Jonathan S. Landay reports (article below) that 60 percent of those elected to the central Afghan parliament have "links to armed groups." Landay's report updates and further documents that the Afghan parliament does not represent the Afghan people but rather those who have acquired power and political connections.
Near the end of his report, Landay refers to Malalai Joya, an elected representative to the parliament in 2005 who promised her constituents that she would use her "position in Parliament to expose the abuse of power and corruption whenever I found it" (A Woman Among Warlords, p. 133). She found it in the newly "elected" parliament. In May 2006, Joya relates what she has learned about the grisly backgrounds of the majority of the elected officials represented in the parliament:
"Some argue that the mistakes of the past must be forgotton, but I believe that there is a big difference between mistakes and crimes. Was it just a mistake to kill more than sixty-five thousand Kabulis during the civil war? Was it just a mistake to use rape as a weapon of war, to murder and mutilate, such as those who militias cut women's breats off to terrorize the popuation. These were not just mistakes, and that is why I use the term criminal muhahideen" (p. 134).
Joya was subsequently banned from the parliament for speaking the truth. Many of those who sat with her in parliament in 2005-2006 are now running to be re-elected, and pretty assured they will again succeed in the charade of another "democratic" election process.
Landay picks up the story in his report, as follows.
Warlords and killers seek re-election to Afghan parliament
Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: September 15, 2010 01:54:57 PM
http://www.mcclatchyde.com/2010/09/14/100574/warlords-alleged-killers-seek.html
KABUL, Afghanistan — Mohammad Eshaq vividly remembers cowering in a crowded Kabul basement as shellfire raged above, fleeing with his family when his Afshar neighborhood's defenses collapsed and returning a year later to find scores of corpses still moldering in the rubble.
"Some were shot and some died from the rockets," said the 55-year-old sweet shop owner, standing by a mass grave on a sun-baked hillside that he helped fill. "We weren't able to wash them. We just laid them side by side and covered them."
Hundreds of minority Hazara civilians were killed in Afshar in February 1993 in one of the bloodiest chapters of the battle for Kabul, between rival U.S.-armed guerrilla factions that had ousted the Soviet-backed regime the previous year.
The man who directed the onslaught, according to residents and human rights groups, was Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, an Islamist member of parliament's lower house who's close to U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. He's running for re-election from Kabul, and analysts say he could be the next speaker of the lower house.
Sayyaf is among a raft of former guerrilla chieftains and commanders implicated in war crimes who are likely to win re-election Saturday to the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga in polls that are expected to be marred by coercion, fraud and violence.
For many Afghans and human rights groups, these men symbolize the high-level impunity, bad governance and massive corruption that are helping to fuel the growing Taliban-led insurgency.
"If ordinary people had power they wouldn't vote for any of these men. The government is filled with traitors from top to bottom," said Najaf Ali, 57. He lost three family members in the 1993 assault on Afshar by Pashtun and Tajik forces.
That some of Afghanistan's most notorious figures haven't been barred from seeking re-election after last year's fraud-tainted presidential contest underscores for many experts a deeply flawed system for vetting the 2,513 candidates.
"I've serious concerns about the way the vetting process has gone," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, the head of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, an independent poll watchdog.
The U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, also voiced no confidence in the system.
"The process of vetting has not produced a satisfactory result so far," he said in a July statement.
Ninety percent of the Wolesi Jirga members who were elected in 2005 have been certified to seek re-election. One lawmaker has been disqualified, 15 are retiring and 10 died or were killed while in office.
Yet the winners of the 2005 polls included 40 commanders still associated with armed groups, 24 who belong to criminal gangs, 17 drug traffickers and 19 who face serious allegations of war crimes and human rights violations, according to an analysis cited in a 2005 report by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent research center.
A second, bleaker analysis by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission cited in the report found that more than 80 percent of provincial lawmakers and more than 60 percent of those elected in Kabul had "links to armed groups."
"One of the biggest threats to Afghanistan's political stability and future comes from individuals who have committed serious human rights abuses," warned a 2005 Human Rights Watch report on the 1992-93 fighting in Kabul that implicated Sayyaf along with other top politicians and officials, including one of Karzai's two vice presidents, Mohammad Qasim Fahim. "To achieve long-term stability, the government will ultimately have to address the continuing threat from these individuals."
However, none of the former guerrilla chieftains and commanders, whom the George W. Bush administration rehabilitated and paid millions to help oust the Taliban and al Qaida in 2001, has faced criminal trial or been scrutinized by a South Africa-type truth commission.
A truth commission proposal, pushed by the United States and its allies as a way to assuage public demands for accountability, was quietly dropped amid resistance from Karzai. Citing the need for national unity, Karzai signed a bill in 2007 that granted amnesty to the former guerrilla chiefs and their followers.
The bill, which parliament passed secretly, was championed by Sayyaf, who denounced critics as being "against Islam" and "enemies of this country."
The electoral vetting system is supposed to disqualify candidates with links to private militias, or "illegal armed groups," that could be used to intimidate voters and hijack polling stations.
The Electoral Complaints Commission, which adjudicates alleged election law violations, announced the disqualification of 36 candidates in July and added eight others as they campaigned earlier this month.
The commission, however, didn't make those determinations. Officials from the Interior and Defense ministries, the National Directorate of Security — Afghanistan's top intelligence agency — and the Independent Election Commission decided them in secret.
Political activists and election experts, citing the lack of transparency, charged that there's no proof that those who were disqualified are tied to militias, while men who should have been excluded were given passes.
"A majority of the seats in parliament will belong to photocopies of Sayyaf," asserted Malalai Joya. Her fierce denunciations of Karzai and "warlords and drug lords" in parliament prompted her expulsion from her Farah province seat in 2007 in what many experts say was an unconstitutional action by the lower house. The chamber also lifted her official passport and banned her from talking to the media, which she refused to heed.
Joya, who's also an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, contended that many lawmakers' police bodyguards are members of personal militias, and she called the candidate vetting process "just symbolic."
Numerous calls to a Electoral Complaints Commission spokesman requesting comment went unanswered.
ON THE WEB
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit 2005 report "A House Divided," by Andrew Wilder
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McClatchy Newspapers 2010
Showing posts with label warlords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label warlords. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Supplying US forces in Afghanistan is profitable for some
Ben Gilbert's article was posted on August 29, 2010, at http://www.globalpost.com. He updates and provides details on how the US military in Afghanistan is compelled to pay top-prices for the movement of supplies to US forces and bases strewn around the country. Here are some excerpts from Gilbert's report.
In Afghanistan, supplying US military is big business
By Ben Gilbert
August 29, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Moving all the things 100,000 troops need to fight and survive in a hostile foreign land is never an easy task. In a landlocked, mountainous country the size of Texas, with few paved roads, it is even harder.
“I don’t think anyone has ever brought in this much equipment to a landlocked country that has only two major airports,” said Col. Gary Sheffer, acting commanding general of the U.S. Military’s Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan. “Without the road network, the railroad network, it’s a huge effort.”
....Sheffer and the 5,000 troops under his command are responsible for supplying all American forces in Afghanistan with everything from food and water to bullets and beds.
....Almost 100,000 U.S. troops are now in Afghanistan....
....The dusty central receiving and shipping point at Kandahar Airfield, one of several massive supply yards here, is filled with everything the troops might need: mobile kitchens, bulldozers, transport trucks and thousands of shipping containers stacked in twos and threes. They are filled with radios, tires and everything else imaginable.
[....]
....The military uses planes and helicopters to move much of its “sensitive equipment,” like ammunition and combat vehicles.
....between 6,000 to 8,000 Afghan and Pakistani trucks move 80 percent of the U.S. military’s supplies around Afghanistan each day.
[....]
Many of the supplies must be trucked through dangerous and hostile routes in Afghanistan and Pakistan....
Lt. Col. Beau Eidt, commander of the 4th battalion of the 401st Army Field Support regiment, said the drivers have to brave dangerous roads where they might encounter Taliban, bandits or warlords. Many such characters demand bribes for passage.
“There are a lot of entrepreneurial enterprises between here and the port of Karachi [in Pakistan where many supplies are initially located] that may or may not affect their pocket book on the way up here,” Eidt said. “That’s a nice way of saying that warlords are stripping them. And sometimes warlords wear uniforms.”
Private security companies also play this game. They often charge the U.S.-led NATO force here between $1,500 and $2,000 per truck to provide security to escort convoys.
[....]
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/100825/afghan-war-US-military-supplies
In Afghanistan, supplying US military is big business
By Ben Gilbert
August 29, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Moving all the things 100,000 troops need to fight and survive in a hostile foreign land is never an easy task. In a landlocked, mountainous country the size of Texas, with few paved roads, it is even harder.
“I don’t think anyone has ever brought in this much equipment to a landlocked country that has only two major airports,” said Col. Gary Sheffer, acting commanding general of the U.S. Military’s Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan. “Without the road network, the railroad network, it’s a huge effort.”
....Sheffer and the 5,000 troops under his command are responsible for supplying all American forces in Afghanistan with everything from food and water to bullets and beds.
....Almost 100,000 U.S. troops are now in Afghanistan....
....The dusty central receiving and shipping point at Kandahar Airfield, one of several massive supply yards here, is filled with everything the troops might need: mobile kitchens, bulldozers, transport trucks and thousands of shipping containers stacked in twos and threes. They are filled with radios, tires and everything else imaginable.
[....]
....The military uses planes and helicopters to move much of its “sensitive equipment,” like ammunition and combat vehicles.
....between 6,000 to 8,000 Afghan and Pakistani trucks move 80 percent of the U.S. military’s supplies around Afghanistan each day.
[....]
Many of the supplies must be trucked through dangerous and hostile routes in Afghanistan and Pakistan....
Lt. Col. Beau Eidt, commander of the 4th battalion of the 401st Army Field Support regiment, said the drivers have to brave dangerous roads where they might encounter Taliban, bandits or warlords. Many such characters demand bribes for passage.
“There are a lot of entrepreneurial enterprises between here and the port of Karachi [in Pakistan where many supplies are initially located] that may or may not affect their pocket book on the way up here,” Eidt said. “That’s a nice way of saying that warlords are stripping them. And sometimes warlords wear uniforms.”
Private security companies also play this game. They often charge the U.S.-led NATO force here between $1,500 and $2,000 per truck to provide security to escort convoys.
[....]
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/100825/afghan-war-US-military-supplies
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Afghan women remain oppressed until occupation and male oppressors are sacked
The Revolutionary Association of Afghanistan (RAWA) offers a statement on how Afghan women will not have liberation until the US-led military occupation is ended, and the Taliban, Karzai, and the puppet regime (e.g. dominated by warlords, drug-czars) are eliminated from the Afghan government. As the title of their organization indicates, there will have to be a wholesale overthrow of the present ruling groups in Afghanistan before Afghans generally and Afghan women specifically will achieve the opportunity for equality and security. These goals will not be won unless the military occupation ends, the corrupt Karzai government ends, political arrangements are put in place that promote democracy, economic support from within and outside of Afghanistan is made available to foster opportunities for independent development, and the equal rights of girls and women are fully realized.
RAWA, March 7, 2010
Emancipation of Afghan women not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on the International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010
Today, on the 8th of March, Afghan women are mourning for the gang-rape of Bashiras and Saimas, for being flogged by most lowed elements, for being auctioned in open market and for their young daughters who put an end to their miserable lives by self-immolation. But the perpetrators of all these crimes are forgiven; therefore they enjoy complete immunity, are still holding their official positions and tightening it through plundering our people and country.
February 2010: Local warlords in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan publicly flogged two Afghan women.
Though we don’t expect anything different from the most corrupt and dirty puppet regime of the world, the pain of Afghan women turns chronic when the world believes that the US and NATO has donated liberation, democracy and human and women rights for Afghanistan; whereas, after eight years of the US and allies’ aggression under the banner of “war on terror”, they empowered the most brutal terrorists of the Northern Alliance and the former Russian puppets – the Khalqis and Parchamis – and by relying on them, the US imposed a puppet government on Afghan people. And instead of uprooting its Taliban and Al-Qaeda creations, the US and NATO continues to kill our innocent and poor civilians, mostly women and children, in their vicious air raids.
In such conditions, we saw that Karzai, as the most demagogic and flagrant President, turgidly talks about the London Conference, which in fact had no positive outcome for Afghan people, where he only bargained and dealt for the return of the terrorist Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to power and the pouring of millions of more Dollars which will go to the pockets of the Karzai family and the mafias of Fahim, Khalili, Dostum and other murderers.
The Karzai puppet and reactionary regime is implicated in corruption and blood of the poor from top to bottom. Only the hundreds of people killed in the recent avalanche tragedy in Salang and the miseries of millions of refugee Afghans in the hands of the Iranian criminal regime are enough to punish and jail many of the so-called high ranking officials for negligence and inattention to the problems of our people.
But the US government does not try to curb its Afghan stooges and allows them to commit many crimes, betrayal and lootings, so they could repress and intimidate Afghans in any possible way and stop the emergence of any anti-fundamentalist and pro-independent uprising in Afghanistan. Therefore, it comes of no surprise that the decay and corruption of top criminals such as Rabbani, Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Qanoni, Karzai family, Zia Massoud, Fahim, Khalili, Saddique Chakari, Mirwas Yassini, Zahir Aghbar, Hadi Arghandewal, Anwar Jakdalak, Ismael Khan, Atta Mohammad and others are even reflected in some Western media, who have made dirty businesses and multi-billion Dollar investments in Afghanistan and Dubai as a result of their lootings and drug-dealings in Afghanistan.
To show to the world that they value women’s rights, the US and its Afghan mafia lackeys nourished a bunch of flunkeys and pro-occupation women to hold conferences and meet the so-called “his Excellency” President Karzai and his US-assigned spokespersons Wahid Omer, Siamak Herawi, Sibghatullah Sanjar and other traitors to ask for more ministries for Afghan women. But they are grasping the intentions of others with their own dirty mirrors and think ordinary Afghan women are unaware of the fact that even if all the members of the cabinet are made up of reactionary women such as Amina Afzali, Hassan Bano Ghazanfar, Massouda Jalal, Noorzia Atmar, Qadria Yazdanparast, Shukria Barakzai, Fouzia Kofi, Manija Bakhtari and others linked to brutal warlords, still it will not bring any positive change for Afghan women, because such women, acting as committed agents of the US government and its fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist menials, only define themselves by raising soft criticisms and asking for some reforms acceptable for the governing criminals and their foreign masters.
With money and offers of official posts, the US and its Afghan agents have bought many Afghan intellectuals. Many of the writers and poets are paid by the blood-thirsty Iranian regime who instead of raising people’s awareness and mobilizing them for pro-independence, pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalism struggle, try to pave the way for Iranian theocratic regime’s deeper involvement in Afghanistan and inflame and fuel ethnic, sectarian and lingual tensions among Afghan people.
