Afghanistan: Invasion, Destruction, Occupation, Exploitation, Opium

International Crimes of the US/NATO/Israel/Saudi Arabia - Empire

http://www.jar2.com/Topics/US_International_Crimes.html

Takeover of Global Heroin Trade, Greater Israel and the UNOCAL Pipeline (2006)

http://www.jar2.com/1/Archive/2006/April2006.htm

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/10/taliban-oil-afghanistan-161004085739050.html

http://www.jar2.com/Topics/USAID.html

https://www.usip.org/publications/2017/12/usaid-afghanistan-challenges-and-successes

Professor Anita Dancs Who Benefits from the Midddle East Wars?

http://www.jar2.com/Interviews/Anita_Dancs.html

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence

US/NATO Protecting Opium in Afghanistan
December 26, 2013 09:18 Published on the VOR

Almost the entirety of the facts regarding the US invasion and “involvement” in Afghanistan raise serious questions as to the real intentions that the US had in invading the country in the first place and what they have done there since. The questions are many, some that are impossible to answer, some that have been answered and brushed under the carpet and still others that are not be answered or even asked, with anyone attempting to do so facing a violent reaction or concerted backlash. Among these questions is why has opium production increased after 12 years of US/NATO occupation?

The fact that the US does not want the world to know what they have really been doing in Afghanistan, the embedded reporters who only report what they are supposed to report and their attempts to silence anyone who has exposed crimes (Bradley Manning for example), along with the level of duplicity that exists within the Karzai “puppet” government, the Taliban and their intertwined relationship with the US has made it extremely difficult if not impossible to ascertain the real situation in the country. However if one is to look at the results of their invasion and occupation and what has transpired there in the now over 12 years of occupation things become clearer.

Like any crime, the crimes that have occurred in Afghanistan and against the Afghan people by the US/NATO coalition in collusion with the Taliban, other non-state actors and foreign powers, have been carried out to benefit particular actors or a particular geopolitical or other plan. From the concerted destruction of almost all Soviet built infrastructure to the decimation of all institutions that supported civil society the end result of over 12 years of US/NATO occupation has been the complete destruction and splintering of the country and the predicted return of the Taliban to power. This benefits US/NATO strategy of destroying countries to keep them weak and prevent the formation of anti US blocs, such as one that may have formed between Russia, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan and it has also followed US strategy with regard to exploitation and resource extraction, that it is better and more profitabler to deal with warlords and illegal fiefdoms when obtaining resources than with legitimate state actors who demand contracts, quotas, controls and taxes.

Following the line of thought that with any crime someone benefits, we then have to ask what has benefitted the most from the US occupation. The answer to that is the opium production and trade and the Taliban. This is not a theory or an accusation but the facts as laid out by the United Nations. So while the US has been taking money from US taxpayers to “fight” the illicit narcotics business in Afghanistan, to the tune of $70 billion, Afghan opium cultivation is up 36% and production is up 49%.

According to a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): “Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose 36 per cent in 2013, a record high, according to the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey released today in Kabul by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics and UNODC. Meanwhile, opium production amounted to 5,500 tons, up by almost a half since 2012.”

Mr. Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of UNODC, called the news "sobering" and stressed that this situation poses a threat to health, stability and development in Afghanistan and beyond: "What is needed is an integrated, comprehensive response to the drug problem. Counter-narcotics efforts must be an integral part of the security, development and institution-building agenda".

The problem with this and the elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring is the fact the United States and their CIA are colluding with the producers of heroin and in fact protecting the opium fields in Afghanistan while running duplicitous policies with the Taliban and the Karzai government.

The reality is that US/NATO and their “coalition of the willing” are involved in actively protecting the opium fields in Afghanistan according to a recent exposé consisting of almost exclusively photographs by the Global Research group(LINK2). Global Research apparently made the editorial decision that a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case the pictures, are a visual and unarguable condemnation of the US “mission” in Afghanistan.

Global research quotes Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the outgoing leader of the Afghanistan office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which produced the above report as saying: “This has never been witnessed before in the history of Afghanistan,”.

Global Research wrote: “The U.S. military has allowed poppy cultivation to continue in order to appease farmers and government officials involved with the drug trade who might otherwise turn against the Afghan Karzai government in Kabul. Fueling both sides, in fact, the opium and heroin industry is both a product of the war and an essential source for continued conflict.”

They also say: “It is well-documented that the U.S. government has – at least at some times in some parts of the world – protected drug operations. (Big American banks also launder money for drug cartels. Indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. And the U.S. drug money laundering is continuing to this day.)

Scores of other reports say the CIA, which has funded operations from drug money received in Columbia and in other locations, has a long history of such collusion and Afghanistan, which now produces approximately 75% of the world’s opium, is a literal gold mine for illicit narcotics revenues and shifts the balance of the illegal heroin trade from the Golden Triangle and other organizations.

In a book by Alfred W. McCoy, called the The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade : Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Colombia, he writes: “American diplomats and secret agents have been involved in the narcotics traffic at three levels: (1) coincidental complicity by allying with groups actively engaged in the drug traffic; (2) abetting the traffic by covering up for known heroin traffickers and condoning their involvement; (3) and active engagement in the transport of opium and heroin. It is ironic, to say the least, that America's heroin plague is of its own making.”

UNODC chief Yury Fedotov believes the UN report is a warning: "As we approach 2014 and the withdrawal of international forces from the country, the results of the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2013 should be taken for what they are - a warning, and an urgent call to action. If the drug problem is not taken more seriously by aid, development and security actors, the virus of opium will further reduce the resistance of its host, already suffering from dangerously low immune levels due to fragmentation, conflict, patronage, corruption and impunity".

After 12 years and perhaps a million dead the only mission that has been accomplished in Afghanistan is the increase of heroin production, could it be that this was the goal all along? Food for thought and serious investigation

CIA Fueling Corruption, War and Protecting the Opium in Afghanistan: Karzai’s Millions

30 April, 2013 09:18  

The violence and instability in the Middle East is getting worse as summer approaches, it is being fueled by Shiite - Sunni strife, regional animosity, civil war, shattered economies, rising Islamic fundamentalism, the ongoing conflict in Syria, Israeli moves against it neighbors, the instability in post invasion Libya and Iraq, and US military expansion. It is no coincidence that right in the middle of almost every single Middle Eastern conflict is the CIA, with suitcases of money for Karzai, money for Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria, money for NGOs in Egypt and support for insurgents and terrorists in almost every single recent conflict. A pretext is needed by US “nation builders” for an all out invasion of Syria and Iran, will the CIA give them one or can be peace be brought about in the Middle East despite US efforts?

The Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, recently made a very astute, topical and insightful statement to the world’s press regarding the situation in Syria. As a man in the leadership of a country targeted, destroyed and haphazardly reconfigured by the nefarious Western geopolitical empire builders, sitting in their comfortable offices in Washington while safely wreaking death, destruction and havoc on poor weak countries across the globe, he is a man who surely must know what he is talking about when he talks about forces that could tear the Middle East completely apart.

The prime minister warned that if the Syrian insurgents, a grouping made up almost in its entirety of U.S and Western backed terrorists, mercenaries, criminals and killers, succeeds in ousting the elected President of Syria Bashar al-Assad, it will lead to more violence and instability not only in Syria, but it will spillover into the rest of the region.

He said if the U.S. backed insurgents, a motley mix of Al-Qaeda, Chechen, and every other color of terrorist wins, Syria will become a haven for extremists, a sectarian war will be sparked in Iraq, a civil war will start in Lebanon and divisions will be created in Jordan.

