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Paul Merrell

Secret Docs Reveal Dubious Details of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...-in-afghanistan-a-1010358.html

war & peace drone attacks Afghanistan Pakistan leaked-docs

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Combat operations in Afghanistan may be coming to an end, but a look at secret NATO documents reveals that the US and the UK were far less scrupulous in choosing targets for killing than previously believed. Drug dealers were also on the lists.
  • The child and his father are two of the many victims of the dirty secret operations that NATO conducted for years in Afghanistan. Their fate is described in secret documents to which SPIEGEL was given access. Some of the documents concerning the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the NSA and GCHQ intelligence services are from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Included is the first known complete list of the Western alliance's "targeted killings" in Afghanistan. The documents show that the deadly missions were not just viewed as a last resort to prevent attacks, but were in fact part of everyday life in the guerilla war in Afghanistan. The list, which included up to 750 people at times, proves for the first time that NATO didn't just target the Taliban leadership, but also eliminated mid- and lower-level members of the group on a large scale. Some Afghans were only on the list because, as drug dealers, they were allegedly supporting the insurgents.
  • Different rules apply in war than in fighting crime in times of peace. But for years the West tied its campaign in Afghanistan to the promise that it was fighting for different values there. A democracy that kills its enemies on the basis of nothing but suspicion squanders its claim to moral superiority, making itself complicit instead. This lesson from Afghanistan also applies to the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. The material SPIEGEL was able to review is from 2009 to 2011, and falls within the term of US President Barack Obama, who was inaugurated in January 2009. For Obama, Afghanistan was the "good" war and therefore legitimate -- in contrast to the Iraq war. The president wanted to end the engagement in Iraq as quickly as possible, but in Afghanistan his aim was to win.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • After Obama assumed office, the US government opted for a new strategy. In June 2009, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates installed Stanley McChrystal, a four-star general who had served in Iraq, as commander of US forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal promoted the aggressive pursuit of the Taliban. Obama sent 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but their deployment was tied to a demand that military officials provide a binding date for the withdrawal of US forces. At the same time, the president distanced himself from the grand objectives the West had proclaimed when it first marched into Kabul. The United States would not try to make Afghanistan "a perfect place," said Obama. Its new main objective was to fight the insurgency.
  • This marked the beginning of one of the bloodiest phases of the war. Some 2,412 civilians died in Afghanistan in 2009. Two-thirds of them were killed by insurgents and 25 percent by NATO troops and Afghan security forces. The number of operations against the Taliban rose sharply, to between 10 and 15 a night. The operations were based on the lists maintained by the CIA and NATO -- Obama's lists. The White House dubbed the strategy "escalate and exit." McChrystal's successor, General David Petraeus, documented the strategy in "Field Manual 3-24" on fighting insurgencies, which remains a standard work today. Petraeus outlined three stages in fighting guerilla organizations like the Taliban. The first was a cleansing phase, in which the enemy leadership is weakened. After that, local forces were to regain control of the captured areas. The third phase was focused on reconstruction. Behind closed doors, Petraeus and his staff explained exactly what was meant by "cleansing." German politicians recall something that Michael T. Flynn, the head of ISAF intelligence in Afghanistan, once said during a briefing: "The only good Talib is a dead Talib."
  • Under Petraeus, a merciless campaign began to hunt down the so-called shadow governors and local supporters aligned with the Islamists. For the Americans, the fact that the operations often ended in killings was seen as a success. In August 2010, Petraeus proudly told diplomats in Kabul that he had noticed a shifting trend. The figures he presented as evidence made some of the ambassadors feel uneasy. At least 365 insurgent commanders, Petraeus explained, had been neutralized in the last three months, for an average of about four killings a day. The existence of documents relating to the so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) has only been described in vague terms until now. The missions by US special units are mentioned but not discussed in detail in the US Army Afghanistan war logs published by WikiLeaks in 2010, together with the New York Times, the Guardian and SPIEGEL. The documents that have now become accessible provide, for the first time, a systematic view of the targeted killings. They outline the criteria used to determine who was placed on the list and why.
  • When an operation could potentially result in civilian casualties, ISAF headquarters in Kabul had to be involved. "The rule of thumb was that when there was estimated collateral damage of up to 10 civilians, the ISAF commander in Kabul was to decide whether the risk was justifiable," says an ISAF officer who worked with the lists for years. If more potential civilian casualties were anticipated, the decision was left up to the relevant NATO headquarters office. Bodyguards, drivers and male attendants were viewed as enemy combatants, whether or not they actually were. Only women, children and the elderly were treated as civilians. Even officers who were involved in the program admit that these guidelines were cynical. If a Taliban fighter was repeatedly involved in deadly attacks, a "weighing of interests" was performed. The military officials would then calculate how many human lives could be saved by the "kill," and how many civilians would potentially be killed in an airstrike.
  • The document also reveals how vague the basis for deadly operations apparently was. In the voice recognition procedure, it was sufficient if a suspect identified himself by name once during the monitored conversation. Within the next 24 hours, this voice recognition was treated as "positive target identification" and, therefore, as legitimate grounds for an airstrike. This greatly increased the risk of civilian casualties. Probably one of the most controversial decisions by NATO in Afghanistan is the expansion of these operations to include drug dealers. According to an NSA document, the United Nations estimated that the Taliban was earning $300 million a year through the drug trade. The insurgents, the document continues, "could not be defeated without disrupting the drug trade."
  • According to the NSA document, in October 2008 the NATO defense ministers made the momentous decision that drug networks would now be "legitimate targets" for ISAF troops. "Narcotics traffickers were added to the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) list for the first time," the report reads. In the opinion of American commanders like Bantz John Craddock, there was no need to prove that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban to declare farmers, couriers and dealers as legitimate targets of NATO strikes.
  • In early 2009, Craddock, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe at the time, issued an order to expand the targeted killings of Taliban officials to drug producers. This led to heated discussions within NATO. German NATO General Egon Ramms declared the order "illegal" and a violation of international law. The power struggle within NATO finally led to a modification of Craddock's directive: Targets related to the drug production at least had to be investigated as individual cases. The top-secret dossier could be highly damaging to the German government. For years, German authorities have turned over the mobile phone numbers of German extremists in Afghanistan to the United States. At the same time, the German officials claimed that homing in on mobile phone signals was far too imprecise for targeted killings. This is apparently an untenable argument. According to the 2010 document, both Eurofighters and drones had "the ability to geolocate a known GSM handset." In other words, active mobile phones could serve as tracking devices for the special units.
  • The classified documents could now have legal repercussions. The human rights organization Reprieve is weighing legal action against the British government. Reprieve believes it is especially relevant that the lists include Pakistanis who were located in Pakistan. "The British government has repeatedly stated that it is not pursuing targets in Pakistan and not doing air strikes on Pakistani territory," says Reprieve attorney Jennifer Gibson. The documents, she notes, also show that the "war on terror" was virtually conflated with the "war on drugs." "This is both new and extremely legally troubling," says Gibson.
  • A 2009 CIA study that addresses targeted killings of senior enemy officials worldwide reaches a bitter conclusion. Because of the Taliban's centralized but flexible leadership, as well as its egalitarian tribal structures, the targeted killings were only moderately successful in Afghanistan. "Morover, the Taliban has a high overall ability to replace lost leaders," the study finds.
Paul Merrell

"The War is Worth Waging": Afghanistan's Vast Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas | Gl... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...19769

war & peace war crimes wars of aggression 9-11 war on terror™ Afghanistan

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan more than 13 years ago in October 2001.   Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism. The war on Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks.  This article, first published in June 2010, points to the “real economic reasons”  why US-NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. 
  • The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under “the doctrine of collective security” was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, namely Afghanistan. Under the proposed Afghan-US security pact,  which is an integral part of Obama’s Asian pivot, Washington and its NATO partners are preparing to ensure a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, with military facilities located in proximity of China’s Western frontier.  The pact would allow the US to maintain their nine permanent military bases, strategically located on the borders of  China, Pakistan and Iran as well as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In addition to its vast mineral and gas reserves, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the World’s supply of opium which is used to produce grade 4 heroin. US military bases in Afghanistan are also intent upon protecting the multibillion narcotics trade.  Narcotics, at present, constitutes the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy.
  • The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. “The highest concentration of NATO servicemen in Afghanistan is being accompanied with the highest concentration of opium poppy, ….  That situation causes doubts about the anti-terrorist mission and leads to the conclusion about catastrophic consequences of the eight-year stay [of coalition forces] in Afghanistan,” (Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov, January 2010)
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 13
     
