To Die For Estonia

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NATO Warns Russia Against Intimidating Estonia
Estonian Envoy Leaves Moscow
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May 4, 2007

By Patrick J. Buchanan

All week, young toughs in Moscow have besieged the Estonian embassy to harass Ambassador Marina Kaljurand. Her bodyguards had to use a mace-like spray to drive back the thugs, who call Estonia a "fascist country." Estonian diplomats and their families are being pulled out of Moscow and sent home.

Relations between the countries are about to rupture, if the Kremlin does not reign in the bully-boys.

Behind this nasty quarrel is the decision by Estonia to move the giant statue of a Red Army soldier, and the remains of Soviet soldiers, from the center of its capital, Tallinn, to a military cemetery. In Tallinn, patriots and nationalists have clashed with citizens of Russian ancestry over the perceived insult to Mother Russia and the "liberators" of Estonia from the Nazis.

Both points of view in this quarrel are understandable.

To Russians, who lost millions of their grandfathers, fathers and uncles in the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army liberated Europe from Nazism, and their sacrifices ought to be honored. And the Estonians are a pack of ingrates.

To Estonians, the Red Army did not liberate anyone. Having won their independence from the Russian Empire in World War I, they were raped by Russia -- to whom they had been ceded as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In June 1940, the Red Army stormed into the three Baltic republics, butchered the elites and shipped scores of thousands off to Stalin's labor camps never to be seen again.

While the Soviets were expelled from the Baltic republics by the Germans in 1941, they returned in 1944 and held the Baltic peoples in captivity until the Evil Empire collapsed. It was only then that Estonia regained her independence and freedom.

Why should Estonians honor a Red Army that brutalized them and, after driving out the Germans, re-enslaved them for half a century?

Why should this issue be of interest to America?

If President Putin decides the Estonians need a lesson, and sends troops to teach it, the United States, under NATO, would have to treat Russian intervention in Estonia as an attack upon the United States, and declare war on behalf of Estonia.

So we come face to face with the idiocy of having moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, and having given war guarantees to three little nations with historic animosities toward a nuclear power that has the ability to inflict 1,000 times the destruction upon us as Iran.

Latvia, too, is now a member of NATO. And Latvia, too, has a quarrel with Moscow over its treatment of the descendants of those Russians whom Stalin moved into Latvia to alter its ethnic character. Their children and grandchildren have grown up in Latvia, and know no other home, though they are unwelcome to ethnic Latvians.

Settling these quarrels is essential to peace in Europe. But the notion that Russian intervention in a Baltic republic should be met by a U.S. declaration of war, or any attack upon a nation with thousands of atomic weapons, is the definition of insanity.

Nor are these the only quarrels we have with Putin's Russia that could explode into full-blown crises. Washington has persuaded the Czech Republic and Poland, two former Warsaw Pact countries, to accept radars and missiles for a U.S. anti-missile system.

We say the missile defense system is directed at Iran. Russians see it as of a piece with the move eastward of NATO and targeted at them. Can we blame them for so thinking, when we responded to their pullout of troops from Central and Eastern Europe by bringing Central and Eastern Europe into a U.S.-led alliance?

If the Russia-baiters in this capital have their way, Ukraine and Georgia will also be brought into NATO. That would commit us to go to war with Russia over control of the Crimean peninsula and the Russian-speaking Donbass of eastern Ukraine, and over the birthplace of Stalin and who should control South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"Moscow would not dare intervene in the Baltic republics!" comes the retort. Perhaps not. But the Russians are now fiercely nationalistic and anti-American. And it is always a mistake for a great power to cede to a minor power the ability to draw it into a great war. Just as it is always a mistake to hand out war guarantees one cannot honor.

In March 1939, Britain gave a war guarantee to Polish colonels who had not requested it, a guarantee Britain had no way of fulfilling. The war that followed cost Britain her empire and Poland 50 years of freedom.

In August 1914, King Albert of Belgium informed King George V that the Kaiser's troops had crossed his border. He invoked a treaty assuring Belgian neutrality that the British had signed -- in 1839!

So, Britain declared war, and 700,000 Brits perished in the Great War that hurled the West onto its present path of self-destruction.

And the march of folly continues on.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Foreign policy challenge: see world as it really is

Published: 04.30.2007
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

ROBERT ROBB

The neoconservative hubris that the United States can and should reshape the world has been a casualty of the Iraq war, both substantively and politically.

The practical limitations on the ability of the United States to direct the destiny of other peoples and cultures, and the cost of such ambitions, have been exposed.

Nevertheless, the three leading Republican candidates for president in 2008 - Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney - cling to some version of the neoconservative vision.

This gives Democrats the chance to forge a new direction and consensus on foreign policy. However, if Barack Obama's speech last week to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs is illustrative, and it probably is, they aren't really up to the task.

The foreign policy challenge for the United States is figuring out how to operate in a world less and less interested in U.S. leadership.

Europe already has an economy roughly as large as that of the United States. The major Asian-Pacific economies (Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and Taiwan) are now about three-quarters as large. So, while obviously still a very important market, the United States is no longer a dominant economic force.

The United States does still have the only military with truly global reach. However, this yields considerably less influence than it used to, particularly after Iraq.

For the most part, other global powers see the U.S. military as a force not so much to be feared, as to be harnessed for sanctioned international missions or in response to international calamities, such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

In his speech, Obama acknowledged that the willingness to accept U.S. leadership has waned. However, he seems to think that it is just because George Bush is such a boor.

With nice and skillful American diplomacy, he maintains, the United Nations can be effective, the countries of Europe will spend more on defense, and NATO can assume more of the military burden.

There's no objective basis for this belief. The U.N. is structurally dysfunctional and its members like it that way. No amount of skilled diplomacy by the U.S. is going to overcome the lack of domestic support for increased military spending in Europe.

And Afghanistan has demonstrated that, while NATO may be useful for peace-keeping missions, it is ineffective as a fighting force.

The harsh reality is that if there are tough things that have to be done in the world, the United States is not going to have much company or support in taking them on.

Bush believes that, to protect the country against terrorism, the United States has to be an active agent of democratic change around the world.

Obama seems to believe that, to protect the country against terrorism, the United States has to be an active agent helping to provide clean water, food, medicine, shelter and education around the world. He would increase foreign and developmental aid to $50 billion a year and establish a $2 billion "Global Education Fund."

The track record on foreign aid is abysmal. Countries with sound governance don't need it. It doesn't do any good in countries without sound governance. Nor is there any indication that it can lead to sound governance, a conceit Obama shares with Bush.

Obama says he supports a strong military, but apparently wants to turn it into a sort of international WPA. He quotes with great approbation a Djibouti U.S. base commander who said that "our mission is at least 95 percent civil affairs."

According to Obama, the United States "must lead the world, by deed and example."
The essence of Obama's foreign policy perspective, then, is this: If the United States tries hard enough to do good and be nice, the rest of the world will be impressed and grateful and accept U.S. leadership.

That's not the world as it really is.

Obama's delusion, widely shared by Democrats, isn't nearly as dangerous as the neoconservative delusion still being served up by the Republicans. It's still a delusion, nonetheless.

Taliban Take Over South Afghan District

By AMIR SHAH

The Associated Press
Friday, April 27, 2007; 6:57 AM

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Taliban militants have seized control of a district in eastern Afghanistan after an hours-long clash that killed five people, including the local mayor and his police chief, a senior official said Friday.

The Taliban takeover is an embarrassment to the Afghan government and its foreign backers, and shows how vulnerable remote areas remain despite the presence of some 47,000 U.S. and NATO troops.

Militants launched the attack Thursday evening on the Giro district of Ghazni province, setting fire to several buildings and cutting communication lines, said provincial deputy governor Kazim Allayer.

The district mayor and four policemen, including the police chief, were killed in a battle that lasted several hours, Allayer said. Police reinforcements have been sent to the area, Ghazni's deputy police chief Mohammad Zaman said.

Giro is about 200 miles east of northern Helmand province, where a large NATO operation is under way.

"Giro collapsed last night, captured by the Taliban after heavy fighting between the police and the Taliban," said Gen. Murad Ali, deputy regional corps commander of the Afghan army.

The Afghan army sent troops early Friday from Ghazni and Paktika to assist, Ali said.

NATO and the U.S.-led coalition said they were aware of the incident.

"The details are very sketchy right now. We're tracking it closely," said Maj. William Mitchell, a spokesman for the coalition.

