The Afghan Land-Grab

In 2001 the Taliban authorities destroyed two giant sculptures of the Buddha at Bamiyan.

Today, 25 miles southeast of Kabul at the ruins of Mes Aynak, a young archaeologist takes a break to show off a latest find at the precious historical site, in a rugged area the size of Pompeii. “Mes Aynak is the most important discovery in my career,” said Qadir Temori, head preservation archaeologist. “We have worked so hard to protect this ancient site, even risking our lives to save it.”

But it’s not Islamic fundamentalists who are threatening to destroy some 400 Buddhist treasures and a monastery complex dating back several thousand years that lie at the site of Mes Aynak. Instead it is a Chinese firm with a contract to dig up valuable copper ore that lies beneath the site is waging a battle against Afghan and foreign archaeologists who are fighting to save ancient Mes Aynak. The mining work would destroy rare domed temples known as stupas. The Silk Road locale has significant influences from Iran to India, and a Bronze Age copper smelter remains buried. Over 500 workers from the Ministries of Culture and of Mining have been racing to recover artifacts before the industrial-scale digging begins. The unprecedented archaeological campaign could give way to what will be the country’s most sizable foreign direct investment.

Five years ago, U.S. government officials revealed numbers suggesting that war-ravaged Afghanistan was sitting on some $1 trillion in mineral wealth. Other studies point to figures as high as $3 trillion. Massive quantities of copper, iron and gold sit in the earth under Afghanistan.

Angry locals also resent forced displacement of six villages. “Most of the residents have been either forced out, have left, or they’re not allowed to return,” said Javed Noorani of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a watchdog group that advocates for increased transparency. “They are losing everything, they will have to be compensated, discuss things properly, consulted properly, and then resettled.”

Lal Agha, a local village elder whose community has been relocated by the project, said, “We are all helpless. We don’t have a way to fight for our human rights…The government is responsible for creating the security problems by grabbing people’s lands, beating them up, and humiliating and disrespecting their values,” Agha said. “It’s when people fight back, the government calls them ‘Al-Qaeda.’ If the people are happy with the Chinese mining company, then why are missiles being fired into Mes Aynak? People are angry,” he added.

Despite the violence, it is the campaign by archaeologists to stop the development that has captured the most international attention. “Preserving Mes Aynak is an important gesture for Afghanistan. It’s an important gesture for all archaeologists in the world concerned with preserving human culture,“ said Mark Kenoyer, a physical anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin working on site. “The destruction of Mes Aynak itself would be like Atlantis going into the ocean and disappearing from history.”

For its part, the United Nations' global cultural body UNESCO is standing on the sidelines instead of opposing the fundamentalist advocates of capitalist profit.

Afghanistan: The War Is Over. Long Live The War

Yesterday, President Barack Obama delivered remarks before a Memorial Day service at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, in which he celebrated the day as the first Memorial Day since the end of the war in Afghanistan.

For many of us, this Memorial Day is especially meaningful; it is the first since our war in Afghanistan came to an end. Today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war. So on this day, we honor the sacrifice of the thousands of American servicemembers—men and women—who gave their lives since 9/11, including more than 2,200 American patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan.

Our war in Afghanistan came to an end. Well, sort of.
The United States and NATO did formally end the war in Afghanistan, amidst some ceremony, in December 2014. However, in many ways, it is hard to see that the changing of the guard was little more than the changing of a flag. And President Obama’s own Justice Department—for its part—is busily arguing in court that the war is not, in fact, over.
In the United States’ opposition to a Guantanamo Bay detainee’s “End of War” motion, the President’s lawyers write, “active hostilities” are continuing against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that the President and the Congress are “in agreement” that this is the case:

As a matter of international and domestic law, the United States currently remains in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, Taliban, and associated forces. Petitioner Mukhtar Yahia al Warafi (ISN 117), a Guantanamo Bay detainee previously determined by this Court to be part of Taliban forces, incorrectly contends that his detention at Guantanamo Bay has become unlawful because he alleges the United States’ armed conflict against the Taliban in Afghanistan ended at the close of 2014.
. . .
[T]he determination of whether hostilities have ended is a matter “of political judgement for which judges have neither technical competence nor official responsibility.” Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160, 170 (1948). With respect to the current armed conflict against al-Qaeda, Taliban, and associated forces, both political branches are in agreement, through Congress’s continued statutory authority and the Executive’s posture and military actions undertaken pursuant to that authority, that active hostilities against those forces have not ceased.
. . .
Petitioner . . . misunderstands the meaning of the President’s public statements in December 2014 announcing that “[t]his month, our combat mission” and “America’s war in Afghanistan will come to a responsible end.” The President has not declared that active hostilities against al-Qaeda, Taliban, and associated forces have ceased or that the fighting in Afghanistan has stopped. Rather, the President’s public statements made clear that, in light of continuing threats faced by the United States in Afghanistan, counterterrorism and other military operations would continue even after the end of the combat mission. Simply put, the President’s statements signify a transition in United States military operation, not a cessation.