    It bears notice that Afghanistan was one nation targeted for capture by the neocon Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding American Defenses report in 2000, specifically because of Afghanistan's abundant natural resources detailed in this article. The PNAC report also advocated for a natural gas pipeline passing through Afghanistan. That is the same report that said a "new Pearl Harbor" would be needed to create public support for the plan's execution. Enter 9-11 from stage left as just such a justification for invasion of Afghanistan (and later Iraq, another targeted nation). Several of the PNAC report authors and signatories went on to become high ranking members of the U.S. State and Defense departments when Bush II took office in January 2001. Notably, the PNAC report and above history provides irrefutable evidence that key U.S. policymakers had military goals for Afghanistan before 9-11 because of that nation's natural resources.  
Paul Merrell

Afghan Opium Production 40 Times Higher Since US-NATO Invasion - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219974

war & peace opium-production Afghanistan ISIL Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • Since the U.S.-led NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the production of opium in the country has increased by 40 times according to Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, fueling organized crime and widespread death. The head of the FSKN, Viktor Ivanov, explained the staggering trend at a March U.N. conference on drugs in Afghanistan. Opium growth in Afghanistan increased 18 percent from 131, 000 hectares to 154, 000, according to Ivanov’s estimates. “Afghan heroin has killed more than one million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales,” said Ivanov according to Counter Current News.   Prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, opium production was banned by the Taliban, although it still managed to exist. The U.S. and its allies have been accused of encouraging and aiding in the opium production and the ongoing drug trafficking within the region. Ivanov claimed that only around 1 percent of the total opium yield in Afghanistan was destroyed and that the “international community has failed to curb heroin production in Afghanistan since the start of NATO’s operation.”
  • Afghanistan is thought to produce more than 90 percent of the world’s supply of opium, which is then used to make heroin and other dangerous drugs that are shipped in large quantities all over the world. Opium production provides many Afghan communities with an income, in an otherwise impoverished and war-torn country. The opium trade contributed around $US 2.3 billion or around 19 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP in 2009 according to the U.N.
  • The Islamic State Group is reported to have recently taken over opium production and trafficking. In November, the extremist group was estimated to be earning over $US 1 billion from the opium trade. Profits also go to international drug cartels and money-laundering banks.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 16
     
    Since early in the Viet Nam War, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has dominated the production and smuggling of opium. After the Viet Nam War, that operation was largely transferred from Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle" to Afghanistan, with primary shipment initially through Pakistan. That production center was threatened when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in 1996, as the Taliban began shutting down the growing of opium poppies in that nation. So it was no surprise that Afghan production of opium skyrocketed after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Indeed, there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that al-Qaeda was blamed for the 9-11 attack precisely to justify invasion of Afghanistan to block the Taliban's interference with the CIA's production of opium. Opium, like cocaine production in South America, provides enormous amounts of off-the-books financing for CIA covert activities. For such reasons, there are strong reasons to suspect that ISIL would not be taking over opium production in Afghanistan without the CIA's acquiescence and participation. (For example, ISIL would need to use the CIA's shipment and marketing capabilities in Pakistan to bring their product to market. So I regard ISIL's rise in opium production as further evidence that the CIA and ISIL are joined at the hip, that ISIL is a CIA operation.
Paul Merrell

Hamid Karzai International Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...d_Karzai_International_Airport

war & peace Afghanistan Kabul Airport Dubai air-routes

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Hamid Karzai International Airport (Persian: میدان هوائی بین المللی حامدکرزی‎‎, Pashto: د حامدکرزی نړيوال هوائي ډګر‎, IATA: KBL, ICAO: OAKB), also known as Kabul International Airport (real name Kabul Khwaja Rawash International Airport), is located 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) from the city center of Kabul in Afghanistan. It serves as one of the nation's main international airports and as one of the largest military bases, capable of housing over one hundred aircraft. It was given the new name in October 2014 in honor of former President Hamid Karzai. The decision was made by the National Assembly of Afghanistan and the Cabinet of President Ashraf Ghani.[2] The airport has been expanded and modernized in the last decade. A new international terminal (which has free wi-fi) was added and the older terminal is now used for domestic flights. A number of military bases were also built around the airport, which are used by the United States Armed Forces and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The military of Afghanistan also has a base there, while the Afghan National Police provide security inside the passenger terminals. As of March 2015 the most frequently serviced destination from the airport was Dubai-International with no less than five passenger airlines flying the route, some with multiple daily flights.
  • Hamid Karzai International Airport (Persian: میدان هوائی بین المللی حامدکرزی‎‎, Pashto: د حامدکرزی نړيوال هوائي ډګر‎, IATA: KBL, ICAO: OAKB), also known as Kabul International Airport (real name Kabul Khwaja Rawash International Airport), is located 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) from the city center of Kabul in Afghanistan. It serves as one of the nation's main international airports and as one of the largest military bases, capable of housing over one hundred aircraft. It was given the new name in October 2014 in honor of former President Hamid Karzai. The decision was made by the National Assembly of Afghanistan and the Cabinet of President Ashraf Ghani.[2] The airport has been expanded and modernized in the last decade. A new international terminal (which has free wi-fi) was added and the older terminal is now used for domestic flights. A number of military bases were also built around the airport, which are used by the United States Armed Forces and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The military of Afghanistan also has a base there, while the Afghan National Police provide security inside the passenger terminals. As of March 2015 the most frequently serviced destination from the airport was Dubai-International with no less than five passenger airlines flying the route, some with multiple daily flights.
  • 3 Airlines and destinations 3.1 Passenger 3.2 Cargo
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15
     
    Interesting factoid to remember: "As of March 2015 the most frequently serviced destination from the airport was Dubai-International with no less than five passenger airlines flying the route, some with multiple daily flights." Also two cargo routes, according to the fine print. Dubai is the largest city in United Arab Emirates. Any reason that route should get flown so much other than Dubai being a travel hub?
Paul Merrell

The Handover - An FP Slideshow | Foreign Policy - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...an_soldiers_war_in_afghanistan

war & peace Afghanistan Taliban U.S. negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Tuesday marked a milestone for the 12-year-old war in Afghanistan, with NATO forces officially handing over responsibility for the country's security to Afghan government forces. Since 2010, when President Barack Obama accelerated training as part of his rapid surge of forces into the country, the Afghan National Army has grown from around 100,000 members to 195,000. But it still faces a number of challenges, including a desertion rate so high that it needs 50,000 new recruits every year to replace those who leave). In December 2012, a Pentagon report determined that only one of the Afghan military's 23 brigades was able to operate effectively without NATO support. Now, Afghan troops will have to do just that; except in rare cases, they will no longer be able to rely on the support of U.S. warplanes, medical evacuation helicopters, or ground troops.
  • Tuesday marked a milestone for the 12-year-old war in Afghanistan, with NATO forces officially handing over responsibility for the country's security to Afghan government forces. Since 2010, when President Barack Obama accelerated training as part of his rapid surge of forces into the country, the Afghan National Army has grown from around 100,000 members to 195,000. But it still faces a number of challenges, including a desertion rate so high that it needs 50,000 new recruits every year to replace those who leave). In December 2012, a Pentagon report determined that only one of the Afghan military's 23 brigades was able to operate effectively without NATO support. Now, Afghan troops will have to do just that; except in rare cases, they will no longer be able to rely on the support of U.S. warplanes, medical evacuation helicopters, or ground troops. Here's a look back at the long preparation for this week's big handover. An Afghan National Army soldier assigned to the Mobile Strike Force Kandak fires an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher during a live-fire exercise supervised by Marines Team on Camp Shorabak, Helmand province, Afghanistan on May 20, 2013.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 13
     