After a winter lull in attacks, the Taliban have stepped up bombings and attacks in recent weeks, as NATO-led forces push forward with their biggest ever offensive in southern Afghanistan to root out militants in the opium-producing heartland of Helmand province.

Meanwhile in eastern Khost province, gunmen assassinated a criminal investigation policeman as he was driving Friday in Tani district, said provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub.

A relative in the car also was killed, and the driver was wounded, Ayub said, adding that two suspects have been arrested. It was not immediately clear if it was a personal conflict or an insurgency attack.

In southern Uruzgan, Taliban militants ambushed a police convoy patrolling late Wednesday night, and the ensuing clash left four policemen and six Taliban dead, said provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Qasim Khan.

© 2007 The Associated Press

NATO chief cannot confirm Iranian arms in Afghanistan

Thu Apr 19, 12:59 PM ET

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, US General Dan McNeill, said Thursday he was unable to confirm the interception Iranian-made mortars and explosives in the country.

"I don't deny that position and I'm very interested how the insurgents might be helped and who might have helped the insurgents," McNeill told reporters in the Afghan capital.

"Obviously, the US Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff have far more information than I do right now," he added.

General Peter Pace, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, said Tuesday that coalition forces had intercepted Iranian-made mortars and explosives in Afghanistan destined for the Taliban.

After 30 years of war, Afghanistan is awash with weapons of all kinds and of different origins. Iran, in particular, furnished the Northern Alliance with weapons during their struggle against the Taliban government.

Mcneill, the head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), also said he had no hard intelligence on the existence of training camps for Afghan insurgents in Iranian territory.

"There is no report of that fact," he said.

A number of American officials have accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guards of training and arming Shiite militants in Iraq.

Afghanistan in a downward spiral

The situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. In retrospect, the 2004 presidential election was the high point. In addition to the Taliban resurgence in the south, President Harmid Karzai faces other intractable problems such as lack of jobs. Some might say that the real problem is a lack of natural leaders.

Apr 18, 2007

SPEAKING FREELY

By Haroun Mir

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

KABUL - Despite a successful presidential election in 2004 and parliamentary elections in 2005, the situation in Afghanistan has been worsening since then. The year 2006 was a bloody one in terms of casualties for both coalition and Afghan forces as well as for the civilian population.

In addition to long-lasting problems such as military conflict, narcotics and warlordism, the Afghan government is increasingly facing new dilemmas which emanate from people's dire social and economic conditions. People demand jobs, shelter and legitimate means to live a decent life. It is the prospect of political turmoil that poses the far greater danger for the stability of the country than military threats by the Taliban.

In fact, the Taliban and their allies have been able to improve their fighting capacity and propaganda capabilities, as well as to considerably extend their territory inside Afghanistan because they were able to improve their organizational structure, train a considerable number of new recruits and receive better supplies of arms and ammunition.

It will enable them to increase their attacks on NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and Afghan forces while terrorizing the civilian population with occasional, but ever more frequent, suicide bombings. This year, they will extend their control over major districts in the south and southwest of the country and improve their capacity to interrupt the main highways connecting Kabul to major cities in the south and west of the country.

Since NATO does not have enough soldiers on the ground to control the entire Afghan territory bordering Pakistan, its main task will be limited to defending major cities while the insurgents expand their control in small towns and isolated districts. NATO's sporadic military operations will only have limited, short-term impact.

NATO can temporarily dislodge the insurgent forces from their strongholds but it cannot police the area and requires Afghan forces to do the job. In most cases, since there are not enough Afghan security forces, the Taliban simply reemerge from their hideouts and take back control.

The US military contingent outside the NATO mission is not sufficient to pursue and engage small and highly mobile groups of insurgents in the rugged and difficult Afghan territory bordering Pakistan. Without of a significant increase in the number of NATO troops, nothing will change until the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police grow in strength and numbers.

It doesn't help that Afghanistan lacks strong pluralistic political parties, necessary elements for a healthy democracy. In the absence of any coherent political ideology or vision for the future of the country, political regroupings take place based on ethnic affiliations. Tensions over sharing power in the government among the various ethnic groups are growing rapidly, and political and intellectual debates in the Afghan free media focus on differences among them rather than their common interests.

Meanwhile, neighboring countries which are against the presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan are working to incite violent ethnic rifts as a means to undermine NATO's efforts. The worst scenario would be if ethnic differences become a motive for armed conflict in Afghanistan, as currently in Iraq. The country would sink once again into political chaos and misery.

Afghan politicians are unfamiliar with the notion of compromise and constructive political dialogue in order to overcome their political differences. Since Afghanistan is a very poor country, everyone struggles to have a share of government resources, which are the only financial resources available and are largely donated by the international community.

Until now there has not been a legitimate and genuine political opposition to President Harmid Karzai. In fact, those who oppose the president are for the most part his former political allies who had been his ministers at one time during the past five years.

Removed from their high-level government positions, they have turned into dedicated enemies who do everything possible to undermine Karzai's leadership.

For instance, the recent formation of the new political entity called the United National Front (UNF) seems to be a short-lived coalition of former Northern Alliance leaders and a few prominent former communist party members. This new group is not established on the basis of a common political platform or a vision for the future of the country. Instead, its formation is a tactical political move for some of its members to put pressure on Karzai in order to extract more advantages from him, such as key government positions. Sadly, they ignore the fact that if this regime falls prematurely the only alternative would be a comeback of the Taliban.

One of the major political issues in Afghanistan is the lack of natural leaders. While the whole south of the country has become leaderless due to the elimination of traditional Pashtun leaders during the past three decades of war, the north has also lost its only legitimate leader, the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former leader of Northern Alliance, who was killed in a suicide attack in September 2001 by al-Qaeda.

The biggest challenge in the near term is to find charismatic and sufficiently unifying leaders. The next Afghan presidential election is less than two years away. In fact, without strong pluralistic political parties or charismatic political leaders the country will face tremendous leadership challenges which will further intensify ethnic tensions.

The economic situation is deteriorating rapidly because of insecurity, lack of enforcement of property rights, administrative corruption, and most importantly people's pessimistic expectations. The meager private investment by a number of Afghan expatriates is seriously threatened by ever increasing kidnapping and ransoming of Afghan businessmen and their families. Instead, narcotics have once again become the main source income.

One of the crucial problems in Afghanistan is poverty. Only a small number of Afghans, who work for foreign companies, earn adequate wages. Those who are employed in public administration earn on average less than $50 a month. In addition, the massive return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran has created an extra economic burden on the country.

Kabul has become a big ghetto where very poor people build rudimentary shelters on the top of hills and mountains. The Afghan government does not have adequate financial resources and the capacity to respond to all legitimate demands of the returnees.

Also, unemployment has become a growing concern both for the people and the government. Every year hundreds of thousands of young boys and girls graduate from high schools and colleges and cannot find jobs. The Afghan administration does not have the capacity to hire more people, and jobs in the private sector don't exist.

Young graduates of high schools and colleges are just added every year to the growing number of unemployed. While a limited number of people live a relatively good life, the rest of population struggles to survive.

In addition, corruption is asphyxiating the very fragile Afghan administration. It has become widespread and evident to the point that even the president admits it but cannot prevent it. There are two reasons for corruption in Afghanistan. At the very low level, civil servants become corrupt because they cannot live with $40 or $50 monthly salaries.

In the higher echelon, easy money from narcotics corrupts administrators. For instance, drug traffickers are willing to pay huge amounts of money to corrupt political appointees to undermine the rule of law.

It is important to remember that all previous governments in Afghanistan have fallen not because of their military weaknesses but because of social, economic and governance issues. For instance, the communist regime was able to defend an encircled Kabul for almost four years after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989. The regime eventually fell in 1992 during a power struggle among different factions.

NATO is capable of containing the military threat of the Taliban, far from the center of power in Kabul, but in the event of political turmoil or popular revolt over lack of progress, like the riot of May 29, 2006, in Kabul, it can't prevent the unraveling of the Afghan government.

I wrote in June of last year for the International Affairs Forum: "The much publicized unfortunate road accident of May 29th of a US military vehicle wasn't the main cause for riots in Kabul. It became a pretext for those unemployed, disenchanted, and disillusioned young to show their anger toward the government and the region's most convenient boogey man, the United States.”

In fact, relative to last year, the socio-economic conditions for young Kabulis have gotten worse. They have become pessimistic about the prospect of a better future because the international community has failed to deliver what was initially promised for Afghanistan in terms of reconstruction and economic development.

The focus of NATO countries on military issues alone will not overshadow the threat of political turmoil arising from people's terrible economic conditions. Afghanistan needs more assistance from NATO countries to rebuild its civil society and to create economic means for its long-term political stability as a viable country.