In effect, the Justice Department is arguing that the President does not quite mean what he says when he says the war was over. What he means is that “military operations” will continue after the “combat mission” is over.
The war is over. Long live the war.

The Justice Department is not the only agency making this argument. In an April speech, Department of Defense General Counsel Stephen Preston clarified the point further, stating “Although our presence in that country [Afghanistan] has been reduced and our mission there is more limited, the fact is that active hostilities continue. As a matter of international law, the United States remains in a state of armed conflict against the Taliban, al-Qa’ida and associated forces, and the 2001 AUMF continues to stand as statutory authority to use military force.”
And in many ways, the Justice Department and the Defense Department are more right than the President. The war continues for the Afghans, the war continues for the Taliban, and for many Americans, the war also continues. Fierce fighting in the country has killed record numbers of Afghan security forces over the last year. In March, the United States agreed to slow the withdraw of U.S. troops from the country.

Before that, in February, the New York Times reported that the United States was escalating a secret war in Afghanistan. Airstrikes continue aplenty; night raids throughout the the country have reached a fever pitch.”It’s all in the shadows now,” One Afghan security official told the Times. “The official war for the Americans—the part of the war that you could go see—that’s over. It’s only the secret war that’s still going. But it’s going hard.”
That was confirmed by another Times report from the end of April. In March alone, the United States launched 52 airstrikes:

Rather than ending the American war in Afghanistan, the military is using its wide latitude to instead transform it into a continuing campaign of airstrikes—mostly drone missions—and Special Operations raids that have in practice stretched or broken the parameters publicly described by the White House.

How do we square the circle of the war’s being over except that it isn’t? Perhaps, the clearest summation of the situation came from the commander expanding the secret war, General John F. Campbell in a New York Times story:

“Washington is going to have to say what they say politically for many different audiences, and I have no issue with that,” General Campbell said. “I understand my authorities and what I have to do with Afghanistan’s forces and my forces. And if that doesn’t sell good for a media piece then, again, I can’t worry about it.”

He added: “Combat and war and transition, as you know, it’s a very complex thing. For me, it’s not black and white.”

Recognizing that final point, the very transitional nature of modern day warfare, yesterday the President acknowledged that “the nature of war has changed.” Instead, it is only the “the values that drive our brave men and women in uniform [that] remain constant:  Honor, courage, selflessness.”

from here

Afghanistan - What Future For The Majority?

First the centre of the silk route, then the epicenter of bloody conflicts, Afghanistan's history can be charted through many diverse chapters, the most recent of which opened with the election of President Ashraf Ghani in September 2014.
Having inherited a country pockmarked with the scars of over a decade of occupation by U.S. troops – including one million unemployed youth and a flourishing opium trade – the former finance minister has entered the ring at a low point for his country.
Afghanistan ranks near the bottom of Transparency International's most recent Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), tailed only by North Korea, Somalia and Sudan.
A full 36 percent of its population of 30.5 million people lives in poverty, while spillover pressures from war-torn neighbours like Pakistan threaten to plunge this land-locked nation back into the throes of religious extremism.

But under this sheen of distress, the seeds of Afghanistan's future are slumbering: vast metal and mineral deposits, ample water resources and huge tracts of farmland have investors casting keen eyes from all directions.
Citing an internal Pentagon memo in 2010, the New York Times referred to Afghanistan as the "Saudi Arabia of Lithium", an essential ingredient in the production of batteries and related goods.
The country is poised to become the world's largest producer of copper and iron in the next decade. According to some estimates, untapped mineral reserves could amount to about a trillion dollars.
Perhaps more importantly Afghanistan's landmass represents prime geopolitical real estate, acting as the gateway between Asia and Europe. As the government begins the slow process of re-building a nation from the scraps of war, it is looking first and foremost to its immediate neighbours, for the hand of friendship and mutual economic benefit.


Speaking of his development plans at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Thursday, Ghani emphasised the role that the Caucasus, as well as Pakistan and China, can play in the country's transformation.
"In the next 25 years, Asia is going to become the world's largest continental economy," Ghani stressed. "What happened in the U.S. in 1869 when the continental railroad was integrated is very likely to happen in Asia in the next 25 years. Without Afghanistan, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and West Asia will not be connected.
"Our goal is to become a transit country, for transport, power transmissions, gas pipelines and fiber optics."
Ghani added that the bulk of what Afghanistan hopes to produce in the coming decade would be heavy stuff, requiring a robust rail network in order to create economies of scale.
"In three years, we hope to be reaching Europe within five days. So the Caspian is really becoming central to our economy […] In three years, we could have 70 percent of our imports and exports via the Caspian," he claimed.

