Afghanistan - Still losing the war, Part 9

Legitimate successor to this thread.

quote:The bearded, turbaned men gather beneath a large, leafy tree in rural eastern Nangarhar province. When Malik Mohammed speaks on their behalf, his voice is soft but his words are harsh. Mohammed makes it clear that the tribal chiefs have lost all faith in both their own government and the foreign soldiers in their country.

Such disillusionment is widespread in Afghanistan, feeding an insurgency that has killed 195 foreign soldiers so far this year, 105 of them Americans.

"This is our land. We are afraid to send our sons out the door for fear the American troops will pick them up," says Mohammed, who was chosen by the others to represent them. "Daily we have headaches from the troops. We are fed up. Our government is weak and corrupt and the American soldiers have learned nothing."

A strong sense of frustration echoed through dozens of interviews by The Associated Press with Afghan villagers, police, government officials, tribal elders and Taliban who left and rejoined the religious movement. The interviews ranged from the capital, Kabul, to the rural regions near the border with Pakistan.

The overwhelming result: Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. They are equally fed up with what they see as seven years of corruption and incompetence in a U.S.-backed government that has largely failed to deliver on development.

Even with more foreign troops, Afghanistan is now less secure.

"It certainly is a mess. Security is the worst that it has been for years. Corruption is out of control. It impacts every single Afghan," says Doug Wankel, a burly 62-year-old American who coordinated Washington's anti-drug policy in Afghanistan from 2004 until 2007 and is now back as a security consultant. "What people have to understand is that what ordinary Afghans think really does matter."

The fear and fury is evident among the neighbors at Akhtar Mohammed's walled home deep within Nangarhar province, reached by a dirt road along a dirty brown canal. A dozen men lie on traditional rope beds beneath a thatched roof. Some wear the full-bodied beard of the devout, with a clean-shaven upper lip. Others have dyed their gray beards a flaming orange with henna to show that they have made the pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca.

They live barely an hour's drive from an errant bombing last month that hit a wedding party and killed about 50 people. Khiel Shah says his home was raided two months earlier, and troops killed his nephew, a high school student.

An old man sits by moaning, "No, no, they weren't Taliban. They were going to the bathroom. They weren't even carrying guns."...

Inside the walled compound of the Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul, workers are knee-deep in statistics that measure the dissatisfaction of Afghans. An army of workers crisscrossed 33 of the country's 34 provinces and took the opinions of 15,200 people, mostly in rural areas. The survey has not been released, but Ahmad Nader Nadery, the commissioner, gave The AP a preview.

The survey, done annually for the past three years, shows a steady deterioration in the social and economic stability of Afghans, Nadery says. Average debt last year was $1,000 and is now 20 percent higher. And up to 73 percent of Afghans say they cannot go to the government for help unless they have money or power.

"Elders say when they go to government officials, they face humiliation," Nadery says in his cramped ground floor office.

Najib, a policeman who asks not to be identified beyond his first name for fear of losing his job, reflects the general anger.

Since he joined Afghanistan's police force in 2001, he has been mistakenly bombed by a U.S. airplane that killed seven of his colleagues. He has paid bribes to government officials, he says, and taken bribes to balance his books. He recalls watching a friend buy a police job for $2,000, and notes that posts with better opportunities for bribery are available for upward of $10,000.

Corruption has made it easier for the Taliban to infiltrate police ranks and carry out lethal attacks, according to Najib.

"The president is crying, but nothing has changed," says Najib, who still walks with a limp from the U.S. bombing. "People are unhappy, and more and more it will become difficult for the Americans and good for the Taliban. These people (U.S. troops) are not making one mistake, but they are making one thousand mistakes and they are killing many people."...

"An Afghan trucker put it succinctly: 'Forget the Taliban, our biggest problems are with the police,'" says Seth Jones, an analyst with the U.S.-based RAND Corporation and author of a report on the rise of Afghanistan's insurgency....AP

97th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan today

Anyone else notice that most of the Canadian deaths recently seem to occur on weekends?

Counting the two aid workers and the diplomat, Sgt. Scott Shipway has the distinction of being the 100th Canadian to die to make Afghanistan safe for pipelines.

[ 07 September 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:Originally posted by M. Spector:
97th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan today

Thanks for posting this, M. Spector. Perhaps this would be a good occasion for some party to issue a statement calling for immediate withdrawal of Canada from Afghanistan - rather than just more eulogies and condolences?

High profile Canadians who support the "mission"

Don't know how I never noticed this before - it's the cynically-named "Canada Afghanistan Solidarity Committee", and it's dedicated to the "continuation of a robust military engagement" in Afghanistan.

Here are their "founding members". They include such worthy Canadians as Terry Glavin and Stan Persky. I'm including the whole list here in case they try to edit or deny it some day.

