AFGHANISTAN

US Is Doing No Good in Afghanistan

By Malalai Joya

November 11, 2009 "SJMN" --- As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country.

Eight years ago, women's rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women's rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media.

In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.

The U.S. and its allies are getting ready to offer power to the medieval Taliban by creating an imaginary category called the "moderate Taliban" and inviting them to join the government. A man who was near the top of the list of most-wanted terrorists eight years ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been invited to join the government.

Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords. Today, 93 percent of all opium in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Many members of Parliament and high ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai's own brother is a well known drug trafficker.

Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans are living in destitution. The latest United Nations Human Development Index ranked Afghanistan 181 out of 182 countries. Eighteen million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. Mothers in many parts of Afghanistan are ready to sell their children because they cannot feed them.

Afghanistan has received $36 billion of aid in the past eight years, and the U.S. alone spends $165 million a day on its war. Yet my country remains in the grip of terrorists and criminals. My people have no interest in the current drama of the presidential election since it will change nothing in Afghanistan. Both Karzai and Dr. Abdullah are hated by Afghans for being U.S. puppets.

The worst casualty of this war is truth. Those who stand up and raise their voice against injustice, insecurity and occupation have their lives threatened and are forced to leave Afghanistan, or simply get killed.

We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.

Now President Obama is considering increasing troops to Afghanistan and simply extending former President Bush's wrong policies. In fact, the worst massacres since 9/11 were during Obama's tenure. My native province of Farah was bombed by the U.S. this past May. A hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women and children. On Sept. 9, the U.S. bombed Kunduz Province, killing 200 civilians.

My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.

© 2009 San Jose Mercury News

COMMENT

Some observations:

i) Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic country, made up of (inter alia) Baluchis, Hazaras, Kirghis, Pamiris, Tajhiks, Turkmen, Uzbeks & at ~40% of the total population, the largest single group, the Pashtuns.

ii) The historical Pashtun homeland is divided in two by the Afghan/Pakistan border. This porous "border" is in effect the old "Durrand Line", the de facto western territorial limit of the British Empire in the Indian sub-continent. The Pashtuns have NEVER recognised this arbitary line on the map & no external power or authority has ever been able to police it.

iii) Pashtun society is extremely conservative, deeply traditional, unrelentingly patriarchical & tribal. A Pashtun is a member of a family group, a sub-clan, a clan & then a tribe. At around 40+ million people, they are the world's largest tribally affiliated ethnic group.

iv) Conservative Islam & the "Lex Talionis", pre-Islamic honour code - Pashtunwalli, are the law, organisational guidelines & ethical principles by which this proud, fiercely independent & hardy mountain people regulate their society.

v) The phrase "Revenge is a dish best served cold", is the English translation & appropriation of the Pashtun original. Another Pashtun dictum is: "Me against my brother; me & my brothers against my cousins; me, my brothers & my cousins against the world". Pashtun males are considered adult at 13 years of age & are honour bound to defend "Zan, Zhar, Zamin" - Women, Wealth & Land. Notions of loyalty, duty, respect, shame, "not losing face", honour & "dying on one's feet rather than living on one's knees" are central to their world view & modus vivendi.

vi) The word "Taliban" translates as "Students" as they were originally recruited & organised with the enthusiastic help, encouragement & funding of the Saudis, Pakistani ISI, CIA & MI6, from the religious schools in the numerous Pashtun refugee camps, during & after the war to oust the Soviet armed forces & the civil war that followed it. They were then of course, known & eulogised as the "Mujahideen". The word "Taliban" is now nothing other than a obfuscatory, propagandist & subversive "meme" for what is in actuality, under various names & guises, The Pashtun National Resistance Movement.

vii) The peoples of present day Afghanistan, whether Pashtun or otherwise, are the time served world champions of guerrilla warfare & insurgency. No army or empire has ever been able to totally defeat & dominate them. Alexander the Great, Scythian, Hepthalite, Bactrian, Persian, Mongol, Arab, Turkic, British & Russian armies have all been severely mauled & bloodied at some time or other & have had to retreat, assimilate, pay tribute to or come to an accommodation with, these fierce & warlike peoples.

viii) The Americans, despite their massive military superiority, are the latest to learn these same painful lessons. This time however, the whole world is (quite intentionally) further driven towards a "Clash of Civilisations", as advocated by Thomas Freidman, Norman Podhoretz, Charles Krauthammer, William Krystol, Richard Perle, Benny Morris, Melanie Phillips & other psychopathic warmongers.