Roads, too, will be vital to the country's revival, and here the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has already begun laying the groundwork. Just last month the financial institution and the Afghan government signed grant agreements worth 130 million dollars, "[To] finance a new road link that will open up an east-west trade corridor with Tajikistan and beyond."

Thomas Panella, ADB's country director for Afghanistan, told IPS, "ADB-funded projects in transport and energy infrastructure promote regional economic cooperation through increased connectivity. To date under the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) programme, 2.6 billion dollars have been invested in transport, trade, and energy projects, of which 15 are ongoing and 10 have been completed. In the transport sector six projects are ongoing and eight projects have been completed, including the 75-km railway project connecting Hairatan bordering Uzbekistan and Mazar-e-Sharif of Afghanistan."

Afghanistan's transport sector accounted for 22 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) during the U.S. occupation, a contribution driven primarily by the presence of foreign troops.
Now the sector has slumped, but financial assistance from the likes of the ADB is likely to set it back on track. At last count, on Dec. 31, 2013, the development bank had sunk 1.9 billion dollars into efforts to construct or upgrade some 1,500 km of regional and national roads, and a further 31 million to revamp four regional airports in Afghanistan, which have since seen a two-fold increase in usage.
In total, the ADB has approved 3.9 billion dollars in loans, grants, and technical assistance for Afghanistan since 2002. Panella also said the bank allocated 335.18 million dollars in Asian Development Fund (ADF) resources to Afghanistan for 2014, and 167.59 million dollars annually for 2015 and 2016.
China too has stepped up to the plate – having already acquired a stake in one of the country's most critical copper mines and invested in the oil sector – promising 330 million dollars in aid and grants, which Ghani said he intends to use exclusively to beef up infrastructure and "improve feasibility."
Both India and China, the former through private companies and the latter through state-owned corporations, have made "significant" contributions to the fledgling economy, Ghani said, adding that the Gulf states and Azerbaijan also form part of the 'consortium approach' that he has adopted as Afghanistan's roadmap out of the doldrums.

"A Very Neoliberal Idea"

But in an environment that until very recently could only be described as a war economy, with a poor track record of sharing wealth equally – be it aid, or private contracts – the road through the forest of extractive initiatives and mega-infrastructure projects promises to be a bumpy one.
According to Anand Gopal, an expert on Afghan politics and award-winning author of 'No Good Men Among the Living', "There is a widespread notion that only a very powerful fraction of the local elite and international community benefitted from the [flow] of foreign aid. If you go to look at schools," he told IPS, "or into clinics that were funded by the international community, you can see these institutions are in a state of disrepair, you can see that local warlords have taken a cut, have even been empowered by this aid, which helped them build a base of support."

Although the aid flow has now dried up, the system that allowed it to be siphoned off to line the pockets of strongmen and political elites will not be easily dismantled.
"The mindset here is not oriented towards communities, it's oriented towards development of private industries and private contractors," Gopal stated.
"When you have a state that is unable to raise its own revenue and is utterly reliant on foreign aid to make these projects viable […] the straightforward thing to do would be to nationalise natural resources and use them as a base of revenue to develop the economy, the expertise of local communities and the endogenous ability of the Afghan state to survive."

Instead what happens is that this tremendous potential falls off into hands of contracts to the Chinese and others. "It's a very neoliberal idea," he added, "to privatise everything and hope that the benefits will trickle down.
"But as we've seen all over the world, it doesn't trickle down. In fact, the people who are supposed to be helped aren't the ones to get help and a lot of other people get enriched in the process."

Indeed, attempts to stimulate growth and close the wealth gap by pouring money into the extractives sector or large-scale development – particularly in formerly conflict-ridden countries – has had disastrous consequences worldwide, from Papua New Guinea, to Colombia, to Chad.
Rather than reducing poverty and empowering local communities, mining and infrastructure projects have impoverished indigenous people, fueled gender-based violence, and paved the way for the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

A far more meaningful approach, Gopal suggested, would be to directly fund local communities in ways that don't immediately give rise to an army of middlemen.
It remains to be seen how the country's plans to shake off the cloak of foreign occupation and decades of instability will unfold. But it is clear that Afghanistan is fast becoming the new playground – and possibly the next battleground – of emerging players in the global economy.

by Kanya D'Almeida from here

More evidence, if it's needed, for the necessity of the socialist position of ridding the world of the exploitative system that is capitalism in favour of organising for the benefit of the vast majority and using global resources for need not profit. Leaders of all colours and stripes of the world, in thrall to the principles of capitalism would rather enrich the few at whatever cost to the rest of us wherever we live. The only way to change the balance of power is to disenfranchise the capitalist class by placing all wealth into common ownership in a global socialist system.

