Thread: Whats new in Afghanistan?

Originally Posted by machangezi

Oh, So all that crap about them being oppressors of women and extremists and violators of human rights and not tolerant of other beliefs doesn't bother the U.S anymore, eh??

Anything for victory??

To be fair it didn't bother the US before either, when they were giving money and aid to the Taliban.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Yeah, there's that, which isn't good, but nothing to fight over. They can do what they like in that regard.

It's the flying planes full if innocent people into buildings and blowing up hotels, busses, trains and embassies full of similarly innocent, unsuspecting people that there's a glitch with.

Yeah. That's problematic.

And how many planes flown into buildings,blown up hotels, buses, trains and embassis have the Taleban been involved with? Seems that the US is ready to pin events like 9/11 on anyone in anyway they can, all except for the actual perpetrators - bunch of Saudis fly an airplannce into a building... Go and invade Iraq.

Brilliant!

Seems you've forgotten where the Al Quaeda camps training these terrorists were located.

You have the same conceptual problem as Macha.
Nationalities of these terrorists are of little or no consequence.
Because they happen to be in Pakistan doesn't infer all of them are Pakistani.

Think of it like a rugby team. Not all the players are from the city that hosts the team. That's why they call it trans-national terrorism. To suggest it's an Afghani problem with the Taleban only is more than a bit naive.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Nationalities of these terrorists are of little or no consequence.

Tell that to the people of Iraq.

Ahh, the tried and true shell-game. Rather than concede the point, shift the topic.

You have serious difficulty making distinctions, don't you?

Originally Posted by Texpat

Seems you've forgotten where the Al Quaeda camps training these terrorists were located.

You have the same conceptual problem as Macha.
Nationalities of these terrorists are of little or no consequence.
Because they happen to be in Pakistan doesn't infer all of them are Pakistani.

Think of it like a rugby team. Not all the players are from the city that hosts the team. That's why they call it trans-national terrorism. To suggest it's an Afghani problem with the Taleban only is more than a bit naive.

So the US put 20,000 troops into Afghanistan to go after Al Qaeda and 150,000 into Iraq to save the world from WMDs. And even after it was shown that there were no WMDs in Iraq nothing much changed in the US military priorities.

And after the false WMD excuse for war against Iraq without UN sanction, Bush and his Neocon mates then sold the idea of liberating the people of Iraq from a tyrannical leader to the US public as an excuse to keep the Iraqi occupation going at the expense of going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And with the help of the US media, the dumb fuck US voters swallowed it all in the name of "freedom and democracy" (not that most of them would know what it means). Now after 5 years of US occupation most people in Iraq are much worse off and want the US invaders to piss off somewhere else. Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden remains alive and active some place in Afghanistan or Pakistan thanks to inaction by the US government.

Then after the false WMD excuse for war against Iraq and without UN sanction, Bush and his Neocon mates sold the idea of liberating the people of Iraq from a tyrannical leader to the US public as an excuse to keep the Iraqi occupation going at the expense of going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

I don't see it that way at all. And I'm assuming my perspective was much closer than yours. Keep believing what you will. I certainly won't change your mind.

But you're wrong. Are you going to the Homecoming party or not?

Iraq is getting along swimmingly -- don't you wish you had a hand in it?

Ahh, the tried and true shell-game. Rather than concede the point, shift the topic.

Which shell game is that? The one that tries so hard to shift from the evil of American empire to the 'evil-doers' in Afghanistan, from terrorists in $5000 suits in Washington and Wall Street, to peasant farmers turned terrorist in the Middle East? The one that conjures shadowy phantoms and spectres out of thin air to distract the populace from the fact that their country is now a war economy and that their state is predicated on the perpetuation of conflict? The one that condemns the death of 3,000 people but overseas an economy that allows 34,000 children a day to die of preventable illness, all the while stuffing the coffers of empire with more and more stolen loot? The one that singularly fails to address the reason why so much of the world cheered when 9/11 happened? Is that the one you mean?

Yes, America is evil, Dan.

