[wvns] US fails to defeat Taliban student movement

Afghans still dying as US tries to defeat popular Taliban
By Zia Sarhadi
July 2007
http://www.muslimedia.com/afg-stilldie.htm

After another particularly bloody week in which the Americans and
their Western allies killed more than 100 Afghan civilians, President
Hamid Karzai stood on the lawn of the presidential palace on June 23
to denounce the air strikes and artillery fire as "careless". He
asserted: "Afghan life is not cheap and should not be treated as
such." These sound like brave words, but they carry little weight
with the Americans or anyone else. They, as well as Karzai, know that
Afghans' lives are indeed cheap. Does Karzai know how many Afghans the
Americans and other Western occupation troops have killed since
October 2001? Does he even know how many have been killed this year?
These are the statistics the Americans and other Westerners are
simply not interested in. Their only concern is with their own
casualty figures, because those are the numbers that cause problems at
home, as Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper discovered after the
death of three more Canadian soldiers last month. As a sop to public
sentiment he announced on June 22 that the Canadian presence in
Afghanistan would not be extended beyond February 2009 unless it had
public and parliamentary support.

Behind the rising concern about military casualties lie two other
factors. The first has to do with the purpose of the mission in
Afghanistan, which remains undefined. The second, even more worrying
to the allies, is the increasing involvement of Russia and China in
Afghanistan. History, it seems, has gone full circle. Less than
three decades ago it was Russian troops fighting the Afghans; the West
came to support them to undermine the Soviet Union. It was a
carefully laid trap for the Soviet bear; after a thousand stab wounds
it bled to death. Now an assertive Russia sees America's involvement
as an opportunity to return the favour. Afghanistan is once again
becoming a battleground for the "great game" between a declining
superpower and an assertive rival.

Moscow's involvement is subtle, as Sirajuddin, son of the famed Afghan
commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, told Najibullah Zadran in an interview
(Aafaq Monthly, June 2007). Sirajuddin, who leads the resistance in
Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces, said that some weeks ago, when
the resistance was short of ammunition, some appeared mysteriously on
the market so that the fighters could purchase it. He is of the
opinion that Russia had supplied the equipment so that the resistance
would not be weakened. The Russians have no love for the Taliban or
Afghans in general, so it is the same game again. The Americans did
not support the Afghans during the eighties because they liked their
primitive culture or medieval ways: Washington used them to weaken and
bring down the Soviet Union. The shoe is now on the other foot.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has been asserting himself in other
ways as well. On the eve of the G8 summit in Germany (June 6-8), he
criticised the US's plan to install a defence system in Czechoslovakia
and Poland. He threatened to direct his own missiles at targets in
Europe. Despite its name, the US missile-system is anything but
defensive; it poses a grave threat to Russia's security and an old KGB
hand like Putin cannot ignore it. He regards it as a declaration of
war against his country. At a recent press conference, Putin said:
"If this missile system is put in place, it will work automatically
with the entire nuclear capability of the United States. It will be
an integral part of the US nuclear capability." He went on to say
that this would disrupt the current configuration of international
security and force Russia to begin work on a new regime of tactical
nuclear weapons. Putin hinted that since US president George Bush had
unilaterally abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2002,
Moscow was left with no choice but to update and extend its own
defence systems to confront any further encroachments on its territory.

As if to emphasise his seriousness, less than ten hours after the
closing ceremonies of the G8 summit Putin addressed 200 corporate
leaders at the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg. He left
little doubt about how he planned to counter Bush's missiles in the
Czech Republic and Poland. He outlined his vision of a
"Moscow-centred" new world order that would create a "new balance of
power". An important pillar of this new world order would be an
alternative global financial centre away from the dollar. "The new
architecture of economic relations requires a completely new approach.
Russia intends to become an alternative global financial centre and
to make the rouble a reserve currency for central banks," he asserted.
He also criticised international institutions, such as the World
Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the IMF, which are all
dominated by the US or Europe, for being "archaic, undemocratic and
inflexible."