RAWA always believes that women’s problem is a political issue and we cannot tackle it separately from the current catastrophic political situation. Without the overthrow of the current puppet regime, which is becoming more mortal and odorous than before by the inclusion of Taliban and Gulbuddini murderers, none of the thousands of the problems of our unhappy people will ever be solved.
Slogans about restoring peace, security, democracy and women’s rights will be empty and amplified claims, as long as Afghanistan has not gained its independence; the Taliban and the Northern Alliance killers are not prosecuted and the billions of wealth they have pillaged from people are not taken back from them. The benchmark to judge if any individual or organization is truly patriotic and progressive in the current situation is their struggle in any possible means against US occupation, the criminal Taliban -- who have the enslavement harness of Pakistan around their nick -- and the hirelings of Iran and the US in the “National Front”.
RAWA is eager to get united in solidarity with individuals and forces that are ready to fight for democracy in an independent front against the occupation, the Taliban, Jehadi and Khalqi and Parchami homeland-sellers.
While women of Afghanistan are experiencing a new era of captivity and are in the grip of the fundamentalist monsters, RAWA sends it heartfelt salutations to struggling brave women of Iran, Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Nepal, India and the rest of the world and announces solidarity with them.
URL for news «Emancipation of Afghan women not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!»
http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/03/07/emancipation-of-afghan-women-not-attainable-as-long-as-the-occupation-taliban-and-national-front-criminals-are-not-sacked.html
«Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan»(RAWA)
RAWA, March 7, 2010
Emancipation of Afghan women not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on the International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010
Today, on the 8th of March, Afghan women are mourning for the gang-rape of Bashiras and Saimas, for being flogged by most lowed elements, for being auctioned in open market and for their young daughters who put an end to their miserable lives by self-immolation. But the perpetrators of all these crimes are forgiven; therefore they enjoy complete immunity, are still holding their official positions and tightening it through plundering our people and country.
February 2010: Local warlords in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan publicly flogged two Afghan women.
Though we don’t expect anything different from the most corrupt and dirty puppet regime of the world, the pain of Afghan women turns chronic when the world believes that the US and NATO has donated liberation, democracy and human and women rights for Afghanistan; whereas, after eight years of the US and allies’ aggression under the banner of “war on terror”, they empowered the most brutal terrorists of the Northern Alliance and the former Russian puppets – the Khalqis and Parchamis – and by relying on them, the US imposed a puppet government on Afghan people. And instead of uprooting its Taliban and Al-Qaeda creations, the US and NATO continues to kill our innocent and poor civilians, mostly women and children, in their vicious air raids.
In such conditions, we saw that Karzai, as the most demagogic and flagrant President, turgidly talks about the London Conference, which in fact had no positive outcome for Afghan people, where he only bargained and dealt for the return of the terrorist Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to power and the pouring of millions of more Dollars which will go to the pockets of the Karzai family and the mafias of Fahim, Khalili, Dostum and other murderers.
The Karzai puppet and reactionary regime is implicated in corruption and blood of the poor from top to bottom. Only the hundreds of people killed in the recent avalanche tragedy in Salang and the miseries of millions of refugee Afghans in the hands of the Iranian criminal regime are enough to punish and jail many of the so-called high ranking officials for negligence and inattention to the problems of our people.
But the US government does not try to curb its Afghan stooges and allows them to commit many crimes, betrayal and lootings, so they could repress and intimidate Afghans in any possible way and stop the emergence of any anti-fundamentalist and pro-independent uprising in Afghanistan. Therefore, it comes of no surprise that the decay and corruption of top criminals such as Rabbani, Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Qanoni, Karzai family, Zia Massoud, Fahim, Khalili, Saddique Chakari, Mirwas Yassini, Zahir Aghbar, Hadi Arghandewal, Anwar Jakdalak, Ismael Khan, Atta Mohammad and others are even reflected in some Western media, who have made dirty businesses and multi-billion Dollar investments in Afghanistan and Dubai as a result of their lootings and drug-dealings in Afghanistan.
To show to the world that they value women’s rights, the US and its Afghan mafia lackeys nourished a bunch of flunkeys and pro-occupation women to hold conferences and meet the so-called “his Excellency” President Karzai and his US-assigned spokespersons Wahid Omer, Siamak Herawi, Sibghatullah Sanjar and other traitors to ask for more ministries for Afghan women. But they are grasping the intentions of others with their own dirty mirrors and think ordinary Afghan women are unaware of the fact that even if all the members of the cabinet are made up of reactionary women such as Amina Afzali, Hassan Bano Ghazanfar, Massouda Jalal, Noorzia Atmar, Qadria Yazdanparast, Shukria Barakzai, Fouzia Kofi, Manija Bakhtari and others linked to brutal warlords, still it will not bring any positive change for Afghan women, because such women, acting as committed agents of the US government and its fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist menials, only define themselves by raising soft criticisms and asking for some reforms acceptable for the governing criminals and their foreign masters.
With money and offers of official posts, the US and its Afghan agents have bought many Afghan intellectuals. Many of the writers and poets are paid by the blood-thirsty Iranian regime who instead of raising people’s awareness and mobilizing them for pro-independence, pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalism struggle, try to pave the way for Iranian theocratic regime’s deeper involvement in Afghanistan and inflame and fuel ethnic, sectarian and lingual tensions among Afghan people.
RAWA always believes that women’s problem is a political issue and we cannot tackle it separately from the current catastrophic political situation. Without the overthrow of the current puppet regime, which is becoming more mortal and odorous than before by the inclusion of Taliban and Gulbuddini murderers, none of the thousands of the problems of our unhappy people will ever be solved.
Slogans about restoring peace, security, democracy and women’s rights will be empty and amplified claims, as long as Afghanistan has not gained its independence; the Taliban and the Northern Alliance killers are not prosecuted and the billions of wealth they have pillaged from people are not taken back from them. The benchmark to judge if any individual or organization is truly patriotic and progressive in the current situation is their struggle in any possible means against US occupation, the criminal Taliban -- who have the enslavement harness of Pakistan around their nick -- and the hirelings of Iran and the US in the “National Front”.
RAWA is eager to get united in solidarity with individuals and forces that are ready to fight for democracy in an independent front against the occupation, the Taliban, Jehadi and Khalqi and Parchami homeland-sellers.
While women of Afghanistan are experiencing a new era of captivity and are in the grip of the fundamentalist monsters, RAWA sends it heartfelt salutations to struggling brave women of Iran, Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Nepal, India and the rest of the world and announces solidarity with them.
URL for news «Emancipation of Afghan women not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!»
http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/03/07/emancipation-of-afghan-women-not-attainable-as-long-as-the-occupation-taliban-and-national-front-criminals-are-not-sacked.html
«Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan»(RAWA)
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Democracy Now interview on extortion by warlords and insurgents in Afghanistan taken up by Congressional Committee
Congressional Probe Confirms US Indirectly Funding Afghan Insurgents with Protection Payoffs
A congressional investigation has affirmed the findings of a Nation magazine report that revealed the US government is indirectly financing warlords and insurgent forces they’re fighting in Afghanistan. Investigative journalist Aram Roston reported the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan have paid insurgent groups to protect US supply routes from attack. Roston discussed his findings on Democracy Now! in November.
Aram Roston: "The security companies reach arrangements with the local Taliban, the local warlords and various insiders to pay them off for protection. It’s very much like an extortion racket and very much like a protection racket, and it amounts to huge amounts of money. Some say ten percent, some say far more than ten percent, of the convoys. Some say that most of the security budgets are going towards these payments to the Taliban and to the tribal leaders and the warlords."
Roston’s story prompted the congressional probe. The military has now opened a criminal investigation into the payoffs.
A congressional investigation has affirmed the findings of a Nation magazine report that revealed the US government is indirectly financing warlords and insurgent forces they’re fighting in Afghanistan. Investigative journalist Aram Roston reported the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan have paid insurgent groups to protect US supply routes from attack. Roston discussed his findings on Democracy Now! in November.
Aram Roston: "The security companies reach arrangements with the local Taliban, the local warlords and various insiders to pay them off for protection. It’s very much like an extortion racket and very much like a protection racket, and it amounts to huge amounts of money. Some say ten percent, some say far more than ten percent, of the convoys. Some say that most of the security budgets are going towards these payments to the Taliban and to the tribal leaders and the warlords."
Roston’s story prompted the congressional probe. The military has now opened a criminal investigation into the payoffs.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
RAWA statement: peace jirga dominated by criminals of war
The key point made by RAWA in the following statement is that representatives of the ordinary people of Afghanistan are not included in the peace jirga called by President Karzai. We have included articles that have called for negotiations with Taliban leaders to lead to the end of violence. However, RAWA believes that negotiations between warlords and Taliban will perpetuate the misery and domination of the majority of Afghanis. This is also the position of Malalai Joya, in which she articulates a position very similar to that of RAWA. (You can see statements by Joya on this site.)
“Consultative Peace Jirga”
http:// www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/06/01/peace-with-criminals-war-with-people.html
By inviting criminals like the Taliban, the leaders of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party and other “Jehadi leaders” to be part of a “Consultative Peace Jirga,” Mr. Karzai is committing yet another treason against the Afghan people. Like any puppet, anti-people ruler, he initially compromised with all the murderers associated with April 27th 1978 (former Russian puppets) and April 28 1992 (the Northern Alliance warlords) and installed them in key posts of his government. He then went to the extent of assigning the two most notorious warlords Karim Khalili and Qasim Fahim as his vice presidents. Now, he calls the Taliban and Hekmatyar party terrorists “Afghan sons” and tries to either share power with them, or offer them the opportunity of asylum and amnesty to their leaders in any country of their choice. He is also offering jobs to their gunmen so he can prolong his mafia-style rule with ease of mind.
A known terrorist from Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party called Farooq Wardak has been awarded the responsibility of running the Jirga. Additionally, the delegates from Hekmatyar’s blood-thirsty party in Kabul were received like showbiz celebrities with local Afghan media being offered in their service. The infamous criminals Mullah Wakil Ahmad Motawakal, Mullah Zaef, Humayun Jarir, Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, Sabaoon, Mullah Rocketi and many other such terrorists of the Taliban and Islamic Party have had their reputations sugarcoated in the past few years. All these things not only illuminate the true nature and goal of this Jirga, but also constitute an insult to our people who have sought their liberation in the prosecution and punishment of Khaliqi, Parchami, Jehadi and Taliban criminals, but instead still feel the heavy load of these brutal enemies on their wounded bodies.
Without receiving a green light from their US masters, the puppet government of Afghanistan could never raise a hue and cry about this “Consultative Peace Jirga.” It could also not consider making peace with the Taliban and Islamic Party assassins while they are apparently still on the “Black List” of the US government. This in itself proves that the US doesn’t just want a puppet government, but also a stable and efficient government to easily change Afghanistan into a strong military base in Asia, extend its grip on the oil and gas of the Central Asian Republics and maintain its supremacy in competition with rivals such as China and other regional powers. For the US and allies, the deeply criminal, treacherous, anti-democracy and anti-independence essence of this puppet regime has no significance at all. Apart from a handful of sold-off intellectuals of Afghanistan, this reality is crystal clear to even our children that the claim of the US about bringing “democracy” and “women’s liberation” to Afghanistan was the biggest lie of the century. In fact, it was even more striking than the claims of the US about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and more comic than its pretence of having an opposition to fundamentalist bands and governments.
At the height of a piercing outcry over a “Peace Jirga,” the Taliban intensified their inhuman brutalities by killing school children, teachers, men, and women of Kabul and other cities, but Karzai and his spokesmen expressed with detestable indifference that, “Inshallah, with national unity soon we will emerge from these problems”! If their own sister, mother or daughter were raped, killed publicly or torn to pieces by suicide bombings, would they still call these killings “problems” they have with Taliban, their “disaffected brothers”? But considering the power-lust and impunity of the ruling mafia, they may still not call the Taliban criminals, and their acts as crimes, because despite having some differences, in the final stage they regard themselves from the same ranks and deem it necessary to become united in order to run the state machinery in front of people’s wrath. Both the Taliban and the ruling mafia know well that the day US/NATO occupation forces leave Afghanistan; all the tribes of Afghanistan will consider unity amongst themselves to topple their bloody rule.
While the US is trying to unite its lackeys through the “Peace Jirga” and other means, it is afraid of unity and integration among Afghan people. Therefore, through its puppet government and Northern Alliance agents, the US is trying hard to sow disruption and animosity among the different tribes of Afghanistan. For example, in Behsood and Daimirdad they inflamed fighting between Hazaras and Nomads and similarly in Northern Afghanistan among Tajiks, Pushtoons and Uzbeks so they can continue the occupation of a divided and disarrayed nation.
The so-called intellectuals of Afghanistan who directly or indirectly hope that the Taliban will end the US occupation, are carving a dark mark of history on their forehead. They are like those who rely on the US and the bloodthirsty Iranian regime to emancipate them from the yoke of the Taliban. If such people are not foolish, then they are spineless because they neither remember the marks of the Taliban flogging our mothers, sisters and fathers nor the beheading of our children and poor women (in the name of rooting out “spies”), or the spraying of acid on innocent school-girls. If they believe that by relying on tribal issues, corruption, and looting of the puppet regime they can find an argument for their support of the brutal Taliban, then by what trick can they ignore the ISI-born nature and medieval mentality of the Taliban? Can they point out any example anywhere in the world of such an anti-democratic and anti-women group dominated by drug lords and dependent on the intelligence agency of a foreign country that dares to struggle for independence and liberation? The intellectual supporters of the Taliban are possibly agents of the US CIA and other agencies who by upholding the Taliban and calling them a “resistance movement” want to pave the way for their joint domination with President Karzai and the “National Front” mafia.
In the past, through the meddling of Zalmay Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai as representatives of UNOCAL, the US dealt with the Taliban and pumped tens of millions of dollars into their pockets. Today if the Taliban once again comes to power, the US will easily “work” with them and prefer their bloody and suffocating rule of Afghanistan to an independent, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights government, because the US counts on them as the most loyal group to safeguard its interests in the region. The Taliban also will not forget that the US was their creator, trainer and mentor through Pakistan’s ISI god-fathers.
The current conflict between the US, Taliban, and Northern Alliance is in fact a family matter between them which will be solved sooner or later. When that happens, the ranks of friends and enemies of our people will become clear and the illusion spread by pro-Taliban, pro-April 27 and April 28 treacherous intellectuals will be countered. Under such conditions, it is the duty of pro-independence, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights intellectuals to increase their organized efforts for a coordinated uprising of our people against all traitors to Afghanistan.
Let the puppet mafia government of Karzai bring together all its agents in the “Peace Jirga” and similar ridiculous shows and by organizing luxury meetings, dance over the dead bodies of our innocent people, but the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), alongside the aggrieved Afghan people thinks that such deceitful games mean throwing salt on the wounds of our people caught in the US/NATO bombings, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and desperation all over Afghanistan.