 

Afghanistan: US Presidential Policy Guidlines On Drones

Afghanistan - War Or Active Hostilities? Civilians Still In The Firing Line

Despite the December 28th "official" end of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, a new Rolling Stone article provides more proof that armed combat is nowhere near over: the Obama administration still considers the country to be an "area of active hostilities" and therefore does not impose more stringent standards aimed at limiting civilian deaths in drone strikes.

At issue are the Presidential Policy Guidelines (pdf), passed in May 2013 in response to widespread concerns about the killing and wounding of non-combatants by U.S. drone strikes. The new guidelines impose the requirement that "before lethal action may be taken," U.S. forces are required to attain "near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed." It is impossible to verify the impact of this reform on civilian deaths and injuries, because U.S. drone attacks are shrouded in near total secrecy.

However, an unnamed senior administration official told Rolling Stone journalist John Knefel that the Presidential Policy Guidelines do not apply to Afghanistan.  "Afghanistan will continue to be considered an 'area of active hostilities' in 2015," said the official. "The PPG does not apply to areas of active hostilities."
This is not the first time President Obama has played fast and loose with its own drone war reforms. In October 2014, it was revealed that the Obama administration holds that the reforms also do not apply to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Syria, because they are also deemed to be "areas of active hostilities."
According to Knefel, "That perplexing distinction – that formal combat operations are over but that the U.S. still remains in an armed conflict – in many ways exemplifies the lasting legacy of Obama's foreign policy. From Yemen to Pakistan to Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan, the administration has consistently downplayed its actions – some acknowledged and some covert – saying that the wars are (almost) over while retaining virtually all the powers of a country at war."

from here

Where did the aid go?

The story the media wishes us to believe as that the British involvement in the Afghan war was a mission for good. “We” brought progress for the well-being of the ordinary person. The British worker needs to be re-assured that all the money spent and the lives given made it all worth it.

 Afghanistan has been the world's leading recipient of development assistance as a percentage of its national income, with US$6.2 billion in 2012 alone. Yet that spending has focused on governance and security.

The most recent National Nutrition Survey - the first in the country since 2004 - released late last year, showed that over 40 percent of Afghan children under the age of five suffered from permanent stunting as a result of malnutrition, while 9.5 percent of children suffered from wasting.

The number of children with severe acute malnutrition had more than tripled from 98,900 in 2003 to 362,317, while the estimated number of pregnant and lactating women requiring nutrition interventions had nearly doubled to 246,283. Acute malnutrition typically kills more quickly than chronic malnutrition, which is the world's leading cause of preventable mental disability.

 Under the country's Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) healthcare system, international NGOs act as contractors to take on the basic provision of health services in a given district. As the Afghan government has faced financial cutbacks the BPHS budget has decreased, undermining malnutrition outreach programmes. In one province, the monthly budget per patient for all services dropped from 7 euros up to 2013 to 4.7 euros per patient per year in 2014, according to a report from ACF.

"The contract has a set amount of money per patient and the nutrition amount is too small to be useful as it doesn't allow for any outreach work to take place," Mark Bowden, the UN Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and the Humanitarian Coordinator for the country. "So essentially nutrition has been ignored within the health system."

 "Poverty is the key issue here. Poverty and ignorance - it can be a vicious cycle," said Homayoun Zaheer, head of the Jalalabad hospital.

Franck Abeille, country director at Action Against Hunger (known by its French acronym ACF) said "When you meet donors they say: 'one year is perfect, let's move forward.' When you suggest three or four years they say: 'I am not sure we can find the funds.' So next year we come back with the same problem."

Claude Jibidar, country director at the World Food Programme, said that one route he was pushing for is to fortify wheat - the staple of the Afghan diet - potentially with government subsidies.  "A lot of the micronutrient deficiencies would be immediately dealt with," Jibidar said. "You fortify with a pack of minerals and vitamins dealing with anaemia, iron, vitamin A and vitamin D deficiencies." "People say it has an effect on the price - I am told it would cost about $4-5 dollars additionally per kilo. Even if it is 10 times that the benefit is worth it," he added.Yet such a scheme, while potentially making older Afghans healthier, would only have a limited impact on the youngest.

From here

The opium pipedreams of an ex-general

 The former head of the British army Gen Sir Peter Wall said on a BBC documentary: "The lasting impact we will have had is not just to sanitise the threat to allow the development of governance and economy, but to be a witness to and stimulus for very significant social change, with an improving economy, with jobs, with much developed farming opportunities in contrast to narcotics.”

This is an example of crass denial which is a persistent and constant feature of UK military history.

 The LA Times reports that there was a record harvest of opium last year and John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction has concluded that the counter-narcotics strategy is failing badly. The amount of land used to grow poppies in 2013 eclipsed the previous record set in 2007, producing nearly $3 billion in profits, up from $2 billion in 2012. He stated in a report "The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability" of the U.S.-led counter-narcotics program.”