This is something that the nefarious Washington planners must also be aware of and perhaps are counting on. Washington itself has become even more bellicose than usual as of late, attempting to fabricate a Syrian chemical weapons story and trying to connect it to an invasion of Iran. The U.S. planners are clearly behind schedule on Syria and Iran and surely the pretexts for yet more aggressive invasions disguised as “interventions” will be coming one after the other in haste as summer begins. Washington’s Iranian uranium pretext has not panned out so well and President Bashar al-Assad has clearly shown more resiliency than Washington expected.

The statement by the prime minister is particularly topical with the recent news that the President of Afghanistan has been receiving millions upon millions of CIA dollars for the last decade, which explains a lot actually. Namely and most importantly for me this explains, President Karzai’s complacency when it comes to the constant, seemingly never ending stream of civilian casualties and the death and destruction wreaked on the innocent Afghan civilian population by the “Bush coalition of the willing”. It also explains why Karzai has allied himself with what are nothing more than aggressive invaders of his country. These were always question I pondered but the answer is now simple and clear, it appears, that he was simply bought-off by the CIA.

The New York Times reported that; “… money was delivered monthly by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags and the sums were in the tens of millions of dollars”. Were such a revelation made of almost any other leader in the world, the outrage in the president’s country would be unbelievable. In almost any country the president receiving money from a foreign power’s spy agency, the CIA in this case, would be an outrageous act of treason.

Hamid Karzai has admitted that the accusations, which were revealed by members of his own administration, are true and has tried to say that the money was used for innocent and benign “humanitarian” issues and paying unspecified “rents”. No corruption or treason here, move along, nothing to see. Never mind the CIA was doing the money delivery. Normal. Move along.

The Iraqi PM stated that the violence of those wishing to replace President Bashar al-Assad will lead to more violence, this is completely logical and pragmatic reasoning and could be expanded on to reach the conclusion that a country rebuilt by corrupt officials will also spread more corruption. This black budget, or the new politer term “Ghost Money”, was paid to Karzai in secret by the CIA, not because it was for “humanitarian assistance” or “rent”, but because it was illegal and what in fact they were doing was buying favor.

How will American politicians, diplomats, State Department officials and the sanctimonious idiots at the CIA who allowed this to become known, now dictate to the world on corruption? Even more importantly for their own political necks, how will they be able to explain to poor over-taxed, over controlled American taxpayers and voters, why they are pouring millions upon millions into the pockets of a foreign leader in a country where they have already failed miserably and have burdened the next dozen or so generations of American taxpayer with a bill of over half a trillion dollars?

As of today, according to cost of war dot com , the war in Afghanistan has cost American taxpayers $624,885,950,261.00. This burden on Americans continues to grow as the government continues to close schools, cut social spending, continues to behave as if the basic human rights of housing, education and medical care are for the elites and continues to raise taxes. Now tell Americans the CIA was delivering millions of their tax dollars to the president of a country they invaded. Doubtful they will support that.

Expanding on the theme; the US always knows exactly how much the opium trade is making in Afghanistan, how many tons are produced etc, just as they claim to have information on and be able to determine who is corrupt. Now we know they are engaged in the very corruption they preach to the world about, clearly giving them a true position as experts on the matter. Perhaps they are also involved in the opium trade? After all that “business” has skyrocketed since they invaded Afghanistan, maybe I am reaching but it does raise questions. Of course this would be through the CIA, an “agency” which engages in some of the worst evils being carried out by humankind, and these are questions American tax payers and voters should be asking.

Why the CIA and the US need to control and pay off Karzai is clear, but what about the statements by the Iraqi PM? Why would the US want to bring about what could be the complete destruction of the entire Middle East, by continuing to fund insurgents in Syria, and the deaths of millions if all out war breaks out? The answer to US meddling and destabilization efforts in the Middle East is quiet simple and boils down to three main things: oil, Israel and money.

I have said this in the past many times: a country founded by genocidal killers and the worst elements of European society and based on that genocide and built by slaves, will never be able to truly carry out anything worthy of mankind, other than more death and destruction. The Iraqi PM’s statement, in all its honesty, if applied historically and with a 200-year-retrospect, could apply to the US as well.

Back to Karzai: the New York Times quotes Karzai as having said the money was "very useful, and we are grateful for it." Sure you are all those billions must have helped a lot in securing yourself a nice little life while the Afghan people are some of the poorest in the world. They also quote Khalil Roman, the deputy chief of staff for Karzai from 2002 until 2005, as saying the huge sums were "ghost money" that "came in secret, and it left in secret." The publication also quotes anonymous US officials as saying: "… the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington's exit strategy from Afghanistan."

As I have said many times, the US needs conflict, it needs and feeds war, all over the world. This justifies its own global military expansion, and it has never ever, not for a minute, been truly concerned about human rights, democracy, rule of law, corruption, justice or peace. So should a country spreading so much war, death, suffering and corruption continue to be allowed to do? I think the answer to that is clear.

The US has shown itself to be the single largest threat to peace and regional stability on the entire planet Earth. It has started and been involved in more wars, aggressive invasions and has violated more international laws and conventions than any other country on the planet. Maybe it is time the world said no to the CIA and Washington’s geopolitical global architects, or perhaps they CIA might start delivering suitcases of dollars to poor and hungry kids around the world so they can build schools, pay for medical care, buy food and perhaps get a new toy? Doubt that will ever happen, no profit in helping humans!

Obama "Warns" Karzai: US/NATO May "Leave" Afghanistan. Thank God Afghans Say!

27 February, 11:48

The self serving spin is almost mind numbing in its complete twisting of the facts as the western press reports that in a telephone conversation on Tuesday US President Barrack Hussein Obama "warned his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai that the US may pull all of its troops out of his country by the year's end." First of all the statement flies in the face of the fact that the US/NATO are supposed to (not may) leave Afghanistan this year.

Secondly the use of the word "warn" implies that somehow President Karzai wants the invaders to continue to occupy his country, something unlikely as he has refused to sign a "security agreement" with the occupiers who want to stay in his country until the end of time to guarantee their military plans and takeover of the entire region.

The Afghanistan narrative by the western media and the US Government is almost the same as the one they were trying to spin as they were chased out of Iraq in 2011. Of course the US Government and US President Obama have to paint as positive a portrait as they can on the Afghanistan fiasco, this is understandable, but given the facts it is pathetic to watch. As in the illegal invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, was portrayed as somehow connected to the events of September 11, 2001 but all connections were quickly proven to be nothing but lies and spin making the US guilty of not one but two (and more) acts of aggressive war (crimes against peace and humanity) based on false pre-fabricated evidence.

Those crimes against humanity have been ignored by the so-called "international community" as they continue to ignore the illegal extra-territorial torture dungeon at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, the ongoing extra-judicial drone assassination operations by the CIA and Obama, the illegal massive spying by the NSA and the persecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange who remains trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London even though he has asylum in Ecuador and has not been charged with a single crime. The ignoring of these crimes continues to fly in the face of international law and is an abomination which continues to undermine the very foundations and belief in the rule of law for all citizens of the world.

Yet the western media continues to spin away everything as if nothing has happened and paint its leaders and military industrial complex as somehow being noble and even more unbelievable, wanted. That is part of the delusional architecture at work here, just as they are ignoring that it is public knowledge that the US/CIA orchestrated the overthrowing of yet another democratically elected government in Ukraine, they continue to ignore and are in denial of the fact that they were never wanted in Afghanistan.

