tagged w/ Helmand Province
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The leaders of the largest tribe in a Taliban stronghold in southern Helmand province have pledged to halt insurgent attacks and expel foreign fighters from one of the most violent spots in the country, the senior U.S. Marine general in Afghanistan said Monday..
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/International/75244The leaders of the largest tribe in a Taliban stronghold in southern Helmand province... more
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International Red Cross affiliate the Afghan Red Crescent Society says about 500 families in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province were forced out of their homes following recent military operations there by Afghan government and NATO forces. The refugee affairs department says over 2,000 of up to 4,000 families displaced from their homes in the Marjah area during a large-scale military operation in February have remained in Lashkargah for security reasons.International Red Cross affiliate the Afghan Red Crescent Society says about 500... more
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In an amazing propaganda segment, Fox News’ Gerald Rivera talks with an occupation soldier about U.S. support of the opium trade in Afghanistan. The soldier tells Rivera he does not like supporting Afghan opium production. The U.S., he insists, has turned a blind eye to the cultivation because it is a cultural thing. He’d rather the Afghans grow watermelons.
Is it possible the U.S. will tell the brother of Afghanistan’s U.S.-installed ruler he should get in the watermelon business?
It was reported a few months ago that Ahmed Wali Karzai was on the CIA payroll and intimately involved in the opium trade Fox News and the rest of the corporate media tell us is run by the evil Taliban.
Fox News did not report that before everything changed on September 11, 2001, and before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had imposed a ban on opium production. This resulted in opium production collapsing by more than 90 per cent. It was the U.S. supported Northern Alliance that came to the rescue and began protecting the production of raw opium.
“CIA-supported Mujahedeen rebels [who in 2001 were part of the Northern Alliance] engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society,” William Blum writes in The Real Drug Lords.
Under the interim government of Hamid Karzai, opium poppy cultivation once again began to skyrocket and opium markets were restored. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 per cent in 2002 in relation to its 2001 level. The UNDCP estimated 2002 opium poppy cultivation would cover an area between 45,000 and 65,000 hectares. Opium cultivation in 2001 had fallen to an estimated 7,606 hectares. According to the UN, in 2006 alone Afghanistan supplied 92 percent of the world’s supply of opium (see Apratim Mukarji’s Afghanistan: From Freedom to Terror, p. 22-23).
“The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military. In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements,” Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2007.
“Respected people of Helmand. The soldiers of ISAF and ANA do not destroy poppy fields,” the radio promo said. “They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods.” This is basically the same excuse used by the soldier interviewed by Geraldo.
“Senior Bush Administration officials had displayed a complete lack of interest in the Afghan opium problem ever since 9/11,” James Risen writes in State of War. “In fact, the White House and Pentagon went out of their way to avoid taking on the Afghan drug lords from the very outset of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.”
Not mentioned is the fact that more than 95 percent of the revenue generated by opium production is siphoned off to business syndicates, organized crime and banking and financial institutions.
“In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital,” said Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said last January. “In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.”
Former Managing Director and board member of Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read, Catherine Austin Fitts, has long alleged that the banksters launder imponderable amounts of drug money. “According to the Department of Justice, the US launders between $500 billion – $1 trillion annually. I have little idea what percentage of that is narco dollars, but it is probably safe to assume that at least $100-200 billion relates to US drug import-exports and retail trade,” writes Fitts.
The CIA has long secured the lucrative global drug market for Wall Street and for its own operational “off-the-books” purposes. “The CIA’s operational directorate, in other words that’s their covert operations, para-military, dirty tricks — call it whatever you want — has for at least 40 years that we can document paid for a significant amount of its work through the sales of heroin and cocaine,” Guerrilla News Network reported in an interview with Christopher Simpson.
The CIA has been in the drug running business since the 1950s. In Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Latin America, and Afghanistan, the CIA — also known as the “Cocaine Import Agency” — has remained at the forefront of the international illicit drug trade. The journalist Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury News tied the CIA and the Contras to a large crack cocaine ring in Los Angeles. Webb paid with his life for revealing this information to the public.
None of this was mentioned by Geraldo Rivera and Fox News. Instead we are told drug dealing in Afghanistan is something engaged in by the evil Taliban (a group of religious fanatics created by the CIA and its partner, Pakistin’s ISI intelligence service).