Haroun Mir is a policy analyst for SIG & Partners Afghanistan. He served over five years as an aide to the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's former defense minister.

(Copyright 2007 Haroun Mir.)

Bombings, gunbattles on rise in Afghanistan

Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:57 PM ET

KABUL (Reuters) - A NATO soldier died in combat in Afghanistan on Friday, a day after two were killed by roadside bombs, bringing the number of foreign troop deaths this week to 12 -- one of the bloodiest weeks for foreign forces in months.

The soldier died in a gunbattle in the south, but under a new NATO policy the alliance refused to say where because that could identify the nationality of the victim before the relevant government makes an announcement.

On Thursday, two NATO soldiers were killed in separate roadside bombings in the east, NATO said in a statement, without saying where, and a helicopter chartered by the U.S.-led coalition crash-landed due to technical problems southwest of Kabul.

At the crash site in Ghazni province, rescuers came under fire from suspected Taliban fighters.

Three Taliban were killed in the resulting gunbattle but there were no casualties among the rescuing troops or the five contractors aboard the aircraft.

The Taliban said they had shot down the helicopter but there was no way of independently verifying either account.

Violence has been rising through the spring following the annual winter lull after last year saw the bloodiest fighting since the Taliban's ouster in 2001.

Eight Canadian soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) and one from the separate U.S.-led coalition died in bombings in the south this week.

It has been the bloodiest single week for the U.S. and NATO -- currently also under U.S. command -- for several months.

In Berlin, Germany's defense minister said he had seen no sign of any spring offensive almost a month into spring.

"So far one cannot speak of any spring offensive by the Taliban," Jung told Reuters in an interview this week.

"There is, as in previous months, a large number of local armed incidents and attacks, of which around 90 percent are in the southern and eastern parts of the country."

NATO and Afghan forces have launched their own offensive, with about 5,000 troops, in the north of southern Helmand province, the opium heartland of the world's top producer.

Germany has about 3,000 troops in the country, mainly in the relatively safe north, and has resisted calls from NATO allies to send more and allow deployment in the south, where most of the fighting occurs.

Instead, it sent six Tornado reconnaissance jets this week. But security experts, including a former German officer, say the planes serve no tactical purpose and are only symbolic.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Berlin)

Index on Afghanistan: March 2007

Monday, April 02, 2007

by Sarah Meyer

Kandahar Airfield 2002

Civilian murders define this month’s obscenities in Afghanistan but – as in Iraq - the war-mongers insist that ‘progress’ is being made. The Americans do not care about civilians dying either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. From the US perspective, perhaps every civilian killed is a future ‘terrorist.’

Canadian torture and losing prisoners in Afghanistan was under the spotlight this month. A further obscenity was the announcement of NATO racist policies in Kandahar Airbase toilets . Not surprising that Afghans, like Iraqis, don’t want occupation forces in their country?


1. Oil and Gas (Pakistan/Iran /India & Iraq)
2. Strategic Imperatives (Afghanistan, Pakistan, US, Media & Videos)
3. Contracts
4. Contractors
5. Investment and Aid
6. US/NATO (General; missile shield)
7. NATO Participating Countries (Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, UK
8. Opium
9. Human Rights (‘rendition; torture; Canadian misdemeanors; racism; Rumsfeld in German court case.)
10. Some Deaths (catalogue of civilian deaths; Pat Tillman)
11. Future Deaths
12. Meanwhile, in Iran …
13. Meanwhile, in New Orleans …

Index Research

--MORE--

Afghan war may be lost: experts

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Afghani Blog
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Taliban are back in force, MPS hear. Contradicting military chief's optimistim

ANDREW MAYEDA

CanWest News Service

Friday, March 30, 2007

Two Afghanistan experts painted a sobering picture of the conditions there yesterday, arguing support among Afghans for NATO forces is plummeting, the U.S.-driven policy of poppy eradication is wrongheaded, and the war might not be winnable in its present form.

U.S. scholar Barnett Rubin and Gordon Smith, Canada's former ambassador to NATO, delivered their withering comments to a Commons committee only days after Canada's top military commander, Gen. Rick Hillier, touted progress being made there.

Hillier, the chief of defence staff, this week predicted Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan will soon see a rise in attacks from the Taliban. But he insisted on using the term "surge" rather than "offensive."

He also noted many Afghans are moving back into their homes in districts west of Kandahar following a Canadian-led NATO offensive last fall.

But Rubin, who has been to Afghanistan 29 times over more than two decades, said yesterday many Afghans are growing frustrated with the pace of Western efforts to stabilize the country.

"They're not at all happy. Support for both the international presence and the government has plummeted in the past year or so," he told the foreign affairs committee.

He said Afghans aren't seeing the results of promises by the United States and NATO, which took over the mission in 2003, to increase security, establish democracy and improve the economy. "The main complaint that I hear from Afghans is ... that we haven't delivered what they think we promised."

Rubin recently published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine warning Afghanistan "is at risk of collapsing into chaos." In it, he blasts the U.S. for underestimating the influence of Pakistan, which he accuses of providing "safe haven" to the Taliban.

Smith, meanwhile, threw cold water on Hillier's suggestion that Canadian troops are facing a weakened enemy.

There is evidence Al-Qa'ida-affiliated militants, who often fight alongside the Taliban, are actually gaining strength, said Smith, now executive director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria.

"The Al-Qa'ida problem has not gone away," he told MPs. "It's important that we not forget the original motivation for going to Afghanistan, and that was to deal with Al-Qa'ida."

Smith recently released a critical report of his own, titled Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working? He questions whether NATO can achieve its stated goals, even within 10 years. Canada has committed to maintain its military presence until 2009.

He argued NATO needs to hike its troop commitment, while using development aid more effectively and opening negotiations with the Taliban. Smith also said NATO must create a market so Afghan farmers can sell their opium for legal use in medical products like morphine.

Both Rubin and Smith suggested Canada needs to have a new debate about its role in Afghanistan. Liberal MP Keith Martin welcomed their remarks.

Ottawa Citizen

Afghanistan: the Fight Comes to Helmand's Capital

Taleban Target Helmand's Capital

Over the past weeks, Lashkar Gah has become increasingly unstable, with bombs and murder almost daily fare. Now, for the first time in Helmand, the Taleban have killed a woman.

By IWPR trainees in Helmand (ARR No. 248, 27-Mar-07)

It has been a bad few days in Helmand’s capital, with a high-profile kidnapping and murder followed by a suicide bomb at police headquarters. Residents say the Taleban are becoming more and more visible in Lashkar Gah, and enjoy support among some segments of the population.

On March 27, a suicide bomber dressed in army uniform attempted to assassinate the chief of police.

“A man dressed as an Afghan National Army soldier came to police headquarters saying he needed to file an application for a passport,” said police chief Nabijan Mullahkhel. “He was targeting me, but the police stopped him at the gate checkpoint. So he blew himself up, killing four police and injuring two more.”

Another police official confirmed the incident, saying that a police commander was among the dead. He added that in addition to police, two civilians were wounded in the explosion.

The blast could be heard throughout the centre of Lashkar Gah, and was followed by rapid gunfire. Local residents say the police were shooting into the air to discourage crowds of onlookers from gathering at the site.

A high-ranking Taleban commander in Helmand took responsibility for the blast, although his estimate of the casualties differed from that given by police.

“We killed a lot of police, and injured many more,” said the commander, who did not want to be named.

The news from Helmand’s capital is getting worse by the day. As the spring offensive kicks into high gear throughout the province, Lashkar Gah itself is becoming a more frequent target of insurgent activity.

On March 26, the head of the women’s prison was kidnapped and murdered, in what her family says is a politically motivated killing.

Zargola, the prison warden, was seized by two men on motorcycles as she left her house in the morning, as she set out to visit her adult daughter, police officials said. A short time later, her body was found in Bollan, a district approximately one kilometre from the capital. She had been shot six times.

Mohammad Wais, chief detective with the provincial crime squad, confirmed the killing. “We found her body,” he said.

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the murder.

“We killed Zargola,” said Qari Muhammad Yousuf, spokesman for the insurgents in Helmand.

Zargola was a mother of three. Her elderly husband was unemployed and relied on her salary.

He eldest son, Amanullah, 27, runs a music shop in Lashkar Gah.

“My mother had been in this job for a long time, although she could neither read nor write,” said Amanullah. “She was killed because she worked for the government.”