Several areas once declared poppy-free by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime are now awash in opium. Afghanistan provides 80% of the world's opium. Much of it is grown in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, strongholds of Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan. Nangarhar province also produces a significant crop.  Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, was declared poppy-free in 2008 and cited as a model for successful interdiction. The province saw a fourfold increase in opium production in 2013. "Poppy production is on the increase and is a significant threat to U.S. and international efforts in Afghanistan," the Pentagon said.

Rather than the growth of farming opportunities claimed by Gen. Wall, high opium prices and a cheap and skilled agricultural work force, much of the newly arable land has been dedicated to poppy cultivation. Part of the reason is affordable deep-well technology that has provided ample water for poppy plants, the US report says. The wells have turned 494,000 acres of desert land into arable agricultural areas over the last decade in southwestern Afghanistan, the center of the country's opium cultivation.

In 2013, Afghan farmers grew an unprecedented 516,000 acres of opium poppy, surpassing the previous record of 477,000 acres in 2007, according to the U.N. drug office. Sopko's report predicts further increases in production for this year's harvest.

Wall is simply another example of a soldier who wants to rewrite history to hide failure. But we hardly expect the BBC to correct him.

The Afghan Mess

2,806 US and 447 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. The total cost to the US of war, reconstruction and aid over the same period is $641.7bn (£390bn while the UK figure is said to be £60 billion). Of course, money spent on Afghanistan does not mean money spent in Afghanistan, but even taking this into account it is extraordinary that, despite gargantuan sums spent, Afghan government figures reveal that 60 per cent of children are malnourished and only 27 per cent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water. Many survive only through remittances from relatives working abroad or through the drug business, which is worth some 15 per cent of the Afghan gross national product. Afghanistan ranked bottom of the 177 countries (equal with Somalia and North Korea) in Transparency International's league table of perception of corruption by businessmen.

Elections are now so fraudulent as to rob the winners of legitimacy. The April 2014 election is likely to be worse than anything seen before, with 20.7 million voter cards distributed in a country where half the population of 27 million are under the voting age of 18. Independent election monitoring institutions have been taken over by and are now under the thumb of the government.

The Taliban has not been crushed, operates in all parts of the country and, in provinces like Helmand, is poised to take over as US and British troops depart. Western leaders simply ignore Afghan reality and take refuge in spin that is not far from deliberate lying. During a visit to Helmand province last December David Cameron claimed that a basic level of security had been established, so British troops could justly claim that their mission had been accomplished. Nobody in Afghanistan believes this.

In 1843 British army chaplain G.R. Gleig wrote a memoir of the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War, of which he was one of the very few survivors. He wrote that it was:
"A war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated”

Not much has changed.

Taken from here 

The Lost Opium War

Afghan opium cultivation has reached a record level, with more than 200,000 hectares planted with the poppy for the first time, the United Nations says. The  report said the harvest was 36% up on last year, and if fully realised would outstrip global demand. Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's opium. The report said the total area planted with poppies rose from 154,000 to 209,000 hectares,

The head of the UN office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Kabul, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, said that production was likely to rise again next year. He said that the illegal economy was taking over in importance from legitimate business, and that prices remained high since there was a ready availability of cash in Afghanistan because of aid.

Most of the rise was in Helmand province, where British troops are stationed. Half of the cultivation area is in Helmand province. Meanwhile two northern provinces which had previously been declared poppy-free - Faryab and Balkh - lost that status.

Afghanistan - a failed war

A study by Theo Farrell, head of the war studies department at King's College London, and Antonio Giustozzi, visiting professor at the department, have published the study in the Chatham House think-tank's journal which concludes 'ignorant' British troops alienated local people and the Taliban are likely to try to retake the Afghanistan Helmand province.

The way British commanders sent thousands of their soldiers there in 2006. "Far from helping to secure Helmand, the arrival of the British triggered a violent intensification of the insurgency," it says.

The report echoes the Socialist Party case that  root cause of war is material reasons. "What we find is an insurgency that is driven both by a strong unifying strategic narrative and purpose – jihad against foreign invaders – and by local conflict dynamics: rivalry between kinship groups and competition over land, water and drugs.” (SOYMB emphasis)
 Farrell and Giustozzi add:
"By arriving with insufficient force, aligning themselves with local corrupt power-holders, relying on firepower to keep insurgents at bay and targeting the poppy crop, the British made matters worse. Far from securing Helmand, British forces alienated the population, mobilised local armed resistance and drew in foreign fighters seeking jihad. Indiscriminate use of fire by British forces alienated locals who were driven from their homes or lost family members."

The Taliban took advantage of this by promising to protect landowners and farmers from poppy-eradication programmes, thereby winning local support, they say. "It was in this climate of gathering jihad that young Helmandi men flocked to the Taliban…the British presence made it far easier to recruit local fighters."

War, Wealth and Mental Health

THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED

In the year 2010 the war against Afghanistan divulged its raison d'etre: the Pentagon revealed that the country had mineral resources worth more than a trillion dollars.