Please contact some or all of these people and tell them they are doing a disservice to the people of Canada and Afghanistan:

quote:Zachary Miles Baddorf, Journalist in Vancouver; Colette Belanger, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WA) Board of Directors, Simon Bessette, LL.B candidate, University of New Brunswick; Melaney Black, CW4WA, Victoria; Natalie K Bjorklund, Ph.D, University of Manitoba; Marc-Andre Boivin, researcher, Universitй du Quйbec а Montrйal Peacekeeping research group member; John Boon, Liberal Party activist; Ken Bryant, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, University of British Columbia; Jennifer Button, CW4WA – Victoria; Iona Campagnolo, PC, CM, OBC, Former Lt. Gov., British Columbia; Dominic Cardy, NGO director, Nepal, New Brunswick New Democratic Party; Mark Collins, Canadian Embassy, Kabul, 1975-77; Natasha Cowan, McGill University, business graduate; Stewart John Cunningham, Sess. Instructor, Historical Studies, U of T Mississauga; Steven Davis, Academics for Higher Education and Development, Montreal; Judith Desautels, Supporter, CW4WA, Amnesty International; Janice Eisenhauer, Executive Director, CW4WA; Lois Edwards, CW4WA, Manitoba;

Stan Persky???? Makes no sense at all. He has more brains then to be mystified by nonsense after seeing and knowing Viet Nam up close. I assume as a "founding member" he had a view years ago, but being a scholar, Stan will have weighed the data since then.

Sad, He was a person I had a great deal of time for in a previos life. Seems, we would now have a stormy gulf in opinion on (in my mind) a critical issue. Where he sees social progress (or a hope for it)at the point of a machine gun, I see a very long process of discussion and debate (while clean water an and food are made available). Killing people tends to freeze their thought processes and encourage others, not change them.

Massacre

quote:As the doctor walks between rows of bodies, people lift funeral shrouds to reveal the faces of children and babies, some with severe head injuries.

Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.”

quote:The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North,

quote:Originally posted by jester:

Don't forget to include the Taliban who kill a lot more and don't bother with 'sorry', going straight to bragging about their atrocities.

They have a right to kill each other. We have no right to join in. It's a little something called international law.

Anyway, if you believe invaders' stats about casualties, you must also believe that there were 90 "Taliban" women and children celebrating a wedding for a short while recently.

quote:Originally posted by Jingles:

When the Taliban use AC-130 gunships to level villages from 5000 feet, then you can complain about their tactics.

By far the most lethal killer of civilians in Afghanistan is the Army of Christ, a.k.a the US military.

I'll complain at my discretion, not yours, thank you. The most lethal killer of civilians in Afghanistan may well be the USA but if they are,the Taliban are right behind them.

Why is it that deaths and injuries, especially women and children caused by the US and its NATO allies stir a great outcry from the faithful but far greater deaths and injuries caused by indiscriminate suicide bombers are ignored?

What about all the civilians killed by the Taliban in Pakistan?

Do children maimed by insurgents not rate compassion? What about the civilian Afghans who are murdered for teaching school or providing health services? Not a word about them.

You know "The Mission" is in trouble when even The Economist becomes critical:

quote:IF AMERICA fails in Afghanistan, as it might, it will be remembered there for killing children. On August 26th the UN claimed to have “convincing evidence” that an American airstrike in western Herat province had killed 90 civilians, including 60 children.

That would make it probably the most bloody of America’s many murderous airstrikes during its seven-year campaign in Afghanistan. But American officials insisted that only five civilians had died, along with 25 militants.

...Afghans are understandably enraged—which is excellent news for the Taliban. To deflect blame for the latest alleged atrocity, on August 25th several Afghan ministers called for a ban on airstrikes.

Hamid Karzai, the president, who has many times pleaded with America to take more care to avoid killing Afghan civilians, wants its troops to be made accountable for any errors they may make.

Crazy George isn't done yet.

quote: "In November, a Marine battalion that was scheduled to deploy to Iraq will instead deploy to Afghanistan," according to the speech text. "It will be followed in January by an Army combat brigade."

Thats 5,000 more troops. Crazy George says he'll leave the rest to the next pres. Maybe they can take over in Kandahar.

quote:Originally posted by unionist:

I don't pay attention to Taliban claims, and in fact we rarely see any in the media.

Have you ever tried looking? There are plenty of sites hosting Taliban views and claims.

[ 08 September 2008: Message edited by: Webgear ]

Speaking of the Taliban: Party leaders blast Taliban remarks on Canadian election

excerpt:

The Taliban spokesman said earlier that Canada has come under U.S. influence.

"Our message to the Canadian leaders, the Canadian people, the Canadian government and all the Canadians is that they should not send their sons to Afghanistan, where they will die for the benefit of the Americans," Qari Muhammad Yussef told CBC News in Kandahar.

If Canadian forces do not withdraw, he said, "Afghanistan will be a graveyard for them — as it was for them in the past."

Yussef said he's familiar with Harper but isn't sure about the other candidates or parties running in the election.

ETA: oops, I didn't see this other thread, where this is already being discussed: The Election and Afghanistan . [img]redface.gif" border="0[/img]

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

Murder in Afghanistan

George's secret order.

quote:A secret order issued by George Bush giving US special forces carte blanche to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistani territory raised fears last night that escalating conflict was spreading from Afghanistan to Pakistan and could ignite a region-wide war.

quote:The move is regarded as unprecedented in terms of sending troops into a friendly, allied country.

It's like the US Cavalry crossing into Saskatchewan and Alberta to hunt down Sitting Bull.

Don't worry though. Next, we'll go with the Americans into Pakistan to make sure little girls can go to school. If they don't want to go, we'll kill them.