Shame to the “Peace Jirga” of criminals with criminals!Neither USA, Nor Taliban and the National Front murderers!An independent and democratic Afghanistan!
Category: English, RAWA Documents
Peace with Criminals, War with People!
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on
“Consultative Peace Jirga”
http:// www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/06/01/peace-with-criminals-war-with-people.html
By inviting criminals like the Taliban, the leaders of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party and other “Jehadi leaders” to be part of a “Consultative Peace Jirga,” Mr. Karzai is committing yet another treason against the Afghan people. Like any puppet, anti-people ruler, he initially compromised with all the murderers associated with April 27th 1978 (former Russian puppets) and April 28 1992 (the Northern Alliance warlords) and installed them in key posts of his government. He then went to the extent of assigning the two most notorious warlords Karim Khalili and Qasim Fahim as his vice presidents. Now, he calls the Taliban and Hekmatyar party terrorists “Afghan sons” and tries to either share power with them, or offer them the opportunity of asylum and amnesty to their leaders in any country of their choice. He is also offering jobs to their gunmen so he can prolong his mafia-style rule with ease of mind.
A known terrorist from Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party called Farooq Wardak has been awarded the responsibility of running the Jirga. Additionally, the delegates from Hekmatyar’s blood-thirsty party in Kabul were received like showbiz celebrities with local Afghan media being offered in their service. The infamous criminals Mullah Wakil Ahmad Motawakal, Mullah Zaef, Humayun Jarir, Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, Sabaoon, Mullah Rocketi and many other such terrorists of the Taliban and Islamic Party have had their reputations sugarcoated in the past few years. All these things not only illuminate the true nature and goal of this Jirga, but also constitute an insult to our people who have sought their liberation in the prosecution and punishment of Khaliqi, Parchami, Jehadi and Taliban criminals, but instead still feel the heavy load of these brutal enemies on their wounded bodies.
Without receiving a green light from their US masters, the puppet government of Afghanistan could never raise a hue and cry about this “Consultative Peace Jirga.” It could also not consider making peace with the Taliban and Islamic Party assassins while they are apparently still on the “Black List” of the US government. This in itself proves that the US doesn’t just want a puppet government, but also a stable and efficient government to easily change Afghanistan into a strong military base in Asia, extend its grip on the oil and gas of the Central Asian Republics and maintain its supremacy in competition with rivals such as China and other regional powers. For the US and allies, the deeply criminal, treacherous, anti-democracy and anti-independence essence of this puppet regime has no significance at all. Apart from a handful of sold-off intellectuals of Afghanistan, this reality is crystal clear to even our children that the claim of the US about bringing “democracy” and “women’s liberation” to Afghanistan was the biggest lie of the century. In fact, it was even more striking than the claims of the US about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and more comic than its pretence of having an opposition to fundamentalist bands and governments.
At the height of a piercing outcry over a “Peace Jirga,” the Taliban intensified their inhuman brutalities by killing school children, teachers, men, and women of Kabul and other cities, but Karzai and his spokesmen expressed with detestable indifference that, “Inshallah, with national unity soon we will emerge from these problems”! If their own sister, mother or daughter were raped, killed publicly or torn to pieces by suicide bombings, would they still call these killings “problems” they have with Taliban, their “disaffected brothers”? But considering the power-lust and impunity of the ruling mafia, they may still not call the Taliban criminals, and their acts as crimes, because despite having some differences, in the final stage they regard themselves from the same ranks and deem it necessary to become united in order to run the state machinery in front of people’s wrath. Both the Taliban and the ruling mafia know well that the day US/NATO occupation forces leave Afghanistan; all the tribes of Afghanistan will consider unity amongst themselves to topple their bloody rule.
While the US is trying to unite its lackeys through the “Peace Jirga” and other means, it is afraid of unity and integration among Afghan people. Therefore, through its puppet government and Northern Alliance agents, the US is trying hard to sow disruption and animosity among the different tribes of Afghanistan. For example, in Behsood and Daimirdad they inflamed fighting between Hazaras and Nomads and similarly in Northern Afghanistan among Tajiks, Pushtoons and Uzbeks so they can continue the occupation of a divided and disarrayed nation.
The so-called intellectuals of Afghanistan who directly or indirectly hope that the Taliban will end the US occupation, are carving a dark mark of history on their forehead. They are like those who rely on the US and the bloodthirsty Iranian regime to emancipate them from the yoke of the Taliban. If such people are not foolish, then they are spineless because they neither remember the marks of the Taliban flogging our mothers, sisters and fathers nor the beheading of our children and poor women (in the name of rooting out “spies”), or the spraying of acid on innocent school-girls. If they believe that by relying on tribal issues, corruption, and looting of the puppet regime they can find an argument for their support of the brutal Taliban, then by what trick can they ignore the ISI-born nature and medieval mentality of the Taliban? Can they point out any example anywhere in the world of such an anti-democratic and anti-women group dominated by drug lords and dependent on the intelligence agency of a foreign country that dares to struggle for independence and liberation? The intellectual supporters of the Taliban are possibly agents of the US CIA and other agencies who by upholding the Taliban and calling them a “resistance movement” want to pave the way for their joint domination with President Karzai and the “National Front” mafia.
In the past, through the meddling of Zalmay Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai as representatives of UNOCAL, the US dealt with the Taliban and pumped tens of millions of dollars into their pockets. Today if the Taliban once again comes to power, the US will easily “work” with them and prefer their bloody and suffocating rule of Afghanistan to an independent, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights government, because the US counts on them as the most loyal group to safeguard its interests in the region. The Taliban also will not forget that the US was their creator, trainer and mentor through Pakistan’s ISI god-fathers.
The current conflict between the US, Taliban, and Northern Alliance is in fact a family matter between them which will be solved sooner or later. When that happens, the ranks of friends and enemies of our people will become clear and the illusion spread by pro-Taliban, pro-April 27 and April 28 treacherous intellectuals will be countered. Under such conditions, it is the duty of pro-independence, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights intellectuals to increase their organized efforts for a coordinated uprising of our people against all traitors to Afghanistan.
Let the puppet mafia government of Karzai bring together all its agents in the “Peace Jirga” and similar ridiculous shows and by organizing luxury meetings, dance over the dead bodies of our innocent people, but the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), alongside the aggrieved Afghan people thinks that such deceitful games mean throwing salt on the wounds of our people caught in the US/NATO bombings, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and desperation all over Afghanistan.
Shame to the “Peace Jirga” of criminals with criminals!Neither USA, Nor Taliban and the National Front murderers!An independent and democratic Afghanistan!
Category: English, RAWA Documents
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
All relevant actors should be at the bargaining table
After the Karzai Visit, Who's at the Negotiating Table?
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
An overview of what an alternative to war in Afghanistan might look like - negotiations, what a concept...The high-profile Washington visit of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is only partly about smoothing over what has become his extraordinarily prickly relationship with the Obama administration. Even the appearance of smoothing over those rough edges, corruption-related and otherwise, is only part of the story. (Although that part is pretty important to the White House as the Congressional vote nears on President Obama's demand for $33 billion more in taxpayer money to fund the current military escalation in Afghanistan.)
The most important part of the Karzai visit has to do with resolving the huge strategic disagreement between the Afghan president and his U.S. benefactor on the fundamental question of negotiations and reconciliation. Everybody admits-and history confirms-that every war ultimately involves negotiations at the end. But for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is increasingly isolated from its friends, allies, and even dependents over the key issues of when, with whom, and over what, those negotiations should take place.
The Obama administration agrees that negotiating with the Taliban will be necessary. In January, when U.S., British, and other NATO leaders met in London to discuss Afghan strategy, Pentagon CentCom chief General David Petraeus told the Times of London that he recognized the possibility of "the concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders.
Kill More Afghans FirstTheir big hesitation, they say, is on the timing. President Obama's hand-picked Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal said in London that he hoped the recently announced escalation of 30,000 new troops would weaken the Taliban enough that its leaders would accept a peace deal. In other words they want to weaken the Taliban first-Pentagon-speak for "kill more Afghans." We should negotiate, but only from "a position of strength." They're wrong. Whatever other things the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, winning a "position of strength" is not one of them. The biggest U.S./NATO offensive since the beginning of the war in 2001 began in February in Marjah. It failed. According to a survey of Marjah's men conducted by the International Council on Security and Development, 61 percent feel more negative about the occupation forces after the get-rid-of-the-Taliban-and-win-the-Afghans'-hearts-and-minds military offensive than they did before. Hardly the definition of a position of strength.An even larger-scale U.S./NATO offensive is scheduled to begin in earnest in early June in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the original home of the Taliban. The prospect of U.S. troops emerging in a "position of strength" from that almost certain debacle is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty lousy. There is simply no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership will be any more likely to negotiate after more of them (and many more civilians) have been killed, than they are now. U.S. influence over events in Afghanistan is diminishing despite the increase in military attacks. Karzai is eager to initiate negotiations with the Taliban ASAP, and may have already begun moves to do so; he knows that his corrupt and delegitimized government may well not survive any lessening of U.S. support. But because Karzai's government is widely viewed by most Afghans as not only corrupt but largely unable to implement any serious governance outside of parts of Kabul, the current U.S. prohibition on talks guarantees that negotiations that could lead to real reconciliation cannot go forward. The Taliban needs the U.S. at the table, not just Karzai.
Negotiations Over What? The Obama administration also insists that any negotiations with the Taliban, whenever they happen, must be limited essentially to terms of surrender. Low-ranking Taliban foot soldiers might be offered "de-radicalization" programs and maybe even some job possibilities, but key regional and national Taliban commanders, the ones who would actually have to sign off on any deal to make it work, would be offered only the option of complete surrender, giving up their weapons and any claim to power or influence, plus maybe the possibility of exile in another country. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned. But the Taliban are Afghans, not Saudis; their goal has always been to rule Afghanistan, not to go abroad. They speak a different language than Saudis do, they are not Arabs. Saudi exile is not likely to win negotiators' hearts and minds-or acquiescence. It seems those in the Administration floating such trial balloons have forgotten what their own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered when challenged by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Taliban have no tanks, no planes, said the senator, so how is it that they're winning? "It's their country," Mullen answered. So who's saying what about all this? The U.S. position is pretty clear (despite already visible disagreements even within the administration). Efforts to bribe and buy off low-level Taliban foot soldiers are grudgingly acceptable. Serious negotiations with Taliban leadership is forbidden until more Taliban soldiers or leaders (or civilians near them?) have been killed or, more rarely, captured. Any future negotiations with Taliban leaders will be limited to the terms of their surrender; power-sharing in a unified Afghanistan is not an option.
The Afghan government-or at least President Karzai himself, since it's unclear who else he speaks for even within his own government-wants to begin negotiations with the Taliban right away. He disagrees with his U.S. sponsors on timing, but appears to accept their view that only surrender is an option for top Taliban commanders; he has no interest in sharing power with them. Pakistan's primary concern is to insure a reliable surrogate to defend its interests in a post-U.S., post-occupation Afghanistan where arch-rival India will have influence. In the past that surrogate has been the Afghan Taliban, and there's no indication Islamabad is making a different choice. Pakistan is determined to have a say in when, whether, with whom and over what negotiations might occur; the recent arrest of a top Taliban leader, Mullah Baradar, after years of providing him with safe haven in Pakistan, was widely viewed as a message to the U.S. and Kabul, reminding them that if negotiations are going to occur, Pakistan is going to be part of them. Pakistan supports immediate negotiations aimed at a power-sharing role for the Taliban in the future.
The British position and that of some other NATO countries is close to that of Karzai, accepting negotiations with the Taliban at all levels right away. London has accepted (though it is unclear what changes the new government under David Cameron's Conservative-Lib/Dem coalition might make) the idea of some sort of power-sharing in Afghanistan that could include the Taliban. Who else needs to be at the table? Of those commentators and pundits who recognized the centrality of the reconciliation issue, almost all focused on whether/when/what the U.S. should negotiate with the Talilban. But that's not enough. If negotiations are to be taken seriously, if there is any hope that reconciliation is possible, who is present is also crucial. Everyone must be at the table. Does that include the Taliban? Of course it does. But Afghanistan isn't a two-sided country, where the only local players are the U.S.-backed government and the anti-U.S. Taliban. The resistance isn't only the Taliban, and the government doesn't reflect much of the population. Afghan society is richly complex, with men and women, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and traditional, a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, and cultures playing important roles. And Afghanistan doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is bordered directly by six complicated countries in a strategic region roiling with political, economic, and social tensions.
Real negotiations mean everyone who has a legitimate stake in the outcome must be at the table. That means the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, and inevitably some of the other warlords, often longtime clients of the United States, who remain as regressive and repressive towards women as the Taliban ever were. Those warlords exist both within the Afghan government and among the anti-government resistance forces. But it also means including representatives of Afghanistan's traditional governing structures, the tribe- and village-based leaders, mosque-linked and otherwise, who are recognized as holding the country's legitimacy. It means women must be involved, both as an organized sector and as individuals, including the professional women's associations who have recently publicly called for negotiating with the Taliban. It means the traditional and newly rebuilding civil society of both cities and rural areas, including farmers' alliances and trade unions, organizations of teachers and doctors, students, and so many more. If the national peace jirga, or council, is held as planned, all of these components of Afghan society must be present. They must be empowered to speak and to participate in the consensus process that Afghan governance has long relied on.And if an Afghan peace jirga is to succeed, it will have to be part of a much broader international diplomatic process. That means bringing together all of Afghanistan's neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan, and all of the regional powers, including China and India. Key Muslim countries such as Turkey and perhaps the Organization of the Islamic Conference will play vital roles, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. And once all its troops are on their way out the U.S. will have to endorse, bankroll, and support such a campaign-but, crucially, will have to break from its long and painful pattern of dominating such efforts. With U.S. and NATO troops and mercenaries withdrawn and serious diplomatic efforts underway both inside Afghanistan and in the region, perhaps we can finally begin making good on the enormous debt-financial, humanitarian, developmental and so much more-that we owe to the people of Afghanistan.
But first, everybody has to be at the table.Thanks,Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
An overview of what an alternative to war in Afghanistan might look like - negotiations, what a concept...The high-profile Washington visit of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is only partly about smoothing over what has become his extraordinarily prickly relationship with the Obama administration. Even the appearance of smoothing over those rough edges, corruption-related and otherwise, is only part of the story. (Although that part is pretty important to the White House as the Congressional vote nears on President Obama's demand for $33 billion more in taxpayer money to fund the current military escalation in Afghanistan.)
The most important part of the Karzai visit has to do with resolving the huge strategic disagreement between the Afghan president and his U.S. benefactor on the fundamental question of negotiations and reconciliation. Everybody admits-and history confirms-that every war ultimately involves negotiations at the end. But for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is increasingly isolated from its friends, allies, and even dependents over the key issues of when, with whom, and over what, those negotiations should take place.