The Taliban were not among the resources named.

Rather gold, cobalt, copper, iron and above all lithium, an essential ingredient in mobile telephones and laptop computers.


COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Around this time in 2010 it came out that more and more US soldiers were committing suicide. It was nearly as common as death in combat.

The Pentagon promised to hire additional mental health specialists, already the fastest growing job classification in the armed forces.

The world is becoming an immense military base, and that base is becoming a mental hospital the size of the world. Inside the nuthouse, which ones are crazy? The soldiers killing themselves or the wars that oblige them to kill?

from Eduardo Galeano's 'Children of the Days'

The cost of war

When it comes to wars the price paid is in the blood and suffering of those who are victims of it. However, capitalism understands only pounds and pence in evaluating the cost of its ventures, not the human costs.

Frank Ledwidge, author of "Investment in Blood" has calculated that The war in Afghanistan has cost Britain at least £37bn and the figure will rise to a sum equivalent to more than £2,000 for every taxpaying household.

Since 2006, on a conservative estimate, it has cost £15m a day to maintain Britain's military presence in Helmand province. The equivalent of £25,000 will have been spent for every one of Helmand's 1.5 million inhabitants, more than most of them will earn in a lifetime.

British troops in Helmand have killed at least 500 non-combatants. About half of these have been officially admitted and Britain has paid compensation to the victims' families. The rest are based on estimates from UN and NGO reports, and "collateral damage" from air strikes and gun battles.

Helmand is no more stable now than when thousands of British troops were deployed there in 2006. Opium production that fell under the Taliban, is increasing, fuelling corruption and the coffers of warlords.

By 2020, the author of a new book says, Britain will have spent at least £40bn on its Afghan campaign, enough to recruit over 5,000 nurses and pay for them throughout their careers. It could fund free tuition for all students in British higher education for 10 years.

MoD officials said that British troops were in Helmand to protect British national security by helping Afghans build up their own security forces.
 "...of all the thousands of civilians and combatants, not a single al-Qaida operative or 'international terrorist' who could conceivably have threatened the United Kingdom is recorded as having been killed by Nato forces in Helmand," Ledwidge writes.
 It was a serious mistake, the author adds, to treat al-Qaida as a military problem – the problem was primarily an intelligence one. Reflecting the widespread view across Whitehall and among defence chiefs, he says the real reason Britain has expended so much blood and money on Afghanistan is simple: "The perceived necessity of retaining the closest possible links with the US."

The real beneficiaries of the war, he suggests, are development consultants, Afghan drug lords, and international arms companies. Much of British aid to Afghanistan is spent on consultancy fees rather than those Afghans who need it most.

 Ledwidge explained: "Once the last British helicopter leaves a deserted and wrecked Camp Bastion, Helmand – to which Britain claimed it would bring 'good governance' – will be a fractious narco-state occasionally fought over by opium barons and their cronies."

Afghanistan - A War for Freedom?

The “arduous” nature of brick making – mostly done in a crouching position, in which workers are constantly exposed to the sun, heat and blowing dust – and low wages make it difficult for brick kilns to recruit and retain labour.

A new United Nations-backed survey has found that most workers in Afghanistan’s brick kilns are bonded child labourers. In other words - slaves.

56 per cent of brick makers in Afghan kilns are children under the age of 18 and 47 per cent are 14 or younger. Workers and their families are tied to a kiln by the need to pay off loans taken for basic necessities, medical expenses, weddings and funerals. Both adult and child labourers work more than 70 hours a week, in very poor conditions. Average daily wages are between 297 and 407 Afghanis ($6.23-$8.54) for an adult and 170-278 Afghanis ($3.57-$5.82) for a child.

“Faced with never-ending debt, families feel they have to use all available labour, even if it is to their long-term detriment, to make daily ends meet. It is out of necessity and extreme poverty that households enlist their children from an early age to work in the kilns,” stated Sarah Cramer, lead author of the survey, which was commissioned by the UN International Labour Organization. “It is extremely difficult for a bonded labourer to leave the vicious cycle of debt as the wages paid are too low to allow the advance to be fully paid off by the end of the season,” said Ms. Cramer. “By using a system of advances on future wage payments that bond labourers and their families, kiln owners are able to ensure a regular labour supply at low cost,” she stated.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41177&Cr=afghan&Cr1=

afghan hounds of war

Adapted from Green Left Weekly article.

On August 19, a Taliban suicide squad attacked the Kabul offices of the British Council, a government-funded institution that “promotes educational and cultural relations” between Britain and other countries. The Guardian said at least 12 people were killed, including a New Zealand SAS soldier and three “security contractors” working for multinational security outfit G4S. British PM David Cameron made the predictable condemnation of the suicide squad’s cowardice, and vowed to maintain the presence in Afghanistan of the British Council and the British Army.

