . . . Why were Dostum's henchmen
interested in perpetuating a destabilized Tajikistan? Simple,
say specialists from the FSB: The Afghan warlords are interested
in continuation of the civil war in Tajikistan because the violence
and unrest facilitates the task of smuggling huge amounts of
drugs into the republic and from there to Russia, Europe and
North America. The report specifically emphasizes that drug trafficking
is a primary source of income for different warring factions
in Afghanistan. More importantly, of course, drug trafficking
supplements the personal income of the leaders from the various
Afghan factions -- including Taliban officials. |