Aware that militarily America is stuck in the Iraqi and Afghan
quagmires and that economically it is in serious difficulties, with a
total debt of $46 trillion ($8 trillion external and $38 trillion
internal), Putin is going for America's soft underbelly: the dollar.
He has also decided to weaken the institutions that have traditionally
enhanced America's wealth and power. True, 64 percent of the world's
currency reserves are still held in dollars, but this is likely to
change if an alternative currency emerges that reserve banks can turn
to. The Chinese, too, are thinking about diversifying their reserve
holdings, because they are nervous about the declining value of the
American dollar. Emphasising the inherent unfairness of the current
system, which relies almost entirely on the dollar, resulting in
negative effects on many smaller countries' economies and financial
reserves, Putin declared: "There can be only one answer to this
challenge: the creation of several world currencies and several
financial centres."

Putin is not alone in thinking about a new global economic
architecture. In the last few months a number of countries, including
Iran, Syria, the UAE, Kuwait, Venezuela and Norway, have announced
that they are either cutting back on their US dollar reserves or
converting to the euro or a "basket of currencies". The dollar's
ascendancy is at the very centre of American power, and yet the
downturn is visible everywhere. If the dollar loses its place as the
world's preferred "reserve currency", the US will have to pay its
massive current-account deficit and live within its means, something
unimaginable only a few years ago.

All this is the direct result of the military humiliations the US is
faced with in Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to the shortsighted
policies of the neocons in Washington. With friends like these, who
needs enemies? Iraq and Afghanistan may yet prove harbingers of the
demise of another superpower.

===

Seven children are killed in a US-led coalition air strike against a
suspected al-Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6762549.stm

Children die in Afghan air raid

The US military says it did not know children were inside
Seven children were killed in a US-led coalition air strike on Sunday
against a suspected al-Qaeda hideout in eastern Afghanistan, the
coalition has said.
It said a number of militants were also killed in the raid in Paktika
province.

The children are believed to have been students at a madrassa, or
Islamic school, at the targeted compound.

In the southern Uruzgan province, more than 100 people, including some
60 civilians, died in fighting over the past three days, Afghan
officials said.

They said some 100 civilians were also injured as suspected Taleban
militants and the Nato-led Isaf force fought fierce battles in
Uruzgan's Chora district.

A Nato soldier from the Netherlands was killed in the fighting, the
Isaf said.

'Saddened'

President Hamid Karzai's spokesman condemned the Paktika air raid.

This is another example of al-Qaeda using the protective status of a
mosque

Coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher
Can Afghan war be won?

"The president was very unhappy, very sad when he heard about the
incident," the spokesman, Karim Rahimi, told the BBC.

He renewed President Karzai's call for international forces to work
more closely with the Afghan military.

Paktika's governor, Mohammad Akram Khpalwak, said he had been to the
area to ask for forgiveness from local people and had ordered an
investigation.

Earlier, a coalition statement said the air raid followed "credible
intelligence" that al-Qaeda militants had taken shelter at the complex.

It said the compound in Zarghun Shah in Paktika province, about 120
miles (180km) south of the capital, Kabul, also contained a mosque and
a madrassa.

The statement said that residents of the targeted compound reported
that militants had been at the camp all day.

"This is another example of al-Qaeda using the protective status of a
mosque, as well as innocent civilians, to shield themselves,"
coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher said.

Kabul fear after bus blast

"We are saddened by the innocent lives that were lost as a result of
militants' cowardice."

The coalition later said it did not believe any children were in or
around the compound during the day.

It said other children who survived the air strike alleged that the
seven children who died were held inside the building all day and
beaten and pushed away from the door if they tried to go outside.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kabul says foreign forces in Afghanistan
constantly accuse militants of using civilians as human shields.

There is, however, anger at the rising number of civilians killed in
such foreign-led strikes, and President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly
asked the coalition and Nato-led forces to try to minimise such
casualties, he says.

The fact that the coalition issued this statement quite rapidly
suggests it is expecting a negative reaction, our correspondent says.

Kabul bombing

Hours before the Paktika raid, a devastating bomb attack on an Afghan
police bus in Kabul killed 35 people and injured more than 30 others.

The attack is thought to be the most devastating bomb attack in the
capital since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

Police said a number of civilians were also among those killed in the
rush-hour attack close to police headquarters in the city centre.

Five foreigners were wounded in the attack.

The BBC's world affairs editor, John Simpson, says such an attack is
disturbingly new on the streets of Kabul and the tactics appear to
have been borrowed directly from Iraq.

===

Afghanistan - The Next Phase
by Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi
http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/articles/Art069_11022007.html

Afghanistan will prove to have been America's third and final Vietnam.

France preceded the USA in Vietnam, and its defeat there was swiftly
followed by disgrace in Algeria.

Russia preceded the USA in Afghanistan and its defeat there was
swiftly followed by the collapse of the Communist State. To rescue
France, de Gaulle – who saw that France's enemy was not a State but a
financial system – sold the country's dollars and ordered the adoption
of a gold-based monetary system. His argument was its rationality and
historicity. It was necessary to depose him, and the mythic '68
Uprising was staged to force him from office. The financiers' place
man, Pompidou, Rothschild's cousin, took over as President and in
symbolic demonstration of their new statal (leveraged buy-out) power
the old jewish ghetto was turned into Paris' most expensive real
estate, and a new financial quarter was built at La Défense.

Russia's retreat from Afghanistan led directly to the utter collapse
of the Russian economy and central government. The financiers' place
man, Yeltsin, handed over the commodity-wealth of the country, lock,
stock and barrel to a handful of poised adventurers, mostly but not
all jewish, who became known to the world as the Oligarchs.

The American strategy in Afghanistan has proved more cunning than in
its previous imperial adventures but presaged an even greater
disaster. As in all these dreadful events it is the common people and
the receptor nation which suffer. None of this could have happened if
the American people had been able to understand and prevent what took
place. Unfortunately, the Americans are the most schooled and least
educated nation on earth. Numbed and dumb from media overflow,
isolated in a Hollywood fantasy they called `The American Dream', its
people remain cut off from mankind, indifferent both to their
suffering and the destruction of the planet.

At the heart of the American fatal sickness is, of course, as so many
great 20th century thinkers warned, the disaster of the Constitution.
The indefensible system of structuration and webbing of Committees and
Councils and Ministries has reduced government to taxation, and
security to a set of tyrannical practices from civic surveillance to
mass penitentiary punishment. As a result the ghastly rhetoric of
Congress is separated by an abyss from the inundation of New Orleans.
Congress calls for withdrawal from Iraq and the draft-dodging
President sends in more troops, declaring "I am the
Commander-in-Chief." Thus, multi-party democracy is itself, dictatorship.

The ur-phenomenon, the global epidemic from which all these miseries
stem, is the irrational usury finance system that in its final
capitalist phase is daily reducing a world population to a downward
spiral of poverty and police control, and the planet itself to a new
Ice Age.

The abolition of trade through its reduction into distribution, the
stasis of banking finance which only is distributive in gesture, never
in substance, and remains acquisitive in definition – these imposed
restraints on wealth have resulted in a demographic world crisis which
the political class are helpless to prevent.

The South American poor are moving into Mexico. Both are now pouring
into America. Mexican restaurants are popping up in Canadian Inuit
villages. Central Africa's tribal mass, shattered by one family's
limitless greed which gives them the world diamond monopoly, has seen
the Angolan and Congolese poor flood into Berber North Africa. Robbed
of menial tasks by this African immigration, the Berber have flooded
into the European Union. Horrified at the prospect of an Islamic
Europe, as the indigenous population, given the abolition of the
family, have a higher death than birth rate, they thus find themselves
obliged to extend the Union to three impoverished countries, Poland,
Rumania and Bulgaria. This in turn has seen a massive influx from them
into Britain and Europe, the result of which has left these countries
devoid of their base work-force. To fill the gap the Chinese are
flooding into Eastern Europe as they have already done in West Africa.

Obsessed with the all but inexistent terrorists, Bin Laden dead and
only a handful of people from the detritus of city poverty sticking
Semtex in their shoes and fertiliser in their basements, and busy
arresting innocent Muslims as `suspects', the once renowned British
Secret Services failed to notice that Russian agents were entering
Britain with nuclear material to put markers on anti-State activists
and rogue oligarchs. Only when one of the marked men died from an
accidental overdose were the utterly uninformed Secret Services forced
to take account.

The phantom `War on Terror' which held both the Bush and Blair
dictatorships in place left their countries unprotected from the
brilliant expansion programmes of both Russia and China. As of today
the largest and most ignominious enactment of the fantasy project
pretends a metaphysical `War on Terror', while in reality it is a
desperate programme to hinder an Islamic renewal knowing that such an
event will simply lead to an abandonment of paper currencies and the
world usury system of banking. The strategy of the banking elite was
to re-define the world's final and greatest religion as its opposite,
and to destroy it completely by making its mass of people accept that
if it was not Terror it was a passive individualist slave Tolerance.

The epicentre of this strategy is today in Afghanistan/Pakistan – in
historical and geographic reality ONE COUNTRY with a dominant Islamic
Pushtu culture.

To veil the iniquity of the occupation of its people the USA defined
its mission as a Nato operation, thus inhibiting the States involved
from pulling out their troops one by one as they had done in Iraq. The
protocols of Nato make it practically impossible to rescind an
obligation to its Treaty requirements. More sinister even than that is
the bitter reality facing the occupied country.

No country can bring Nato into its sovereign national court. No
personnel of Nato can be arrested and tried by a country under their
occupation. In Bosnia the Nato general charged with rape was simply
airlifted to Canada under their protection. It follows from this that
no genocide, no murder, no torture, nor any other crime can be laid at
its door. It is simply above the law. The US ploy of designing their
occupation of Afghanistan as a Nato operation gave them carte blanche
for a totalitarian control of the country. With its quisling puppet in
Kabul they could pretend to a `democratic' framework to what was a
brutal and destructive tyranny. No occupational army in recorded
history since the Roman Empire but has set up brothels and
prostitution to cater for its men. It would be absurd to suggest this
is not being provided for the occupying army, bearing in mind US
sexual approval of same-sex activity. Not one single TV station, not
one press reporter, not one NGO has examined the matter of the
prostitution of a generation of Afghan youth, to satisfy the
occupiers' appetites.

The hypnotic obedience of the other Nato States to this programme of
lawless terror and destruction, accompanied on a daily basis by
bombing raids and the slaughter of local populations, indicates that
it is not just the USA but the European Union which is descending into
the final stage of a failed social order. The democratic political
system has ended in a multi-national demonstration of its inability to
protect moral values, justice and its own law system since its own
wealth and commodities nexus is outside governmental jurisdiction. The
financial sect command the national government, constraining the
political class to follow its orders. Promotion upwards in today's
world leads from the political class to the financial class. Wolfowitz
went from the State Department's Defence Ministry, upwards to his
reward, as Head of the World Bank.

The promise of the NGOs and missionaries that soon Afghan women will
be free to walk in public in Western clothes and dress in sequins and
feathers in order to come down a staircase, bare-breasted in Kabul and
Herat casino cabarets has proved surprisingly unattractive. The
promise that the Islamic Madrasahs will be abolished and Afghan kids
will be free to shoot their teachers and schoolmates like in the many
Columbine episodes in the US has proved surprisingly unattractive.
When an Afghan village is cluster-bombed the local population describe
it as having had a `hearts-and-minds' in mockery of Nato's pretended
claim to a policy to win hearts and minds. People are not stupid –
politicians are.

There is not, however, an Afghan problem. The issue of the future in
political terms is no longer régime-change – it is frontier-change.
History IS frontier-change, and despite the dream that history is
ended, history is events following events. Frontiers must change.
While the USA indulges in its futile bid for empire on the other side
of the world, Mexico is quietly regaining its lost territories in
Texas, Arizona and California. Frontiers change.

The Afghan affair can only be satisfied from Islamabad. Pakistan is
faced with three possible scenarios.

1] Disappearance. It is divided into regions, and these in turn are
absorbed into a greater Hindu sub-continent common market. This is the
banking élite's strategy, prefigured in 1947 with the deliberate theft
of Kashmir in the north, and Muslim Calcutta in the south.

2] Fragmentation. This is the Kissinger Plan which has already been
pre-empted in Indonesia by the re-integration of Acheh into the
greater Muslim nation. In Pakistan it implies separating the Pathan
people to buffer Afghan activity, a Baluchistan given `Luxembourg'
independence, Sind as a functioning bank-controlled south and Punjab
territory as the heartland.

3] Expansion. This is the dreaded third possibility. It would mean
success for Pakistan and an opening to the north. It would necessarily
require the removal of the dictator Musharraf, the Darling of
Democracy. It would require the Pakistan Army to take on its historic
and indeed Mughal destiny as guardians of the Nation. Its last element
would be the disappearance of the British invention Afghanistan, with
its absurd Southern frontier a straight line drawn through the
Himalayan range. These two geographic zones have been one since Mahmud
al-Ghazni all these centuries ago. The natural ally and defender of
this reality is Russia and that can heal the recent enmity as France
and Germany did after their war.

This holds the only promise of stability in the region. The USA, and
indeed Europe should not be in the region. They should start paying
attention to the reality that they themselves are quietly being
annexed by China.

*********************************************************************

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