A Taliban spokesman told AFP: “Today is our independence day from Britain. They recognised our independence 92 years ago. Today’s attack was marking that day. Now the British have invaded our country again and they will recognise our independence day again.”

The 9500-strong British contingent in Afghanistan is the second largest component of the occupying force.

Afghan feminist and democracy activist Malalai Joya said in a interview: “Western governments are bombing and killing innocent civilians of my country, most of them women and children …"

The US-led overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 was achieved by combining “shock and awe” military tactics with making alliances with various Afghan warlords and militia commanders. These forces differed from the Taliban in terms of being more ethnically broadly-based, more divided, and more linked to the illegal drug trade. In other respects, they were identical.

Joya explained: “These fundamentalist warlords are mentally the same as the Taliban. They were in power before the domination of the Taliban and in Kabul alone they killed more than 65,000 innocent people. They destroyed our national unity … They committed many crimes against our people similar to the Taliban. And with their bloody hands, but under a mask of democracy, they came in power after 9/11, imposed on our people.”

One such warlord is Matiullah Khan made police chief of Oruzgan Province after years of his militia working closely with Australian troops. Matiullah has earned more than $50 million from Australia, the US and other governments, by charging to protect NATO road convoys and winning lucrative construction projects. When Dutch troops were in Oruzgan they refused to work with him because of his human rights abuses.

The war is bringing poverty that is killing more Afghans than the occupation forces, their warlord allies and Taliban opponents combined. The UN World Food Program estimated that 7 million Afghans suffered food insecurity and by the northern autumn this will have increased by 2 million. Reuters say a quarter of children die before the age of five and the average Afghan life expectancy is 44 years. In occupied Afghanistan, a woman dies in childbirth every 29 minutes, ABC reported

Afghanistan - the tale of two Kabuls

Afghanistan’s capital city has experienced a financial and development boom over the past decade, growing in population from 1.5 to 5 million people while gleaming new malls and apartment complexes have sprung up. 70 percent of new high-rise buildings in the capital are illegal and built without regard to local laws or regulations by powerful individuals known as the "land mafia". But these bastions of the rich are offset by the sharp contrast of crowded shanty towns and squatter settlements where dwell the other Kabul - the downtrodden and oppressed living in squalor, representing an inequality gap that is grossly widening by the day.

The billions pumped into Afghanistan accounting for its double-digit growth have been consolidated into the hands of a few - the societal and political elite. Meanwhile, the rest of the Afghans suffer from unemployment that still hovers around 40%. 36% of the population still lives below the poverty line with over 5 million people trying to survive on $43 a month.

The foreign aid-inspired GDP growth ( an estimated 97% of GDP is derived from spending related to the international military and donor community presence) has been "hijacked by oligarchs" Sayed Masoud, an economics lecturer at Kabul University said "Social unrest, violence and rebellion against the state are the most likely outcomes in a society where a majority of people live in extreme poverty but small elite groups thrive in affluence." He added that social justice was a prerequisite for peace-making in war-torn Afghanistan.

According to a 2010 UN report: "Unprecedented resource flows have created a new cast of rich and powerful individuals who operate outside the traditional power/tribal structures and bid the cost of favors and loyalty to levels not compatible with the under-developed nature of the country." Afghanistan was rated as the second most corrupt country in 2010 by Transparency International, and the trend is getting worse.

It is hardly surprising that many soldiers should begin to ask why they are there and what the end will be for it all.

Homeless in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan about 400 individuals were displaced each day in 2006-2010 - 730,000 in total - mostly due to military operations by US/NATO forces, according to the Oslo-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

The so-called “surge” in US/NATO troops and increased counterinsurgency operations in 2010 resulted in the displacement of about 85,000 people in the volatile south of the country alone. Foreign forces, whose ostensible aim is to protect civilians while fighting the Taliban, may be responsible - directly or indirectly - for the bulk of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country, whose number is rising.“Displacement is already increasing in the north,” Jacob Rothing, an IDMC country analyst said. Furthermore, local militias hired by the government and its US/NATO allies for counterinsurgency purposes, were extorting communities and grabbing land, resulting in further internal displacements.

Despite the unprecedented US/NATO military presence (over 150,000 soldiers), insecurity is widely anticipated to exacerbate in 2011 with more tragic consequences for civilians. Other humanitarian agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have also warned that the security situation has become “untenable” for civilians. “The first two months of 2011 have seen a dramatic deterioration in the security situation for ordinary Afghans,” ICRC said

Winning the War ?

The International Committee of the Red Cross declared on Wednesday that conditions in the country - with respect to their ability to do their work - are now the worst in 30 years, since the organisation first arrived there. "Access for the ICRC has over the last 30 years never been as poor." Many areas of Afghanistan, particularly in the north, were now inaccessible not only for the ICRC but for the hundreds of other aid groups.
"The proliferation of armed groups threatens the ability of humanitarian organisations to access those in need."