While Zargola is the first woman to be kidnapped and killed in Helmand province, she is not the first to be targeted. Fawzia Ulumi, head of the official women’s affairs department in Helmand province, has received numerous death threats, and narrowly escaped assassination several months ago.

“Two gunmen on motorcycles shot at me in my car,” she said. “I survived, but my driver was killed.”

While even the governor, Asadullah Wafa, acknowledges that several of Helmand’s 14 districts are under Taleban control, the provincial capital itself has remained relatively stable until now.

But in recent days, residents have reported seeing armed Taleban patrols on the street at night.

“The police drive right by them and do nothing,” said one reporter in the town.

Residents of Lashkar Gah. especially those who fear they might be targeted, are worried by the growing boldness of the Taleban,

Sher Mohammad, 56, lives a few kilometres from the centre of the city. He hides his identity from his neighbours in the Tor Taang district because he fears retribution from the insurgents.

“I am a government employee,” he said. “But no one knows where I live. I hide because I’m afraid that the Taleban will come for me in the night.”

He has good reason to be worried.

One Taleb, speaking to a reporter, said that his entire job consisted of ferreting out government employees.

“We first leave them letters, warning them to leave the government or else they will be dealt with harshly,” he said. “If they do not obey, then we know what to do with them.”

But despite such tough tactics, the insurgents have their supporters, even in Lashkar Gah.

“Every night we are invited for dinner,” said the Taleb, “And local shopkeepers give us top-up cards for our phones.”

Residents say one motive for engaging with the Taleban is that they fear that the Afghan government is unable to protect them. Support for the Taleban is a way of hedging their bets.

“Security has become much worse compared with recent years,” said Abdul Karim, 42. “The police are unable to provide security. There are killings, robberies, all kinds of atrocities. Two years ago, there were schools open all over the district, reconstruction was proceeding and the situation was getting better.

“But with the arrival of more foreign soldiers, and the increase in numbers of police and army, things just keep getting worse.”

IWPR is implementing a journalism training programme in Helmand province. This story is a compilation of trainee reports.

Taliban 'invite' 10,000 Uzbeks to Helmand

By Massoud Ansari, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:55am GMT 25/03/2007

Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden have been offered a safe haven by the Taliban in Afghanistan, bringing them into conflict with British troops patrolling the lawless province of Helmand.

Uzbek gunmen, who fought a series of bloody battles last week with Pakistani tribesmen in the border region of Waziristan, where they had been living, have been told they should join the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan instead.

The move raises the prospect of a major upsurge in violence in Helmand, where 43 British soldiers have been killed in clashes with militants over the last five

(Map of Afghanistan and surrounding region)

years.

The group of around 10,000 Uzbeks are led by Tahir Yuldashev, a close associate of the al-Qaeda terrorist chief, who is believed to be hiding out in the mountainous border area with his chief henchman Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The members of the Islamic Movement Union of Uzbekistan fell out with their Pakistani hosts after accusing some tribal leaders of acting as agents of the Pakistani government, which is under huge pressure from the US to crack down on Islamic militants. Pakistan government officials said that nearly 160 people, including 130 Uzbeks, were killed in the battle.
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Taliban fighters intervened to broker a ceasefire but local officials have told The Sunday Telegraph that neither side is likely to back down. Taliban sources have revealed that they have offered the Uzbeks safe passage into Afghanistan in order to bring an end to the violence.

The militant group are wanted by the Uzbek government of President Islam Karimov and cannot return to their own country.

Lateef Afridi, a tribal leader and former national assembly member from the Frontier province, who is privy to details of the discussions, said: "These tribesmen are quite determined to flush them out. Given that these Uzbeks cannot be extradited back to their own country because they are all wanted there, one way they are considering to accommodate them is to send them to Afghanistan."

Mr Afridi said the Taliban felt compelled to give the Uzbeks a way out because if the battle continued between the local tribesmen and the foreign fighters, the Taliban elements would have to choose which side to back, unleashing further bloodshed. Another source added: "Both the sides are led by highly trained militants and if the fighting is not stopped, there will be massive killings."

A second tribal leader said the local and Afghan Taliban forces had already approached the Uzbeks and asked them to continue their jihad in Taliban-dominated areas in Afghanistan, in a bid to "reinvigorate their campaign of violence against Nato troops". They have been offered safe passage to either Kunar, Paktia or Helmand, where British troops are braced for a spring offensive from the Taliban.

Britain has announced plans to raise the UK military presence in Afghanistan to more than 7,000 troops. But the presence of a new wave of heavily armed guerrilla fighters is likely to leave troops stretched further and strengthen calls for an even greater military presence.

For Pakistan, forcing out the Uzbeks has the advantage of undermining support for Osama bin Laden.

His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been spotted in Waziristan several times. If the local tribesmen succeed, it will deny bin Laden one more safe haven for his associates, according to one western diplomat.

The Uzbeks are believed to have killed more than 1,500 local tribesmen in the past two years and are blamed for kidnapping others.

Mr Afridi said: "The partial ceasefire was achieved only for a time being, when the Taliban leaders intervened, but it did not give both the parties enough time to carry out the dead. The corpses and broken limbs of the dead are scattered all over the area."

Most Afghan civilians turning against NATO, towards Taliban: survey

What? They don't appreciate our 'help'?
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Related
Poor Iraq. First the lies and now, even worse: more help
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Afghans rejecting Canadian troops for Taliban, survey finds
Globe and Mail, Canada - 19 Mar 2007
LONDON — Afghan civilians are increasingly turning against Canadian troops and their country's government and toward support of the Taliban, according to a ...

Taliban Support Rising In Afghanistan: Study Online - International News Network, Pakistan - 17 hours ago LONDON: Canadian troops are facing another challenge in Afghanistan as Taliban support among civilians has rocketed to nearly 27 per cent, ctv.ca reported. ...

Not welcome Macleans.ca, Canada - 19 Mar 2007 Maclean's 50 member Scott Taylor, who travelled with the Senlis Council in Kandahar earlier this year, says it's time for a comprehensive re-assessment of ...

Most Afghan civilians turning against NATO, towards Taliban: survey Winnipeg Free Press, Canada - 19 Mar 2007 TORONTO (CP) — A new survey conducted this month in Afghanistan suggests civilians there are turning against Canadian and other NATO troops as well as their ... Poverty "driving people into arms of Taliban" Kuwait News Agency, Kuwait - 19 Mar 2007 LONDON, March 19 (KUNA) -- More than a quarter of men in southern and eastern Afghanistan support the Taliban, according to research released here Monday. ... Losing Afghan hearts, minds Toronto Star, Canada - 20 Mar 2007 Canada and other Western countries are losing the battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan while the Taliban is seizing the advantage, says a survey from ...

When Less Is Best: RORY STEWART - Afghanistan

Editor's note: I am posting at a NEW site: http://mparent7777-3.blogspot.com/
(also see new articles below). The new site is strictly for overflow. The software at my 2 present sites won't let me post for the next couple of hours. I maybe back posting at the site you are now looking at later today.
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THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
GUEST COLUMNIST

When Less Is Best

By RORY STEWART

Published: March 20, 2007

The United States needs to be honest about what it wants from Afghanistan and what it can achieve.

Why are we in Afghanistan? Vice President Cheney talks terror, Britain focuses on narcotics. The European Union talks ‘state-building,’ others gender. On a different day, the positions seem interchangeable. Five years ago, we had a clear goal. Now we seem to be pursuing a bundle of objectives, from counterinsurgency to democratization and development, which are presented as uniform but which are in fact logically distinct and sometimes contradictory.

Finance officers in Kabul and shepherds in Kandahar want to know what we did with the $10 billion we spent in the last four years. So do any number of commentators on Afghan TV and radio. And when Helmand villagers see soldiers from countries thousands of miles away carrying guns and claiming to be only building schools, they don’t believe them.

I have noticed that many Afghans now simply assume we are engaged in a grand conspiracy. Nothing else in their minds can explain the surreal gap between our language and performance. The United States needs to be honest about what it wants from Afghanistan and what it can achieve.

--MORE--

Forget Israel, Befriend Russia

March 17, 2007

By Charley Reese

A little more than half of the U.S. population lives in 75 metropolitan areas. Russia has 4,399 nuclear warheads deployed. Except for 624 to be carried by bombers, they are all land-based and submarine missiles.

Furthermore, this past week Russia test-fired a land-based missile, the RSM54, and a submarine-launched missile. Both were intercontinental. Both hit their targets dead-on. The sub launch was, by the way, the sixth such test-firing conducted this year.