ix) This Zionist / PNAC / Neo-con ambition, worldview & "wet-dream" stimulates & is mirrored by, the psychopathic grand "End Time" schematic of a few thousand Jihadis worldwide, whose fanaticism & fury; rage & resistance; is fueled, stoked & provoked by the scientific uber-violence & Imperial jackboot of the Coalition of the Complicit under the aegis & "Blood Spattered Banner" of the United States of Amnesiacs.

x) What the War-mongering Military / Industrial cliques did NOT know of the Buddhist Vietnamese - in that they were a fiercely independent people, who had fought the Khmer, Chinese, Japanese & French imperiums before they defeated the USA - so do they NOW seem NOT to know of the Muslim Afghans. But perhaps an unending war is just what is really wanted....?

xi) Fighting the "Spectre of Communism" has almost seamlessly morphed into fighting the "Ghost of Global Jihad" mega-meme, whilst the Monster of the Military / Industrial / Security Murder-Machine grinds on relentlessly.

xii) Peace & freedom loving people all over the world can increasingly discern What is What: Cause
& Effect; Chicken & Egg! This Oppression Can NOT Abide.Shadz,UK
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Malalai Joya," My people are fed up, that is why we want an immediate end to the US occupation.

President Obama, please regard this as you last appeal for sanity to prevail over tyrannical injustice in the US war on Terror. Your are terrorizing millions, killing hundreds of thousands and murdering to satisfy generals ambitions to win some hollow victory over you nations demons.

The murders in Fort Hood are not due to a man's scorn for human life, they are due to the Congess's lack of credibility in facing down the war crimes of it's murderous regime in Israel. YOU killed these soldiers and many more by your COWARDICE in the face of AIPAC, legions of supporters of apartheid, racism, occupation, denigration of Muslims and their nations, YOU did this to American soldiers, not intentionally but in the blow back of congressional intransigence and their mockery of the International criminal courts and it's justice.

Mr President, I know you have your head in your hands, are frustrated, saddened by loss and greiving as your nation mourns these deaths and the servicemen and women surrounding such macabre massacre. Palestine grieves as well, Afghanistan gerievs, Iraq Greives and Somalia, Iran and Lebanon greive, not from birth pangs but death pangs and the world is sickened by such grave injustices born of obiesance to zionist ideals and their gutless and debilitating need to be worshipped as God and Goddesses. Worship and die in this , for your nation is dead if no courage is born to stave off injustice .

You weep for your soldiers,your nations weeps for all of it's soldiers and every war today, and their victims of unjust military actions are sorry they will not be weeping with you or for you. Sympathy and forgiveness comes from repentence and this is never more absent as when congress resolves to destroy the Goldstone report, the best chance Palestine had to be a peaceful resister to YOU NATION's support for tyrants, and fake Judaics bent on domination of good people deserving of better that Hillary's kneeling before Netenyahu and praising his arrogance, intransigence and mockery of justice.

Afghanistan groans for release from such occupation, and if you escalate, Congress wil be right their cheerleeding the casue of more death and destruction in Afghanistan to expand their empire, profits from weapons sales and the liklyhood that Israel marches over Palestine unabated while your military marches over Afghanistan and into Pakistan causeing civil strife, degradation of living conditions and fleeing refugees with no recourse but to stay with anyone able to take them in, no Help comes in this war for refugees, indeed they are forgotten completely while the US is transfixed in memorial for it's own murderous armies.

Mt President, YOU are a charade, no leader for your people and disrespoected for your broken trust to heal wounds, not inflict more and call it victory, Their is no victory in endless occupation, Mr President and when such attepts are made to sanitize agression and war for hegemony the sourness is only heightened and the tragedy continued while your nation weeps for 13 dead soldiers.

How will these men and womens families see this? Do they know that it is congress who murdered these soldiers? Do they know that your administrations convenes with these assets for zionism to make war in Iran with Israel, Do they know the carnage they will perpetrate, who will suffer, why and when, NO, soldiers no NOTHING of these things they obey theior commander in chief and you have failed them in every way until you admit to them, to your military that this war is a disgusting ruse, a despicable ploy and a degenerate plan to demonise good people to murder their nations and occupy them with NATO military might as guards during an armed robbery while you lie about the reasons, they will kil and die for their nation as good soldiers do, they accept this duty. What they do not accept is you commander in chief status, they want a true leader, one unafraid to face them and say, on the record, this war is a crime against humanity and by it's charter you are murdering innocent people for empire and lies.