The Red Cross said that growing civilian casualties, internal displacement and poor medical care have created a dire humanitarian situation and are likely to persist into next year.
"The sheer fact the ICRC has organised a press conference ... is an expression of us being extremely concerned of yet another year of fighting with dramatic consequences for an ever-growing number of people in by now almost the entire country."

The ICRC said it expected fighting to increase in the coming year just as it had in 2010, the deadliest year of the war since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001. The number of NATO and foreign troops is about 150,000

Afghanis Starving

$52bn of American aid and still Afghans are dying of starvation. $52bn (£33bn) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war. That enormous aid budget, two-thirds for security and one-third for economic, social and political development, has made little impact on 9 million living in absolute poverty, and another 5 million trying to survive on $43 (£27) a month. The remainder of the population often barely scrapes a living, having to choose between buying wood to keep warm and buying food. As winter approaches, half of Afghans face not getting enough to eat, according to the US Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

A racketeering élite are the main beneficiaries of international support. Afghanistan was identified as the third most corrupt country out of 178 in the world in a report released last week by Transparency International.

"The US has a highly capitalist approach and seeks to deliver aid through private companies," says Karolina Olofsson, head of advocacy and communication for the Afghan NGO Integrity Watch Afghanistan. "It does not like to use NGOs which its officials consider too idealistic." Big contracts are given to large US companies that are used to a complicated bidding process, can produce appropriate paperwork, and are well connected in Washington.

Hedayatullah Hafizy, owner of the Noor Taq-e-Zafar Construction Company, says that there is a simple reason why the work is so poor. He says: "Let us say the main US contractor has a contract worth $2.5m. He will take a 20 per cent administrative fee and find a subcontractor, who will subcontract to an Afghan company, which may subcontract again. At the end of the day only $1.4m may be there for building the project."

People see schools built by the Americans as American property. That means they are a Taliban target. People are frightened of sending their children there.The US government policy of providing aid through large American private companies is proving a failure in Afghanistan as it did previously in Iraq.
T
From The Independent

Double Speak Blair

As his autobiography rapidly becomes a remainder, these quotes remind us of Tony Blair's very selective concern for human rights.

Jeremy Paxman: So there is a distinctive British foreign policy. Does it have an ethical dimension still?

Blair: Of course it does, yeah.

Paxman: How then can you publicly endorse a country which bans political parties, bans trade unions and uses institutional torture?

Blair: The country being?

Paxman: Saudi Arabia? You called it a friend of the civilised world.

Blair: Yes, but it is also important to realise that if we want a secure progress in the Middle East, we should work with Saudi Arabia. I don't decide— An ethical foreign policy doesn't mean that you try to decide the government of every country of the world. You can't do that.

Paxman: You called it a friend of the civilised world.

Blair: It is. In my view, what it is doing in respect of the Middle East now—

Paxman: It chops people's arms off. It tortures people.

Blair: They have their culture, their way of life.

And another occasion

Time Magazine: Your wife chaired a press conference about the treatment of women in Afghanistan. What about Saudi Arabia? Do you approve of the way women are treated there?

Blair: I'm not going to get in the business of attacking the Saudi system.

Time: But you do attack the Afghan system.

Blair: yes, but we are in a conflict with the Taliban regime...At. the present time I don't think it's very helpful for us to tell the Saudis how they should live

Afghanistan - the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,”

Recently, the German president Horst Köhler announced his resignation when he seemed to justify his country's military missions abroad with the need to protect economic interests.
"A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that ... military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests -- for example when it comes to trade routes, for example when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes," Köhler said. It sounded as though Köhler was justifying wars for the sake of economic interests.

SOYMB has already posted previously on the oil pipeline connection and Afghan war.We now read in the New York Times that the United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium. The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. An internal Pentagon memo states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.
American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.

International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall.

saying like it is

The Socialist Party of Great Britain have a clear analysis on the cause of wars . Many wars have appeared on superficial examination to be primarily religious, while others have been excused on the ground of maintaining national prestige but the Socialist Party maintain that all wars are to-day carried on in the interests of commerce. It appears that our case is supported by no other than the now ex-president of Germany.

The German president , former head of the International Monetary Fund, Horst Köhler announced his resignation in response to criticism of comments he made about Germany's military mission in Afghanistan.

The president had become the target of intense criticism following remarks he made during a surprise visit to soldiers of the Bundeswehr German army in Afghanistan. In an interview with a German radio reporter who accompanied him on the trip, he seemed to justify his country's military missions abroad with the need to protect economic interests.

"A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that ... military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests -- for example when it comes to trade routes, for example when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes," Köhler said.

That sounded as though Köhler was justifying wars for the sake of economic interests, in the context of the Afghan mission which is highly controversial in Germany and throughout Europe.