The Obama administration agrees that negotiating with the Taliban will be necessary. In January, when U.S., British, and other NATO leaders met in London to discuss Afghan strategy, Pentagon CentCom chief General David Petraeus told the Times of London that he recognized the possibility of "the concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders.
Kill More Afghans FirstTheir big hesitation, they say, is on the timing. President Obama's hand-picked Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal said in London that he hoped the recently announced escalation of 30,000 new troops would weaken the Taliban enough that its leaders would accept a peace deal. In other words they want to weaken the Taliban first-Pentagon-speak for "kill more Afghans." We should negotiate, but only from "a position of strength." They're wrong. Whatever other things the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, winning a "position of strength" is not one of them. The biggest U.S./NATO offensive since the beginning of the war in 2001 began in February in Marjah. It failed. According to a survey of Marjah's men conducted by the International Council on Security and Development, 61 percent feel more negative about the occupation forces after the get-rid-of-the-Taliban-and-win-the-Afghans'-hearts-and-minds military offensive than they did before. Hardly the definition of a position of strength.An even larger-scale U.S./NATO offensive is scheduled to begin in earnest in early June in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the original home of the Taliban. The prospect of U.S. troops emerging in a "position of strength" from that almost certain debacle is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty lousy. There is simply no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership will be any more likely to negotiate after more of them (and many more civilians) have been killed, than they are now. U.S. influence over events in Afghanistan is diminishing despite the increase in military attacks. Karzai is eager to initiate negotiations with the Taliban ASAP, and may have already begun moves to do so; he knows that his corrupt and delegitimized government may well not survive any lessening of U.S. support. But because Karzai's government is widely viewed by most Afghans as not only corrupt but largely unable to implement any serious governance outside of parts of Kabul, the current U.S. prohibition on talks guarantees that negotiations that could lead to real reconciliation cannot go forward. The Taliban needs the U.S. at the table, not just Karzai.
Negotiations Over What? The Obama administration also insists that any negotiations with the Taliban, whenever they happen, must be limited essentially to terms of surrender. Low-ranking Taliban foot soldiers might be offered "de-radicalization" programs and maybe even some job possibilities, but key regional and national Taliban commanders, the ones who would actually have to sign off on any deal to make it work, would be offered only the option of complete surrender, giving up their weapons and any claim to power or influence, plus maybe the possibility of exile in another country. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned. But the Taliban are Afghans, not Saudis; their goal has always been to rule Afghanistan, not to go abroad. They speak a different language than Saudis do, they are not Arabs. Saudi exile is not likely to win negotiators' hearts and minds-or acquiescence. It seems those in the Administration floating such trial balloons have forgotten what their own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered when challenged by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Taliban have no tanks, no planes, said the senator, so how is it that they're winning? "It's their country," Mullen answered. So who's saying what about all this? The U.S. position is pretty clear (despite already visible disagreements even within the administration). Efforts to bribe and buy off low-level Taliban foot soldiers are grudgingly acceptable. Serious negotiations with Taliban leadership is forbidden until more Taliban soldiers or leaders (or civilians near them?) have been killed or, more rarely, captured. Any future negotiations with Taliban leaders will be limited to the terms of their surrender; power-sharing in a unified Afghanistan is not an option.
The Afghan government-or at least President Karzai himself, since it's unclear who else he speaks for even within his own government-wants to begin negotiations with the Taliban right away. He disagrees with his U.S. sponsors on timing, but appears to accept their view that only surrender is an option for top Taliban commanders; he has no interest in sharing power with them. Pakistan's primary concern is to insure a reliable surrogate to defend its interests in a post-U.S., post-occupation Afghanistan where arch-rival India will have influence. In the past that surrogate has been the Afghan Taliban, and there's no indication Islamabad is making a different choice. Pakistan is determined to have a say in when, whether, with whom and over what negotiations might occur; the recent arrest of a top Taliban leader, Mullah Baradar, after years of providing him with safe haven in Pakistan, was widely viewed as a message to the U.S. and Kabul, reminding them that if negotiations are going to occur, Pakistan is going to be part of them. Pakistan supports immediate negotiations aimed at a power-sharing role for the Taliban in the future.
The British position and that of some other NATO countries is close to that of Karzai, accepting negotiations with the Taliban at all levels right away. London has accepted (though it is unclear what changes the new government under David Cameron's Conservative-Lib/Dem coalition might make) the idea of some sort of power-sharing in Afghanistan that could include the Taliban. Who else needs to be at the table? Of those commentators and pundits who recognized the centrality of the reconciliation issue, almost all focused on whether/when/what the U.S. should negotiate with the Talilban. But that's not enough. If negotiations are to be taken seriously, if there is any hope that reconciliation is possible, who is present is also crucial. Everyone must be at the table. Does that include the Taliban? Of course it does. But Afghanistan isn't a two-sided country, where the only local players are the U.S.-backed government and the anti-U.S. Taliban. The resistance isn't only the Taliban, and the government doesn't reflect much of the population. Afghan society is richly complex, with men and women, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and traditional, a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, and cultures playing important roles. And Afghanistan doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is bordered directly by six complicated countries in a strategic region roiling with political, economic, and social tensions.
Real negotiations mean everyone who has a legitimate stake in the outcome must be at the table. That means the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, and inevitably some of the other warlords, often longtime clients of the United States, who remain as regressive and repressive towards women as the Taliban ever were. Those warlords exist both within the Afghan government and among the anti-government resistance forces. But it also means including representatives of Afghanistan's traditional governing structures, the tribe- and village-based leaders, mosque-linked and otherwise, who are recognized as holding the country's legitimacy. It means women must be involved, both as an organized sector and as individuals, including the professional women's associations who have recently publicly called for negotiating with the Taliban. It means the traditional and newly rebuilding civil society of both cities and rural areas, including farmers' alliances and trade unions, organizations of teachers and doctors, students, and so many more. If the national peace jirga, or council, is held as planned, all of these components of Afghan society must be present. They must be empowered to speak and to participate in the consensus process that Afghan governance has long relied on.And if an Afghan peace jirga is to succeed, it will have to be part of a much broader international diplomatic process. That means bringing together all of Afghanistan's neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan, and all of the regional powers, including China and India. Key Muslim countries such as Turkey and perhaps the Organization of the Islamic Conference will play vital roles, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. And once all its troops are on their way out the U.S. will have to endorse, bankroll, and support such a campaign-but, crucially, will have to break from its long and painful pattern of dominating such efforts. With U.S. and NATO troops and mercenaries withdrawn and serious diplomatic efforts underway both inside Afghanistan and in the region, perhaps we can finally begin making good on the enormous debt-financial, humanitarian, developmental and so much more-that we owe to the people of Afghanistan.
But first, everybody has to be at the table.Thanks,Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
US financed contracts sometimes end up in the wrong places
"Warlords feed on US contracts, say critics." This is the headline of an article written by Richard Shilito and Matthew Green (in Kandahar) for the Financial Times, May 11, 2010. You can find the full article at: http://freedomsyndicate.com/fairOOOO/ft05.html.
On this blog or ours, we have reprinted and/or commented on reports of corruption in the Afghan government and among warlord in provinces and districts outside of Taliban dominance. In some cases, the warlords also hold positions in the government. Since the US military has not defined the warlords as Al Qaeda or Taliban, they are implicitly considered allies of the US-led occupation and given far more trust than they deserve.
The corruption aspect has to do with how US funded contracts, or some portion of them, end up in the hands for powerful warlords and are used to consolidate their own power and serve their private interests rather than for projects in the public good for which they were intended. some of this money trickles down to various Taliban groups. The opaque networks involved in the trucking business border on the absurd.
Shilito and Green provide new details for this story.
From the article:
On this blog or ours, we have reprinted and/or commented on reports of corruption in the Afghan government and among warlord in provinces and districts outside of Taliban dominance. In some cases, the warlords also hold positions in the government. Since the US military has not defined the warlords as Al Qaeda or Taliban, they are implicitly considered allies of the US-led occupation and given far more trust than they deserve.
The corruption aspect has to do with how US funded contracts, or some portion of them, end up in the hands for powerful warlords and are used to consolidate their own power and serve their private interests rather than for projects in the public good for which they were intended. some of this money trickles down to various Taliban groups. The opaque networks involved in the trucking business border on the absurd.
Shilito and Green provide new details for this story.
From the article:
"...mounting evidence that a $2.16bn trucking contract is enriching Afghan warlords linked to the controversial half-brother of President Hamid Karzai."
"...congressional investigators are looking into whether millions of taxpayers' dollars are being paid to militia commanders to protect convoys ferrying supplies through Kandahar province, where US troops are preparing an offensive."
"Critics say the militias form part of a mafia-like network..."
"...in Washington, concerns are growing that inadequate oversight of Afghan expenditure is financing a heavily armed cabal that will jeopardise the broader US strategy of promoting good governance to counter the Taliban."
"John F. Tierney, a Democratic member of Congress from Massachusetts....chairs the national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, which launched the investigation, partly in response to a Financial Times report on Taliban insurgents extorting money from trucking contractors supplying Isaf, the international force in Afghanistan."
The companies on which the investigation is focusing includes "eight trucking contractors who share the US military's $2.16bn (€1.7bn, £1.5bn) two-year host nation trucking contract. The companies in-clude NCL Holdings, run by Hamed Wardak, the son of Afghanistan's defence minister, and others founded by US and Gulf investors."
Key points: "The system relies on an opaque network of sub-contractors who pay Afghan security companies to escort their trucks. Investigators suspect these companies in turn pay tolls to militia leaders with groups of hundreds of gunmen."
".... Industry insiders say militias run what amount to protection rackets on convoys passing through their territory."
"Investigators suspect that commanders controlling long stretches of highway share multi-million-dollar incomes each year by demanding $1,000-$1,200 for each of the trucks, making up to 10,000 trips a month under the contract."
"Investigators also suspect that some of the funds from the contract end up in the hands of the Taliban, either through bribes paid by sub-contractors or extortion rackets run by militia leaders colluding with insurgents."
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Time Magazine choses Malalai Joya as among most influential but distorts what she represents
I found the following article at http://www.zcommunications.org/time-magazine-sneaky-way-of-muffling-the-message-of-an-afghan-peace-activist-by-malalai-joya
The article is based on an interview with Malalai Joya by Sonali Kolhatkar, both well-known and well-regarded in progressive circles for their courageous work in Afghanistan and their writing in support of an independent, democratic, and just Afghanistan. One of the basic points of the article is that Time Magazine included Joya in their "100 Most Influential People of 2010" but failed to identify her as an activist and leader who wants the US/NATO occupation ended and who has been an outspoken critic of the Afghan government, Afghan warlords allied with the government and occupation, and the misogynist and authoritarian Taliban.
-------------------------
Time Magazine's Sneaky Way of Muffling the Message of an Afghan Peace Activist
Malalai Joya gets named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2010, but allows Ayaan Hirsi to make the announcement and distort Joya's message.
By Malalai Joya and Sonali Kolhatkar
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Malalai Joya's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
(May 3, 2010) -- Outspoken Afghan activist and former member of the Parliament, Malalai Joya has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US and NATO war in Afghanistan. In a recent op-ed she called on the US to "stop murdering my people."
Joya was suspended from the Afghan Parliament nearly 3 years ago for challenging warlord domination and lives in constant fear of her life. She has survived several assassination attempts but chooses to live in Afghanistan. Her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords with Derrick O'Keefe was published late last year (Simon and Schuster). Last week Malalai Joya was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2010. I reached her for an interview via satellite phone in Afghanistan on May 3rd 2010.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You were just named one of the 100 most influential people of 2010 by TIME Magazine. But author Hirsi Ali, who wrote the announcement, said "I hope in time she comes to see the U.S. and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country." How do you respond to this statement?
Malalai Joya: I am very angry with the way they have introduced me. TIME has painted a false picture of me and does not mention anything at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side-by-side with the glorious anti war movements around the world and have proved time and again that I will never compromise with the US And NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone with one hand and getting it back with another hand. I have sent my protest through my Defense Committee, but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the US. But I'm happy to see that many of my friends and supporters have objected to the write-up and expressed it by posting their comments on TIME's site or sending me many emails.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Earlier this year some journalists were able to confirm that US troops had killed two pregnant women during a night-time raid. How common are such occurrences in Afghanistan today?
Malalai Joya: Yes, the US and NATO often lie when they kill innocent people and also stop media from reporting civilian casualties. Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it, so no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually women and children killed, not insurgents. Afghan media are also mostly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. In Afghanistan most media outlets, especially TV channels, are a tool for warlords of the Northern Alliance. For example warlords like Atta Mohammed, Qanooni, Mohseni, Mohaqqiq, Rabbani and others, each have their own TV channel and they naturally do not want to report civilian casualties by their US and NATO masters.
The US Embassy in Kabul has an office that carefully monitors all media in Afghanistan and if they find any of them reporting against US interests, they try using different means to stop it. Bribes are a very common means used. For the US it's not just fighting a war through military means, but also on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war is justified. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say that all the people killed are Taliban. When there is no chance for any independent confirmation, the lies are the only things reflected in the world media. There are only a few cases where some brave and justice-loving journalists like Jerome Starkey have come forward to unmake their shameful lies.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Much has been made recently of Karzai's statements in favor of the Taliban. How close is the Afghan central government to forging a peace with the Taliban? What will that mean for the US/NATO war? What will it mean for the people of Afghanistan?
Malalai Joya: I think Karzai cannot dare to make such a statement or try to meet the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party leaders without having an "OK" from the White House. Actually it is the US that asks him to make peace with the Taliban and Hekmatyar's party or at least share power with them. Also the US government needs to show the people of NATO countries that it is not a war-monger and is in favor of peace talks with the Taliban. But it is just a show. The US doesn't want to fight the Taliban forever as it needs them as an excuse to continue the occupation of Afghanistan in the implementation of its strategic, regional, and military interests. I think some of the Taliban and Hekmatyar's leaders are already part of Karzai's regime. One of the main leaders of Hekmatyar's party called Hadi Arghandiwal is now the Minister of Economy under Karzai.
This is what the US wants. These brutal and inhuman leaders have been created by the US in the past and are ready to work for the US as long as their pockets are filled with dollars and high posts are offered to them in the government. Actually the US government is trying hard to empower reactionary forces and individuals in Afghanistan as they can use them to stop the emergence of pro-democracy and nationalist forces and groups in my country.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You recently wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Beast that there are a lot of anti-US protests happening in Afghanistan today that go unreported. Tell us more about these protests - where are they happening, who is protesting, and are they also against the fundamentalists or just the US/NATO?