Get out of Afghanistan or perish there, Get OUT!

Malalai, thank you I believe you, love you and feel your nations pain and we all bare these murderous tragedies with very heavy hearts in the ranks of those who oppose tyranical wars of aggression.

This "necessary' war, makes it necessary for the world of witness to make ready to fire your nation as God and present you with a challenge militarily, If you go there, we will be there.This is the voice which hears your words and translates them into their own language to make sense of a despot of empire whose promises, as all which came before are hollow bullshit and are the timed cowering before the Chabad and Zionist empire, not democracy, not freedom, not love, not justice and not liberation of women, but pure unadulterated EVIL sold as defense of you asshole national security, Bring it freak, we are here, or get the fuck out of our nation and find repentance. No repent, no forgive, no forgive, Dante awaits!

Barack Obama, you are a coward!
jerrygates7@gmail.com

NEW DELHI (Reuters AlertNet) - The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) expressed anger on Tuesday at NATO-led troops who used explosives to storm a Red Crescent compound and temporarily detain two aid workers. Saleem Wardak, manager of the media division of the ARCS, said NATO-led forces attacked their office in Qalat in the southern province of Zabul during a military operation against Taliban insurgents on Friday night. "There was an attack by the security forces and two staff members were arrested, but were released after 24 hours," Wardak told AlertNet by telephone. He said security forces used explosives to break into the compound with the blasts shattering windows and breaking doors. "It is the first time that the ARCS has been attacked like this and we are very angry about it as we are only here to help the people and what the security forces have done is illegal," Wardak said. By Nita Bhalla

America is Performing its Familiar Role of Propping Up a Dictator

As in Vietnam, Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption

By Robert Fisk

November 04, 2009 "The Independent" -- Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.

And now we are still trying to persuade his opponent to join a national unity government, an administration led by the man whose vote-stuffing was the very reason that same leader of the opposition – the good pseudo-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah – refused to run in a second round of elections. And Karzai got his fawning congrats from the Obama-Brown twins. So that's OK then. Wagons Ho. For Westmoreland, read McChrystal. Send in the brave 40,000 to join the rest of the US cavalry as it fights its way west – or rather south-west – to the Khe Sanh of Afghanistan in Year Eight of the War on Terror.

The March of Folly was Barbara Tuchman's title for her book on governments – from Troy to Vietnam-era America – that followed policies contrary to their own interests. And well may we remember the Vietnam bit. As Patrick Bury, a veteran British soldier of our current Afghan adventure, pointed out yesterday, Vietnam is all too relevant.

Back in 1967, the Americans oversaw a "democratic" election in Vietnam which gave the presidency to the corrupt ex-General Nguyen Van Thieuman. In a fraudulent election which the Americans declared to be "generally fair" – he got 38 per cent of the vote – Thieu's opponents wouldn't run against him because the election was a farce.

In 1967, Washington needed the elections to give legitimacy to this revolting dictator – and thus provide credibility to its own military occupation of Vietnam in the war against Communism. As in Vietnam – where Saigon was a lonely kingdom of brutal power totally isolated from the rest of the country – Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption, protected by US mercenaries while the Americans perform their familiar role of propping up a dictator.

As ex-Lieutenant Bury sagely points out, the Afghan war is "campaigning on a par with the 19th-century British colonial army trying to manage the unwinnable... What was or is the strategy behind these long, bloody conflicts?" Well, in 1967, it was the possible communisation of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Now it is Pashtunistan, Baluchistan, Waziristan. For us, the vast ignorant "plebes", it's supposed to stop the Taliban/al-Qa'ida beasts from attacking our looming towers all over again, albeit that the 2001 murderers in question largely hailed from that friendly, moderate, brutal, oligarchical monarchical dictatorship called Saudi Arabia where – thank the good gods – they don't hold elections.

But it's part of a dreary pattern. US forces were participating in a civil war in Vietnam while claiming they were supporting democracy and the sovereignty of the country. In Lebanon in 1982, they claimed to be supporting the "democratically" elected President Amin Gemayel and took the Christian Maronite side in the civil war. And now, after Disneyworld elections, they are on the Karzai-government side against the Pashtun villagers of southern Afghanistan among whom the Taliban live. Where is the next My Lai? Journalists should avoid predictions. In this case I will not. Our Western mission in Afghanistan is going to end in utter disaster.