The US invasion and over 12 year occupation of Afghanistan has done nothing positive whatsoever for the Afghan people or the Afghan Government. By some estimates the fighting has killed up to a million Afghanis, opium production has now risen 40 fold making Afghanistan the world’s number one opium producer and the Taliban, who the western media continue to say were somehow defeated are now stronger than ever. As for the 10 or so al-Qaeda fighters that were operating in Afghanistan and who the US supposedly brought in several hundred thousand troops to fight, well they are probably still hanging around somewhere.

We can tell all of the poor Afghan families who have lost children, brothers, husbands and entire families to wanton drone attacks and night raids that it is okay. The US commanders and those in charge of the carnage have learned "lessons." A repeated claim by Generals and politicians. Yes, your country was decimated and destroyed so US/NATO/ISAF could "learn" how to improve their interoperability, fly their little killer drones and use all of their cool night vision murder equipment during their night raids. They also learned how to torture and hone their “enhanced interrogation” skills on your people. As for the opium, well, they learned how to protect the opium fields and in front of the eyes of the world increase production 40 fold while pretending to be fighting against the illegal narcotics trade.

The US is battling a thousand in Afghanistan and is unfortunately also having a problem getting President Karzai to agree to give US personnel legal immunity for its soldiers and contractors. President Karzai may be slightly upset by the thousands of innocent civilians that the US has slaughtered in their wanton drone attacks, but just like in Iraq the "exceptional" Americans believe they should be immune from any law whatsoever when it applies to anywhere other than their own country. This belief that they are above the law everywhere is a psychosis for which there will be no cure until prosecutions begin to be handed down. Something not likely to happen soon as the US even has an act called the "Hague Invasion Act" in case anyone has the nerve to prosecute any American for war crimes.

So back to the pull out. The US wants to keep, what is for them a "small" number of troops (just 10 thousand or so) in Afghanistan until the end of time or has threatened to go for what they are calling a "zero option" (withdrawing all troops), as it did in Iraq, leaving the Afghan forces to battle the bogeymen terrorists by themselves, namely the 5 or so al-Qaeda fighters that may be somewhere in Afghanistan.

The problem is that President Karzai will not sign the security agreement the US wants him to sign to guarantee they can stay. After the phone call between Obama and Karzai White House spokesperson Jay Carney said :"We have made clear that our commitment to Afghanistan – separate from the troop presence – is in our national security interests." He also said: "It is preposterous to suggest [that Karzai’s refusal to sign the BSA] is because we have not made clear that it is to be signed."

Yes that was a correct quote. The US made it clear to Karzai that "… it is to be signed," meaning that Karzai has not followed orders. Let us recall for a moment, Hamid Karzai is not a US Government employee or a member of the White House’s lower level staff, he is the President of Afghanistan. The statement underlines the complete arrogance of the White House and the fact that they really do believe that they own Karzai.

The US White House released a statement which said: "… we will leave open the possibility of concluding a BSA (bilateral security agreement) later this year. However, the longer we go without a BSA, the more challenging it will be to plan and execute any US mission and the more likely it will be that any post-2014 US mission will be smaller in scale and ambition."

If this is true, that the US will actually leave Afghanistan without their BSA, a fact I doubt, then this will surely have the Afghan people dancing in the streets and finally allow the government and the people to concentrate or rebuilding their country, something they will have to do as the US has destroyed all of the infrastructure and annihilated what little the people did have before their invasion. As for the hundreds of thousands if not a million dead civilians, well the US has gotten away with murder so far….

According to Al-Jazeera Chuck Hagel, the US Secretary of Defense (War), said planning for the "zero option" was a prudent step given that Karzai had made clear he is unlikely to sign the security deal. However Hagel is recalcitrant, the US wants to stay, whether they are wanted or not. Hagel added: "The United States will consult closely with NATO allies and ISAF partners in the months ahead, and I look forward to discussing our planning with defence ministers in Brussels this week."

Police Salaries: a Reason US/NATO Must Obtusely Occupy Afghanistan?

16 January, 23:20

Due to clerical errors in filing the proper documents, something which exists in all governments at one time or the other, some police in Afghanistan have not received their salaries since November. The Afghan authorities have reported that the issue is being taken care of and that Afghanistan’s law enforcement personnel will be receiving their full salaries and back pay soon. Those are the facts but of course the US/NATO occupiers have to twist them to meet their own ends.

The narrative again is as old and tired as the hills as US/NATO continue to use the same arguments and propaganda to attempt to stay relevant and put forward an acceptable and believable argument to continue their occupation of Afghanistan, a country they invaded, decimated, occupied and were never wanted in, in the first place. Again the western media is full of statements and reports that the Afghan people are inept, corrupt, incompetent, ignorant and apparently cannot even pay out meager salaries to police despite the “generosity” of the occupiers.

One of the favorite tactics for justifying military occupations, interventions and the subversion of foreign governments by the US has long been one of demonizing and portraying populations and governments as being somehow unable to govern themselves properly to guarantee their own security either because they are too backward and ignorant or too weak to defend themselves. This is a particularly effective tactic with countries possessing non-white populations, particular Middle Eastern and Latin American nations whose “brown” people are portrayed as somehow ignorant and incapable of self-rule.

The tactic plays well to “Americans”, blinded by the country’s institutionalized endemic racism and from birth fed with propaganda that somehow the white “American” race group is the one chosen by God to rule the world and is somehow inherently more intelligent, worthy and exceptional than any other. Non-white Americans are of course forced to live with such a system and are of course figuratively “welcomed along for the ride” as long as they are supportive and live with the pretext that they are inferior and that the land of the “Red” man is the land of the white man.

Of course no one in the debate do those demonizing Afghanistan for the clerical error mention their own government’s complete and total failure economically but that is another issue. US/NATO need to justify their continued presence. With the issue of pay for the police, if one is to listen to many Afghans, the fault lies with the West, who many say is attempting to further weaken the country and who must be evicted as soon as possible. That is the Afghan perspective. The self-serving western perspective is that for the same reason they must stay, which is just in keeping with their long-term strategy in the region.

While blame is being traded by Afghan officials and others are blaming the West the issue appears to truly clerical in nature and does not reflect a need for the US/NATO to continue their occupation. Quite the opposite in fact it shows that law enforcement continues to function even with the absence of pay. Something Americans could never really understand in the first place.

While many western media outlets are jumping on the bandwagon and screaming “See they are ignorant, they must be occupied!” the New York Times appears to be one of the most balanced outlets reporting on the issue. The NY Times reports that: “Basil Massey, who runs the United Nations trust fund through which the police salaries are transferred to the Afghan government from donor nations said the money is in Afghanistan’s treasury and the trust fund was only now becoming aware of the problem because it was reconciling its books from the past quarter, which ended in December.”

According to the NYT “Afghanistan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said the Interior Ministry’s paperwork arrived three days before the end of the Afghan fiscal year on Dec. 20. By then, the ministry’s processing system was already closed so the accounting books could be reconciled. The Interior Ministry “might as well have complained about us because we didn’t process their late requests, but we at the Ministry of Finance follow standard budgetary procedures — and that we stick to. Now that the ministry is again dispersing money, the police will soon receive their back pay, he said.”

NYT: Interior Ministry spokesperson Sediq Sediqqi, said the ministry had missed the deadline because of a shift in the dates for the fiscal year, and that the late paychecks affected only a few areas. Interior Minister Umar Daudzai, said he had already fired a number of officials and that the issue would not happen again.