Malalai Joya: Yes, we have witnessed the protests of people especially in the Eastern and Western parts of Afghanistan over the past year. They are mostly reactions to civilians killed by the US and NATO. With every bombardment by NATO, angry people come to the streets to raise anti-US slogans. But unfortunately they are not organized and in some cases the Taliban uses them. We have seen most of these protests in Nangahar, Ghazni, Loghar, Herat, and Helmand provinces but they are usually not reported. A few days ago angry protestors burned about 20 fuel tankers of NATO in Loghar which was one out of many such protests reported by the world media.
These protestors are not only against the US and NATO but also against the Afghan government. People see that this government is deeply corrupt and in the hands of looters and murderers of the Northern Alliance. So they are deeply fed up. Last month a large crowd of thousands of workers in Baghlan province protested against Mahmood Karzai [vice chairman of the Afghanistan chamber of commerce and Hamid Karzai's younger brother], head of the "economic mafia" of Afghanistan who has his hold on some previously state-owned factories. The US and NATO and the Afghan government usually ignore people's protests. But I believe that given enough time, such protests will become even more organized out of people's anger. Afghans are on the verge of uprising but poverty, destitution, and the non-existence of powerful democratic-minded forces in our country stops them from a very serious uprising. I'm sure in the next few years such forces will emerge and these protests will turn more powerful to shake the Afghan puppet government and the occupation forces.
Sonali Kolhatkar: The US has made no secret for many months that it is about to launch an offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar. What do you think will happen this summer as a result of this offensive?
Malalai Joya: As I said before, the US does not want to fight the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive in Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such a hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past. They declared Marjah as a Taliban-free district but in fact the Taliban has a permanent presence there. They had just left the area for a short time.
After the Marjah operation, a spokesperson of the Afghan Defense Ministry was asked at a press conference why they allowed the Taliban to leave the area and why the Taliban were neither killed nor arrested in Marjah. He answered that the purpose of the operation was not killing or arresting the Taliban, instead it was to push them out of the area.So we expect that they will do the same thing with Kandahar. They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of only a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan.The only outcome of the Kandahar operation will be civilian casualties. Poor and innocent people are the only ones killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat or even major casualties. Afghans know very well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace to Afghanistan. They know that the US and NATO are empowering the enemies of democracy. But it is the duty of the Afghan people to fight for their values and understand that the occupation will only drag us more deeply into slavery. As always I pass this message to justice-loving people around the world that no nation can donate liberation to another nation.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you tell us what the status of your own parliamentary position is right now, since you were stripped of your elected position by the fundamentalists some years ago. Have you ever been made to face a court? Can you run again for parliament in the next elections?
Malalai Joya: In the last stage of the Interparliamentary Union meeting, a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians promised that they would end my suspension so I could return to Parliament. But it was just a lie and they did not stand by their promise.
I received a letter from the court some months ago and I answered truthfully what my strong position was against the warlords. They asked me to apologize [for my statements made in a TV interview --and said that they would allow me back to the Parliament. But I stressed the truth of my statements and said that I would never apologize to criminals and looters. However, I still can run for elections which are due to happen later this year. But I have not made up my mind to run.
But whether I serve in Parliament or outside it, I will continue my fight for justice, democracy and against the occupation. Parliament was just a small part of my struggle but I still have many other options and fields. Going to a Parliament of criminals was a big torture for me. It was a torture everyday to see the faces of these brutal men such as Qanooni, Sayyaf, Mohaqqiq, Piram Qul, Haji Almas, Haji Fayeed, etc there. But I accepted the task on behalf of my people.
I think the next election will be even more disgusting and full of fraud. The new chief of the election commission is a known warlord of the Northern Alliance and he will try to bring all these warlords to the Parliament and stop the emergence of democratic-minded people like me. Many people think that at this point they will never allow me to win the election as they can't bear to have me inside the parliament once more. But I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women's rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country.
For more information, visit malalaijoya.com.
Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.
The article is based on an interview with Malalai Joya by Sonali Kolhatkar, both well-known and well-regarded in progressive circles for their courageous work in Afghanistan and their writing in support of an independent, democratic, and just Afghanistan. One of the basic points of the article is that Time Magazine included Joya in their "100 Most Influential People of 2010" but failed to identify her as an activist and leader who wants the US/NATO occupation ended and who has been an outspoken critic of the Afghan government, Afghan warlords allied with the government and occupation, and the misogynist and authoritarian Taliban.
-------------------------
Time Magazine's Sneaky Way of Muffling the Message of an Afghan Peace Activist
Malalai Joya gets named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2010, but allows Ayaan Hirsi to make the announcement and distort Joya's message.
By Malalai Joya and Sonali Kolhatkar
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Malalai Joya's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
(May 3, 2010) -- Outspoken Afghan activist and former member of the Parliament, Malalai Joya has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US and NATO war in Afghanistan. In a recent op-ed she called on the US to "stop murdering my people."
Joya was suspended from the Afghan Parliament nearly 3 years ago for challenging warlord domination and lives in constant fear of her life. She has survived several assassination attempts but chooses to live in Afghanistan. Her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords with Derrick O'Keefe was published late last year (Simon and Schuster). Last week Malalai Joya was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2010. I reached her for an interview via satellite phone in Afghanistan on May 3rd 2010.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You were just named one of the 100 most influential people of 2010 by TIME Magazine. But author Hirsi Ali, who wrote the announcement, said "I hope in time she comes to see the U.S. and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country." How do you respond to this statement?
Malalai Joya: I am very angry with the way they have introduced me. TIME has painted a false picture of me and does not mention anything at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side-by-side with the glorious anti war movements around the world and have proved time and again that I will never compromise with the US And NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone with one hand and getting it back with another hand. I have sent my protest through my Defense Committee, but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the US. But I'm happy to see that many of my friends and supporters have objected to the write-up and expressed it by posting their comments on TIME's site or sending me many emails.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Earlier this year some journalists were able to confirm that US troops had killed two pregnant women during a night-time raid. How common are such occurrences in Afghanistan today?
Malalai Joya: Yes, the US and NATO often lie when they kill innocent people and also stop media from reporting civilian casualties. Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it, so no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually women and children killed, not insurgents. Afghan media are also mostly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. In Afghanistan most media outlets, especially TV channels, are a tool for warlords of the Northern Alliance. For example warlords like Atta Mohammed, Qanooni, Mohseni, Mohaqqiq, Rabbani and others, each have their own TV channel and they naturally do not want to report civilian casualties by their US and NATO masters.
The US Embassy in Kabul has an office that carefully monitors all media in Afghanistan and if they find any of them reporting against US interests, they try using different means to stop it. Bribes are a very common means used. For the US it's not just fighting a war through military means, but also on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war is justified. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say that all the people killed are Taliban. When there is no chance for any independent confirmation, the lies are the only things reflected in the world media. There are only a few cases where some brave and justice-loving journalists like Jerome Starkey have come forward to unmake their shameful lies.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Much has been made recently of Karzai's statements in favor of the Taliban. How close is the Afghan central government to forging a peace with the Taliban? What will that mean for the US/NATO war? What will it mean for the people of Afghanistan?
Malalai Joya: I think Karzai cannot dare to make such a statement or try to meet the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party leaders without having an "OK" from the White House. Actually it is the US that asks him to make peace with the Taliban and Hekmatyar's party or at least share power with them. Also the US government needs to show the people of NATO countries that it is not a war-monger and is in favor of peace talks with the Taliban. But it is just a show. The US doesn't want to fight the Taliban forever as it needs them as an excuse to continue the occupation of Afghanistan in the implementation of its strategic, regional, and military interests. I think some of the Taliban and Hekmatyar's leaders are already part of Karzai's regime. One of the main leaders of Hekmatyar's party called Hadi Arghandiwal is now the Minister of Economy under Karzai.
This is what the US wants. These brutal and inhuman leaders have been created by the US in the past and are ready to work for the US as long as their pockets are filled with dollars and high posts are offered to them in the government. Actually the US government is trying hard to empower reactionary forces and individuals in Afghanistan as they can use them to stop the emergence of pro-democracy and nationalist forces and groups in my country.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You recently wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Beast that there are a lot of anti-US protests happening in Afghanistan today that go unreported. Tell us more about these protests - where are they happening, who is protesting, and are they also against the fundamentalists or just the US/NATO?
Malalai Joya: Yes, we have witnessed the protests of people especially in the Eastern and Western parts of Afghanistan over the past year. They are mostly reactions to civilians killed by the US and NATO. With every bombardment by NATO, angry people come to the streets to raise anti-US slogans. But unfortunately they are not organized and in some cases the Taliban uses them. We have seen most of these protests in Nangahar, Ghazni, Loghar, Herat, and Helmand provinces but they are usually not reported. A few days ago angry protestors burned about 20 fuel tankers of NATO in Loghar which was one out of many such protests reported by the world media.
These protestors are not only against the US and NATO but also against the Afghan government. People see that this government is deeply corrupt and in the hands of looters and murderers of the Northern Alliance. So they are deeply fed up. Last month a large crowd of thousands of workers in Baghlan province protested against Mahmood Karzai [vice chairman of the Afghanistan chamber of commerce and Hamid Karzai's younger brother], head of the "economic mafia" of Afghanistan who has his hold on some previously state-owned factories. The US and NATO and the Afghan government usually ignore people's protests. But I believe that given enough time, such protests will become even more organized out of people's anger. Afghans are on the verge of uprising but poverty, destitution, and the non-existence of powerful democratic-minded forces in our country stops them from a very serious uprising. I'm sure in the next few years such forces will emerge and these protests will turn more powerful to shake the Afghan puppet government and the occupation forces.
Sonali Kolhatkar: The US has made no secret for many months that it is about to launch an offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar. What do you think will happen this summer as a result of this offensive?
Malalai Joya: As I said before, the US does not want to fight the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive in Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such a hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past. They declared Marjah as a Taliban-free district but in fact the Taliban has a permanent presence there. They had just left the area for a short time.
After the Marjah operation, a spokesperson of the Afghan Defense Ministry was asked at a press conference why they allowed the Taliban to leave the area and why the Taliban were neither killed nor arrested in Marjah. He answered that the purpose of the operation was not killing or arresting the Taliban, instead it was to push them out of the area.So we expect that they will do the same thing with Kandahar. They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of only a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan.The only outcome of the Kandahar operation will be civilian casualties. Poor and innocent people are the only ones killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat or even major casualties. Afghans know very well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace to Afghanistan. They know that the US and NATO are empowering the enemies of democracy. But it is the duty of the Afghan people to fight for their values and understand that the occupation will only drag us more deeply into slavery. As always I pass this message to justice-loving people around the world that no nation can donate liberation to another nation.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you tell us what the status of your own parliamentary position is right now, since you were stripped of your elected position by the fundamentalists some years ago. Have you ever been made to face a court? Can you run again for parliament in the next elections?
Malalai Joya: In the last stage of the Interparliamentary Union meeting, a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians promised that they would end my suspension so I could return to Parliament. But it was just a lie and they did not stand by their promise.
I received a letter from the court some months ago and I answered truthfully what my strong position was against the warlords. They asked me to apologize [for my statements made in a TV interview --and said that they would allow me back to the Parliament. But I stressed the truth of my statements and said that I would never apologize to criminals and looters. However, I still can run for elections which are due to happen later this year. But I have not made up my mind to run.
But whether I serve in Parliament or outside it, I will continue my fight for justice, democracy and against the occupation. Parliament was just a small part of my struggle but I still have many other options and fields. Going to a Parliament of criminals was a big torture for me. It was a torture everyday to see the faces of these brutal men such as Qanooni, Sayyaf, Mohaqqiq, Piram Qul, Haji Almas, Haji Fayeed, etc there. But I accepted the task on behalf of my people.
I think the next election will be even more disgusting and full of fraud. The new chief of the election commission is a known warlord of the Northern Alliance and he will try to bring all these warlords to the Parliament and stop the emergence of democratic-minded people like me. Many people think that at this point they will never allow me to win the election as they can't bear to have me inside the parliament once more. But I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women's rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country.
For more information, visit malalaijoya.com.
Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Statement by Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/03/07/emancipation-of-afghan-women-not-attainable-as-long-as-the-occupation-taliban-and-national-front-criminals-are-not-sacked.html
Emancipation of Afghan women not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on the International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010
Today, on the 8th of March, Afghan women are mourning for the gang-rape of Bashiras and Saimas, for being flogged by most lowed elements, for being auctioned in open market and for their young daughters who put an end to their miserable lives by self-immolation. But the perpetrators of all these crimes are forgiven; therefore they enjoy complete immunity, are still holding their official positions and tightening it through plundering our people and country.
February 2010: Local warlords in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan publicly flogged two Afghan women.
Though we don’t expect anything different from the most corrupt and dirty puppet regime of the world, the pain of Afghan women turns chronic when the world believes that the US and NATO has donated liberation, democracy and human and women rights for Afghanistan; whereas, after eight years of the US and allies’ aggression under the banner of “war on terror”, they empowered the most brutal terrorists of the Northern Alliance and the former Russian puppets – the Khalqis and Parchamis – and by relying on them, the US imposed a puppet government on Afghan people. And instead of uprooting its Taliban and Al-Qaeda creations, the US and NATO continues to kill our innocent and poor civilians, mostly women and children, in their vicious air raids.
In such conditions, we saw that Karzai, as the most demagogic and flagrant President, turgidly talks about the London Conference, which in fact had no positive outcome for Afghan people, where he only bargained and dealt for the return of the terrorist Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to power and the pouring of millions of more Dollars which will go to the pockets of the Karzai family and the mafias of Fahim, Khalili, Dostum and other murderers.
The Karzai puppet and reactionary regime is implicated in corruption and blood of the poor from top to bottom. Only the hundreds of people killed in the recent avalanche tragedy in Salang and the miseries of millions of refugee Afghans in the hands of the Iranian criminal regime are enough to punish and jail many of the so-called high ranking officials for negligence and inattention to the problems of our people.
But the US government does not try to curb its Afghan stooges and allows them to commit many crimes, betrayal and lootings, so they could repress and intimidate Afghans in any possible way and stop the emergence of any anti-fundamentalist and pro-independent uprising in Afghanistan. Therefore, it comes of no surprise that the decay and corruption of top criminals such as Rabbani, Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Qanoni, Karzai family, Zia Massoud, Fahim, Khalili, Saddique Chakari, Mirwas Yassini, Zahir Aghbar, Hadi Arghandewal, Anwar Jakdalak, Ismael Khan, Atta Mohammad and others are even reflected in some Western media, who have made dirty businesses and multi-billion Dollar investments in Afghanistan and Dubai as a result of their lootings and drug-dealings in Afghanistan.