In the meantime, Iran has no nuclear weapons and no intercontinental ballistic missiles or long-range bombers. North Korea might have two or three nuclear missiles. Yet the administration, and most of America's news media, seems obsessed with Iran, no doubt because Israel is obsessed with Iran. A story by the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee played a lobbying role in deleting a provision in the defense bill that would have required the president to get Congress' OK before launching a war against Iran.

So what's my point? First, when assessing threats, all but fools look at capability, not intentions or rhetoric. Russia has the capability of wiping us out. Iran would be hard-pressed to sink one destroyer. Therefore, it would behoove us to put good relations with Russia very high on a diplomatic agenda. Yet, on the contrary, the Bush administration goes out of its way to insult Russia and to interfere in what Russia sees as its internal affairs.

Secondly, because of the cowardice of Congress, the U.S. government has allowed a little country in the Middle East (Israel) to distort our priorities. Our first priority should be getting along with Russia. Iran is a small country we can squash anytime. Russia is not small, and it can squash us anytime. How darn stupid does one have to be not to realize that?

We've already blundered by not seizing the opportunity of the collapse of the Soviet Union to disband NATO and seriously pursue helping Russia join the West. Instead, we sent some financial sharpies in to help a few Russians steal most of the country's wealth. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is 100 percent correct to go after the oligarchs who bought up the state's resources for pennies on the dollar and became overnight billionaires. One is in jail, another fled to England, and several others have sought refuge in Israel.

When you hear Putin being maligned by people in the West, whether they're in government, journalism or academia, just remember that money buys whores, and whores service their customers.

Future historians may view the failure to bring Russia into the West, when the opportunity was there, as one of history's all-time strategic blunders.

The only legitimate interest we have in the Middle East is access to oil. Notice I said access, not control. It doesn't matter who controls it, because whoever does will be willing to sell it, since oil is inedible. Other than that, we have no – I repeat, no – legitimate interests, national or otherwise, in that region of the world.

American politicians need to get over their fear of the Israeli lobby and attend to America's business. Israel is a sovereign state with one of the world's most powerful military machines and a higher per capita gross domestic product than some of our NATO allies. We should cut the strings, stop the tax giveaways, repeal all of the special legislation and tell the Israelis they are on their own.

But, as John Wayne once said, that'll be the day.

Afghanistan's 'Hard Mission' Slips Away

Related

US State Dept Report: Human Rights in Afghanistan

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consortiumnews.com

By Richard L. Fricker
March 10, 2007

Canadian lawmakers have written an Afghanistan version of the Iraq Study Group report, reaching a conclusion that the conditions on that original battlefront in the “war on terror” are grave and deteriorating.

The 16-page Canadian Senate report, entitled “Taking a Hard Look at a Hard Mission,” foresees a conflict that could drag on for generations and might well fail unless NATO significantly increases its commitment of money and troops.

“It is in our view doubtful that this mission can be accomplished given the limited resources that NATO is currently investing in Afghanistan,” said the report by the Standing Committee on National Security and Defence. “The current NATO contingent doesn’t have enough troops to go toe-to-toe with the Taliban.”

Former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander told the committee that it would take five generations to “make a difference in Afghanistan,” while Land Forces Commander Andrew Leslie estimated that it would take at least two decades to complete the mission.

NATO has roughly 32,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 15,000 Americans and 2,500 Canadians. Another 12,000 American troops under U.S. command conduct missions ranging from counter-terrorism to training Afghan forces.

In 2001 after the 9/11 attacks were blamed on al-Qaeda operatives based in Afghanistan, the United States led an invasion of the rugged country, toppling its Taliban government and trapping many al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, in the mountains of Tora Bora along the Pakistani border.

At that crucial moment in December 2001, however, President George W. Bush failed to deploy adequate U.S. military forces to capture bin Laden, who managed to escape on horseback with some of his key lieutenants into Pakistan.

Bush then redirected the attention of the U.S. military and intelligence services toward Iraq in preparation for the invasion on March 19, 2003. Since then, the conflict in Iraq has absorbed the bulk of U.S. military resources and political attention.

Al-Qaeda Resurgence

Over those past five years, al-Qaeda has regrouped in the mountains of Pakistan and the Taliban has reemerged as a potent force inside Afghanistan, where NATO forces are anticipating a fierce spring offensive by Taliban fighters. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Is Losing the War on Terror."]

The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan has ratcheted up political and military pressure on America’s NATO allies who had expected their Afghan deployments to concentrate mostly on peacekeeping and reconstruction, not fighting a major counterinsurgency war.

U.S. aerial assaults also have killed substantial numbers of civilians and thus deepened Afghani resentment of Westerners. That local anger and the broader fury in the Muslim world over the Iraq War have attracted a flow of Islamic militants to Afghanistan as well as to Iraq.

When Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting a U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Feb. 27, a Taliban fighter blew himself apart at the gate of the base, killing 23 people but not directly endangering Cheney. The attack, however, was a reminder of the Taliban’s determination to challenge the presence of Westerners on Afghan territory.

“The Afghans are holding elections in their own minds as to whether or not the Westerners can provide the wherewithal to make life better or let the Taliban come back; at least they are predictable,” Canadian Committee Chairman Colin Kenny told me. “We have a very short window of time in which to show them we can assist them.”

Dawn Black, a member of the House of Commons and the New Democratic Party’s voice on defense and security issues, also expressed doubts about assurances from Canada’s Conservative government regarding what it calls generally positive trends in the conflict.

“The government says things are improving,” Black told me. “I was there last month. The security situation is such that they didn’t feel it was safe enough for us to leave the air base” at Kandahar.

When the Canadian delegation did visit an encampment of Afghans “just beyond the wire, the people are starving,” Black said.

Black also complained that heavy-handed military tactics have alienated the Afghani population and set back the goal of winning hearts and minds.

“How are you winning the hearts and minds of these people when you drive a tank through their farms?” Black said. “The NDP would like to see Canada withdraw from the combat mission.”

Election Chances

Canada’s Senate national security committee is dominated by Liberals and Conservatives, but the NDP could play a pivotal role in future Canadian policy in Afghanistan, especially if the Conservative minority government of Stephen Harper is forced into a new election.

Harper, a staunch ally of President Bush, is struggling in opinion polls, dragged down in part by the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. If neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals can win a clear electoral victory, the NDP could be the power broker deciding who will form the next Canadian government. [For more on the politics, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Canadian Clone in Jeopardy."]

Harper has proposed an additional $200 million aid package that would go to the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai despite concerns over widespread corruption. Sen. Kenny, a Liberal, questioned the wisdom of pouring money into that black hole.

“Canadians will not be able to see how their tax dollars are being spent,” Kenny told me. “I think there will be a lot of money going to a number of people to enhance their Swiss bank accounts. Perhaps some of it will get through to the Afghan people.”

The committee report, released in February, recommended redirecting aid through the military to ensure that more of the money actually reaches the population.

Overall, the report saw few bright spots.

“Anyone expecting to see the emergence in Afghanistan within the next several decades of a recognizable modern democracy capable of delivering justice and amenities to its people is dreaming in Technicolor,” the report said.

“The three primary forces in Afghan politics [are] armed power, tribal loyalties and corruption,” the report said. “Eliminating corruption in a place like Afghanistan is probably a pipe dream. …

“Any attempts to centralize control are complicated by the fact that Afghanistan’s economy is almost totally dependent on the sale of opium, and the opium marketplace is controlled by the warlords and, increasingly, the Taliban.”

The Canadian senators made little effort to sugarcoat the challenges ahead.

“The Taliban have time and geography on their side,” the report said. “Afghanistan is considerably more backward than other difficult areas like Iraq, Iran and Palestine. Whatever changes are made here are going to take many generations to effect and any early reforms are unlikely to present Canadians with the kinds of successes that might easily be seen to justify our involvement in Afghanistan.”

The report summed up the local situation by saying, “People outside Kabul are generally far more dependent on their traditional Sharia courts and systems of government than they are on the central government. …While NATO is proud of the fact that national elections have taken place, these elections have proven to be all but irrelevant to Afghans in places like Kandahar.”

The committee also took the Canadian International Development Agency to task for insisting “that it has a number of development projects underway in the province, but no one was able to show us.”

Beyond the lack of proof that Canada’s commitment was improving the lives of Afghans, the report noted that “life is clearly more perilous because we are there. That doesn’t mean that Canada shouldn’t be there…but it does mean that the ordinary citizen of Kandahar is living in a war zone that he or she wouldn’t be living in if NATO troops weren’t there.