Sounds reasonable, things happen, especially in a war torn occupied country. Sounds reasonable if one is objective, unless of course you want to use such an error for your own propaganda purposes and to justify a further occupation as it appears many western media outlets do.

The Christian Science Monitor is just one such publication reporting that the Afghan Government is “inept”, “does not even notice that their own police did not receive their salaries” and that the error is a “stunning display of incompetence”. In the same article they demonize Karzai for not caving in to conditions to guaranteeing the further occupation of his country and attempt to portray the occupation and the foreign invaders as somehow necessary as a force for good: “… allowing foreign troops to stay is crucial for the continued flow of aid to Afghanistan and for the country's stability.”

The article is a perfect example of American hypocrisy and their messianic approach to their own role in the world and by failing to mention the opposing side of the equation is a disservice to any of the poor readers who happen to come across the piece. Nowhere is there a mention that Afghanistan existed for thousands of years without US occupation, that the US/NATO occupying forces are guilty of thousands of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan or that the only visible result of going on 13 years of occupation is a 40 fold increase in opium production.

The CSM finishes with: “If after 10 years and a war that has cost the US at least $1 trillion the government can't remember to pay its police, how many more years and how much money must be spent before it learns how?”

The idiocy of this statement is so glaring that I can only call it what it is, namely idiotic. First off since when is US/NATO an educational body and has the responsibility to ensure that countries pay their police on time? Second if after the US has spent at least $1 trillion dollars in Afghanistan engaged in a mission that has brought the people of the US nor of Afghanistan any benefit, this while the American people are hurting and the US’ own economy is bankrupt and the country is falling apart, when are the people going to learn to stand up and say “enough is enough”. Mentioning the US Government “learning” anything is a hopeless cause and one which has been abandoned by many long ago.

Afghanistan is a geopolitical prize from which US/NATO will never leave because it allows for placing US/NATO military assets near Russia and within range of central Asia, and it is now, thanks to US/NATO the world largest producer of opium and the biggest provider of CIA black funds on the planet. How many years and how much more money will be spent before the American people wake up and realize they have been duped?

Afghanistan needs to heal, to rebuild its infrastructure and its society and it does not need obtuse war profiteers and war criminals occupying it any longer to do so. Sadly even the Taliban seems a better option than continued US/NATO occupation, and this is according to US analysts and even the same reporter for the CSM. So go figure.

US Wars Against Afghanistan and Iraq: Crimes Against Humanity - By John Robles

12 February, 2014 21:07  http://www.jar2.com/Topics/Afghanistan.html

The US has failed miserably in Afghanistan, the way they failed in Iraq, in Vietnam, and in dozens of other places and even though they are finally leaving with their tail between their legs, military "commanders" continue to make bold statements and try to put a positive spin on the fiasco that seem to be disconnected from reality and might cause the average person to question their competence.

It may be difficult for the average American and for citizens of the world to understand those who have launched all of the US wars, in the same way that it is difficult for the sane person to understand the mind and the motivations of a homicidal serial killer, yet if we look closely maybe we can. Or not? These are people who have caused the deaths of millions and for you and I it might be difficult to comprehend why despite the failures in Afghanistan and the price the world is having to pay for their "lessons" they want to continue with their adventure.

For Americans it should be vital to understand why their country is at war, but they are bogged down trying to survive without healthcare, with homes being foreclosed, education becoming privatized and everything growing astronomically expensive. Every day those who still have jobs work and attempt to pay for a gallon of gas at the pump so they can stay employed, the same gallon that was $0.69 in 1980 and is already predicted and forecast to be at over $10.00 by the year 2030, yet few question.

Americans should be concerned, if not for the over 1 million lives that have been brutally extinguished since the "War on Terror" began, including the initial 2,999 of their fellow countrymen and innocent civilians who perished on 9-11, then for the simple economic reason that every household in America, whether they support the unfounded and illegal wars and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq or not, are going to foot the bill for generations to come as the military adventures started by their leaders will cost every household approximately $75,000.00 so far.

Yes American taxpayer, like it or not, justified or not, you will pay as much as $6 trillion for your government’s illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, that breaks down to the equivalent of $75,000 for every household according to the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Costs of wars

In an article for Global Research  Sabir Shah detailed the costs of the US wars which Bush and the wars’ proponents said would pay for themselves through oil revenues. So then why isn’t gas at the pump now $0.30 a gallon but has instead skyrocketed? Ask them.

Overall the illegal wars have cost the US $6 trillion dollars, $2 trillion which they have already borrowed and already paid $260 billion just on the interest of those loans. But the war profiteers don’t care, at the same time they are also giving themselves tax cuts of historic proportions.

Those are just the preliminary financial costs there are also long term costs and the cost in destroyed lives and human suffering that the US tries to ignore.

Of course no one in the US has seriously done any study on how many Afghan lives they have extinguished or destroyed either, but there have been many studies done on the lives of US soldiers that have been affected. According to Global Research approximately 1.56 million US Afghanistan and Iraq veterans are receiving treatment at Veterans Administration Hospitals and will be receiving benefits for the rest of their lives with %50 of all veterans having already applied for permanent disability benefits.

Citing the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government report Global Research says the US government has already spent $134 billion on medical care and disability benefits and that they will pay out $836 billion more in the coming decades. But that is not the worst thing, according to the Harvard report, even if the warmongers ended their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan it would not help in easing the growing and widespread poverty, unemployment and declining living standards for working people in the US. Quite the opposite, no matter what happens Americans will be paying for the American adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq for many, many decades to come.

Detached from Reality: No Accoutability

Perhaps through no fault of their own but rather because their government has been taken over by war profiteers, the military industrial complex and the security structures that only serve those promoting war for the sake of war, American have lost the backbone to question and the ability to call for accountability.

Putting aside, as Americans love to do, that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were crimes against humanity and unprovoked aggressive wars launched on countries that never posed a threat to the US, one of the real insanities of the wars is that the commanders and the wars’ proponents have the audacity to openly discuss the "lessons that are to be learned" over their failed military adventures. As if they were on a training run and their decades of war, the millions of civilians killed, the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers crippled and the decimated US economy were not even worth mentioning.

Lessons Learned ?!?!

In an unapologetic article the site UT San Diego matter-of-factly reports that retired Marine General John Allen and retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis two key former commanders in Afghanistan spoke at a conference dedicated to the "lessons to be learned" from their devastating wars.

Of course the conference itself, the "commanders" and the publication ignore the fact that the US was the cause of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and that these invasions were based on lie after lie, but the remorselessly discuss the "lessons to be learned" as if they are discussing some training exercise and not decades of war that caused millions of deaths.

Perhaps I am mistaken but if someone has the authority to send soldiers off to die and order the invasions of countries they damn well better have already learned their "lessons" and actually know what they are doing.

So what lessons did these commanders learn? Well one is that: "… long-term engagement leveraging multinational alliances is key to global stability, in that country and others from Iraq to the Balkans and China." In other words use your allies in your illegal wars.

The publication calls the aggressive wars which killed millions the "US experience" and says the two commanders "… cautioned against the isolationist streak in American sentiment emerging in the post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq war era." Sure people are beginning to wake up and see the war criminals for what they are and most normal countries do not want to be involved in crimes against humanity and endless resource wars.

Mr. Allen’s Lessons

Mr. Allen was very nice in telling the audience about the lessons he had learned in Afghanistan. Very expensive lessons paid coming at a cost of trillions of dollars and millions of lives, but since they were so expensive no doubt the things he learned need repeating. Among his comments he said: "… without security almost nothing is possible in the future in Afghanistan." Sure but I think any idiot will tell you that you cannot build a future when your country has been invaded and is occupied.