To show to the world that they value women’s rights, the US and its Afghan mafia lackeys nourished a bunch of flunkeys and pro-occupation women to hold conferences and meet the so-called “his Excellency” President Karzai and his US-assigned spokespersons Wahid Omer, Siamak Herawi, Sibghatullah Sanjar and other traitors to ask for more ministries for Afghan women. But they are grasping the intentions of others with their own dirty mirrors and think ordinary Afghan women are unaware of the fact that even if all the members of the cabinet are made up of reactionary women such as Amina Afzali, Hassan Bano Ghazanfar, Massouda Jalal, Noorzia Atmar, Qadria Yazdanparast, Shukria Barakzai, Fouzia Kofi, Manija Bakhtari and others linked to brutal warlords, still it will not bring any positive change for Afghan women, because such women, acting as committed agents of the US government and its fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist menials, only define themselves by raising soft criticisms and asking for some reforms acceptable for the governing criminals and their foreign masters.
With money and offers of official posts, the US and its Afghan agents have bought many Afghan intellectuals. Many of the writers and poets are paid by the blood-thirsty Iranian regime who instead of raising people’s awareness and mobilizing them for pro-independence, pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalism struggle, try to pave the way for Iranian theocratic regime’s deeper involvement in Afghanistan and inflame and fuel ethnic, sectarian and lingual tensions among Afghan people.
RAWA always believes that women’s problem is a political issue and we cannot tackle it separately from the current catastrophic political situation. Without the overthrow of the current puppet regime, which is becoming more mortal and odorous than before by the inclusion of Taliban and Gulbuddini murderers, none of the thousands of the problems of our unhappy people will ever be solved.
Slogans about restoring peace, security, democracy and women’s rights will be empty and amplified claims, as long as Afghanistan has not gained its independence; the Taliban and the Northern Alliance killers are not prosecuted and the billions of wealth they have pillaged from people are not taken back from them. The benchmark to judge if any individual or organization is truly patriotic and progressive in the current situation is their struggle in any possible means against US occupation, the criminal Taliban -- who have the enslavement harness of Pakistan around their nick -- and the hirelings of Iran and the US in the “National Front”.
RAWA is eager to get united in solidarity with individuals and forces that are ready to fight for democracy in an independent front against the occupation, the Taliban, Jehadi and Khalqi and Parchami homeland-sellers.
While women of Afghanistan are experiencing a new era of captivity and are in the grip of the fundamentalist monsters, RAWA sends it heartfelt salutations to struggling brave women of Iran, Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Nepal, India and the rest of the world and announces solidarity with them.
Emancipation of Afghan women not attainable as long as the occupation, Taliban and “National Front” criminals are not sacked!
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on the International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010
Today, on the 8th of March, Afghan women are mourning for the gang-rape of Bashiras and Saimas, for being flogged by most lowed elements, for being auctioned in open market and for their young daughters who put an end to their miserable lives by self-immolation. But the perpetrators of all these crimes are forgiven; therefore they enjoy complete immunity, are still holding their official positions and tightening it through plundering our people and country.
February 2010: Local warlords in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan publicly flogged two Afghan women.
Though we don’t expect anything different from the most corrupt and dirty puppet regime of the world, the pain of Afghan women turns chronic when the world believes that the US and NATO has donated liberation, democracy and human and women rights for Afghanistan; whereas, after eight years of the US and allies’ aggression under the banner of “war on terror”, they empowered the most brutal terrorists of the Northern Alliance and the former Russian puppets – the Khalqis and Parchamis – and by relying on them, the US imposed a puppet government on Afghan people. And instead of uprooting its Taliban and Al-Qaeda creations, the US and NATO continues to kill our innocent and poor civilians, mostly women and children, in their vicious air raids.
In such conditions, we saw that Karzai, as the most demagogic and flagrant President, turgidly talks about the London Conference, which in fact had no positive outcome for Afghan people, where he only bargained and dealt for the return of the terrorist Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to power and the pouring of millions of more Dollars which will go to the pockets of the Karzai family and the mafias of Fahim, Khalili, Dostum and other murderers.
The Karzai puppet and reactionary regime is implicated in corruption and blood of the poor from top to bottom. Only the hundreds of people killed in the recent avalanche tragedy in Salang and the miseries of millions of refugee Afghans in the hands of the Iranian criminal regime are enough to punish and jail many of the so-called high ranking officials for negligence and inattention to the problems of our people.
But the US government does not try to curb its Afghan stooges and allows them to commit many crimes, betrayal and lootings, so they could repress and intimidate Afghans in any possible way and stop the emergence of any anti-fundamentalist and pro-independent uprising in Afghanistan. Therefore, it comes of no surprise that the decay and corruption of top criminals such as Rabbani, Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Qanoni, Karzai family, Zia Massoud, Fahim, Khalili, Saddique Chakari, Mirwas Yassini, Zahir Aghbar, Hadi Arghandewal, Anwar Jakdalak, Ismael Khan, Atta Mohammad and others are even reflected in some Western media, who have made dirty businesses and multi-billion Dollar investments in Afghanistan and Dubai as a result of their lootings and drug-dealings in Afghanistan.
To show to the world that they value women’s rights, the US and its Afghan mafia lackeys nourished a bunch of flunkeys and pro-occupation women to hold conferences and meet the so-called “his Excellency” President Karzai and his US-assigned spokespersons Wahid Omer, Siamak Herawi, Sibghatullah Sanjar and other traitors to ask for more ministries for Afghan women. But they are grasping the intentions of others with their own dirty mirrors and think ordinary Afghan women are unaware of the fact that even if all the members of the cabinet are made up of reactionary women such as Amina Afzali, Hassan Bano Ghazanfar, Massouda Jalal, Noorzia Atmar, Qadria Yazdanparast, Shukria Barakzai, Fouzia Kofi, Manija Bakhtari and others linked to brutal warlords, still it will not bring any positive change for Afghan women, because such women, acting as committed agents of the US government and its fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist menials, only define themselves by raising soft criticisms and asking for some reforms acceptable for the governing criminals and their foreign masters.
With money and offers of official posts, the US and its Afghan agents have bought many Afghan intellectuals. Many of the writers and poets are paid by the blood-thirsty Iranian regime who instead of raising people’s awareness and mobilizing them for pro-independence, pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalism struggle, try to pave the way for Iranian theocratic regime’s deeper involvement in Afghanistan and inflame and fuel ethnic, sectarian and lingual tensions among Afghan people.
RAWA always believes that women’s problem is a political issue and we cannot tackle it separately from the current catastrophic political situation. Without the overthrow of the current puppet regime, which is becoming more mortal and odorous than before by the inclusion of Taliban and Gulbuddini murderers, none of the thousands of the problems of our unhappy people will ever be solved.
Slogans about restoring peace, security, democracy and women’s rights will be empty and amplified claims, as long as Afghanistan has not gained its independence; the Taliban and the Northern Alliance killers are not prosecuted and the billions of wealth they have pillaged from people are not taken back from them. The benchmark to judge if any individual or organization is truly patriotic and progressive in the current situation is their struggle in any possible means against US occupation, the criminal Taliban -- who have the enslavement harness of Pakistan around their nick -- and the hirelings of Iran and the US in the “National Front”.
RAWA is eager to get united in solidarity with individuals and forces that are ready to fight for democracy in an independent front against the occupation, the Taliban, Jehadi and Khalqi and Parchami homeland-sellers.
While women of Afghanistan are experiencing a new era of captivity and are in the grip of the fundamentalist monsters, RAWA sends it heartfelt salutations to struggling brave women of Iran, Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Nepal, India and the rest of the world and announces solidarity with them.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
New report on corruption in Afghanistan confirms previous studies and estimates
The corruption in Afghanistan is well established and helps to divert foreign aid from its intended purposes into the hands of powerful warlords and friends of the Karzai government. There is a vicious cycle implicit in this situation, namely, that those in powerful positions are able to consolidate their power, while the poor majority of Afghan people see little or no progress out of their misery. In the meantime, US/NATO forces are directed at the "Taliban," leaving the warlords free to keep the corrupt system from which they benefit in motion. Malalai Joya provides background on this problem in her book, A Woman Among Warlords.
"According to an article in the Sunday Telegraph, on January 20, 2007, 'Defence officials in the United States and Britain estimate that up to half of all aid in Afghanistan is failing to reach the right people....
"Endemic corruption combined with the vacuum of leadership in Kabul has made Afghanistan fertile ground for narcotrafficking. Afghanistan is a country capable of growing food to feed its own people, but most of our best agricultural land is planted with poppy seed because it's a cash crop for export"....
A new UN report documents the continuation of corruption in Afghanistan. Here are excerpts from one of numerous reports on the study.
------------------------------
Corruption deepens poverty in Afghanistan-U.N. report
30 Mar 2010 18:16:49 GMT 30 Mar 2010 18:16:49 Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnews.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE62T1SV.htm
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, March 30 (Reuters) - Corruption is entrenched in Afghanistan, leaving the poor at the mercy of the powerful while security-obsessed international forces often turn a blind eye to abuses, a United Nations report charged on Tuesday.
Despite $35 billion injected into the economy since 2002, one in three Afghans, or 9 million people, live in absolute poverty while another third survive just above the poverty line, it said.
"A key driver of poverty in Afghanistan is the abuse of power. Many Afghan power-holders use their influence to drive the public agenda for their own personal or vested interests," said the report issued by the U.N. human rights office....
"The 26-page report is based on the results of a survey conducted in 14 provinces, interviews with officials and community leaders as well as research by groups including Oxfam.
Many communities believe, rightly or wrongly, that food aid had been either embezzled or diverted elsewhere, it found....
"According to an article in the Sunday Telegraph, on January 20, 2007, 'Defence officials in the United States and Britain estimate that up to half of all aid in Afghanistan is failing to reach the right people....
"Endemic corruption combined with the vacuum of leadership in Kabul has made Afghanistan fertile ground for narcotrafficking. Afghanistan is a country capable of growing food to feed its own people, but most of our best agricultural land is planted with poppy seed because it's a cash crop for export"....
A new UN report documents the continuation of corruption in Afghanistan. Here are excerpts from one of numerous reports on the study.
------------------------------
Corruption deepens poverty in Afghanistan-U.N. report
30 Mar 2010 18:16:49 GMT 30 Mar 2010 18:16:49 Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnews.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE62T1SV.htm
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, March 30 (Reuters) - Corruption is entrenched in Afghanistan, leaving the poor at the mercy of the powerful while security-obsessed international forces often turn a blind eye to abuses, a United Nations report charged on Tuesday.
Despite $35 billion injected into the economy since 2002, one in three Afghans, or 9 million people, live in absolute poverty while another third survive just above the poverty line, it said.
"A key driver of poverty in Afghanistan is the abuse of power. Many Afghan power-holders use their influence to drive the public agenda for their own personal or vested interests," said the report issued by the U.N. human rights office....
"The 26-page report is based on the results of a survey conducted in 14 provinces, interviews with officials and community leaders as well as research by groups including Oxfam.
Many communities believe, rightly or wrongly, that food aid had been either embezzled or diverted elsewhere, it found....
Friday, March 19, 2010
US and NATO allies prepare for attacks on Kandahar and Kunduz
The article below (after comments and quote) is from Aljazeera-English, http://english-aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/03/2010318152734763348.html
Al-Jazeera reports on the initial forays of US-led military actions around Kandahar in the south and the preparation of NATO (German) troops for offensives in the northern province of Kunduz. The goals of the military actions, as reported by Al Jazeera, are to "shape, take, hold, and build." So far, the military strategy of the US/NATO has not demonstrated that targeted towns and areas can be held and then built up through reconstruction projects. One criticism from right-wing politicians in the US is that the Obama government needs to put even more troops in the country to achieve the goals. We who are opposed to the US intervention and escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, and who question the rationality of the very notion of a "war on terrorism," remain hopeful that there will be a government commitment to withdrawing combat troops by 2011. We also hope that some reconstruction of what the US government military as helped to destroy, directly and indirectly over the last 30 years, will actually be implemented.
In his book Revolution at the Gates, Philosopher Slavoj Zizek suggests that this war on terrorism in Afghanistan seems the height of hubris, misguided at that, and an economic drain on US resources. Still, as Zizek asks, why Afghanistan?
"The ridicule of America attacking Afghanistan cannot fail to strike us: if the greatest power in the world destroys one of the world's poorest countries, in which peasants barely survive on barren hills, will this not be the ultimate case of impotent acting out? In many ways, Afghanistan is an ideal target: a country that is already reduced to rubble, with no infrastructure, repeatedly destroyed by war for the last two decades...we cannot avoid the surmise that the choice of Afghanistan will also be determined by economic considerations: is it not best procedure to act out one's anger at a country for which no one cares, and where there is nothing to destroy" ( p. 234).
But there are economic reasons to propel this tragic US-led assult that shore up some of the underpinnings of the US empire. It is good for the inflated US military to be able to use its "assets" somewhere in the world. It is profitable for US weapons' producers. It is profitable for US contractors. It is useful for US Afghan allies who endorse the military focus on the Taliban and who benefit from US aid and lack of attention otherwise to how they govern. It helps to distract attention away from the corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
Bob
----------------------------------
Al Jazeera reports:
Major Afghan offensive 'under way'
McChrystal said efforts to gradually retake control of Kandahar will "ramp up" in coming weeks [Reuters]
The US has said a new offensive to drive the Taliban from the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar is under way and will steadily "ramp up" in the months ahead.The military and political efforts against the Taliban around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, are the next step in the US-led strategy to end a war now in its ninth year.
General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, said the offensive had begun with initial military and political efforts, including operations to secure key roads and districts."Kandahar is already being shaped," McChrystal said on Thursday, adding that efforts will "ramp up" in the coming weeks and months ahead, lasting "a significant time".
A major offensive in Kandahar, once a Taliban stronghold, would follow the current military operation in neighbouring Helmand province,which appears to have largely pushed back the Taliban and given the government a chance to take control.'Reversing momentum'"What you are going to see in the months ahead, without giving too much detail, is a number of activities to shape the political relationships in and around Kandahar," he said.
McChrystal said there would also be a "series of activities" to boost security, like more partnering with Afghan police inside Kandahar city and boosting troop levels in the surrounding areas.
"If you control the environs around Kandahar, you go a long way to controlling Kandahar," he said.
To win over Afghans, US must listen
McChrystal has not given a timeline for the operation but said last week in Kabul that troops would be at full force for Kandahar operations by the early summer.
Kandahar is the next target in major military operations to eradicate the Taliban from areas they have controlled, in many cases in tandem with drug cartels, over the years since their regime was overthrown in 2001.
Operation Moshtarak- "together" in Dari and Pashto - is the first major test of the strategy of Barack Obama, the US president, to take on the Taliban and end the eight-year conflict with one of the biggest offensives since the 2001 US-led invasion.It is designed to clear Taliban fighters from the Marjah region of the southern province and hold it so that the civilian administration can establish itself.
The strategy comprises military, political and civilian approaches in four stages dubbed "shape, take, hold and build" and aims to ensure that once eradicated, the Taliban threat does not re-emerge.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kabul, the Afghan capital, said: "These are the very early stages of the Kandahar offensive.
"We are at the 'shape' phase of the operation, however, there are military offensives being carried out around the city of Kandahar to facilitate a larger offensive in the coming weeks."The campaign in Kandahar is seen as a crucial test of Obama's strategy to reverse Taliban momentum after more than eight years of war.