Global Realignment and the Decline of the Superpower

March 10, 2007

By Mike Whitney

The United States has been defeated in Iraq. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be a troop withdrawal anytime soon, but it does mean that there’s no chance of achieving the mission’s political objectives. Iraq will not be a democracy, reconstruction will be minimal, and the security situation will continue to deteriorate into the foreseeable future.

The real goals of the invasion are equally unachievable. While the US has established a number of military bases at the heart of the world’s energy-center; oil output has dwindled to 1.6 million barrels per day, nearly half of post-war production. More importantly, the administration has no clear strategy for protecting pipelines, oil tankers and major facilities. Oil production will be spotty for years to come even if security improves. This will have grave effects on oil futures; triggering erratic spikes in prices and roiling the world energy markets. If the contagion spreads to the other Gulf States, as many political analysts now expect, many of the world’s oil-dependent countries will go through an agonizing cycle of recession/depression.

America’s failure in Iraq is not merely a defeat for the Bush administration. It is also a defeat for the “unipolar-model” of world order. Iraq proves that that the superpower model cannot provide the stability, security or guarantee of human rights that are essential for garnering the support of the 6 billion people who now occupy the planet. The mushrooming of armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and, now, Somalia foreshadows a broader and more violent confrontation between the over-stretched American legions and their increasingly adaptable and lethal enemies. Resistance to the imperial order is on the rise everywhere.

The United States does not have the resources or the public support to prevail in such a conflict. Nor does it have the moral authority to persuade the world of the merit of its cause. The Bush administration’s extra-legal actions have galvanized the majority of people against the United States. America has become a threat to the very human rights and civil liberties with which it used to be identified. There’s little popular support for imprisoning enemies without charges, for torturing suspects with impunity, for kidnapping people off the streets of foreign capitals, or for invading unarmed sovereign nations without the approval of the United Nations. These are fundamental violations to international law as well as commonly held principles of human decency.

The Bush administration defends its illegal activities as an essential part of the new world order; a model of global governance which allows Washington to police the world according to its own discretion. The vast majority of people have rejected this model and polls clearly indicate declining support for US policies nearly everywhere. As former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski noted:

“American power may be greater in 2006 than in 1991, (but) the country’s capacity to mobilize, inspire, point in a shared direction and thus shape global realities has significantly declined. Fifteen years after its coronation as global leader, America is becoming a fearful and lonely democracy in a politically antagonistic world.”

The United States is a nation in a state of irreversible decline; its foundational principles have been abandoned and its center of political power is a moral swamp. The Bush presidency represents the ethical low point in American history.

The U.S. now faces a decades-long struggle which will engulf the Middle East and Central Asia leading to the steady and predictable erosion of America’s military, political and economic power.

This is not the “new century” that Bush and his fellows envisioned.

There are still dead-enders within the Bush administration who believe that we are winning the war. Vice President Dick Cheney has celebrated the “enormous success” of the Iraqi occupation, but he finds himself increasingly isolated in his views. Reasonable people agree that the war has been a strategic and moral catastrophe. The US has paid a heavy price for its recklessness; losing over 3,000 servicemen while seriously undermining its standing in the world. A small cadre of Iraqi guerillas has demonstrated that it can frustrate the efforts of best-equipped, best-trained, high-tech military in the world. They have made Iraq an ungovernable quagmire which, by the standards of asymmetrical warfare, is the very definition of success.

But what if Bush’s plans had succeeded? What if his dark vision of “victory” had been realized and the US was able to subjugate the Iraqi people, control their resources, and create an “Arab façade” through which the administration could carry out its policies?

Is there any doubt that Bush would quickly march on Tehran and Damascus? Is there any doubt that Guantanamo and other CIA “black sites” around the world would increase in number and size? Is there any doubt that global warming, peak oil, nuclear non proliferation, poverty, hunger and AIDS would continue to be brushed aside by Washington’s corporatists and banking elites?

Is there any doubt that success in Iraq would further strengthen a tyrannical system that limits the decision-making on all the issues of global importance, even the very survival of the planet, to a small fraternity of well-heeled plutocrats and gangsters?

The “new world order” promises despotism not democracy.

Many people believe that America has undergone a silent coup and has been taken over by a cabal of political fantasists and war-mongers. But this is only partially true. The US has a long history of covert activity, black-ops, and other clear violations to international law. Perhaps, we are reluctant to accept the truth because it’s easier to stick our heads in the sand and let the marauding continue.

The truth is there’s a straight line from the founding of this country to the killing fields of Baghdad. That line may be interrupted by periods of enlightenment and peace, but it is still an unbroken stripe from the Continental Congress to Abu Ghraib, from Bunker Hill to Falluja, from Valley Forge to Guantanamo Bay. It all grows from the same root.

The United States now faces mounting resistance from all corners of the earth. Russia, China, and the Central Asian countries have joined together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to fend off US-NATO influence in the region. And in Latin America, an alliance of leftist governments has formed (Mercosur) under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. Africa still remains politically fragmented and open to western exploitation, although ham-fisted interventions in Somalia, Nigeria and Sudan suggest that the empire will face escalating resistance there as well.

These new coalitions are an indication of the massive geopolitical changes that are already underway. The world is realigning in reaction to Washington’s aggression. We can expect to see these groups continue to strengthen as the administration pursues its resource war through force of arms. That means that the “old order”--the United Nations, NATO and the transatlantic Alliance--will come under greater and greater strain until relations are eventually cut off.

The UN has already become irrelevant through its blind support of US policy in the Middle East. Its silence during Israel’s destructive rampage through Lebanon, as well as its failure to acknowledge Iran’s “inalienable rights” under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has exposed the UN as a “rubber stamp” for US-Israeli belligerence. An attack on Iran will be the end of the UN, an institution that held great promise for the world, but now merely provides cover for an elite-western agenda. On balance, the UN facilitates more wars than it stops. It won’t be missed.

Afghanistan holds the key for understanding what’s in store for the EU, NATO and the transatlantic Alliance. There is no possibility of success in Afghanistan. If the men who planned the invasion had a grasp of the country’s history they would have known how the war would progress. They would have realized that Afghanis traditionally take their time to fight back; (Eric Margolis predicted that the real war would not take place until 4 to5 years after the initial invasion) measuring the strength of their enemy and garnering greater public support. Then they proceed with deliberate steps to rid their country of the invaders. These are fiercely nationalistic and independent people who have fought occupation before and know what it takes to win.

We are mistaken to think that the war in Afghanistan is merely a Taliban (or worse still) “terrorist” insurgency. The present conflict represents a general uprising of Pushtun nationals who seek to end foreign occupation. They know first-hand that US-NATO policy has strengthened the warlords, expanded the drug trade, reduced security, and increased terrorism. According to the Senlis Council Report, the occupation has triggered “a humanitarian crisis of starvation and poverty… US policies in Afghanistan have re-created a safe-haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy.”

The Afghan armed resistance is resourceful and intractable and has a growing number of recruits to swell its ranks. Eventually, they will prevail. It’s their country and they’ll be there long after we’ve gone.

An America defeat in Afghanistan could be the straw that breaks NATO’s back. The administrations’ global schema depends heavily on support from Europe; persuading the predominantly white, western nations to join the battle and secure pipeline corridors and landlocked energy supplies throughout Central Asia. Failure in Afghanistan would send tremors through Europe’s political landscape and give rise to a generation of anti-American politicians who will seek to dissolve relations between the two traditional allies. But a breakup seems inevitable. After all, Europe has no imperial aspirations and its economies are thriving. They don’t need to invade and occupy countries to get access to vital resources. They can simply buy them on the open market.

As Europeans begin to see that their national interests are better served through dialogue and friendship, (with suppliers of resources in Central Asia and Russia) then the ties that bind Europe to America will loosen and the continents will drift further apart.

The end of NATO is the end of America as a global power. The present adventurism is not sustainable “unilaterally” and without the fig-leaf of UN cover. America needs Europe, but the chasm between the two is progressively growing.

It is impossible to predict the future with any degree of certainty, but the appearance of these coalitions strongly suggests a new world order is emerging. It is not the one, however, that Bush and the neoconservatives anticipated. America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to prevent it from addressing brush-fires in Latin America and Russia, further strengthening US rivals and precipitating macroeconomic changes that could crush the American middle class. The likelihood of a major economic retrenchment has never been greater as the administrations’ reckless defense spending, lavish tax cuts, and trade deficit have set the stage for the US dollar to be dethroned as the world’s “reserve currency”. The three pillars of American imperial power--political, economic and military--rest on the crumbling foundation of the US greenback. If the dollar falls, as many currency traders now expect, then foreign (baskets of) currencies will rise, and America will slip into a deep recession/depression.