Regardless, that was not Mr. Allen’s main lesson learned. According to him his top lesson learned was that the invaded people might actually fight back and kill his "advisers". "That development, together with innovations in the method and prevalence of roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), is among Allen’s top lessons learned from the war."reports UT San Diego.

Mr. Allen also said: "It took us awhile to recognize the strategic implications, killing our advisers, created a huge political crisis ... that began to create a dissolution of the coalition. This was the biggest political challenge I faced."

Mr. Stavridis’ Lessons

Neither of the "commanders" took responsibility for bringing Al-Qaeda to Iraq, a country where they did not exist before, and did not mention the fall of Fallujah a city for which hundreds of Americans had died, so I guess it was not that important.

Mr. Stavridis did acknowledge "enormous fatigue" in the US with Middle Eastern problems, from the Palestinian crisis to Iraq and Afghanistan in what is perceived as "this enormous, disastrous crescent of crisis." but did not take any responsibility. Even worse he said they should continue their adventure: "The worst thing we could do in my view is walk away from this turbulent part of the world or come home to our shores."

Mr. Stavridis was regretful on one point however when he said: "… the US failed to leave behind a residual force of troops. Options for nurturing stability in volatile areas include ‘strategic communication’ about American values such as democracy, NATO military advisers, private-sector weapons sales, and cultural exchanges to build ‘secondary linkages.’" Yes, the families of those one million Iraqis the US killed need to be taught about "American values, democracy and weapons sales.

Mr. Stravidis was candid however when he stated the real reason for destroying Iraq: "All is not lost. If we use the tools we have, we’ve got a reasonable chance of keeping Iraq where it needs to be, a friend of the United States, engaged in the region." No mention of Al-Qaeda or 9-11 or WMDs there. Strange?

Best Lesson

The award for the best lesson learned goes to Mr. Stravidis and he gets the award for saying: "In the end, we won’t deliver security strictly from the barrel of a gun. We are going to do it through building teams."

Apparently they love learning because they want more

The American Forces Press Service reports that apparently the lessons continue. This time the student is Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who said that despite the fact that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will not sign an agreement that would allow for a continued US/NATO presence he: "… continues to plan for a post-2014 training and assistance mission in Afghanistan."

The publication says that Mr. Hagel recently met US President Obama and discussed the retreat and the pulling out of forces and equipment from Afghanistan. The US position has not changed, Mr. Hagel said, adding that "Karzai has so far refused to sign the pact…", but that, "We continue to hope and believe that it will be signed, and we will continue to plan and work with our NATO and International Security Assistance Force commanders for a post-2014 mission."

People keep dying as apparently the hardest lesson which the US refuses to learn is that they are simply "not wanted". Time to finally go home.

Since US invasion 1 million dead from Afghan heroin

3 April, 22:43  

The utter and dismal failure of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was further underlined on March 11 at a session of the UN Commission on Narcotics Drugs. Opium production which was almost completely stopped in 2001 now accounts for 90% of the world’s heroin, a fact that might lead to speculation as to the real motivations behind the invasion and occupation by the West of Afghanistan.

On March 11, at the 56th session of the Commission on Narcotics Drugs held by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Victor Ivanov, the head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, revealed that since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan heroin production has increased 40 fold, more than 1 million people have died due to Afghan heroin and now 90% of the world’s heroin supply comes from Afghanistan.

These are damning statistics which the western media and the U.S. Government will try to evade and further underline the complete failure of U.S. named “Operation Enduring Freedom,” an aggressive invasion, which has done nothing but decimate the country’s people, destroy almost all of the infrastructure and has further allowed America’s war profiteers to become fabulously rich.

Ivanov told the conference that: “Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales… Any impartial observer must admit the sad fact that the international community has failed to curb heroin production in Afghanistan since the start of NATO’s operation.”

With the Middle East, the Arctic, Venezuela and the slew of other countries that have been the subject of U.S. targeting both military and otherwise it is clear what the real objectives are, and were, first and foremost oil and energy resources. With Afghanistan the real reason will never be admitted as it is much more illicit.

Although officials will not state this openly, both in Russia and elsewhere, judging from the U.S.’ past history of invading countries where there are large financial dividends to be had as well as ones of strategic importance, it would appear that the trillion dollar Afghan heroin industry is what the U.S. was after. This would explain why the U.S. has done nothing to eradicate the cultivation of opium in the country and has done nothing to stop the flow of heroin out of Afghanistan.

Unlike the decades before 9-11 there is sadly little chance that anyone will ever come forward and expose the entire lie that has been the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. With the U.S. hyper-security state and its aggressive persecution of whistleblowers there will be no Iran-Contra like revelations pointing to U.S. narcotics profiteering or collusion with the drug trade. What we have are the statistics to look at and the aftermath of the U.S. invasion.

According to data presented by Ivanov at the session opium production has increased to 154,000 hectares and according to reports from Afghanistan will be at 157,000 hectares this year. This is in sharp contrast to the situation before the U.S. invasion in October 2001 when the Taliban had banned the growing of all poppies. What is telling is that after the U.S. invasion all production resumed.
During the presentation by Ivanov data was shared which shows that 820 tons of heroin makes its way into Europe and Russia every year. Most of it is trafficked through the unstable Middle East and Africa as is part of the 994 tons of cocaine that is consumed in the U.S. and Europe.

In a graph used by Ivanov during his presentation opium production in Afghanistan in 2001 was at a paltry 185 tons a year compared to 8,200 in 2007 and 6,900 in 2009. This accounts for a huge amount of dirty money that Ivanonv says is nearly on par with the world’s oil and gas trade.

Moscow believes that eradicating the Afghan poppy fields is the simplest solution to the problem, one that the U.S. for some reason has eschewed. Ivanov said:"Metaphorically speaking, instead of destroying the machine-gun nest, they suggest catching bullets flying from the machine-gun. We suggest eradicating the narcotic plants altogether. As long as there are opium poppy fields, there will be trafficking."

And as long as there is trafficking there will be trillions of illicit dollars to fund U.S. expansionism, illegal invasions and the endless war on terror.

Karzai accuses US of collusion to destabilize Afghanistan

11 March, 2013 15:22  

The President of Afghanistan has made several statements of late and has taken a stance against the American occupiers of his country that have many in Washington bristling, with the latest being his statements that the US is in collusion with the Taliban to further destabilize the country in order to justify a continuing US presence and the prolongation of their “Security Assistance Invasion” and occupation of the strategically important country.

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of reports and articles written detailing US involvement and ties with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden but to finally hear President Hamid Karzai, the acting head of state of Afghanistan, the country where all of the above got their start with the support of the US in their “secret” Afghan war against the Soviet Union, is another matter entirely.

In statements made during a speech celebrating the once Soviet holiday of Women’s Day on Sunday and after the unannounced “secret” visit by the new US War Secretary Chuck Hagel, President Karzai leveled harsh accusations at his American benefactors in an obvious attempt to try to maintain support among the Afghan people, save face and show that he is in control despite the fact, and moreover, especially after the US refused to hand-over control of the Bagram prison, despite Karzai’s claims before Parliament and the nation this was soon to occur. The hand-over was promoted and seen as a sign that Afghanistan was reasserting its sovereignty.

Karzai’s harshest statement accused the United States of America of being in collusion with the Taliban and in fact working together with them to continue destabilizing the country, a fact that is not surprising, given the proven US track record of destabilizing countries to facilitate control over them, the US geopolitical goals in the region, the strategic importance of Afghanistan for the Americans and the US desire to stay in the country indefinitely further underlined by Rick Rozoff in an interview with Press TV.