Initial stages of the strategy aimed at speeding up the war's end began in Kandahar province around November, a Western official told the AFP news agency, on condition of anonymity.
"The emphasis increased last November, and most of it is invisible because it is aimed at understanding the situation on the ground, the political landscape and the human terrain," he said.
"We all understand how important and iconic Kandahar is for the Taliban - it was their first foothold."Taliban stronghold
Zalmai Ayobi, a spokesman for Kandahar governor Turyalai Wisa, said consultations had begun with tribal elders and community leaders as the long-term goal was to "expand good governance to all districts and villages".
Kandahar city, is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul and the birthplace of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until their overthrow in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Suicide attacks are frequently carried out in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold [Reuters]
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a multiple suicide bomb attack on the city last Saturday that killed 35 people,saying it was intended to sabotage the planned offensive.
Bruno Kasdorf, chief of staff at the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) said there would "definitely" be an operation in the northern province of Kunduz, where most of Germany's 4,300 troops in Afghanistan are based.
He declined to give details but Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kaemmerer, an Isaf spokesman, said it would be similar in "type not the scale" to Moshtarak.
The number of foreign troops under US and Nato command is set to rise to 150,000 by August, with most of the new deployment heading to the south.
The 15,000 US, Nato and Afghan troops currently deployed to Helmand's Marjah and Nad Ali areas for Operation Moshtarak will remain in the province for other offensives there, the spokesman said.
Newly arrived troops would be sent to Kandahar, he said, adding that foreign troops would remain in both provinces to ensure security was maintained and the Taliban did not re-emerge.
But in the battle to win the support of local people, perceptions that Kandahar's leaders are corrupt could be an obstacle to long-term success, military officials have said.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the elected leader of Kandahar's provincial council, has long denied allegations that he has ties to the three-billion-dollar-a-year illicit drug trade.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Al-Jazeera reports on the initial forays of US-led military actions around Kandahar in the south and the preparation of NATO (German) troops for offensives in the northern province of Kunduz. The goals of the military actions, as reported by Al Jazeera, are to "shape, take, hold, and build." So far, the military strategy of the US/NATO has not demonstrated that targeted towns and areas can be held and then built up through reconstruction projects. One criticism from right-wing politicians in the US is that the Obama government needs to put even more troops in the country to achieve the goals. We who are opposed to the US intervention and escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, and who question the rationality of the very notion of a "war on terrorism," remain hopeful that there will be a government commitment to withdrawing combat troops by 2011. We also hope that some reconstruction of what the US government military as helped to destroy, directly and indirectly over the last 30 years, will actually be implemented.
In his book Revolution at the Gates, Philosopher Slavoj Zizek suggests that this war on terrorism in Afghanistan seems the height of hubris, misguided at that, and an economic drain on US resources. Still, as Zizek asks, why Afghanistan?
"The ridicule of America attacking Afghanistan cannot fail to strike us: if the greatest power in the world destroys one of the world's poorest countries, in which peasants barely survive on barren hills, will this not be the ultimate case of impotent acting out? In many ways, Afghanistan is an ideal target: a country that is already reduced to rubble, with no infrastructure, repeatedly destroyed by war for the last two decades...we cannot avoid the surmise that the choice of Afghanistan will also be determined by economic considerations: is it not best procedure to act out one's anger at a country for which no one cares, and where there is nothing to destroy" ( p. 234).
But there are economic reasons to propel this tragic US-led assult that shore up some of the underpinnings of the US empire. It is good for the inflated US military to be able to use its "assets" somewhere in the world. It is profitable for US weapons' producers. It is profitable for US contractors. It is useful for US Afghan allies who endorse the military focus on the Taliban and who benefit from US aid and lack of attention otherwise to how they govern. It helps to distract attention away from the corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
Bob
----------------------------------
Al Jazeera reports:
Major Afghan offensive 'under way'
McChrystal said efforts to gradually retake control of Kandahar will "ramp up" in coming weeks [Reuters]
The US has said a new offensive to drive the Taliban from the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar is under way and will steadily "ramp up" in the months ahead.The military and political efforts against the Taliban around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, are the next step in the US-led strategy to end a war now in its ninth year.
General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, said the offensive had begun with initial military and political efforts, including operations to secure key roads and districts."Kandahar is already being shaped," McChrystal said on Thursday, adding that efforts will "ramp up" in the coming weeks and months ahead, lasting "a significant time".
A major offensive in Kandahar, once a Taliban stronghold, would follow the current military operation in neighbouring Helmand province,which appears to have largely pushed back the Taliban and given the government a chance to take control.'Reversing momentum'"What you are going to see in the months ahead, without giving too much detail, is a number of activities to shape the political relationships in and around Kandahar," he said.
McChrystal said there would also be a "series of activities" to boost security, like more partnering with Afghan police inside Kandahar city and boosting troop levels in the surrounding areas.
"If you control the environs around Kandahar, you go a long way to controlling Kandahar," he said.
To win over Afghans, US must listen
McChrystal has not given a timeline for the operation but said last week in Kabul that troops would be at full force for Kandahar operations by the early summer.
Kandahar is the next target in major military operations to eradicate the Taliban from areas they have controlled, in many cases in tandem with drug cartels, over the years since their regime was overthrown in 2001.
Operation Moshtarak- "together" in Dari and Pashto - is the first major test of the strategy of Barack Obama, the US president, to take on the Taliban and end the eight-year conflict with one of the biggest offensives since the 2001 US-led invasion.It is designed to clear Taliban fighters from the Marjah region of the southern province and hold it so that the civilian administration can establish itself.
The strategy comprises military, political and civilian approaches in four stages dubbed "shape, take, hold and build" and aims to ensure that once eradicated, the Taliban threat does not re-emerge.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kabul, the Afghan capital, said: "These are the very early stages of the Kandahar offensive.
"We are at the 'shape' phase of the operation, however, there are military offensives being carried out around the city of Kandahar to facilitate a larger offensive in the coming weeks."The campaign in Kandahar is seen as a crucial test of Obama's strategy to reverse Taliban momentum after more than eight years of war.
Initial stages of the strategy aimed at speeding up the war's end began in Kandahar province around November, a Western official told the AFP news agency, on condition of anonymity.
"The emphasis increased last November, and most of it is invisible because it is aimed at understanding the situation on the ground, the political landscape and the human terrain," he said.
"We all understand how important and iconic Kandahar is for the Taliban - it was their first foothold."Taliban stronghold
Zalmai Ayobi, a spokesman for Kandahar governor Turyalai Wisa, said consultations had begun with tribal elders and community leaders as the long-term goal was to "expand good governance to all districts and villages".
Kandahar city, is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul and the birthplace of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until their overthrow in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Suicide attacks are frequently carried out in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold [Reuters]
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a multiple suicide bomb attack on the city last Saturday that killed 35 people,saying it was intended to sabotage the planned offensive.
Bruno Kasdorf, chief of staff at the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) said there would "definitely" be an operation in the northern province of Kunduz, where most of Germany's 4,300 troops in Afghanistan are based.
He declined to give details but Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kaemmerer, an Isaf spokesman, said it would be similar in "type not the scale" to Moshtarak.
The number of foreign troops under US and Nato command is set to rise to 150,000 by August, with most of the new deployment heading to the south.
The 15,000 US, Nato and Afghan troops currently deployed to Helmand's Marjah and Nad Ali areas for Operation Moshtarak will remain in the province for other offensives there, the spokesman said.
Newly arrived troops would be sent to Kandahar, he said, adding that foreign troops would remain in both provinces to ensure security was maintained and the Taliban did not re-emerge.
But in the battle to win the support of local people, perceptions that Kandahar's leaders are corrupt could be an obstacle to long-term success, military officials have said.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the elected leader of Kandahar's provincial council, has long denied allegations that he has ties to the three-billion-dollar-a-year illicit drug trade.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Afghan war criminals give themselves blanket immunity
On the basis of the information that we have become familiar with, there are four points worth reiterating: (1) the Taliban are not a unitary force, (2) the core insurgent groups among the Taliban are not the only enemy of the Afghan people, (3) there are many non-Taliban warlords who are also enemies of the Afghan people, who the US military considers their allies, and who occupy important local positions of power, and (4) there are warlords, who are alleged to be war criminals, who hold positions in the national parliament and President Karzai's cabinet.
I'd like to focus on the 4th point, and quote Malalai Joya from chapter 9 of her book, A Woman Among Warlords.
"As I walked inside the recently rebuilt halls of Parliament, I saw mostly the same old faces from Afghanistan's sorrowful past. Many warlords had once again strong-armed the process and forced their way into Parliament. Even though, it was supposedly illegal for militia leaders or combatants to run for office, a Human Rights Watch report exposed their allies. Many of these people either stole their places in Parliament at gunpoint or bought their seats with U.S. dollars - which they had in abundance because leaders of the Northern Alliance were paid with cash by the CIA for the support of the U.S. war" (p. 124).
With this context from Joya, I'll identify what I see as four key points in a recent article by Jason Leopold, "Afghanistan Enacts Law Giving War Criminals Blanket Immunity."
The article appeared in Truthout.org on March 16, 2010. The URL for the article is: http://www.truthout.org/afghanistan-enacts-law-giving-blanket-immunity-war-criminals57746
The first of the points that I draw from Leopold's article is that the Afghan Parliament, "made up largely of former warlords" who have been "accused by Afghans and human rights groups of war crimes," have voted for a law "that provides blanket immunity and pardons for members of the Afghanistan armed factions of war crimes and human rights abuses prior to Dec. 2001."
Second, Leopold refers to The Transitional Justice Coordination Group (TJCG), "made up of a coalition of 24 civil society organizations, [that has] called upon the Karzai government" to suspend the law and eventually abolish it.
Three, according to Leopold, there is a provision in the amnesty law that "allows victims of atrocities to file individual claims against alleged perpetrators." Leopold reports that TJCG said this "places an unfair burden upon victims, who have already suffered so much and would put themselves at rick of reprisals given the impunity of Aghanistan today." He adds: "This provision is particiularly impractical so far as it concerns women and the many victims of sexual violence, who already face barriers to obtaining justice."
Four, and most relevant for the present post, Leopold writes that there are "War Criminals in Karzai's Cabinet, including "high-level officials who were accused of war crimes." For example, "both of Karzai's vice presidents are former leaders of armed groups whose factions squabbled for control of Kabul in the 1990s, when thousands of civilians wee killed and hundreds of thousands fled from their homes." Another example: "...Karzai approved the re-appointment in Jan. of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dotsum, an ex-militia chief, to a high-level military position which had been harshly criticized by civil rights groups."
The implications? The US appears to be fighting a war focused on what it calls the Taliban, while much of the rest of the country is ruled by warlords who have also perpetrated atrocities on the Afghan people and who now use present circumstances to consolidate their power. Along the way, the Afghan people remain among the poorest in the world and the U.S. government and military spend tens of billions of dollars on an adventure that appears to have no clear strategy for bringing security to the Afghan people - and no end point.
I'd like to focus on the 4th point, and quote Malalai Joya from chapter 9 of her book, A Woman Among Warlords.
"As I walked inside the recently rebuilt halls of Parliament, I saw mostly the same old faces from Afghanistan's sorrowful past. Many warlords had once again strong-armed the process and forced their way into Parliament. Even though, it was supposedly illegal for militia leaders or combatants to run for office, a Human Rights Watch report exposed their allies. Many of these people either stole their places in Parliament at gunpoint or bought their seats with U.S. dollars - which they had in abundance because leaders of the Northern Alliance were paid with cash by the CIA for the support of the U.S. war" (p. 124).
With this context from Joya, I'll identify what I see as four key points in a recent article by Jason Leopold, "Afghanistan Enacts Law Giving War Criminals Blanket Immunity."
The article appeared in Truthout.org on March 16, 2010. The URL for the article is: http://www.truthout.org/afghanistan-enacts-law-giving-blanket-immunity-war-criminals57746
The first of the points that I draw from Leopold's article is that the Afghan Parliament, "made up largely of former warlords" who have been "accused by Afghans and human rights groups of war crimes," have voted for a law "that provides blanket immunity and pardons for members of the Afghanistan armed factions of war crimes and human rights abuses prior to Dec. 2001."
Second, Leopold refers to The Transitional Justice Coordination Group (TJCG), "made up of a coalition of 24 civil society organizations, [that has] called upon the Karzai government" to suspend the law and eventually abolish it.
Three, according to Leopold, there is a provision in the amnesty law that "allows victims of atrocities to file individual claims against alleged perpetrators." Leopold reports that TJCG said this "places an unfair burden upon victims, who have already suffered so much and would put themselves at rick of reprisals given the impunity of Aghanistan today." He adds: "This provision is particiularly impractical so far as it concerns women and the many victims of sexual violence, who already face barriers to obtaining justice."
Four, and most relevant for the present post, Leopold writes that there are "War Criminals in Karzai's Cabinet, including "high-level officials who were accused of war crimes." For example, "both of Karzai's vice presidents are former leaders of armed groups whose factions squabbled for control of Kabul in the 1990s, when thousands of civilians wee killed and hundreds of thousands fled from their homes." Another example: "...Karzai approved the re-appointment in Jan. of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dotsum, an ex-militia chief, to a high-level military position which had been harshly criticized by civil rights groups."
The implications? The US appears to be fighting a war focused on what it calls the Taliban, while much of the rest of the country is ruled by warlords who have also perpetrated atrocities on the Afghan people and who now use present circumstances to consolidate their power. Along the way, the Afghan people remain among the poorest in the world and the U.S. government and military spend tens of billions of dollars on an adventure that appears to have no clear strategy for bringing security to the Afghan people - and no end point.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
More on Obama's secret prisons in Afghanistan
While much of the commercial and mainstream media focus on the US-led assault on the city of Marja in Afghanistan, or whether upcoming elections can be legitimate, there are troubling developments occurring in many other parts of this occupied country. As an article in an earlier post on this blog emphasized, there are secret prisons strewn across Aghanistan, where prisoners have no legal rights and are sometimes tortured. These atrocies are occuring not under Bush's administration but under Obama's.
When you put it all together - warlords who are US allies, civilian casualties, terrible conditions for the Afghan population as a whole, continued oppression of women, much more of US taxpayer money for weapons than development, payment to Taliban groups to provide security for US supply movements, the lack of trust by Afghans in US promises of security, reports that Taliban influences is spreading, more costs in human and money terms to US taxpayers - it is not that surprising that the US occupiers and their Afghan allies are abducting and imprisoning Afghan civilians, without any concern for their legal or basic human rights.