    Here in one paragraph are a lot of the reasons two of Obama's claims about U.S. plans in Afghanistan cannot both be true: [i] all U.S. -and NATO combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014; and [ii] a fairly large contingent of U.S. non-combat troops will remain on U.S. bases in Afghanistan to advise, train, and support the Karzai government's defense forces.  1. The "surge" didn't work even though Obama sent more troops than the military had requested. Even at the peak of U.S. forces in that country, the U.S. military had been beaten back into enclaves by the Taliban. Nonetheless, Obama has  continued to draw down U.S. forces there. NATO allies have been pulling up their tent pegs too. 2. The Afghan government forces are utterly incapable of holding out against the Taliban without strong NATO backing that Obama says is ending. 3. Therefore, a small non-combatant U.S. force left behind after 2014 would be virtually defenseless if left behind. There seems to be no question that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is winding down steadily. And Obama isn't dumb enough to have a few thousand U.S. troops stay behind to be slaughtered. So his "stay behind" claims are a bluff. The Taliban can read those tea leaves at least as well as I can. This is Vietnam War Redux, also a repeat of the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. Obama has no credible stick to wield in negotiations with the Taliban. Therefore, the negotiations are either a sham or Obama has to offer the Taliban a carrot of suitable size. The Taliban has no incentive to participate in a sham; they've won their war and the U.S. departure is imminent. Therefore, we need consider what carrot Obama might offer the Taliban. A better royalty agreement on the sidetracked Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline that would supply India with natural gas? .  That doesn't seem enough.  But a consortium of western investors willing to pay royalties t
Paul Merrell

The US's Vicious Colonial War - LewRockwell.com - 0 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...the-uss-vicious-colonial-war

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Afghanistan war-on-drugs™

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The last British soldiers were airlifted out of Afghanistan last week, marking the sorry end of Britain’s fourth failed invasion of Afghanistan. With them went the last detachment of US Marines in Helmand. Well has Afghanistan earned its title, “Graveyard of Empires.” To be more precise, this honor belongs to Afghanistan’s Pashtun (or Pathan) mountain tribes, who bend their knees for no man and take pride in war.
  • The US garrison in Kabul will continue to make Afghanistan safe for opium, which is the base for heroin. Americans have simply turned a blind eye to their ownership if the world’s top producer of heroin. As Washington orates about the so-called War on Drugs, Afghan opium production rose in 2013 from $2 billion to $3 billion. The UN says over 500,000 acres of land in Afghanistan are now devoted to the opium poppy – right under the eyes of the US garrison. While US-installed rulers in Kabul pay lip service to opium eradication, the rural warlords who support them, and receive stipends from CIA, continue to grow rich on the opium trade. Trying to blame Taliban for the scourge of opium is dishonest: when Taliban was in power it eradicated almost all of the nation’s opium production, reported he UN Drug Agency, except in the region controlled by the Communist Northern Alliance – which today shares power in Kabul. When the full history of the Afghan war is finally written, CIA’s involvement in that nation’s drug trade will become a notorious episode. French intelligence became deeply involved in the Laotian opium trade to pay its Lao mercenaries. The US was up to its ears with its Contra allies in the Central American cocaine trade.
  • Any native “disturbance” would be bombed and strafed by the RAF. In the 1920’s, Winston Churchill authorized RAF to use poison gas bombs against restive Pashtun and Kurdish tribesmen. Ironically, seven decades later I discovered British scientists who had been sent by HM government to Iraq to build germ weapons for Saddam Hussein to use against Iran. Similarly, the “Pax Americana” will be enforced by US airpower based at Bagram. US warplanes flying from Bagram, Qatar, and aircraft carriers on 24 hour call have been the only force keeping the Pashtun movement Taliban at bay. Without intense employment of US air power, western occupation forces, like the Imperial British armies before them, would have been driven from Afghanistan. Without US air power, garrison troops and large numbers of “civilian contractors” and old-fashioned mercenaries the Kabul puppet regime would soon be swept away. Afghanistan’s government army is likely to collapse as quickly as Iraq’s did before ISIS. Most of southern Afghanistan would declare for Taliban which, however harsh, is the nation’s only authentic political movement apart from the Tajik and Uzbek Communists in the north.
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  • The old imperialists are gone, but the occupation of Afghanistan continues. The new regime in Kabul just installed by Washington to replace uncooperative former ally Hamid Karzai, rushed to sign an “agreement” allowing the United States to keep some 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for years. This garrison will be exempt from all Afghan laws. However, there’s much more to this arrangement. The US combat troops, tactfully labeled “trainers” or “counter-terrorist forces,” are too few in number to dominate all Afghanistan. Their task is to defend Kabul’s sock puppet government from its own people and to defend the all-important US Bagram airbase. Washington clearly plans to continue ruling Afghanistan and Iraq the same way that the British Empire did. Small numbers of British troops garrisoned the capital; white officers led the native mercenary army. But Britain’s real power was exercised by RAF units based in Iraq and Northwest Frontier Province.
  • Now, US intelligence has besmirched its name once again aiding and abetting Afghan drug lords so as to supposedly wage war on “terrorists.” In dirt-poor Afghanistan, there are only two sources of income: money from Washington, and from narcotics. The collusion of senior members of government, military and police is necessary to export tons of opium to either Pakistan, Central Asia or Russia – where morphine addiction is now a major epidemic. Adding to this shameful record, the US Congressional auditor for Special Reconstruction of Afghanistan just reported that much of the $104 billion appropriated for Afghan “reconstruction” has to no surprise been wasted or stolen. Some of it has been used to irrigate opium poppy fields. Spare parts are unavailable for Russian helicopters bought by the US for use in battling Taliban and supposed opium fighting. Why? Because the US-imposed trade sanctions on Russia bars the US from buying the spare part. Catch-22.
  • By now, the longest war in US history has cost some $1 trillion, maybe more. No one can properly account for the billions and billions of US dollars flown into Afghanistan and Iraq and dished out to the natives – or the numbers of Afghans killed. For Washington’s allies, like Canada and Britain, the war has been a total waste of lives and treasure. For Canada, 158 dead for nothing; for Britain 453. Forget all the phony claims about “mission” and “nation building.” This has been yet another dirty little colonial war that is better forgotten – and never repeated. So this war will simmer on, at least until Washington finds some face-saving way out of the mess in the Hindu Kush. If the US was wise, it would simply quit Afghanistan. But power, like opium, is highly addictive. So America’s longest war will drag on and on.
Paul Merrell

Endless Afghanistan? US-Afghan agreement would keep troops in place and funds flowing, ... - 0 views

worldnews.nbcnews.com/...s-flowing-perhaps-indefinitely

war & peace Afghanistan U.S.-Afghan-Agreement perpetual-war

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • While many Americans have been led to believe the war in Afghanistan will soon be over, a draft of a key U.S.-Afghan security deal obtained by NBC News shows the United States is prepared to maintain military outposts in Afghanistan for many years to come, and pay to support hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces.The wide-ranging document, still unsigned by the United States and Afghanistan, has the potential to commit thousands of American troops to Afghanistan and spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.The document outlines what appears to be the start of a new, open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan in the name of training and continuing to fight al-Qaeda. The war in Afghanistan doesn’t seem to be ending, but renewed under new, scaled-down U.S.-Afghan terms. Advertise | AdChoices “The Parties acknowledge that continued U.S. military operations to defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates may be appropriate and agree to continue their close cooperation and coordination toward that end,” the draft states.
  • The 25-page “Security and Defense Cooperation Agreement Between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” is a sweeping document, vague in places, highly specific in others, defining everything from the types of future missions U.S. troops would be allowed to conduct in Afghanistan, to the use of radios and the taxation of American soldiers and contractors.The bilateral security agreement will be debated this week in Kabul by around 2,500 village elders, academics and officials in a traditional Loya Jirga. While the Loya Jirga is strictly consultative, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he won’t sign it without the Jirga’s approval.
  • The copy of the draft -- the full text is available here --  is dated July 25, 2013. As a working draft, it is particularly revealing because it shows the back and forth negotiations, as U.S. and Afghan officials added words and struck out paragraphs. The changes are marked by annotations still revealed in the text. The document is a work in progress. US officials say there have been more changes since July. The draft, however, does indicate the scope of this possible agreement with major implications for Washington, Kabul, U.S. troops and the continuation of America’s longest war.Taken as a whole, the document describes a basic U.S.-Afghan exchange. Afghanistan would allow Washington to operate military bases to train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda after the current mission ends in 2014. For that foothold in this volatile mountain region wedged between Pakistan and Iran, the United States would agree to sustain and equip Afghanistan's large security force, which the government in Kabul currently cannot afford. The deal, according to the text, would take effect on Jan. 1, 2015 and “shall remain in force until the end of 2024 and beyond.” It could be terminated by either Washington or Kabul with two years advance written notice.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • There is however what U.S. officials believe is a contradiction in the July draft, which would effectively ask American troops to provide training and confront al-Qaeda from the confines of bases. While it says operations against al-Qaeda may be necessary, it also says US troops will not be allowed to make arrests or enter Afghan homes. Advertise | AdChoices “No detention or arrest shall be carried out by the United States forces. The United States forces shall not search any homes or other real estate properties,” it says.“[The contradiction] was a matter of serious consternation at the highest levels” of the Obama administration over the weekend, according to one senior defense official. “It is the one remaining issue that could ultimately kill the deal." However, US officials believe that in a more recent draft, which was circulated among key Pentagon officials and US lawmakers on Monday, the US has won its position on this point.The document doesn’t specifically say how many U.S. and NATO troops would remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Afghan officials tell NBC News they hope it will be 10 to 15 thousand. U.S. officials tell NBC News the number is closer to seven to eight thousand, with an additional contribution from NATO. Factoring in troop rotations, home leave, and breaks between deployments, the service of tens of thousands of American troops would be required to maintain a force of seven to eight thousand for a decade or longer. The anticipated costs would likely run into the billions quickly.
  • Afghan officials tell NBC NEWS the agreement is critical to Afghanistan’s future stability. Without ongoing military assistance, training and funding, those officials say the government could collapse and Afghanistan would enter a civil war. If the agreement passes, the draft says Washington would commit to a long -term, indefinite military involvement in this land-locked Asian nation.A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council did not comment on the draft version of the agreement, but said that "the President is still reviewing options from his national security team and has not made a decision about a possible U.S. presence after 2014."The agreement circulating this week is unlikely to be the last. It first must pass through the Loya Jirga, then go onto parliament for final approval. “We’re looking at 60-days or more” before the US and Afghanistan sign any agreement, defense officials said. Here are highlights of the July draft of the bi-lateral agreement:
Paul Merrell

MoD admits campaign in Afghanistan is 'an unwinnable war' - UK Politics - UK - The Inde... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...an-unwinnable-war-8535291.html

Afghanistan war & peace lessons learned

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are part of a campaign that attempted to “impose an ideology foreign to the Afghan people” and was “unwinnable in military terms”, according to a damning report by the Ministry of Defence. The internal study says that Nato forces have been unable to “establish control over the insurgents’ safe havens” or “protect the rural population”, and warns the “conditions do not exist” to guarantee the survival of the Afghan government after combat troops withdraw next year.
  • The report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says that when troops leave, Afghanistan “will be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base”, which means that the West will have to continue to fund “large-scale support programmes” for many years to come.
  • The report, Lessons from the Soviet Transition in Afghanistan, is an internal research project produced in November last year by the MoD’s think-tank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC). Based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, the DCDC’s reports “help inform decisions in defence strategy, capability development and operations” across all three branches of the armed forces.The study examines the “extraordinary number of similar factors that surround both the Soviet and Nato campaigns in Afghanistan” and highlights lessons that military commanders could learn.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 13
     
    The UK military finally figures out that there will be no victory in Afghanistan. They've got back as far as looking for parallels between the NATO and Soviet invasions of Afghanistan; maybe someday they'll look as far back as Alexander the Great, who said of Afghanistan that it "is easy to march into but hard to march out of."
Paul Merrell

Statement by the President on Afghanistan | whitehouse.gov - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...tatement-president-afghanistan

war & peace Afghanistan American-Foreign-Policy Obama broken-campaign-promises

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  • THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning.  Last December -- more than 13 years after our nation was attacked by al Qaeda on 9/11 -- America’s combat mission in Afghanistan came to a responsible end.  That milestone was achieved thanks to the courage and the skill of our military, our intelligence, and civilian personnel.  They served there with extraordinary skill and valor, and it’s worth remembering especially the more than 2,200 American patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan.
  • Following consultations with my entire national security team, as well as our international partners and members of Congress, President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah, I’m therefore announcing the following steps, which I am convinced offer the best possibility for lasting progress in Afghanistan. First, I’ve decided to maintain our current posture of 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through most of next year, 2016.  Their mission will not change.  Our troops will continue to pursue those two narrow tasks that I outlined earlier -- training Afghan forces and going after al Qaeda.  But maintaining our current posture through most of next year, rather than a more rapid drawdown, will allow us to sustain our efforts to train and assist Afghan forces as they grow stronger -- not only during this fighting season, but into the next one. Second, I have decided that instead of going down to a normal embassy presence in Kabul by the end of 2016, we will maintain 5,500 troops at a small number of bases, including at Bagram, Jalalabad in the east, and Kandahar in the south.  
  • Third, we will work with allies and partners to align the steps I am announcing today with their own presence in Afghanistan after 2016.  In Afghanistan, we are part of a 42-nation coalition, and our NATO allies and partners can continue to play an indispensable role in helping Afghanistan strengthen its security forces, including respect for human rights.    And finally, because governance and development remain the foundation for stability and progress in Afghanistan, we will continue to support President Ghani and the national unity government as they pursue critical reforms.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 15
     
    Political cowardice by the U.S. Psychopath in Chief who lacks the military discipline to order a retreat when a battle cannot be won. Better that our troops and Afghans continue to die and be maimed than to let it be said that Mr. Obama lost the war in Afghanistan. So he kicks the can down the road to the next President.
Paul Merrell

Are we losing Afghanistan again? | The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...e-losing-afghanistan-again.php

war & peace Afghanistan U.S.-foreign-policy boots-on-the-ground Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Since early September, the Taliban have swept through Afghanistan’s north, seizing numerous districts and even, briefly, the provincial capital Kunduz. The United Nations has determined that the Taliban threat to approximately half of the country’s 398 districts is either “high” or “extreme.” Indeed, by our count, more than 30 districts are already under Taliban control. And the insurgents are currently threatening provincial capitals in both northern and southern Afghanistan. Confronted with this grim reality, President Obama has decided to keep 9,800 American troops in the country through much of 2016 and 5,500 thereafter. The president was right to change course, but it is difficult to see how much of a difference this small force can make. The United States troops currently in Afghanistan have not been able to thwart the Taliban’s advance. They were able to help push them out of Kunduz, but only after the Taliban’s two-week reign of terror. This suggests that additional troops are needed, not fewer. When justifying his decision last week, the president explained that American troops would “remain engaged in two narrow but critical missions — training Afghan forces, and supporting counterterrorism operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.” He added, “We’ve always known that we had to maintain a counterterrorism operation in that region in order to tamp down any re-emergence of active Al Qaeda networks.” But the president has not explained the full scope of what is at stake. Al Qaeda has already re-emerged. Just two days before the president’s statement, the military announced that it led raids against two Qaeda training camps in the south, one of which was an astonishing 30 square miles in size. The operation lasted several days, and involved 63 airstrikes and more than 200 ground troops, including both Americans and Afghan commandos.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15
     
    From the hawk view. What's really at play here is Obama's unwillingness to be in office when the Taliban (unavoidably) take over Afghanistan as the U.S. departs. So he is kicking the can down the road to the next President. The right questions to ask are: [i] whether the U.S. can win the war in Afghanistan; and [ii] if so, at what cost? That war is unwinnable, as every invader of Afghanistan has learned from Alexander the Great to the present date. The U.S. has no track record of winnng anywhere against insurgent forces during my lifetime. "Winning" in Afghanistan was and still is Mission Impossible for the U.S. military.    Obama's poltiical cowardice means that untold thousands of more people will be maimed and killed. Just to placate our chicken hawk politicans and think tankers. 
Paul Merrell

Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide - 0 views

sites.google.com/...afghanholocaustafghangenocide

war & peace Afghanistan csualties stats genocide holocaust Iraq Palestine

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • This site is dedicated to informing people about the ongoing, US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide that as of 2012 is associated with post-2001 violent and non-violent avoidable deaths totalling 7.2  million and Afghan and Pashtun refugees totalling 5-6 million – an Afghan Holocaust ( a huge number of deaths) and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) which states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”Also utterly ignored by Neocon American and Zionist  Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western Mainstream media are the 1.2 million people who have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007, the breakdown (as of 2015)  including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Australians and 500 French.
  • As of January 2014  deaths from the Afghanistan War include approximately 7 million violent and non-violent excess deaths of Indigenous Afghans since 2001 and 3,417 US Alliance deaths (see: http://icasualties.org/oif/ ).As of January  2014 it is estimated from the latest UN Population Division data that in Occupied Afghanistan post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 5.5 million.  Assuming expert US-Australian advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War where the ratio of violent deaths to non-violent avoidable deaths was 1.5 million/1.2million = 1.25, then post-invasion violent deaths in Afghanistan can be estimated at 1.25 x 5.5 million/4 = 1.7 million. Post-invasion violent and non-violent avoidable deaths total 5.5 million plus 1.7 million = 7.2 million; and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 3.0 million (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violence of the Geneva Convention – Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War demand that an Occupier must supply life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” (see: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y4gcpcp.htm ) but according to the WHO (see: http://www.who.int/countries/en/ ) the “total annual expenditure on health per capita” permitted in Occupied Afghanistan is $50 as compared to $8,608 in Occupier US, $3,322 in Occupier UK, $4.086 in Occupier France, $4,371 in Occupier Germany  and $3,692  in Occupier racist, white Apartheid Australia).  
  • There are 3-4 million Afghan refugees plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated in NW Pakistan by the obscene war policies of war criminal Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Obama – this carnage involving 4.5 million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess Afghan deaths constitutes an Afghan Holocaust and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
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  • As of January 2014  2009 it was estimated from the latest UN Population Division data that in Occupied Afghanistan post-invasion non-violent excess deaths totalled 5.5 million and post-invasion violent deaths totalled 1.7 million (this based on assuming expert US-Australian advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War).
  • The US Alliance restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007 (see UNODC World Drug Report 2007: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html and World Drug Report 2009: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html   and World Drug Report , Opium/heroin market, 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_Opium_Heroin_Market.pdf ).
  • About 0.1 million people die from opiate drug-related causes each year (see Australian National Drug Research Centre: http://db.ndri.curtin.edu.au/media.asp?mediarelid=40 ; UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Addiction, crime and insurgency. The transnational threat of Afghan opium”, 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Afghanistan/Afghan_Opium_Trade_2009_web.pdf ) and hence about 0.8 million have died since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, of whom about 90%, i.e. 0.9 x 0.8 million = 0.7 million people, have died as a result of the huge expansion of the Afghan opium industry under US Alliance occupation. In 2005 in the US, of 18,347 deaths due to narcotics and psychodysleptics, 12, 262 were due to heroin (2,011), other opioids (5,789) or methadone (4,462) (see Health E-stat, “Increases in poisoning and methadone-related deaths: United States,1999-2005 “: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/poisoning/poisoning.pdf  ) . Given the over 90% contribution of the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed opium industry to world illicit heroin production, and the interconnectedness and effective indistinguishability of "Afghan-derived heroin" from the "pool" of other abusively-used opiates, one can accordingly crudely estimate 0.9 x 12,262 persons/year x 8 years = 88,286 US opiate drug-related deaths (0.9 x 2,011 deaths/year x 8 years = 14,479 heroin-related deaths) connected with the aftermath of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
  • Global deaths from violent priorities and ignoring Developing World poverty. Professor John Holdren (Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Director of the Woods Hole Research Center;  recent Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) identified nuclear weapons, poverty and global warming as the three biggest threats facing Humanity (see: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0216am_holdren_address.shtml ). The US military budget is now about $1 trillion per annum (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States ) and 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate and former World Bank Chief Economist, Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) has estimated that the accrual cost (long-term committed cost as opposed to the shirt-term budgeted cost) of the Iraq War is about $3 trillion (see: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2236161.htm and “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by Joseph Stiglitz). In 2009, funds for war had been equally distributed between Iraq and Afghanistan, which each received $700 million. But in 2010, the bulk of the funds - $1.2 billion dollars will go to Afghanistan (see: http://www.defencetalk.com/afghan-war-costs-to-overtake-iraq-in-2010-pentagon-18679/ ). The budgeted cost from Congress of the Afghan War is estimated to have been $38 billion (see: http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=16570
  • Poverty results in the deaths of 16 million people annually (including 9.5 million under-5 year old infants) from deprivation and deprivation exacerbated disease (2003 data; see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). yet high female literacy, good governance, good primary health care and a modest increase in economic security could abolish this global avoidable mortality holocaust. It is estimated that the simple expedient of increasing the per capita of all countries to about $1000 would cost only $1.4 trillion, roughly the annual global “defence” budget and about 2.65 of global GNP (2003) ( p169,  Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”). Global deaths from worsening climate genocide. Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming – noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims, 2 billion Indians, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see “Climate Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
  • US Alliance war policies in a swathe of countries from Occupied Haiti to Occupied Afghanistan and NW Pakistan, coupled with similarly greedy and  racist US Alliance global warming policies, oppose and prevent global equity and will ultimately kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 16
     
    Nauseating statistics. Site also has stats for Palestine and Iraq.
Paul Merrell

Trump unveils new US policy for Afghanistan - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 1 views

nsnbc.me/85699

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Afghanistan Trump

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  • After years of deriding the U.S. war in Afghanistan as “complete waste”, U.S. President Donald Trump trumped his previous position and election promises on Monday, when he said he now believes it is in the United States’ interest to remain committed to Afghanistan. 
  • In an evening address from a military base outside Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his administrations new policy without unveiling many details of it. Trump said his policy was base on a “condition-based” approach to defeating terrorism in the country and said the United States will no longer use its military to construct democracies or rebuild other countries in its own image. His goal, he said, is to stop the re-emergence of safe havens for terrorists to threaten America and make sure they do not get their hands on nuclear weapons. “We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities,” Trump told about 2,000 service members at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. “Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.” Trump has reportedly approved up to 4,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Currently, there are about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Most are advising Afghan forces, though some are tasked with carrying out counterterrorism operations against groups such as the Taliban or the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate. That number is down significantly from the height of former President Barack Obama’s troop surge, which saw nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in August 2010. However, there has also been a significant resurgence of the Taliban and ISIS has entered the Afghan theater since.
  • Following Trump’s speech, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released a statement saying: “We stand ready to support peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban without preconditions. We look to the international community, particularly Afghanistan’s neighbors, to join us in supporting an Afghan peace process.” Trump, in his address, put Pakistan on notice. “We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists they are fighting. But that will have to change and that will change immediately,” Trump said. Many perceived Trumps statement to “not allowing terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons” as a reference to Pakistan as well. The conflict in Afghanistan, a country with a factionalized unity government, with former war lords holding key government positions, and riddled with systemic corruption,  has dragged on for 16 years. It is becoming the longest U.S. war ever, since the September 11, 2001 “incidents” in the United States. It is worth noting that a growing number of U.S. Americans no longer believe in the “official narrative” about the events on 9/11 and would like to see an independent investigation. Expressing frustration Trump informed Afghanistan that the commitment by the United States is not unlimited and America’s support not a blank check. The American people, he warned, expect “to see real reforms and real results.” Trump’s policy announcement follows a months long review. However, there are many Afghan politicians including former President Hamid Karzai who are opposed to an increase in troops and who call for a political settlement instead.
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  • U.S. generals advised Trump to send several thousand more troops to break the stalemate and retake territory from the Taliban, which controls nearly half the country. Trump was reluctant to commit more troops to Afghanistan – not because of a willingness to facilitate peace with the Taliban, but because of his America first policy. Trump’s decision to trump his previous “the war is a complete waste” policy may have come after Generals and advisers explained the geopolitical value of Afghanistan – and maybe equally importantly – the value of Afghan minerals and other resources. Afghanistan holds one of the world’s largest lithium resources, among others, and Beijing would love to control as many of them as possible.
Paul Merrell

Afghanistan Exit Is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...as-peril-to-drone-mission.html

war & peace Afghanistan drone attacks Pakistan Karzai Obama negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The risk that President Obama may be forced to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year has set off concerns inside the American intelligence agencies that they could lose their air bases used for drone strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and for responding to a nuclear crisis in the region. Until now, the debate here and in Kabul about the size and duration of an American-led allied force in Afghanistan after 2014 had focused on that country’s long-term security. But these new concerns also reflect how troop levels in Afghanistan directly affect long-term American security interests in neighboring Pakistan, according to administration, military and intelligence officials.
  • The concern has become serious enough that the Obama administration has organized a team of intelligence, military and policy specialists to devise alternatives to mitigate the damage if a final security deal cannot be struck with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has declined to enact an agreement that American officials thought was completed last year. If Mr. Obama ultimately withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, the C.I.A.’s drone bases in the country would have to be closed, according to administration officials, because it could no longer be protected. Their concern is that the nearest alternative bases are too far away for drones to reach the mountainous territory in Pakistan where the remnants of Al Qaeda’s central command are hiding. Those bases would also be too distant to monitor and respond as quickly as American forces can today if there were a crisis in the region, such as missing nuclear material or weapons in Pakistan and India.
  • Their base inside Pakistan was closed after a shooting involving a C.I.A. security contractor, Raymond Davis, and the raid into Pakistani territory that killed Osama bin Laden, both in 2011. Crucial to the surveillance of Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad was the use of an RQ-170 drone. Pakistani officials talked openly in the weeks after that raid about their fear that the unmanned aircraft was also being used to monitor their nuclear arsenal, now believed to be the fastest growing in the world. The raid, and those drones, came out of American facilities just over the Afghan border.
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  • The C.I.A.’s drone bases in Afghanistan, including one in the eastern part of the country, allow operators to respond quickly to fresh intelligence. The proximity to Pakistan’s tribal areas also allows the Predator drones and their larger, faster cousin, the Reaper, to fly longer missions without having to return to base.
  • The Reapers, the newest, largest and most capable of the unmanned armed vehicles, have a range of up to 1,100 miles. That puts Pakistan’s tribal areas within range of some bases the American military has flown from, especially in Kyrgyzstan, where for more than a decade the Pentagon has conducted air operations, include cargo and troop flights, out of a base at Manas. But the United States said last fall that it would pull out of that base in July. Other allied countries are within the Reaper’s range — in the Persian Gulf, for example. But the distances would be too great to carry out drone operations effectively, officials said, and it is very unlikely that any of those nations would approve launching the diplomatically sensitive strikes missions from their soil.“There’s no easy alternative to Afghanistan,” one former senior American counterterrorism official said.
Paul Merrell

Obama Knew Arming Rebels Was Useless, But Did It Anyway - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...w-arming-rebels-useless-anyway

war & peace ISIL Obama political-cowardice

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • What’s worse: Launching a disastrous military campaign under false pretenses to achieve goals you wrongly believe are attainable? Or launching a disastrous military campaign you know is doomed in order to help your party win an election? I ask in light of today’s New York Times story about how President Obama asked the CIA a while back whether arming rebel forces – pretty much the agency’s signature strategy — had ever worked in the past. He was told that it almost never has. But then in June, once the political pressure for intervention in Syria got too great, he did just that — sending weapons to rebels fighting the Syrian military. Yes: He knew better, but he did it anyway.
  • Obama’s biggest such decision killed a lot of American servicemembers who he sent to fight and die in Afghanistan. During his 2008 presidential campaign, which was marked by his opposition to the war in Iraq, then-Senator Obama’s vow to re-engage in Afghanistan was seen by many as a ploy to avoid being cast as a dove, first by Hillary Clinton and then by John McCain. What’s not clear to this day is precisely when Obama knew better; when he realized that the war in Afghanistan was hopeless. By inauguration time, that conclusion seemed fairly obvious to many foreign-policy watchers. So why not him?
  • But one month into his presidency, Obama announced he was sending more troops there – 30,000, as it would turn out. Despite the obvious lack of what he himself had frequently described as a must — an exit strategy – he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan by 50 percent. And the monthly death tolls shot up. Over 1,600 American servicemembers  have died in Afghanistan since the summer of 2009 — well over half of all the dead during the entire war – along with countless Afghans. There were public signs in November 2009 that Obama was “rethinking” his plan. David Sanger, in his book Confront and Conceal, wrote that Obama actually began a “reassessment of whether the war was as necessary as he first believed” even earlier, in the summer of 2009. (At an off-the-record June 2009 dinner with historians the “main point” his guests tried to make was “that pursuit of war in Afghanistan would be for him what Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson,” Garry Wills wrote  later.)
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  • And according to Sanger’s murky sources, the recognition that things were hopeless came at the latest by June 2011. But it wasn’t for three more long years —  until this May — that Obama finally announced U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. Which brings us to the question I raised at the top. George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq sent vastly more people to their deaths than anything Obama did – nearly 5,000 U.S. servicemembers, plus over 100,000 Iraqi civilians – and left as many as half a million U.S. servicemembers wounded or otherwise permanently damaged
  • (Obama’s latest doomed-to-fail show of force explicitly keeps U.S. servicemembers out of harm’s way. ) But Bush at least thought the war in Iraq would do some good. He was incredibly wrong, mind you. He was both delusional — and actively manipulated by neocons like Dick Cheney (who believe the application of American power is always and inherently a good thing). He intentionally misled the public about his real reasons for going to war (the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were an excuse, not a reason; there were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction). His eventual goal was both unachievable (a sudden flowering of pro-Western democracy in the Middle East) and perverse (American control of Iraqi oil fields). His methods (firing all the Baathists; trying to install a corrupt puppet) were spectacularly misguided. Much of the rest of his presidency was consumed with sectarian warfare in Iraq and new lies to  cover up the old ones at home. And the end result was a massive human rights catastrophe, including torture of U.S. detainees, a refugee crisis, mass casualties, social disorder and – finally – the Islamic State.
  • Bush also certainly saw – and exploited — the political upside of being a war president. But he didn’t let loose the dogs of war simply because his political operatives told him it would poll well.
Paul Merrell

US Planning to Keep Military Forces in Afghanistan for "Decades" | Global Research - Ce... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5504131

war & peace Obama U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Afghanistan Syria Libya ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The US military plans to maintain a presence of thousands of US forces in Afghanistan for “decades,” unnamed senior US military officials told theWashington Post Tuesday. “The US was supposed to leave Afghanistan by 2017. Now it might take decades,” unnamed US military leaders cited by the Post said. The confirmation of long-term US troop deployments to Afghanistan has been prompted by the instability of the US-backed regime in Kabul, whose tenuous hold over the capital is threatened by insurgent forces including the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS, the US officials said. Current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is a US and NATO stooge imposed through a managed election geared to deflect popular hatred of the previous US- backed ruler, Hamid Karzai. Ghani was described by the US officials as a “willing and reliable partner” who can “provide bases to attack terror groups not just in Afghanistan, but also throughout South Asia for as long as the threat in the chronically unstable region persists.” US officials added, “There’s a broad recognition in the Pentagon that building an effective Afghan Army and police force will take a generation’s commitment, including billions of dollars a year in outside funding.”
  • The US-NATO intervention in Afghanistan will also require “constant support from thousands of foreign advisers on the ground,” the officials said. “We’ve learned that you can’t really leave,” an unnamed Pentagon official said. “You’re going to be there for a very long time.” Unnamed Obama administration officials confirmed the White House’s support for the plans, saying that the US intervention is analogous to that in South Korea, where Washington has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers since the end of the Second World War to cement its domination over the Pacific Rim. The Post report, which amounts to a de facto US government press release, comes amid a broader upsurge of escalatory moves by the US military in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Last week the Obama administration signed orders authorizing the US military to expand its military operations in northeast Afghanistan in the name of targeting the Islamic State. US Department of Defense chief Ashton Carter announced further deployments of US ground forces to Iraq, pledging to put “boots on the ground.” US Vice President Joseph Biden declared that Washington is prepared to seek a “military solution” in Syria. On Friday, US General Joseph F. Dunford said that the US is on the verge of launching “decisive military action” in Libya, in coordination with a NATO coalition.
  • Dunford’s statements have signaled “the opening of a third front in the war against the Islamic State,” according to a New York Times editorial Tuesday. The new US war in Libya “could easily spread to other countries on the continent,” the Times admitted, before calling for the US Congress to pass a new authorization to use military force. With the US and European powers engaged in a competitive scramble over the redivision of the world, the announcement that US forces will remain in Afghanistan for untold decades underscores the centrality of the Central Asian region in the strategic calculations of US imperialism. The US ruling class and military establishment seek to utilize Afghanistan as a permanent military outpost for operations throughout South and Central Asia. Washington is determined to project power throughout the entire Eurasian landmass as part of its campaign to destabilize Russia and China and foster conditions more suitable to US control over the world’s decisive economic centers.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Jan 16
     
    To those who voted for Obama as a "peace" candidate: How did that work out for you?
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: New document details America's war machine - and secret mass of contractors ... - 0 views

www.salon.com/..._of_contractors_in_afghanistan

war & peace Afghanistan contractors

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • What is a huge army of private contractors secretly doing in Afghanistan? A leaked PowerPoint presentation explains
  • On Tuesday, following his surprise Memorial Day visit to Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul, President Obama announced that the United States plans to keep at least 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2016, further delaying the end of what he calls “America’s longest war.”But in his remarks at the White House, the president didn’t say that the nearly 10,000 U.S. troops he’s asking to remain in an “advisory role” will be augmented by a huge army of private contractors. As they have in Iraq, contractors will vastly outnumber the U.S. uniformed forces training Afghan troops as well as the special operations forces providing counterterrorism operations against what the president called “the remnants of al-Qaida.”The role of contractors in the Afghanistan war is spelled out in a document obtained by Salon from SAIC, one of the nation’s largest military and intelligence contractors. The document, an unclassified PowerPoint presentation, shows exactly how contractors have been used in that war since 2009, when Obama endorsed a surge of 33,000 troops and a counterinsurgency strategy in the war against the Taliban. Those policies increased the U.S. presence in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 troops.
  • One of the PowerPoint slides defines the four “mission areas” of the company’s five-year, $400 million contract with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, which provides contracted services to other combat commands, special forces and other parts of the U.S. military. They are “Expeditionary Warfare; Irregular Warfare; Special Operations; Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations.”There, in black and white, is proof positive of how deeply contractors have penetrated the U.S. war machine.“We’ve already taken public functions and privatized them,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who was the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the Bush administration, in a recent interview with Salon. “But this is an example of privatizing the ultimate public function, war.”
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  • I passed this exchange by a former high-ranking general who served in Afghanistan and later worked as a U.S. diplomat. “That makes my eyes water,” he said. The companies involved in the ARL contract, he explained, represent “an entirely new set of actors” who have come to prominence during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Under the new plan for Afghanistan, which the president is outlining in a speech Wednesday at West Point, U.S. forces will no longer be involved in direct combat after 2015 with the exception of counterterrorism operations directed against the Taliban and remnants of al-Qaida. Those operations would undoubtedly be led by the U.S. Special Forces Command, which is expected to retain a large presence in Afghanistan long after the last regular troops have left.And, clearly, thousands of contractors.
Paul Merrell

The Impending Failure in Afghanistan | Consortiumnews - 0 views

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war & peace Afghanistan U.S.-foreign-policy military-defeat

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • As U.S. forces withdraw from parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban is making gains in several areas of the country. The Afghan police and army are slowly giving way, despite the United States spending 13 years and tens of billions of dollars training those forces. When the United States completes its withdrawal from ground combat at the end of this year, this unfavorable trend will undoubtedly accelerate — that is, if the Afghan security forces don’t collapse altogether, as did similarly U.S. trained Iraqi forces in that country. Thus, in the longest war in American history, the U.S. military has failed to pacify Afghanistan — as had the mighty British Empire three times in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the Soviet superpower more recently in the 1980s. In fact, an outside force has not pacified Afghanistan since Cyrus the Great of Persia did it in ancient times.
  • Why did the United States have the hubris to think it could succeed in taming Afghanistan, when all of these other strenuous efforts had failed? Because many in the American foreign policy elite, media and citizenry believe in “American exceptionalism.” As propounded by politicians of both parties — for example, Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright in the Democratic Party and people such as John McCain and his sidekick Lindsay Graham in the Republican Party — America is the “indispensable nation” to a world that cannot do without its solving most major problems using military power. Yet despite the current public fawning over military personnel and veterans of American wars, the U.S. military has been fairly incompetent in most major engagements since World War II that required significant ground forces — with only Desert Storm in 1991 being an unvarnished success in recent years. The U.S. armed forces are probably more powerful than any other military in world history, both absolutely and relative to other countries, yet their battlefield performance has not been that great, especially against irregular guerrilla forces in the developing world.
  • But what exactly went wrong in Afghanistan? As in Vietnam and Iraq, the U.S. military has not been fighting conventional armies, such as Iraqi forces during Desert Storm, which it is best at. Instead, in all three places, it was conducting what amounts to military social work. U.S. armed forces are fighting guerrillas that melt back into an all-important supportive indigenous civilian population. In Vietnam, initially, U.S. forces used excessive firepower, which alienated civilians; in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military, forgetting the lessons of Vietnam, did the same thing. But American citizens ask, “Aren’t our forces more benevolent than the brutal Taliban? Why does the Taliban still get so much support in Afghanistan?” The answer: because they are Afghans. As my book, The Failure of Counterinsurgency: Why Hearts and Minds Are Seldom Won, notes, when fighting indigenous insurgents, the foreign invader never gets the benefit of the doubt. This central point makes it difficult for great powers to win wars against insurgents, no matter how nice they try to be to the civilian populace. And the U.S. military is usually fairly unfamiliar with the language and culture of distant lands in which they intervene, thus making it difficult to get good information about who is a guerrilla and who is not.
Paul Merrell

Int'l Criminal Court's Examination of U.S. Treatment of Detainees Takes Shape | Just Se... - 0 views

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war & peace Afghanistan U.S.-war-crimes ICC torture

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • On Tuesday, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced, in the most explicit and detailed terms to date, that the U.S. treatment of detainees captured in the Afghanistan conflict is under examination by her office. The statement is included in the Office of the Prosecutor’s (OTP) annual “Report on Preliminary Examination Activities,” released on the eve of the Assembly of States Parties this month.
  • In particular, the OTP is assessing the degree to which national proceedings are underway with respect to the allegations underlying the examination.  Furthermore, an affirmative determination that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation is far from a finding of strong evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the appearance of the latter is surely one issue on the minds of administration officials. David Bosco, for instance, reported that “the U.S. delegation urged the court not to publish the allegations, even in preliminary form. They warned that the world would see any ICC mention of possible American war crimes as evidence of guilt, even if the court never brought a formal case.”
  • Here are the key graphs: “94. The Office has been assessing available information relating to the alleged abuse of detainees by international forces within the temporal jurisdiction of the Court. In particular, the alleged torture or ill-treatment of conflict-related detainees by US armed forces in Afghanistan in the period 2003-2008 forms another potential case identified by the Office. In accordance with the Presidential Directive of 7 February 2002, Taliban detainees were denied the status of prisoner of war under article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention but were required to be treated humanely. In this context, the information available suggests that between May 2003 and June 2004, members of the US military in Afghanistan used so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against conflict-related detainees in an effort to improve the level of actionable intelligence obtained from interrogations. The development and implementation of such techniques is documented inter alia in declassified US Government documents released to the public, including Department of Defense reports as well as the US Senate Armed Services Committee’s inquiry. These reports describe interrogation techniques approved for use as including food deprivation, deprivation of clothing, environmental manipulation, sleep adjustment, use of individual fears, use of stress positions, sensory deprivation (deprivation of light and sound), and sensory overstimulation.
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  • The Prosecutor proceeds in 4 phases within any preliminary examination: (1) an initial assessment to analyze the seriousness of information received; (2) a jurisdictional analysis – the formal commencement of an examination involving “a thorough factual and legal assessment” of whether there is “a reasonable basis to believe that the alleged crimes fall within the subject-matter jurisdiction of the Court;” (3) an admissibility determination – assessing whether the gravity of the crimes or prospect of national investigations and prosecutions preclude the need for the ICC to proceed ; (4) prudential considerations — determining whether an investigation would serve the “interests of justice.” It appears that the examination of U.S. detention operations has reached the third phase and crossed over the important threshold of a finding that there is a reasonable basis to believe U.S. forces committed war crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court. Heller posited that some aspects of the Prosecutor’s Afghanistan examination had already reached this stage in 2013. The 2014 report provides further corroboration specifically with respect to U.S. detention practices. For example, paragraph 96 of the 2014 report states that the Office of the Prosecutor is now “analysing the relevance and genuineness of national proceedings by the competent national authorities for the alleged conduct described above as well as the gravity of the alleged crimes”—clearly a phase three inquiry. That said, paragraph 96 also states that the Office is “continuing to assess the seriousness and reliability of such allegations”—which sounds like phase two and even phase one.
  • 95. Certain of the enhanced interrogation techniques apparently approved by US senior commanders in Afghanistan in the period from February 2003 through June 2004, could, depending on the severity and duration of their use, amount to cruel treatment, torture or outrages upon personal dignity as defined under international jurisprudence. In addition, there is information available that interrogators allegedly committed abuses that were outside the scope of any approved techniques, such as severe beating, especially beating on the soles of the feet, suspension by the wrists, and threats to shoot or kill. 96. While continuing to assess the seriousness and reliability of such allegations, the Office is analysing the relevance and genuineness of national proceedings by the competent national authorities for the alleged conduct described above as well as the gravity of the alleged crimes.
  • The OTP is considering whether the war crimes of cruel treatment, torture or outrages upon personal dignity were committed by U.S. forces. Article 8 of the ICC statute places something of a qualification on the jurisdiction of the Court over war crimes. It states that the Court shall have jurisdiction over war crimes “in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.” In 2013, the Prosecutor’s annual report stated that the Office “continues to seek information to determine whether there is any reasonable basis to believe any such alleged acts, which could amount to torture or humiliating and degrading treatment, may have been committed as part of a policy.” That reference to the “as a part of policy” qualification does not appear in the 2014 report. And, on the contrary, the 2014 report highlights elements that indicate the existence of a policy such as the Presidential Directive of 7 February 2002 on the determination of POW status and the senior US commanders’ approval of interrogation techniques.
  • Will bilateral agreements between the US and Afghanistan preclude the ICC from investigating or prosecuting “U.S. persons”? One final question that might arise from these proceedings is the legal viability of the bilateral agreement between the United States and Afghanistan regarding the surrender of persons to the International Criminal Court (full text).  Since the case arises out of Afghanistan’s status under the ICC treaty, the United States might try to claim that the bilateral agreement provides US nationals and employees immunity for actions that took place in Afghanistan. I have briefly discussed the legal viability of such article 98 agreements in an  earlier post at Just Security.
Paul Merrell

U.S. to launch peace talks with Taliban - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html

war & peace Afghanistan Pipelinestan negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration will start formal peace talks with the Taliban on Thursday in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, the first direct political contact between them since early last year and the initial step in what the administration hopes will lead to a negotiated end to the protracted war in Afghanistan. Afghan government representatives are not expected to attend the meeting. But U.S. officials said the United States wants to eventually hand over the process to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his appointed peace council.
  • For the moment, the opening of the office and the start of formal U.S.-Taliban talks appeared more symbolic than substantive, and the two sides remain far apart on their final objectives. The U.S. goal is for the Taliban to publicly and substantively renounce ties with al-Qaeda, end violence in Afghanistan, recognize the Afghan constitution — including rights for minorities and women — and participate in the democratic process there.The Taliban has demanded the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan — including any residual forces the United States and NATO plan to leave after the 2014 withdrawal — and the release of all Taliban detainees. The detainees include five militants being held at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whose release the Taliban has previously sought. The United States has turned over the bulk of its battlefield prisoners in Afghanistan to the Karzai government.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 13
     
    Lots more detail in the article. 
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 13
     
    I won't bother posting links, but the meeting scheduled to begin negotiations today didn't happen because President Karzai broke off negotiations with the U.S. over bases and U.S. forces to remain after 2014 because the Taliban's new office established in Qatar flew the Taliban's flag which includes the phrase, "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," the formal name of the Taliban government before the U.S. invaded. And because a plaque on the office's wall outer wall read, "Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." Karzai objects that this paints the picture of a government in exile. But that is precisely what the Taliban is. Would one expect the French government in exile during World War II not to fly the pre-war French flag? Karzai is a good little puppet and from time to time has thrown small tantrums in aid of painting himself as a non-puppet. But he usually changes his mind. But he has to watch himself; when the post-Saddam Iraq broke off similar negotiations, Obama took it as an invitation to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq. Karzai knows that he runs the same risk. But according to a Reuters report, the Taliban have removed the plaque and lowered their flag to ground level. Perhaps that will be enough concession for the U.S. to tell Karzai to go along with it. Karzai also says he is upset because the Taliban refused to meet with Karzai's negotiator in the first meetings. But the negotiations are supposedly aimed at bringing the Karzai government into the negotiations soon. Karzai's real problem is that he has no leverage worthy of mention. The U.S. is leaving. The Taliban will resume governing Afghanistan to the extent that nation is governed as a nation (historically, most of Afghanistan's "government" in the last century has been mostly multiple and geographically separate and sometimes combative warlords). I suspect that the best Karzai can hope for is amnesty or exile for himself and friends. Amnesty seems unlikely considering his collab
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: Grisly Peshawar Slaughter - Who Created Taliban, Who Still Funds Them? - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.dk/...war-slaughter-who-created.html

war & peace Taliban U.S.-foreign-policy U.S.-funding Saudis UAE Qatar must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Taliban militants stormed an army public school in the northern city of Peshawar, killing over 100, including many young students. It is believed up to 10 militants took part in the attack, dressed as soldiers to first infiltrate the school's grounds before beginning the attack.  While the details of the attack are forthcoming, the background of the Taliban and the persistent threat it represents is well established, though often spun across the Western media.  Who Put the Taliban into Power? Who is Funding them Now?  In the 1980's the United States, Saudi Arabia, and elements within the then Pakistani government funneled millions of dollars, weapons, equipment, and even foreign fighters into Afghanistan in a bid to oust Soviet occupiers. Representatives of this armed proxy front would even visit the White House, meeting President Ronald Reagan personally. 
  • In 1997, Taliban representatives would find themselves in Texas, discussing a possible oil pipeline with energy company Unocal (now merged with Chevron). The BBC would report in a 1997 article titled, "Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline," that: A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.
  • However, it was already claimed by the US that the Taliban had been "harboring" Osama Bin Laden since 1996, and had branded the Taliban's human rights record as "despicable." The Telegraph in an artile titled, "Oil barons court Taliban in Texas," would report (emphasis added):  The Unocal group has one significant attraction for the Taliban - it has American government backing. At the end of their stay last week, the Afghan visitors were invited to Washington to meet government officials. The US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban's policies against women and children "despicable", appears anxious to please the fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline contract. The Taliban is likely to have been impressed by the American government's interest as it is anxious to win international recognition. So far, it has been recognised only by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It is clear that to the West, as they were during the proxy war against the Soviets, and during attempts to forge an oil pipeline across Afghan territory, the Taliban remain a tool, not an ally - to be used and abused whenever and however necessary to advance Wall Street and Washington's agenda - a self-serving Machiavellian agenda clearly devoid of principles. 
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  • The Global Post would reveal in a 2009 investigative report that the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan was mostly funded via redirected US aid. The report titled, "Who is funding the Afghan Taliban? You don’t want to know," would state:  It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country. The report would also reveal that Taliban members were in the capital city of Kabul, directly involved in redirecting the funds, apparently under the nose of occupying NATO forces:
  • But the narrative of the "accidental" funding of Taliban militants in Afghanistan is betrayed when examining their counterparts in Pakistan and their source of funding. While the US funds roughly a billion USD a year to the Taliban in Afghanistan "accidentally," their allies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are confirmed to be funding the Taliban in Pakistan.In the Guardian's article, "WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists," the US State Department even acknowledges that Saudi Arabia is indeed funding terrorism in Pakistan:   Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton."More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan."Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said.Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
  • Pakistani terror organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi - which maintains ties to the Taliban - has also been financially linked to the Persian Gulf monarchies. Stanford University's "Mapping Militant Organizations: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," states under "External Influences:"  LeJ has received money from several Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates[25] These countries funded LeJ and other Sunni militant groups primarily to counter the rising influence of Iran's revolutionary Shiism.   Astonishingly, despite these admission, the US still works politically, financially, economically, and even militarily in tandem with these very same state-sponsors of rampant, global terrorism. In fact, Wall Street and Washington are among the chief architects and beneficiaries of this global terrorism. 
  • Just as in Libya and Syria where the US and its Persian Gulf allies funded terrorist fronts in bids to overthrow each nation's respective governments, this unholy alliance is working in Pakistan to create a militant front with which to menace political groups in Islamabad and reorder the country to reflect and serve their collective interests. And just as in Syria now, where the US feigns to be locked in battle with terrorists of their own creation, the fact that the US is funding their own enemy billions of dollars while allegedly fighting them in Afghanistan creates a perpetual conflict justifying their continued intervention in the region - overtly and covertly.  When a terrorist attack is carried out in Pakistan by the "Taliban," it must then be looked at through this lens of global geopolitical reality. Attempts by the Western media to reduce this recent attack to mere "extremism," preying on global audiences emotionally, provides impunity for the state-sponsors of the Taliban - those funding, arming, and directing their operations across the region, and then benefiting from their horrific consequences.It appears, just as in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, the West and its allies are waging a proxy war in Pakistan as well. Attempts to exploit the tragedy in Peshawar compound this insidious agenda. Those across Pakistan's political landscape must understand that their is no line these foreign interests are unwilling to cross in achieving their agenda - be it a line crossed at a perceived ally's expense, or a perceived enemy's expense. 
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14
     
    How to fight the "Long War?" Well, you need a constant supply of new enemies to fight ...
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