America’s military and economic unraveling is likely to take a decade or more depending on the situation in Iraq. If the Bush administration is able to exert control over Middle East oil, then the dollar will continue to be linked to vital resources and American supremacy will persist. If, however, conditions on the ground deteriorate, then Central Banks around the world will decrease their dollar holdings, Americans will face hyper-inflation at home, and the US will lose its grip on the global economic system. The Bush administration must, therefore, ensure that oil continues to be denominated in USDs and that the world economy remains in the hands of western elites, banking giants and corporatists.

The chances for success in Iraq are gradually diminishing. The US has shown that it is incapable of establishing security, providing basic social services, or keeping the peace. The guerilla war continues to intensify while the over-extended US military has been pushed to the breaking point. We expect the occupation of Iraq to be untenable within 5 years if present trends continue.

America’s military and economic unraveling will undoubtedly be painful, but it may generate greater parity among the nations, which would be a positive development. The superpower model has been an abysmal failure. It has wreaked havoc on civil liberties at home and spread war and instability across the world. The present system needs a major shakeup so that power can be more evenly distributed according to traditional democratic standards. America’s decline presents a unique opportunity to restore the Republic, restructure the existing global-paradigm, and begin to build consensus on the species-threatening challenges which face us all.

Afghans 'Hate NATO More Than the Russians'

March 05, 2007

Comment: civilian deaths are making Nato the enemy

Tim Albone in Kabul

The battle to defeat the Taleban will not be won in the trenches of Helmand; it will only be won when Nato convinces ordinary Afghans that it is a force for good. At the moment this is a battle they are losing miserably.

The International Security Assistance Force's reputation has never been worse and has been exacerbated lately by a string of civilian deaths at the hands of Nato and American coalition soldiers.

Yesterday a US Special Forces convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber near the Pakistan border; witnesses said the Americans then went on a killing spree firing indiscriminately at shopkeepers and drivers. The Americans said they came under attack and returned fire.

The exact details are unimportant. Regardless of the truth, Afghans on the scene blamed the Americans; a mob of hundreds gathered chanting "death to America" and pelted police with stones.

Many of the civilian casualties, such as today's, have been caused by misdirected air strikes and it is something that particularly angers the Afghans.

The problem is that Nato, regardless of any assurances otherwise, is desperately short of troops on the ground. A lack of troops to fight insurgents means a reliance on air support and a reliance on air support means that when things go wrong they go very wrong. A 1,000LB bomb dropped on a house causes a lot of damage.

I have an Afghan friend, a southerner who is a great gauge of what Afghans in the southern Pashtun heartlands think of international troops. It is in the south that the insurgency is at its worst and it is here the battle for hearts and minds is so important. I spoke to him earlier today after the latest attack and he said to me: "People hate Nato more than the Russians."

It's amazing to think that only five years after troops were met with widespread approval when they overthrew the Taleban that they are now compared to the hated Soviet army. It's hard until you think how you would feel if someone dropped a bomb on your neighbour's house or shot your brother for driving too close to a military convoy.

In Afghanistan, a battle of hearts and minds gone awry

Monday, March 05, 2007

By Kathy Gannon

In Afghanistan’s tribal society, a single death — no matter if NATO labels the person an ‘enemy’ target — can create scores of sworn foes. And NATO, like the Taliban, has killed hundreds

ABDULLAH Shah and his son made a pilgrimage to the holy Muslim city of Mecca this January, courtesy of the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai himself arranged the trip to Saudi Arabia.

The invitation came after Shah’s wife, two daughters and three other sons were killed by a wayward NATO bomb in Lagarnai, a village near here in southern Afghanistan.

Shah, in his 70s and wearing the white turban of a religious man, accepted the trip, but not the message.

Before the deaths, “I wasn’t with the Taliban and I wasn’t with the government,” he said. “But, I tell you, now I am Talib.”

In the sixth winter since the US-led ouster of the Taliban government, the radical Islamists are making a comeback. Their bold confidence was apparent last week, when a suicide bomber killed 23 outside an air base during Vice President Richard Cheney’s visit there.

There are many factors. But citizens like Shah, the Afghan government and key NATO commanders agree on this: The use of force is sometimes excessive and errant. In Afghanistan’s tribal society, a single death - no matter if NATO labels it “enemy” - can create scores of sworn foes. And NATO, like the Taliban, has killed hundreds.

The US-based Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 100 Afghan civilians died as a result of coalition assaults in 2006. An AP tally, based on reports from Afghan, NATO and coalition officials, puts the overall death toll of civilians in 2006 at 834, most from militant attacks.

“Killing Taliban is not going to get this country sorted out. That is not going to fix the problem,” said Brig Gen Tim Grant, commander of Canada’s 2,500 troop force, stationed in southern Kandahar, heartland of the resistance to Karzai’s government. What’s needed, he says, is an Afghan army.

While troops go after Taliban fighters, Grant says that’s not a priority for ordinary Afghans; they are frustrated by insecurity and lawlessness, which they blame on a corrupt and inept government whose police extort, threaten and make them feel less secure.

The international troops are there to support Karzai’s government. When they do that aggressively, even in response to deadly Taliban tactics, they are seen as brutes protecting an unpopular regime, he said.

“Are we stuck between a rock and a hard place? Yes. We are here at the request of the government and the government has issues and corruption is leading amongst them,” said Grant.

The head of an Afghan human rights advocacy group, Nader Nadery, told The Associated Press that Afghans are turning away from the government and the international forces.

Yet most Afghans don’t want the foreign soldiers to leave, he said. They keep local warlords and commanders - some now in government - from turning their guns on each other. Such feuds killed thousands of Afghans in the 1990s, destroyed much of the capital, Kabul, and eventually gave rise to the Taliban.

Grant said his priority, higher than chasing Taliban, was training and equipping Afghan forces to provide security on their own by 2009, when the Canadian mission ends.

There’s much work to be done.

Wali Mohammad is a police officer in Kandahar, looking smart in his gray woolen hat and pants. He told the AP that a policeman’s salary of US$60 a month is so low it drives police to corruption.

“There is no discipline among the police, no direction,” he said. “We are given nice uniforms and weapons but that won’t feed our family. We are compelled to be corrupt.”

The police chief of Zabul province, Noor Mohammed Paktin, earlier told the AP that criminal gangs abetted by the police and military are as big a threat in some parts of Afghanistan as the religious militia.

With the spring thaw, fighting is sure to intensify. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates promises NATO and coalition forces will go after the Taliban rather than wait for them to strike.

“What we want to do this spring is have this spring offensive be our offensive,” he said.

But aggressive action risks a backlash.

In 2006, NATO and coalition forces mounted blistering offensives, including the strongest called Operation Medusa in Panjwayi district of southern Kandahar.

Residents of Spirwan, a village in the heart of the district, fled before last year’s operation and had only recently returned when the AP visited this January.

Mohammed Khan, a villager in his 50s with dirt-caked hands from scrounging through the rubble of his home, screamed abuse when he saw a Westerner approach.

“What are these foreign soldiers doing?” he said. “One day they are dropping bombs on us and then they come with three or four dishes of food. What is that? What do they think?”

The offensive against the Taliban left the common people with nothing but problems, he said.

“We hate the world community. We hate America. We hate NATO,” he said. “What good are they doing for us? What good is our government doing?”

In what appeared to be the only concrete structure in the otherwise mud-brick village, local elder Dur Mohammed warned that the bombing of villages was creating more Taliban. He sat in the corner of the room, smoking and stroking his artificial leg, lost in the 1980s war against the invading Soviet Union.

“People don’t like the Taliban coming into the villages, because then the bombing will come,” he said. “But why are they (NATO) killing the Taliban? They are from this country. Why should the foreigners come and kill Afghans?”

Grant said the war is lost if the international community loses the hearts and minds of Afghans. More foreign troops aren’t the answer, he said, and when assaults are needed they must be accurate.

A study of the Afghan war released Tuesday by the US-based Jamestown Foundation reached a similar conclusion.

“As coalition troops continue to use close air support and superior artillery firepower to flush Taliban insurgents out of provinces like Kandahar, the real contest for the hearts and minds... may well hinge on the competing sides’ “collateral damage” statistics,” it said.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, another Washington-based group, said that NATO and the US military were wrong to emphasize their ability to kill Taliban. “The ensuing collateral damage in a culture that emphasizes revenge has created ten enemies out of one and has disillusioned most Afghans,” it said.