The revelations this week about how the CIA and British authorities handed over a suspected jihadi to torturers in Pakistan may sound at first glance like a hangover from the Bush years. Barack Obama was elected, in part, to drag us out of this trap - but in practice he is dragging us further in. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has taken the war to another Muslim country. The CIA and hired mercenaries are now operating on Obama's orders inside Pakistan, where they are sending unarmed drones to drop bombs and sending secret agents to snatch suspects. The casualties are overwhelmingly civilians. We may not have noticed, but the Muslim world has: check out Al Jazeera any night.
Obama ran on an inspiring promise to shut down Bush's network of kidnappings and secret prisons. He said bluntly: "I do not want to hear this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that... but as a parent I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence." He said it made the US "less safe" because any gain in safety by Gitmo-ing one suspected jihadi - along with dozens of innocents - is wiped out by the huge number of young men tipped over into the vile madness of jihadism by seeing their brothers disappear into a vast military machine where they may never be heard from again. Indeed, following the failed attack in Detroit, Obama pointed out the wannabe-murderer named Guantanamo as the reason he signed up for the jihad.
Yet a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely - and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was - and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.
This is not an unusual event in Afghanistan today. In this small village of 300 people, some 16 men have been "disappeared" by the US and 10 killed in night raids in the past two years. The locals believe people are simply settling old clan feuds by telling the Americans their rivals are jihadists. Habib's cousin Qarar, who works for the Afghan government, says: "I used to go on TV and argue that people should support the government and the foreigners. But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so?"
Where are all these men vanishing to? Obama ordered the closing of the CIA's secret prisons, but not those run by Joint Special Operations. They maintain a Bermuda Triangle of jails with the notorious Bagram Air Base at its centre. One of the few outsiders has been into this ex-Soviet air-hangar is the military prosecutor Stuart Couch. He says: "In my view, having visited Guantanamo several times, the Bagram facility made Guantanamo look like a nice hotel. The men did not appear to be able to move around at will, they mostly sat in rows on the floor. It smelled like the monkey house at the zoo."
We know that at least two innocent young men were tortured to death in Bagram. Der Spiegel has documented how some "inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". The accounts of released prisoners suggest the very worst abuses stopped in the last few years of the Bush administration, and Obama is supposed to have forbidden torture, but it's hard to tell. We do know Obama has permitted the use of solitary confinement lasting for years - a process that often drives people insane. The International Red Cross has been allowed to visit some of them, but in highly restricted circumstances, and their reports remain confidential. In this darkness, abuse becomes far more likely.
The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world - with no legal process - and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.
Once you vanish into this system, you have no way to get yourself out. The New York lawyer Tina Foster represents three men who were kidnapped by US forces in Thailand, Pakistan and Dubai and bundled to Bagram, where they have been held without charge for seven years now. She tells me there have been "shockingly few improvements" under Obama. "The Bush administration rubbed our faces in it, while Obama's much smoother. But the reality is still indefinite detention without charge for people who are judged guilty simply by association. It's contrary to everything we stand for as a country... I know there are children [in there] from personal experience. I have interviewed dozens of children who were detained in Bagram, some as young as 10."
Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates - the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness. Obama also asserts his right to hand over the prisoners to countries that commit torture, provided they give a written "assurance" they won't be "abused" - assurances that have proved worthless in the past. The British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith estimates there are 18,000 people trapped in these "legal black holes" by the US.
As Obama warned in the distant days of the election campaign, these policies place us all in greater danger. Matthew Alexander, the senior interrogator in Iraq who tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says: "I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight... We have lost hundreds if not thousands of American lives because of our policy." The increased risk bleeds out onto the London Underground and the nightclubs of Bali. I oppose these policies precisely because I want to be safe, and I loathe jihadism.
President Obama has been tossing aside the calm jihad-draining insights of candidate Obama for a year now. Whenever Obama acts like Bush, listen carefully - you will hear the distant, delighted chuckle of Osama bin Laden, and the needless stomp of fresh recruits heading his way.
© 2010 The Independent
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/13-1
When you put it all together - warlords who are US allies, civilian casualties, terrible conditions for the Afghan population as a whole, continued oppression of women, much more of US taxpayer money for weapons than development, payment to Taliban groups to provide security for US supply movements, the lack of trust by Afghans in US promises of security, reports that Taliban influences is spreading, more costs in human and money terms to US taxpayers - it is not that surprising that the US occupiers and their Afghan allies are abducting and imprisoning Afghan civilians, without any concern for their legal or basic human rights.
Bob
---------------------------
Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 by The Independent/UK
Obama's Secret Prisons in Afghanistan Endanger Us All
He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in
by Johann Hari
Osama bin Laden's favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father's cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever travelled the other way. Osama's vision can't even inspire his own kids. But Omar bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause - and we are giving it to him.
Obama was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in. Whenever Obama acts like Bush, listen carefully - you will hear the distant, delighted chuckle of Osama bin Laden, and the needless stomp of fresh recruits heading his way. (CHRIS COADY/ NB ILLUSTRATIONS)The day George W Bush was elected, Omar says, "my father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs - one who will attack and spend money and break [his own] country". Osama wanted the US and Europe to make his story about the world ring true in every mosque and every mountain-top and every souq. He said our countries were bent on looting Muslim countries of their resources, and any talk of civil liberties or democracy was a hypocritical facade. The jihadis I have interviewed - from London to Gaza to Syria - said their ranks swelled with each new whiff of Bushism as more and more were persuaded. It was like trying to extinguish fire with a blowtorch.
The revelations this week about how the CIA and British authorities handed over a suspected jihadi to torturers in Pakistan may sound at first glance like a hangover from the Bush years. Barack Obama was elected, in part, to drag us out of this trap - but in practice he is dragging us further in. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has taken the war to another Muslim country. The CIA and hired mercenaries are now operating on Obama's orders inside Pakistan, where they are sending unarmed drones to drop bombs and sending secret agents to snatch suspects. The casualties are overwhelmingly civilians. We may not have noticed, but the Muslim world has: check out Al Jazeera any night.
Obama ran on an inspiring promise to shut down Bush's network of kidnappings and secret prisons. He said bluntly: "I do not want to hear this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that... but as a parent I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence." He said it made the US "less safe" because any gain in safety by Gitmo-ing one suspected jihadi - along with dozens of innocents - is wiped out by the huge number of young men tipped over into the vile madness of jihadism by seeing their brothers disappear into a vast military machine where they may never be heard from again. Indeed, following the failed attack in Detroit, Obama pointed out the wannabe-murderer named Guantanamo as the reason he signed up for the jihad.
Yet a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely - and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was - and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.
This is not an unusual event in Afghanistan today. In this small village of 300 people, some 16 men have been "disappeared" by the US and 10 killed in night raids in the past two years. The locals believe people are simply settling old clan feuds by telling the Americans their rivals are jihadists. Habib's cousin Qarar, who works for the Afghan government, says: "I used to go on TV and argue that people should support the government and the foreigners. But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so?"
Where are all these men vanishing to? Obama ordered the closing of the CIA's secret prisons, but not those run by Joint Special Operations. They maintain a Bermuda Triangle of jails with the notorious Bagram Air Base at its centre. One of the few outsiders has been into this ex-Soviet air-hangar is the military prosecutor Stuart Couch. He says: "In my view, having visited Guantanamo several times, the Bagram facility made Guantanamo look like a nice hotel. The men did not appear to be able to move around at will, they mostly sat in rows on the floor. It smelled like the monkey house at the zoo."
We know that at least two innocent young men were tortured to death in Bagram. Der Spiegel has documented how some "inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". The accounts of released prisoners suggest the very worst abuses stopped in the last few years of the Bush administration, and Obama is supposed to have forbidden torture, but it's hard to tell. We do know Obama has permitted the use of solitary confinement lasting for years - a process that often drives people insane. The International Red Cross has been allowed to visit some of them, but in highly restricted circumstances, and their reports remain confidential. In this darkness, abuse becomes far more likely.
The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world - with no legal process - and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.
Once you vanish into this system, you have no way to get yourself out. The New York lawyer Tina Foster represents three men who were kidnapped by US forces in Thailand, Pakistan and Dubai and bundled to Bagram, where they have been held without charge for seven years now. She tells me there have been "shockingly few improvements" under Obama. "The Bush administration rubbed our faces in it, while Obama's much smoother. But the reality is still indefinite detention without charge for people who are judged guilty simply by association. It's contrary to everything we stand for as a country... I know there are children [in there] from personal experience. I have interviewed dozens of children who were detained in Bagram, some as young as 10."
Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates - the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness. Obama also asserts his right to hand over the prisoners to countries that commit torture, provided they give a written "assurance" they won't be "abused" - assurances that have proved worthless in the past. The British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith estimates there are 18,000 people trapped in these "legal black holes" by the US.
As Obama warned in the distant days of the election campaign, these policies place us all in greater danger. Matthew Alexander, the senior interrogator in Iraq who tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says: "I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight... We have lost hundreds if not thousands of American lives because of our policy." The increased risk bleeds out onto the London Underground and the nightclubs of Bali. I oppose these policies precisely because I want to be safe, and I loathe jihadism.
President Obama has been tossing aside the calm jihad-draining insights of candidate Obama for a year now. Whenever Obama acts like Bush, listen carefully - you will hear the distant, delighted chuckle of Osama bin Laden, and the needless stomp of fresh recruits heading his way.
© 2010 The Independent
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/13-1
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Afghan opium crop stable
The following UN report on Afghan opium production offers several facts. The Afghan opium crop provide 90 percent of the world's demand for this crop. The report refers to two reasons why opium production remains high. One is that the price of opium is higher than for alternative crops like wheat and maize. The other is that opium production is likely to operate in provinces that are "insecure." The implication of "insecure," or less secure, is that there are pressures on farmers to produce opium. The sources of such pressures would implicitly come from Taliban, warlords (among US allies), corrupt government officials, or criminal forces.
The commentary on the UN report (see below) suggests that the only effective way to reduce poppy cultivation is to make farmers secure. How? Free them from those who now control them. This would take enormous, long-term, military intervention. Subsidize prices for alternative crops and provide farmers with the means to reclaim their land for alternative cultivation. Noble goals. But this conflicts with the neoliberal approach, which favors export-oriented agriculture from large mechanized farms, and increased imports (from, say, US farmers). Interdict opium traffic routes going out of the country. Interdiction has not worked in other places (e.g., Columbia, Mexico). Similarly, eradication is a lethal way to eliminate crops defined as undesirable, and it harms the environment and drives farmers off the land.
We should also bear in mind that opium production is probably not a priority of the US. Rather, it's a distraction from other geopolitical and economic interests.
Bob
--------------------------------
UN predicts 'stable' 2010 Afghan opium cultivation, warns of fewer poppy-free provinces
Feb 10, 2010 00:31 EST
Source: http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/02/09/un-forecasts-stable-afghan-opium-crop
After a major drop over the past two years, Afghanistan's opium cultivation is unlikely to rise or fall dramatically in 2010, a U.N. report said Wednesday.
The report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said bad weather may lead to a decrease in opium production but warned the country could see fewer poppy-free provinces.
Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin, and the highly lucrative crop has helped finance insurgents and fueled corruption.
"Overall, the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan is likely to remain stable in 2010 but the number of poppy-free provinces may decrease," from 20 to 17, said the report.
"However, if timely poppy eradication measures are implemented and/or drought conditions prevail, a total of 25 provinces — an increase of five compared to 2009 — could be poppy-free in 2010."
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan peaked in 2007 and then fell for two consecutive years from about 478,000 acres (193,000 hectares) to 304,000 acres (123,000 hectares) in 2009.
In September, the Vienna-based UNODC said Afghanistan was still producing 6,900 tons of opium a year, 1,900 tons more than the world consumes. In 2007, production stood at a staggering 8,200 tons.
The report, which surveyed 536 Afghan villages, found that 35 percent said they had planted opium poppy for the 2010 cultivation season and that higher sales prices compared to other crops was the predominant reason for doing so.
While the price of dry opium has fallen 6 percent compared to a year ago, the price of wheat has decreased by 43 percent, the report showed. The price of maize dropped by 38 percent over the past year.
The survey also found that 79 percent of villages with very poor security conditions grew poppy, while only 7 percent of villages unaffected by violence — or with "very good security" — did so.
"This is further proof of the overlap between high insecurity and high cultivation," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement. "The message is clear: in order to further reduce the biggest source of the world's deadliest drug, there must be better security, development and governance in Afghanistan."
The commentary on the UN report (see below) suggests that the only effective way to reduce poppy cultivation is to make farmers secure. How? Free them from those who now control them. This would take enormous, long-term, military intervention. Subsidize prices for alternative crops and provide farmers with the means to reclaim their land for alternative cultivation. Noble goals. But this conflicts with the neoliberal approach, which favors export-oriented agriculture from large mechanized farms, and increased imports (from, say, US farmers). Interdict opium traffic routes going out of the country. Interdiction has not worked in other places (e.g., Columbia, Mexico). Similarly, eradication is a lethal way to eliminate crops defined as undesirable, and it harms the environment and drives farmers off the land.
We should also bear in mind that opium production is probably not a priority of the US. Rather, it's a distraction from other geopolitical and economic interests.
Bob
--------------------------------
UN predicts 'stable' 2010 Afghan opium cultivation, warns of fewer poppy-free provinces
Feb 10, 2010 00:31 EST
Source: http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/02/09/un-forecasts-stable-afghan-opium-crop
After a major drop over the past two years, Afghanistan's opium cultivation is unlikely to rise or fall dramatically in 2010, a U.N. report said Wednesday.
The report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said bad weather may lead to a decrease in opium production but warned the country could see fewer poppy-free provinces.
Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin, and the highly lucrative crop has helped finance insurgents and fueled corruption.
"Overall, the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan is likely to remain stable in 2010 but the number of poppy-free provinces may decrease," from 20 to 17, said the report.
"However, if timely poppy eradication measures are implemented and/or drought conditions prevail, a total of 25 provinces — an increase of five compared to 2009 — could be poppy-free in 2010."
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan peaked in 2007 and then fell for two consecutive years from about 478,000 acres (193,000 hectares) to 304,000 acres (123,000 hectares) in 2009.
In September, the Vienna-based UNODC said Afghanistan was still producing 6,900 tons of opium a year, 1,900 tons more than the world consumes. In 2007, production stood at a staggering 8,200 tons.
The report, which surveyed 536 Afghan villages, found that 35 percent said they had planted opium poppy for the 2010 cultivation season and that higher sales prices compared to other crops was the predominant reason for doing so.
While the price of dry opium has fallen 6 percent compared to a year ago, the price of wheat has decreased by 43 percent, the report showed. The price of maize dropped by 38 percent over the past year.
The survey also found that 79 percent of villages with very poor security conditions grew poppy, while only 7 percent of villages unaffected by violence — or with "very good security" — did so.
"This is further proof of the overlap between high insecurity and high cultivation," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement. "The message is clear: in order to further reduce the biggest source of the world's deadliest drug, there must be better security, development and governance in Afghanistan."
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