Not that the Taliban are innocent — they have abandoned their old ways and are now exploiting the opium bumper crop to fund their operations.
“Curbing the Taliban’s multimillion dollar opium poppy business was a major goal of a military operation to seize this former insurgent stronghold,” the Associated Press reported in March. “If they destroy the crops and curb the trade, they lose the support of the population — a problem for which they have no easy solution.”
Support of the population, of course, comes in a far distant second to maintaining the addiction of Wall Street and the CIA to billions of dollars in profit.In an amazing propaganda segment, Fox News’ Gerald Rivera talks with an... more
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Website Raw Story reports that the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who helped break the story that detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being tortured by their US jailers is now saying that American soldiers are executing prisoners in Afghanistan.Website Raw Story reports that the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who helped break... more
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A civilian was shot dead in eastern Afghanistan last week after police fired at thousands of villagers protesting against NATO raids which they say killed 11 civilians.A civilian was shot dead in eastern Afghanistan last week after police fired at... more
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Although it's just beginning, the U.S.-led effort to pacify the Taliban's spiritual capital in southern Afghanistan already appears to be faltering.
Key military operations have been delayed until the fall, efforts to improve local government are having little impact and a Taliban assassination campaign has brought a sense of dread to Kandahar's streets.Although it's just beginning, the U.S.-led effort to pacify the Taliban's... more
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The US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that "nobody is winning".The US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting... more
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An independent government report raises new questions about the likelihood of success for President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy, which nearly doubles the number of U.S. troops there.
The report, by the Government Accountability Office, found that despite the boost in U.S. troops, the Taliban remain a resilient fighting force, and it suggests many factors remain in place that will allow the Taliban to survive U.S. efforts to eradicate them.An independent government report raises new questions about the likelihood of success... more
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Afghanistan’s drug and corruption economy of $5.3 billion in 2009 was more than the $4.4 billion earmarked in 2010 for running the government and financing the development budget.Afghanistan’s drug and corruption economy of $5.3 billion in 2009 was more than... more
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Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry says that civilian casualties there are on the rise as U.S. and NATO reinforcements stream into the country as part of a military buildup to combat the resurgent Taliban.Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry says that civilian casualties there are on the... more
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US Special Forces raided the home of a prominent Afghan Minister of Parliament, killing one of her relatives in an operation that provoked public protests this past week.US Special Forces raided the home of a prominent Afghan Minister of Parliament,... more
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A Pentagon report presents a sobering new assessment of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that its abilities are expanding and its operations are increasing in sophistication, despite recent major offensives by U.S. forces in the militants' heartland.
The report concludes that Afghan people support or are sympathetic to the insurgency in 92 of 121 districts identified by the U.S. military as key terrain for stabilizing the country. Popular support for Karzai's government is strong in only 29 of those districts.A Pentagon report presents a sobering new assessment of the Taliban-led insurgency in... more
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Insurgents killed the vice mayor of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar as he prayed at a mosque last week. Meanwhile, a NATO convoy in Khost province, on the border with Pakistan, fired on a vehicle carrying four boys aged between 13 and 18 who were driving home from a volleyball game.Insurgents killed the vice mayor of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar as he prayed... more
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Four suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed U.S. Marines from the 36 battalion Lima Company on April 8 as the soldiers were heading back from a patrol near a village near Marjah in Helmand province. There was no causality among the Marines.
Marjah, a desert area of fertile farming land irrigated by canals in Helmand's opium-growing heartland, was billed as the last big Taliban stronghold in the country's most violent province. Thousands of U.S. Marines flooded into the district in February, joined by about 1,500 Afghan troops, while thousands of British troops conducted assaults to seize areas on its outskirts.Four suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed U.S. Marines from the 36 battalion Lima... more
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A new army field manual published last week instructs British soldiers to buy off potential Taliban recruits with “bags of gold.”A new army field manual published last week instructs British soldiers to buy off... more
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Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the former governor of Afghanistan's Helmand province, has revealed that he turned thousands of his followers over to the Taliban after he lost his job under pressure from British officials.Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the former governor of Afghanistan's Helmand province,... more
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