Grant says there is more anger today toward the foreign soldiers than in 2005, when he also was stationed in Afghanistan. To turn around that perception means taking risks, he said.

“I tell the troops that there are 55,000 drivers in Kandahar city and maybe five among them are suicide bombers. But if we treat all the other 54,995 drivers like they are all suicide bombers then we have lost,” he said.

Some, like Abdullah Shah, who lost so much of his family, can’t be won back.

“I don’t care. They can kill me. What are the foreign soldiers doing but killing us?” he said, recounting the day his wife and children were struck as they tried to flee. His youngest child, a 10-month-old baby, died with his mother.

“From whom can they protect us? The looters? The looters are the government and they are with the government.” ap

NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan Kills 9 More Civilians

NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan Kills 9

Monday March 5, 2007 12:16 PM

By AMIR SHAH

and

RAHIM FAIEZ

Associated Press Writers

JABAR, Afghanistan (AP) - A NATO airstrike destroyed a mud brick home, killing four generations of an Afghan family - nine people in all - during a firefight between Western troops and militants, Afghan officials and relatives said Monday.

Militants late Sunday fired on a NATO base in Kapisa province, just north of Kabul. When fighter aircraft returned fire they hit a civilian home, killing five adults and four children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years, said Gulam Nabi, 51, a relative of the victims.

Maj. William Mitchell, a U.S. military spokesman, said officials were looking into the incident. The NATO base in Kapisa is staffed by U.S. forces and sits some 50 miles northeast of Kabul, the capital.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said a large mud home in a compound of five buildings was destroyed, leaving only exploded bits of mud.

Among those killed were Gulam Nabi's parents, his sister, his nephew, and four of the extended family's youngest children.

The news of the airstrike came one day after wounded Afghans and witnesses said U.S. Marines fired on civilian cars and pedestrians after a frenzied escape from a suicide bomb and gunfire attack in eastern Afghanistan. The violence sparked angry anti-U.S. demonstrations by hundreds of Afghan men.

Up to 10 Afghans were killed and 34 injured during Sunday's violence in Nangarhar province. A delegation of Afghan officials on Monday visited the site of the bombing as part of investigation into the attack and its aftermath.

The back-to-back incidents of NATO or U.S. forces killing or wounding so many Afghans was likely to cause further grief and anger in a country that has seen scores of civilians killed by international forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pleaded repeatedly for Western troops to take care not to harm civilians. On Monday, he condemned the killings in Nangarhar province and said he had ordered an investigation, and government assistance for the victims and their families.

A U.S. official called The Associated Press on Monday to say that military authorities believe Sunday's suicide bombing was a ``clearly planned, orchestrated attack'' that included enemy fire on the convoy and a pre-planned and arranged demonstration.

The official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said authorities believed criminal elements orchestrated the attack and demonstration and that it was related to ongoing Afghan efforts to eradicate the region's profitable poppy crop.

He said there was ``no doubt in the minds of Marines on the ground that they were being fired on.'' The official said Afghan casualties could have been caused by militants on the ground or by U.S. gunfire.

However, two senior provincial Afghan officials who also asked not to be named said they had found no evidence to corroborate the military's claims that militants fired on the Americans. An AP reporter who has spoken to more than a dozen witnesses could not find anyone who said they saw or heard incoming militant gunfire.

Akhtyar Gul, who ran outside his home after the suicide bombing, said he saw American troops firing in many directions - and that some bullets struck the wall of his home. He said he saw a woman working in a nearby field struck by American gunfire.

``There was nobody on the street, nobody on the road to fire on the Americans,'' said Gul. ``The only firing that came toward us was from these American vehicles.''

The U.S. official also questioned how a large demonstration could materialize so fast, suggesting it had been planned. But witnesses on the ground say the demonstration happened more than 3 miles west of the bombing and only after the U.S. convoy had driven by shooting at civilian cars and pedestrians.

``We didn't know about the suicide attack, because the attack was miles away from us,'' said Haji Gul Batikoti, 25.

He said no one encouraged the Afghans to demonstrate.

``Ten minutes after the vehicles left, all the angry people who were collecting the injured people and also carrying the dead bodies, they were shouting, they were very angry,'' he said.

---

Rahim Faiez reported from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.

Don’t push Pakistan too far

BY ERIC MARGOLIS

4 March 2007

VICE-President Dick Cheney’s visit last week to South Asia was not what one could call a rousing success.

Cheney, the real power behind the Bush Administration, arrived at Bagram air base, formerly the nerve centre for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Today, it plays the same role for the US occupation. A suicide bomber attacked the base’s main gate, killing a score of soldiers and civilians and hugely embarrassing Cheney. Worse, the 60 km ‘secure’ highway between Bagram and Kabul has become so dangerous that Cheney could not travel by road through this region which is deemed highly secure by US and NATO forces to meet with the American-installed figurehead leader, Hamid Karzai, who is constantly surrounded by up to 200 US bodyguards.

Anti-western forces are quickly gaining ground in Afghanistan. What Washington and its NATO allies keep claiming is an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ against a handful of Al Qaeda fighters and Taleban has, in fact, turned into fast-growing Afghan national resistance to foreign occupation. Were it not for the US Air Force’s might and ubiquitous presence, US, Canadian, and British troops would soon be driven from southern Afghanistan. The respected Senlis Council, which closely monitors Afghanistan, reports half that nation is now under Taleban control or influence.

The fast-deteriorating situation there is provoking furious finger-pointing. Washington and NATO are angrily blaming Pakistan for sheltering and abetting Taleban and its allies. Pakistan blames the feeble Karzai regime which can’t control its own territory. Now, US intelligence reports that Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in spite of President George Bush’s so-called $690 billion ‘war on terror.’

Cheney went on to Pakistan to threaten President Pervez Musharraf, with a cutoff of US aid — and perhaps much worse — if he didn’t crack down further on Pashtun tribesmen in the frontier provinces who are aiding Taleban and other Pashtun and nationalist resistance groups. The western powers are following India’s lead over Kashmir by accusing Pakistan of ‘cross-border terrorism.’

This is untrue. The 40 million Pashtun, the world’s largest tribe, have never recognised the British-drawn 1893 border between Pakistan and Afghanistan that cuts their traditional territory in two. They cross it at will and maintain close links with relatives and clansmen on the other side of the border who strongly support Taleban and its allies.

In the 1980’s and 90’s, I explored and became fascinated by the wild, lawless, then little-known frontier tribal agencies of north and south Waziristan, Khyber, Mohmand, Orakzai and Malakand. Their warlike, fiercely independent tribes joined Pakistan in 1947 under constitutional guarantee of total autonomy that excluded government soldiers from the tribal agencies.

Intense US pressure forced Musharraf to violate Pakistan’s constitution by sending troops into the tribal territories. The army shamefully launched heavy attacks, killing over 3,000 civilians. Outrage across Pakistan forced Musharraf to back down and withdraw some troops. ‘Fight India, not your own people,’ cried the press. It was one of the darkest days for Pakistan’s Army.

Many Pakistanis oppose the US occupation of Afghanistan, support their old anti-communist ally, Taleban, and think better of Osama bin Laden than George Bush. Many senior and junior officers in Pakistan’s military and powerful intelligence service, ISI, feel similarly and are bitter at Musharraf for abandoning Taleban and resistance groups fighting to oust Indian rule in divided Kashmir.

Musharraf is thus caught between Washington’s growing demands and his own people who increasingly accuse him of being an American tool. Washington simply does not understand it has pushed the isolated, unpopular Musharraf too far already. If he is blown up or overthrown, Pakistan and its 40-60 nuclear weapons, could turn into an even bigger and more dangerous hotbed of anti-western activity. The next army corps commander who takes over may not be as amenable to Washington’s demands as Pervez Musharraf.

Meanwhile, Washington is increasingly blaming its Afghanistan fiasco on whipping boy Pakistan, just as the Vietnam defeat was blamed on infiltration from Cambodia and Laos. Recently, a remarkably ill-informed Canadian defense minister foolishly proposed sending Canadian troops into Pakistan’s tribal agencies to ‘fight terrorists.’

Picking a fight with old, loyal ally Pakistan is both morally wrong and fraught with untold dangers. The US has forgotten how it forced another compliant military ruler, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, into policies his people hated. He was assassinated, to national joy.

Negotiating a deal with Taleban and other Afghan resistance forces is the only way out of the current morass, not undermining Pakistan or expanding a war that is already lost.

Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun