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March, 2009

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Afghanistan-Obama's Vietnam?
By Edward W. Miller, M.D.

When you're wounded and left, on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out, to cut up your remains, just roll on your rifle, and blow out your brains, and go to your Gawd, like a soldier. - Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

As President Obama orders 17,000 additional US troops into Afghanistan, to bolster the 33,000 already in that country, Americans deserve a view from the Afghan's perspective. I quote:

"The UN released a report Feb. 18 that 2118 civilians died in the Afghan War in 2008, a 40% increase over 2007, and the most since the US invasion in 2001... civilian deaths are a growing source of friction between the United States and President Hamid Karzai, who has increased his demands that US troops avoid killing civilians in the fight against the Taliban." (Jason Straziuso Assoc. Press 19 February 2009)

A new Air Force technique contributes to civilian casualties: "From their cockpit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, the pilot and co-pilot are flying a pilotless Predator on a bombing mission over Afghanistan, 8,000 miles away. Ordnance aboard includes four Hellfire missiles and two 500-pound bombs. A forward air controller in another unmanned drone spots the target and the Predator bomber takes off under local control from Kandahar... Minutes later, control of the bomber is handed over to satellite control in the cockpit at Creech.... hours later, the crew sees on the cockpit screen two suburban vehicles stop in front of the targeted mud-baked house. Half a dozen bearded men hurry into the dwelling that intelligence had spotted as a Taliban command post. The ultra-sensitive cameras in the aircraft's nose showed a door latch and a chicken outside. Seconds later, the bombardier in Nevada squeezed the trigger and a 500-pound bomb flattened the Taliban dwelling ... Their eight-hour mission over, pilot and co-pilot drive home... War by remote control is here." (Washington Times: Arnaud de Borchgrave February 11, 2009)

Afghanistan, a mountainous country that lies across ancient trade routes between the west and both India and China, has been conquered only once in its history, and then by Alexander the Great. The soviets failed, as did the British before them. The British in 1842 lost a regiment of some 16,000 men, ambushed on the road south from Kabul. Only the regimental physician, on a fast horse, survived.

America has had a long and often hidden relationship with this country. British author John Pilger (www.Mirror.co.uk) notes President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book "Total War," revealed that on July 3, 1979, unbeknownst to both Congress and the American people, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and "destabilize" the Soviet Union. This CIA, "Operation Cyclone," over the following years spent $4 billion "setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan. Some zealots were sent to the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia where future members of the Al Qaeda were taught "sabotage skills." Others were recruited at an Islamic school in Brooklyn, New York. In Pakistan, recruits were directed by British MI6 officers and trained by the SAS.

Writing in the Sunday Times (UK), in September 2001, Tom Carew reported: "As a fighting terrain, Afghanistan is a nightmare. It's a natural fortress. You can't get far with vehicles... The passes are too steep so the Russians had an awful time... The Afghans have it all organized, moving from one village to the next where they have stocks of food."

Afghanistan today is also one of the world's most mined countries, contaminated with Soviet mines and unexploded ordnance. On April 24, 2006 CHINE VIEW reported, "Landmines and unexploded ordnance ... kill or injure some 70 to 100 Afghans a month."

Steve Coll in the Washington Post, July 1992 reported that: "A C-141 carrying William Casey touched down south of Islamabad in October 1984 for a secret visit by the CIA director to plan strategy for the war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan... Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan Administration decision in March 1985... to sharply escalate US covert action in Afghanistan." The Afghans were doing the fighting and dying."

Writer Raza Khan (www.iviews.com) noted that after the Russians left in 1985, civil strife and anarchy overtook the Afghans with rampant kidnappings, rape, extortion, and robberies by armed bands of thugs. Forty-three brothels thrived in Kabul alone.

After ten years of this, Khan said, "Mullahs, along with thousands of students trained in the universities and mosques of Afghanistan and Pakistan... proclaimed 'enough is enough'. Calling themselves 'Taliban' (the word means students) they routed out virtually every criminal gang."

The Taliban implemented strict Islamic law, shut down brothels, theaters, cinemas, banned satellite dishes and TV stations, required men to wear beards and women, the burqa. Khan says the West launched a fierce media campaign to discredit the Taliban, and branded Afghanistan a "Terrorist State." In 1999 UN sanctions were imposed over the harboring of alleged 'terrorist' Osama Bin Laden."

Sayyid Rahmatullah Hashemi, roving ambassador from Afghanistan, in a lecture at USC in Los Angeles on March 12, 2001, said the problems with Afghanistan started when the Russians, who, with 140,000 troops, attacked in December 1979, "stayed for a decade, killed one and a half million people, maimed one million more, while six out of the eighteen million migrated, most to Pakistan, to escape Russian brutalities..."

During the Russian occupation, Hashemi reported, "The American, British, French and Chinese governments supported the counter-revolutionary Mujahadeen."

After the Russians left, these parties, with different ideologies, fought one another. Hashemi added, "A group of students called the Taliban... started a movement and by March of 2001 controlled 95 percent of the country. "Only a bunch of warlords remained in the northern corridor... The Taliban unified the country, disarmed militant factions, and eradicated opium cultivation."

"On Aug. 20th 1998, President Clinton, midway in his impeachment hearings sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan... to kill Osama bin Laden"... 75 cruise missiles... missed Osama but killed 19 students in an Afghan Madrassa.

The US never apologized. Muslims termed it ''OPERATION MONICA." The Afghan Ambassador, Hashemi said, had offered to punish Osama bin Laden if the US gave proof of his embassy bombings. The US refused. He offered to try Osama in their courts. The US again refused. Next offered, Hashemi said, was an international monitoring group in Afghanistan to watch bin Laden, also refused. When the US refused bin Laden's trial in another country, the Ambassador decided the US was "looking for a boogey man."

Hashemi noted bin Laden had been in Afghanistan 17 years before the Taliban existed, fighting the Soviets. At that time the Mujahadeen were called "Freedom Fighters" by Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney, but when the Soviet Union fragmented and such fighters were not needed anymore, they were transformed into "Terrorists."

Bin Laden and the Taliban had attracted young students from Pakistan and Afghan madrassas, many exposed to Wahabism, a strict Muslim cult popular with the Saudis. Osama's older followers, ex-CIA mujahadeen, had become embittered, not only by the US exploitation of their lives and country, but by the US campaigns which were killing their fellow Muslims in Iraq, Palestine and Somalia... The younger Al Qaeda who came from across the Muslim world, plus some Christians were devoted to resisting the military and economic colonialism of the United States.

The Al Qaeda were quietly accommodated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Many Pakistanis also supported the Taliban. The mixed bag of prisoners still held in Guantanamo Bay today represent at least 26 different countries.

French authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie in their book "Bin Laden, The Forbidden Truth," claim the hidden US objective in Afghanistan has been to access Central Asian oil reserves using the Taliban to help construct a pipeline from Central Asia south via Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.

Confronted by the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the French authors noted: "The rationality of energy security changed into a military one... at one moment during the negotiations, the US representative said to the Taliban "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we will bury you under a carpet of bombs." Leila Helms, niece of former CIA Director Richard Helms, was then the Taliban's PR representative in Washington, where negotiations were taking place in August 2001, just before the September 11 bombing.

The Irish Press reported February 9, 2007 (www.ireland.com) that Pakistani President Gen. Musharraf and Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai "agreed yesterday that their two countries should develop... a proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

Washington's response to September 11, 2001 was OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM, (OEF), the US military invasion of Afghanistan, which began on October 7, 2001. OEF also marked the beginning of the U.S. war on terrorism. As Bush Jr.'s stated purpose was "to capture Osama bin Laden, destroy Qaeda, and remove the Taliban regime." The US and Britain led the aerial bombing campaign, with ground forces, supplemented by NATO troops.

In May 2007, Washington announced that NATO had taken charge of Afghanistan's eastern provinces. The Alliance's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commanded troops in the north, west and south of Afghanistan, as well as Kabul. Afghanistan today is occupied by the largest ground deployment in NATO'S history, some 10,000 troops. The addition of US troops brings the total under NATO's UK command to 31,000.

Columnist Pepe Escobar reported back in January 2002 (Asia Times Online) that American and European oil giants... considered the Taliban "the proverbial fly in the ointment," adding: "The Afghan War was decided long before September 11... Plans to destroy the Taliban had been the subject of international diplomatic meetings... months before September 11. There was a crucial meeting in Geneva in May 2001 between US State Department, Iranian, German and Italian officials, where the main topic was a strategy to topple the Taliban and replace the theocracy with a "broad-based government." Afghanistan's ultra-strategic position ...between Turkmenistan and the avid markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan. Afghanistan is the core..."

Most Americans are unaware that American-educated Karzai, President of Afghanistan was the former representative of oil giant UNOCAL in Washington, and that Condoleezza Rice during Bush I, was on the Board of Directors of Chevron.

Today, in 2009, as more Afghans join the Taliban, NATO is again losing control. Germany has lost nearly 3 dozen troops as well as the stomach for fighting. The Taliban have taken over the biggest provinces of Helmand, Oruzgan and Zabul, and have nighttime control of Khost, Kunar and Paktia provinces. They have the support of the majority of Afghans who are Pashtun, and are waging guerrilla warfare. A good share of Pakistanians are also Pashtuns.

"After Karzai was installed by the U.S., the "war lords" linked to the U.S. via the CIA made poppy and narcotics, Afghanistan's biggest export. With the recent upsurge of the Taliban, this whole business is in jeopardy." (New Trend, May 9th, 2007)

In recent weeks, Obama and his NATO allies have been facing increased obstacles in Afghanistan. Just days ago the Taliban destroyed a bridge critical to US and NATO supply in the Khyber Pass and on the 19th of February the Kyrgyzstan parliament voted 78-1 to force the U.S. military to abandon its vital Manas Air Base, a severe setback to American efforts in Afghanistan.

Adding to Obama's troubles The US military has lost track of about 222,000 weapons shipped to Afghanistan since 2001, a leaked report compiled by the US Government Accountability Office revealed. The report shows that the US military failed to keep proper records of 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008. It also failed to track 135,000 weapons donated to Afghan security by 21 other countries.

This week, a note from Peshawar, Pakistan published in the Los Angeles Times reported that, as part of a cease-fire announced by government officials and militants in the region. Islamic Law will be allowed in the tourist-popular Swat Valley. The announcement "set off alarm bells in Washington." The Obama Administration has been urging Pakistan's civilian government to move decisively against the Taliban and al Qaeda-linked militias along the Afghan border where Islamic Law is already in effect as well as in Pakistan's northwest provinces. Times writers suggested the agreement was part of an effort to appease the followers of a powerful radical cleric, Mullah Fazlulah, who in late 2007 had seized control of the scenic Swat Valley. Visiting regional envoy, Richard Holbrooke saw the agreement as "a... threat to our leadership."

During Israel's recent three weeks of savagery in Gaza, Al Jazeera reported that hundreds of young Muslims, chiefly from Iraq and Iran were moving into Afghanistan to confront US and NATO forces.

The combination of Putin's dislike of NATO on his border, the loss of critical Air Base facilities, bridge bombing in the crucial Khyber Pass, the EU's NATO Command, ignoring Obama's request and refusing additional NATO forces in Afghanistan, increased Muslim anger over civilian killing and Washington's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza (which feeds the ranks of both Taliban and al Qaeda) all suggest we had best declare "victory" and get out of Afghanistan now.