There's a good lad, now run along.

Thirty nine posts and seven (whoops, six) green blobs. So who might you be?

Yes, America is evil

Nice to see you concede the point so readily. I admire you for it.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Ahh, the tried and true shell-game. Rather than concede the point, shift the topic.

You have serious difficulty making distinctions, don't you?

That's rich, coming from you.

This thread is titled What's new in Afghanistan, Ant. Iraq is a much different topic. I realize your life would be easier if they were the same, but they're not.
Haven't we been down this road before?

Originally Posted by Texpat

This thread is titled What's new in Afghanistan, Ant. Iraq is a much different topic.

And? What of it? You yourself have been discussing Pakistan and Iraq. Topics and discussion is rarely limited to either the thread title or what you want it to be. On top of which you were the one that raised the issue of the Taliban being complicit in terrorism, my point re Iraq was a valid one.

I realize your life would be easier if they were the same, but they're not.

Oh, so now the topic's about me is it? "Shell game" indeed.

the Taliban government retains considerable influence in Afghanistan and remains a loyal friend of Pakistan

Macha says different.

For sure the US is not on the right path economically. It's a bloody meltdown

The present decline in violence is not due to the increase in American forces or them doing a good job. One reason is that the sunni fighters have stopped supporting AQ and its activities. Second is that the Shia Cleric Muqtada Al Sadar has decided to stop fighting and join the mainstream Iraqi politics in which Iraq has a very big hand.
Here is an interesting article:

And let’s not forget Iraq

UNTIL as recently as a year ago, the conflict in Iraq was being portrayed by the primary aggressor as a well-intentioned intervention gone wrong, while Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war.

This year the narrative has changed. As Afghanistan’s pear shape has become progressively more pronounced, Iraq has suddenly become the success story.

Pakistan should not be surprised at being lumped with more than its fair share of blame for the Afghan mess: blaming its victims’ neighbours is an old American ploy. Cambodia was bombed in the 1970s ostensibly as a means of destroying the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front’s supply routes. This strategy ultimately led to the ascendancy of the Khmer Rouge. Iran has frequently been cited as an offender in Iraq, while its role in restraining Shia militants remains officially unacknowledged. Who knows where this entanglement, with its nuclear component, will lead to.

The porousness of Pakistan’s long frontier with Afghanistan could hardly have come as a surprise to the Americans, given that they exploited this facility to the hilt while fuelling and funding the anti-Soviet insurgency through the 1980s. The bands of armed Islamists in the country’s north-west pose a bigger threat to Pakistan’s well-being than they do to any American interests. If the threat of Talibanisation in Pakistan has multiplied manifold in the wake of the western military intervention in Afghanistan, it hardly makes sense to deny some sort of a cause-and-effect relationship between the two developments.

Based on the supposed success of last year’s surge in Iraq, whereby the ranks of the occupying forces were swelled by 30,000 troops, influential voices in the US have been advocating a similar plan for Afghanistan. Fortunately, saner voices are also being heard, not least from within the military establishment. For instance, Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, the British commander in Helmand, was quoted on Sunday as saying: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.” He also broached the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban, a track that is reportedly already being pursued.

Many in the US would dismiss such talk as defeatist. They would probably be surprised to find that Gen David Petraeus and his successor as the US commander in Iraq, Gen Ray Odierno, have been speaking in somewhat similar terms, describing the gains in that country as “fragile and reversible” — a far cry from the premature triumphalism of Republican presidential candidate John McCain and the contention of his alarmingly unsophisticated running mate, Sarah Palin, that “victory in Iraq is wholly in sight”. “This is not the sort of struggle,” Petraeus pointed out last month, “where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade.”

In comparison with the bloodiest phase of the war, the level of violence has, on the face of it, decreased sharply in many parts of Iraq. This is a welcome development, albeit within the context of a completely gratuitous war. However, as Petraeus must be aware, the extent to which this can be attributed to the increase in troop numbers is questionable. It is likely to be related more directly to the so-called Awakening movement, whereby Iraqi Sunnis turned away in large numbers from Al Qaeda in Iraq, recognising it as a purely destructive force, and via their tribal leaders established contact with US forces, which decided to put them on their payroll.

For $300 a month, former insurgents have been helping to maintain security in designated regions. The Shia-dominated government of Nuri Al Maliki wasn’t thrilled by this turn of events, but from this month it has begun taking responsibility for the Sunni fighters under American supervision. Given the encrustation of sectarian divisions amid the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq, it is not hard to see why such a gain should be seen as fragile and reversible. But it had little to do with the surge. Meanwhile, the fiery young cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s decision to remodel his Mahdi Army along the lines of Hezbollah, with greater emphasis on its social and political role, also contributed crucially to the reduction in violence.

The short-term consequences of these multiple factors have been something of a boon for McCain, an early advocate of the surge — who also happens to believe that the Vietnam War would have turned out differently had the aggressor nation poured in a lot more troops and had its bombs killed a lot more people. This is a dangerous line of thinking: taken to its logical conclusion, it could well lead to the ultimate abomination of nuclear weapons being used against an indefatigable foe.

What has actually helped McCain is not the surge per se, which hasn’t substantially changed public opinion about the war, but the fact that Iraq has receded from media headlines. Even his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the outset, has not been talking much about Iraq. This is probably a mistake. Although most Americans are focused for the time being on their economic woes, Obama ought to be a great deal more forceful in advancing his argument about the sheer stupidity of the occupation.

There is a plethora of corroborating evidence, given the host of books about the inner workings of the Bush presidency that have steadily been appearing in its final year. They range from Gen Ricardo Sanchez’s Wiser in Battle and Bob Woodward’s The War Within, both of which feature vignettes demonstrating George W’s wilder streak (“Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out!), to Ron Suskind’s thoughtful The Way of the World, which contains evidence that well before the assault on Iraq, the Bush and Blair administrations had more or less incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction or even WMD programmes.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the suicide bombings in Baghdad on Eidul Fitr, in some parts of the city families emerged to celebrate, The Washington Post reported last week. “A few women,” it said, “even went out in public in knee-length skirts or without headscarves, just as they did in the days when the government of Saddam Hussein maintained a largely secular society. With the rise of religious parties and militias in recent years, most women now cover their hair and wear long robes or skirts.”

If that’s the price of ‘liberation’, it’s hard to see how it can be distinguished from a defeat, at least for the women of Iraq.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.
From: DAWN - Mahir Ali Corner; October 08, 2008

Originally Posted by Texpat

the Taliban government retains considerable influence in Afghanistan and remains a loyal friend of Pakistan

Macha says different.

And what does Macha say??

tex, you're such a twat. swimmingly you reckon? So Dan matey makes a very erudite post and you deride him to run along like the ignorant septic runt that you are, because he hasn't made a million ignorant ranting bigoted posts as you have.

It is not only the US which considers negotiating a feasable option:

Western forces in Afghanistan will never be able to win the war against insurgents and may need to include the Taliban in any long-term solution, Britain's senior commander in the country says in a report. An absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible, Brig.-Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith told England's Sunday Times newspaper. What foreign forces must now come to grips with, he said, is reducing the level of insurgency so that it can be managed by Afghan forces and no longer poses a major threat. "We may well leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency … I don’t think we should expect that when we go there won’t be roaming bands of armed men in this part of the world," Carleton-Smith was quoted as saying. "That would be unrealistic and probably incredible." As such, striking a deal with the Taliban could be considered as a strategic option, Carleton-Smith said. It is an idea that has been repeatedly — and recently — advanced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Victory impossible in Afghanistan: senior British commander

Originally Posted by pompeybloke

tex, you're such a twat.

Seconded.

Good article that was macha- thanks.


The article linked below makes great reading. It is an on the ground account of the cat and mouse game between the Taliban and a US Army aid convoy. The Tali's have spotters with satellite phones everywhere. They don't want to attack the convoy until after the aid is delivered. The attack comes, but the US Army Captain is prepared, and vigilant. No casualties, but some vehicle damage and destruction- the US Army wins this encounter, although no damage is inflicted on the enemy.

Excellent reporting from Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald- embedded with the 506 Infantry Regiment of the second battalion of the American 101st Airborne Division at Forward Operating Base Tillman [] in Paktika province, Afghanistan. Full article:-

Lucky escape from jaws of death - World - smh.com.au

Originally Posted by machangezi

Originally Posted by Texpat

Iraq is getting along swimmingly

Bombs kill 34 in Iraq, Gates visits Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three bomb attacks killed 34 people and wounded dozens more in Iraq on Monday, underscoring the security challenges facing the next U.S. military commander in the country.
linky: Bombs kill 34 in Iraq, Gates visits Baghdad | World | Reuters

You Americans must have a twisted dictionary. 34 people dead in Iraq yesterday and Texpat so happily believes that it is all going swimmingly. What do you mean by swimmingly??

hey, who needs electricity for more than an hour/day, clean water, working sewers or jobs? saddam and his sons are dead....and it's only costing $3 billion/week. whoo hoo!

Originally Posted by machangezi

Originally Posted by Texpat

don't you wish you had a hand in it?

Do you??

Afghan parents are selling their sons to wealthy women unable to have their own.

December 22, 2008

The trade in children is spurred by the battered country's economy and the failure of foreign aid to reach beyond the coffers of central government in the capital Kabul.

While girls are are rarely traded, boys can fetch substantial sums - at least in the eyes of the poor couples who give up a child simply to allow the rest of the family to survive.

A cameraman working for Channel 4 News, Mehran Bozorgnia, witnessed the sale of an eight-year-old boy, Qassem, to Sadiqa, a wealthy woman from Kabul, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

As the meeting began, the boy's father, Nek Mohammed, knew he only had a final few moments with his son. Sadiqa was business-like. "Kiss your father and mother goodbye now - it is time," she said, before handing over $1,500 (ฃ1,000). Mr Mohammed began to weep.

The translator accompanying the cameraman said: "Sadiqa, this is wrong!"

"Yes you're right. It's cruel, " she replied, before claiming: "But I have two aims here. First, to give this boy a bright future and a good education. And second, to save their other children. The winter's coming and I've given them money so the children don't die of hunger."

Mr Mohammed said: "I sold a piece of my heart to stop my four other children dying of hunger. I don't have an elder son. I'm also sick.

"My kidney is failing. My body is in pain."

For Mr Mohammed, selling a child was the only way to keep his other children alive.

The plight of many Afghans is now so desperate that selling a child is increasingly routine. But there is another threat to the welfare of the young – and their parents.

Afghanistan's boom business is kidnapping. At least 180 documented abductions in the past seven months in Kabul alone. The going rate is around $50,000 (ฃ34,000) to release the sons of the wealthy.

One kidnapper in Kabul who would speak openly about his trade said that he had no problem targeting the rich.

"We're not dealing with poor people," said the man, who claimed his name was Mateen Khan. "We are only going to kidnap people who have foreign money from all around the world and who have taken it for themselves.

"We are going to take their children. You see their six year olds sitting in the back seat of a Lexus - the latest models. People abroad couldn't afford these cars. So we kidnap these type of children to get the money off their families - the money they've stolen."

In a stable he showed off a teenage boy, who was blindfolded and bound and plainly terrified.

"We'll sell him or take his eyes out and bring him to the eye hospital and call his relatives. Or we'll sell him to the Taliban," said Mateen Khan.

Although he said his gang has no formal ties to the Taliban, his admission that he does business with them appeared to confirm speculation surrounding the Islamist group's involvement in the trade in children.

His threats were all made within earshot of the teenager, whose fate is unknown.

Afghan parents selling their sons to survive :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dall'Iraq occupato :: news from occupied Iraq :: - it

With living conditions like this, militants are not difficult to find.

Originally Posted by machangezi

Originally Posted by pompeybloke

tex, you're such a twat.

Seconded.

Seconded as well