Karzai did not mince words when he said the Taliban and the US were in bed together in Afghanistan after the US bombed Kabul in the lead up to the visit by Hagel to Afghanistan. According to Reuters Karzai said: "Those bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come. In fact those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan."

In an interview I conducted with three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly who has been on almost a dozen extended stays in Afghanistan for the Voice of Russia  she took it one step further and stated that the US had even built Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden’s encampments in the country.

One has to wonder as to the sincerity of Hamid Karzai however as he has proven in the past, and continues to prove, that he is almost completely impotent in dealing with the Americans who have invaded his country and continue to occupy it for the13th year running. He has repeatedly made statements condemning the slaughter of civilian women and children by US and ISAF forces, the non-stop night raids that are designed to terrorize the Afghan civilian population and the continuing US control of Afghan prisons where the US conducts torture and arbitrary incarceration. Yet until now he has taken almost no real concrete measures to end any of these abuses by the US invaders.

To the chagrin of what many call his US paymasters and “allies” Karzai has surprisingly taken steps recently, if not to protect Afghan Sovereignty, then at least to show he is capable of standing up to the American invaders and prohibited US commandos from conducting “Special Operations” in the Wardak Province. He also came out in, as the New York Times reports, “bristling” terms against the US insistence on maintaining control over how Afghans, who are for the most part simply defending their homeland, are detained, interrogated and released.

Karzai’s new-found independence caused the US to cancel plans to hand over Bagram Prison and Hagel to cancel a joint photo opportunity and press conference that had been planned to show Americans just how wonderful the US failure is going in Afghanistan.

The American occupiers are of course bristling themselves at Karzai’s independent and anti-US rhetoric, withBloomberg quoting a retired U.S. Army colonel David Maxwell as saying; “On the surface and to this outside observer, it appears that Karzai has gone way off the reservation, perhaps more so than he has in the past,” and “I cannot see how we could work with such an apparently delusional leader much longer, but unfortunately I do not know if we have any other good options.”

Such arrogant rhetoric as well as statements by Hagel himself and Western military commanders, point to counted days for Karzai as president, yet have to be taken in the context of the political theater that Karzai himself has been a leading actor in during almost 13 years of US occupation after their aggressive invasion of the country on false grounds.

Using the American idiom derived from the term used for Indians who left their prison-like reservations and were murdered and calling Karzai delusional for saying anything against the imperialist US occupiers further underlines the unbelievable arrogance, all encompassing ignorance and unwavering self-righteous hypocrisy that US has when dealing with foreign countries and anyone they want to control.

President Karzai is in a difficult position, on the one hand the Americans support him and guarantee his safety as long as he is pliable and on the other he has to somehow respond the Afghan people’s anger at the US occupiers who have brought nothing but war and misery to the Afghan people, unlike the Soviets who came in and built almost all of the infrastructure in the country and brought peace, much of which has been destroyed by the Americans. A fact recently underlined in an interview with Afghan native and expert Dr. Zalmay Gulzad aired by the Voice of Russia .

Knowing the US Geopolitical goals in the region and Afghanistan’s strategic location bordering China, Iran and former Soviet Republics, and against the backdrop of those goals which require the Americans to maintain a huge military presence in Afghanistan, makes everything the US does or says with regard to the nobility of their invasion; hypocritical, laughable and an insult to every intelligent independent thinking individual on the planet

On Sunday in attacks killing at least 19 people underlining the blood and carnage the Americans have brought to Afghanistan, as Hagel was leaving a U.S. military compound in Kabul, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Ministry of Defense and another suicide bomber detonated his explosives in Khost province, prompting Karzai to say: “There are ongoing daily talks between Taliban, American and foreigners in Europe and in the Gulf states.” He also said the attacks show that; “The Taliban want a longer presence of foreigners, not their departure from Afghanistan."

If we look at the US support of Al-Qaeda in Syria and their close relationship with the Taliban in the past and we know the US and Israel want to invade Iran and destabilize Iran and China and through former Soviet Republics, Russia, where else will their mercenaries and terrorists need to be based? In Afghanistan of course, and perhaps at the US built fortifications at Tora-Bora.

Further complicating Karzai’s and the Afghan people’s predicament are Afghan resources. Sure they are many and will be exploited by the US but the main reason for the US presence will be to guarantee the security and the exploitation of pipelines delivering oil and gas to the US’ main financial backer, China. For US planners once Iran and Syria are “taken care of” this will open up the possibility of oil to flow all the way from/to China to the Mediterranean and on to the ravenous US market.

Afghanistan: Spinning Failure as Success

19 September 2012, 00:25  

The number of green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan is increasing amid widespread rioting over the American film “The Innocence of Muslims” as the US attempts to make a saving face drawdown of troops from the country. Cooperation between “coalition” troops and the Afghans is being cut back as the attacks continue, yet the US is still trying to paint a different picture of their failure in Afghanistan.

The western media reports that this year alone there have been 37 attacks on the US, and its NATO and want-to-be-NATO allies, all part of George Bush’s coalition of the willing engaged in their endless world war on terror.

Just like at the beginning of the invasion when the US and the Western media reacted with horror and indignation anytime the Afghans fought back, branding them enemy combatants then terrorists and hauling them off to their illegal torture prison, outside of the jurisdiction of international law, in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, the media in the West still don’t seem to get it. They continue to react with shock and indignation whenever the Afghan “allies,” yes that is the term they use now for the countrymen of the country they invaded, attack the "coalition" forces.

Let’s stop for a minute here and put things into the proper perspective. Unlike the Soviet Union, whose intervention was officially requested by the Afghan Government, the United States and NATO were never asked to enter the country, that’s one, two: the invasion of Afghanistan, and that is what it was no matter how the West hates to admit it, was never sanctioned internationally or even within the US, and Afghanistan never threatened the US, never committed an act of aggression against the US warranting invasion, and last and most importantly was never involved in the questionable events of 9-11.

The Western media says that the attacks by Afghan “allies” have killed 51 “international service members” this year with 12 attacks in August leaving 15 dead. Yet nowhere can you find an accurate body count of the innocent Iraqi people, including women and children who have died at the hands of the coalition. This is simple to explain and is part of the US propaganda war, the people back in Kansas don’t want to hear about it, the Afghan people are an abstraction, less than human, their lives do not count as much as those of the “coalition” forces. If the American people were to find out what the US is really doing in Afghanistan, they might become upset and call for an end to the military adventure.

The US’ vested interest in hiding the truth, including about Afghanistan, is obvious by the US reaction to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, yours truly, and anyone else who gets too close to the truth. The war should be over soon, you may think, at least that is what they want you to believe, not hardly, despite the fact that the US is to announce that 33,000 troops who were part of the “surge” three years ago, have left the country this actually means nothing. The number of troops will remain at close to invasion level with 68,000 US troops still in-country. That is the great pull-out?

The western media doesn’t mention this very real and provable fact, they continue to complain about Afghan "attacks," either they just doesn’t get it or they actually believe what they are writing when it comes to Afghanistan.

This is completely understandable, no one in the US wants to hear that they illegally invaded and decimated a country for no real reason, or at least not for the reasons they were lied to about and led to believe. No one wants to hear that their presence is not wanted and that they are aggressors and invaders: invaders who attacked one of the poorest and most defenseless countries in the world illegally and on false pretext and then stayed there for more than a decade killing the population without being able to claim any kind of a victory.

The media in the West complains that the spike in “insider” attacks is somehow souring relations between the US and its Afghan allies who are fighting side by side. Against whom? Against other Afghan people. The once-CIA-backed Taliban? The reality is that the US invaded their country, and is killing their people, so how is it that an Afghan could, in their right mind, fight alongside the invaders? Well apparently many are now taking the first chance they have to fight back. Not against their Afghan brothers and sisters but against the invaders.

This is something the US just doesn’t seem to understand. Even if there weren’t thousands of cases of innocent civilians being killed and the constant “scandals” that go unpunished, incidents of urinating on corpses, collecting body parts as trophies and the like, the US would never be welcomed in the country. They are invaders.

The latest in a spate of what are now called “green-on-blue” attacks an Afghan soldier in Helmand province opened fire on a vehicle he believed was driven by NATO soldiers slightly wounding a foreign staff member. Also on Sunday, an Afghan police officer shot and killed four American troops in Zabul and on Saturday a member of a government-backed militia killed two British troops, also in Helmand.

Of course the escalation in violence and attacks against the Americans is being painted in a different light by officials and the press and Instead of admitting that they are completely losing control of the country and the situation for them is growing worse by the day, people like U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, are attempting to paint the increase in attacks as a sign of the decrease in power by the attackers. Panetta said while visiting Japan that the “… insider attacks are the last gasp of a Taliban insurgency that has not been able to regain lost ground.” So the fact that they are attacking more means that they are in fact weaker? Ahem. Okay, but sorry, if you call a black kettle white it is still black.

Further underlining the US military adventure’s failure in Afghanistan and in their meddling in the Muslim world in general, on Tuesday September 18th a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up on a minibus in Kabul killing 12 people including 7 foreigners. According to reports the dead were mostly Russian and South African nationals. Apparently the attack was in protest of the infamous film “The Innocence of Muslims”.

In Kabul thousands of protestors clashed with police over the same film, in violence that was even worse that the outbreak that occurred at the beginning of the year over the burning of Korans by US troops.

On Monday NATO reported that it has cut the number of joint operations with Afghan soldiers and policemen in order to lessen the chance of insider attacks. This is the second such order given recently which further flies in the face of the claim that they are fighting "shoulder to shoulder" with the Afghans.

The Pentagon, for its part, has "suspended most joint field operations with Afghan forces because so many Americans are being killed by the men they are training" according to CBS News reports. This comes on the heels of a decision to end all joint patrols and operations without first obtaining approval from the command structure.

If they call that winning, I would hate to see what they call losing.

US in Afghanistan: Who’s the "Savage"?

28 August 2012, 22:55

Another case of US Forces desecrating remains ends with a slap on the wrist for some of the perpetrators while others received no disciplinary action and on the same day the burning of Korans was also brushed off with those guilty also escaping serious punishment. Against the backdrop of increased Afghan on NATO violence and the beheading of 17 partygoers by Islamists, the question as to who really are the "savages" in Afghanistan begs to be asked.

Once again, as with almost every case involving egregious misconduct by US troops who have committed what can only be characterized as war crimes, those involved have received nothing more than the proverbial slap on the wrist, and the cases are in the hundreds if not thousands. We do not know the accurate figures because most such events are hidden and not reported.

This time the events in question could be called benign by US standards. For some reason, probably to minimize the backlash, both judgments came at the same time, namely rulings on cases of soldiers urinating on Taliban corpses and the burning of Korans.

In the case of the urinating Marines some of them received unspecified administrative “discipline,” it was reported on Monday, despite the US claiming that it was a “huge” embarrassment and caused a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation, as well as condemnation and an apology from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and even US Secretary of State Clinton, who vowed that the culprits would be found and punished.

The other judgment also released on Monday, involved the burning of Korans by US troops, an event which caused widespread riots, multiple deaths and calls from the Taliban and Islamists to kill foreign troops in Afghanistan and Americans in order to defend Islam’s Holy book.

Despite the outrage and deaths caused by their actions nothing “criminal” really occurred, according to the US.

Like I said these were benign events by US standards, after Abu Ghraib and similar events in Iraq, the mass murders of almost 20 civilians while they slept in their homes earlier this year by a “deranged” sergeant, cases of cutting off body parts as trophies (including the cutting off of fingers, noses, ears and even the peeling off of faces), families being set on fire, denial of medical care to mass numbers of civilians leading to their deaths, snipers posing with Nazi symbols, multiple cases of rape, sodomy and massacre after massacre after massacre, sure Marines simply urinating on corpses seems almost comic.

The Taliban are almost no better, however they trail far behind compared to the overall creativity and level of atrocity of NATO’s finest. Their savagery is just as brutal as that committed by some of the NATO forces but less widespread and frequent. The latest event attributed to the Taliban but denied by them and quite possibly carried out by “insurgents,” was the beheading of 15 men and 2 women for having a party with dancing and music, something they view as immoral and un-Islamic.

The Afghan authorities has launched an investigation with President Hamid Karzai saying,”…the attack shows that there are irresponsible members among the Taliban."

The beheading of the partygoers occurred in an area of Musa Qala district which is almost totally under Taliban control. Governor of Musa Qala, Nematullah Khan said, "They were having a music party and the Taliban came and killed them and cut off their heads."

On the same day to the south 10 Afghan soldiers were killed at a checkpoint and 2 NATO soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier while they were on joint patrol bringing the number of victims of Afghan soldier on NATO soldier violence to 42 this year alone. Now called “green-on-blue-killings” a further sign of the utter failure of almost 12 years of “coalition” occupation.

These are facts the west would rather we did not know because in Afghanistan as in Iraq every move against the citizenry and every bomb dropped has been done illegally. Both of these countries were attacked in illegal acts of military aggression for involvement in events they had nothing to do with, namely the events of 9-11, both of the countries never threatened or even posed a threat to the US, yet they have paid the price and have been illegally occupied so it is not surprising that the people are fighting back.

Going back to the subject of slaps on the wrists for those committing atrocities, for me, the reason they never pay the price for their illegal behavior has been clear for a long time. How on earth could the US judicial system or the US military deem anything their own killing machines do to be illegal if the whole war and occupation of Afghanistan is in and of itself illegal to begin with?

The truth is an extremely dangerous thing especially when it is something that might end plans for world domination, and that is what it is all about, but it looks like they may be failing.

In Afghanistan, a country decimated by close to 12 years of war the truths are hidden on a daily basis and as sites such as Wikileaks have found out (the hard way), reporting on the facts is something the US Empire will not allow.

The destruction and atrocities that the US has unleashed on the Afghan people continue on a daily basis and have been something the US has attempted time and time again to hide. As they continue so will the response from the Afghan side.

In Afghanistan the US obfuscates, hides and doctors the facts at every turn so that even finding an accurate count of the number of civilian deaths in the country is almost an impossibility with numbers ranging from the 10s of thousands to the millions. Yet one thing is crystal clear the US has failed in Afghanistan and there is little likelihood that there is a way out.

One question that I feel truly begs to be answered is quite a simple one: who in fact are the real “savages” in Afghanistan?

Influence Bought by CIA in Afghanistan

10 July 2012, 12:01

It was supposed to be the big saving face I suppose, but sadly as if to underline the failure of the Western adventure in Afghanistan, a conference by donor countries was recently held not in some free and peaceful city of Afghanistan, liberated by the peace-bringing-humanitarian-intervening NATO, but at a safe distance, in Tokyo Japan.

President Hamid Karzai looked worried and none too pleased. Perhaps he knows that when NATO leaves his chances of staying in power decrease exponentially. Perhaps he is tired of having to pose for photo ops with the same occupiers who have countless times ignored his calls for an end to civilian casualties and who have apologized countless times for the same casualties and the countless horrific acts against his people; acts of mass murder, urinating on corpses, collecting body parts as trophies, torture and much more, a sickening list too long to go into here.

It’s an election year in the U.S. and a pull-out is politically expedient and soon NATO will be abandoning Karzai and the country it has devastated for over a decade, so a saving face plan had to be carried out. On the surface it looks as if the kind and benevolent West is out to help Afghanistan, granting it a special non-NATO ally/special ally status and $16 billion in economic aid. I guess this is supposed to please the Afghan people. Of course the $16 billion will be able to assist the Afghan people in paying all of the Western reconstruction contractors and the special status will only serve to give the U.S. a legal framework for its long term geo-strategic plans in the region. A fact underlined by a statement made by Clinton at the donor summit: “We had no intention to leave Afghanistan. On the contrary, we are building partnerships with Afghanistan, which will continue far into the future."

Far into the future? Is the same in store for Pakistan which also recently received the “special ally” status from the U.S.?

As for the money it is supposed to in some way guarantee that the country does not spiral into complete anarchy once the NATO forces leave, that is their public reason. The real reason for the money may be the buying of continued influence in the country. One reason why the West was so opposed to Iran’s offer to build infrastructure and roads in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile the Taliban have continued to show the world that the U.S. has gotten nowhere in Afghanistan. Shortly after the donor meeting in Tokyo the Taliban launched a huge, albeit not entirely effective, attack on multiple targets in the country; a massive attack according to reports, resulting in 23 dead, 17 of them being Taliban. They were launched in response to the donor meeting which the Taliban saw as an agreement to continue a foreign occupation of their country.

Perhaps they are right, but who is really the worst in this conflict? The NATO/US forces who have killed up to tens of thousands either directly or indirectly, in their “righteous” war, or the Taliban, who have sadly, proven time and time again that they can be just as savage, if not more so, than the occupiers of their country.

Sadly for Afghanistan the future looks bleak. Another recent event in a village called Qol-i-Heer in central Afghanistan, further serves to underline the West's utter and dismal failure in Afghanistan, namely the cold-blooded execution of a poor Afghan girl named Najiba who was in her early 20s. She was publicly executed by the brutal and primitive Taliban for alleged “illegal sex” after she was passed back and forth between two top Taliban leaders. A brutal and cowardly act against all women and civilized people.

Sure the Taliban are brutal, backwards and primitive savages making a mockery of their very name “Taliban”, which means roughly "Students of the Holy Koran", but, who in fact are the worst savages? Those who kill hundreds because of their primitive, brutal and backward beliefs, or those who kill thousands and have press teams, slick-looking uniforms and smooth-talking spokespeople and kill for the primitive motives of domination, or revenge for an attack they may have planned themselves?

Sadly for the Afghan people the answer to this question is not one that can be easily answered, nor if answered, would it help them in any way.

Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan Continue Unchecked  (July 11, 2019 4.5 Million)

29 May 2012, 13:29

In Eastern Afghanistan on Saturday night NATO was involved in another “incident”, as NATO calls them, involving the deaths of large numbers of civilians. This time NATO forces killed a family of eight people, including six children, in the Paktia province.

In Eastern Afghanistan on Saturday night NATO was involved in another “incident”, as NATO calls them, involving the deaths of large numbers of civilians. This time NATO forces killed a family of eight people, including six children, in the Paktia province.

Many experts say the “incident” threatens to further strain the already tense relationship between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers. Some analysts claimed Karzai’s recent trip to the NATO Summit in Washington served to slightly smooth the already tense relationship but this latest incident may cause another wave of violence in the country and force Karzai to have to take stronger steps against the “occupiers”.

According to a local government spokesperson in an interview with the AFP the eight people were killed in a NATO air strike and included a husband and wife and their six children.

The official, one Rohulla Samouni, stated that none of the members of the family had ties with the Taliban or other terrorist group. He said NATO aircraft bombed a house. A man named Mohammad Sahfi his wife and their six innocent children were brutally murdered.

— There have been many similar such cases in 2012 in Afghanistan. For example on February 17, 2012, six civilians, including a woman and a child were killed in a NATO night raid in Dewa Gul Valley, in the Chawki district of Kunar province.

—Then on February 8, seven children and a young adult were killed in a NATO airstrike in the village of Geyaba in the eastern Afghan province of Kapisa.

—March 11, 2012 saw at least 16 civilians, including women and children killed after a 'rogue' US serviceman entered their homes murdered them.

The War in Afghanistan has already lasted for more than 10 years (2001–present) and killed tens of thousands of Afghan civilians directly as well as the deaths of tens of thousands more indirectly as a consequence of displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, crime and lawlessness resulting from the war.

President Hamid Karzai has summoned foreign military commanders and made public statements to warn of the consequences of further Afghan civilian deaths many times.

—"We are not happy. We don't want any more Afghan civilian casualties." "This must not occur again."  President Hamid Karzai, July 2002

—"I don’t think there is a big need for military activity in Afghanistan anymore." "Similarly, going into the Afghan homes – searching Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government – is something that should stop now."  President Hamid Karzai, September 2005

—In May 2006, Afghan President Hamid Karzai summoned the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, to demand an explanation for the deaths of at least 16 Afghan civilians during air strikes.

—In December 2006, a tearful President Hamid Karzai gave a heartfelt speech that brought audience members to tears, Karzai said the cruelty imposed on his people "is too much" and that Afghanistan cannot stop "the coalition from killing our children."

—"Five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue accepting civilian casualties. It is becoming heavy for us; it is not understandable anymore." "We are very sorry when the international coalition force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured. It pains us. But Afghans are human beings, too." President Hamid Karzai, May 2, 2007

—In June 2007, after the deaths of more than 90 civilians in 10 days, President Hamid Karzai accused ISAF and the US-led military coalition in his country of "extreme" and "disproportionate" use of force.

—"Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such." "Several times in the last year, the Afghan government tried to prevent civilian casualties, but our innocent people are becoming victims of careless operations of NATO and international forces." President Hamid Karzai, June 23, 2007

—On October 28, 2007, in an interview on 60 Minutes, Hamid Karzai stated that he had explicitly asked U.S. President George W. Bush to roll back the use of air strikes, which had killed more than 270 civilians in 17 air strikes to date in 2007 alone.

— In August 2008, President Hamid Karzai ordered a review of foreign troops in Afghanistan after 96 civilians were killed in an air strike in Herat.

—"The continuation of civilian casualties can seriously undermine the legitimacy of fighting terrorism and the credibility of the Afghan people's partnership with the international community." President Hamid Karzai, September 24, 2008

— On November 5, 2008, Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to put an end to civilian casualties in Afghanistan after an air strike on a wedding party, killing 37 people, including 23 children and 10 women.

— In April 2009, American-led military forces killed 5 civilians, including two children and a nine-month-old baby, in a U.S. night raid in Khost province

—In March 2011, Karzai rejected American President Obama's and Gen. David Petraeus' apologies for the killing of 9 Afghan boys ages 7–13 who were collecting firewood. "The apology is not enough," Karzai said

— In May 2011, Karzai issued a "final warning" as more civilians were killed in NATO airstrikes. He said the Afghan people can no longer tolerate the attacks, and that the U.S.-led coalition risks being seen as an "occupying force".

The killings go on.