Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has condemned another NATO massacre of civilians in Afghanistan, the latest in its blase Wham! Bam! Sorry Ma'am! policy of slaughter from Kosovo to Kabul. This time it was a bus strafed with automatic weapons fire in Zhari, Kandahar Province. The victims included a woman.

The result of NATO's most recent escapade in Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, when a patrol of international troops opened fire on a bus full of civilians is 18 people injured and four dead, including a woman according to local news sources.

The massacre sparked off mass protests and outrage in Kandahar, where the chant of the day was "Death to America". Dozens of outrages citizens called for the ousting of President Hamid Karzai, who condemned the killings claiming that such actions violate NATO's commitment towards safeguarding civilian life.

Admitting the incident, which took place in the Zhari District of Kandahar Province, NATO has not confirmed the nationality of the soldiers involved but Afghan eye-witnesses have been reported by Afghan Voice as stating that they were Americans.

The NATO version is that the bus was approaching its convoy at high speed and ignored flares and other warnings to stop, after which the troops at the back of the patrol opened fire. A NATO statement, which expresses deep regret at the tragic loss of life, also confirms that "once engaged, the vehicle stopped". Only then did they see it was a bus full of civilian passengers.

The bus driver, who escaped uninjured, had a different version of the events. Quoted by AFP News Agency, he said that "They opened fire on us and I fell unconscious. The people who were killed were sitting in the seats just behind me".

If after ten years this is the best NATO can do to protect civilian lives, maybe it is time to adopt the strategy used by the Israeli Defence Force when massacres of civilians are perpetrated, namely to make the snide remark "They shouldn't have been there". In this case, it is not the Afghan civilians, who are in their own country, but rather NATO itself.

All NATO has done is to fragment Afghan society to breaking point, installing a corrupt puppet regime from the fringes of society and to oversee a 40-fold increase in the production of opium, while paying off the Taleban not to attack, before then admitting that talks were being held with some of the Taleban to form an alliance.

If NATO presence is synonymous with installing a regime of drugs traffickers and protecting farmers as they harvest their crop (there is immense photographic evidence of this) then it is clear that NATO itself is nothing more or less than a cabal of arms traffickers which has now become also a club for drugs barons.

Is THIS the Organization which oversees the foreign policy of its member states, in many cases against their Constitutions?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

As the London Conference on Afghanistan gets under way, it is imperative that the international community gets it right after nearly ten years of mistakes which have cost thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and have done nothing whatsoever to improve the daily lives of the majority of the Afghan population.

Having sided with the war lords against the Pashtun-based Taliban, the international community took a short-term option which has turned into a nightmare, turning the historic ethnic mix of the country upside-down. The appearance of foreign troops has only exacerbated the Afghan population who do not see them as freedom fighters but invaders and vast quantities of the rivers of taxpayers' money being spent in Afghanistan are squandered.

While pulling out now is not the solution, making mistakes can be worse than doing nothing. Back in 2001, in this column it was stated that the international coalition should be careful to respect the country's age-old lore and that development was the key, not military invasion and certainly not bombing wedding parties from 30,000 feet. Time and again.

Now in 2010 on the eve of the Conference, we reiterate the same words. The troop surge planned by Washington will bring worse results for the population because it will engender more violence, not less. The troops themselves, from the minute they set foot in Afghanistan, only think about how to survive and the day they will leave, spend most of their time barricaded in camps with comforts the local population does not have and becoming sitting ducks for attacks. They alienate everyone.

Development is the key, not militarization. Poverty and unemployment create extremism, they create an underclass of endemic unemployed young men who see the Taliban's fat pay checks as the only way to escape a life where a bag of flour is often all they have to eat for a month.

In turn, development creates jobs, which create stability and this fosters a climate of peace and moderates extremism and fanaticism. Bringing Afghanistan's women into the equation would do a lot towards resolving issues at the local level, where public and private partnerships, adopting a flexible approach and respecting the regional differences within the country, could make a real difference, building capacities for the local population to manage themselves.

Currently so much investment is wasted in paying short-term contractors to give training programmes which are often not tailored to the local culture and which mean spending fortunes on translators. The programs are too short and are often never implemented. To bridge this gap, Afghanistan's brain drain should be reversed, bringing the country's educated persons back and creating the conditions for them to stay.

At least they speak the language and understand the culture. If money is to be spent, then spend it on Afghans to teach Afghans.

With money comes the need to monitor and this has not been done closely enough. Too much money (over 250 billion dollars) has been poured into Afghanistan and a lot of it has gone into lining the pockets of the corrupt governing classes. Corruption and drugs trafficking and production are named as worse problems than the Taliban by leading members of Afghanistan's society.

So it is not a question of militarization, it is a question of money and monitoring and finally, empowerment of women. It is women who take the decisions at village level. Include women in the equation and you have a balanced solution. And this is not imposed by soldiers in uniforms, it is created through development.

To note: This is precisely what the Soviet Union was trying to do back in the 1970s and 1980s, supporting a socially progressive Government which combated extremism and terrorism and implemented gender equality in developing the social model, when it was sabotaged by those who created the Mujaheddin to serve their political ends. This is what happens when countries interfere outside their sphere of influence. Now is the time to get it right before Afghanistan and the entire region spin out of control beyond repair.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

As NATO gets ready for a massive troop surge in Helmand Province, the local population flees ahead of what both sides promise to be the Mother of All Firefights. The Taleban have sneered at NATO's warning to move away or lay down arms in this important bastion, the center of the drugs trade which finances their operations and promise a bloodbath. But is it really necessary?

Operation Moshtarak ("Together", in Dari) is about to be unleashed by NATO in the southern Helmand town of Marjah, the largest population center under Taliban control in the region and the largest counter-insurgency operation since the Afghanistan campaign began in 2001. 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops, plus special forces are poised to attack a force of around 1,000 Taliban fighters, who have been warned to lay down their arms or leave the area. But they refuse.

The result is a mass exodus of tens of thousands of civilians who fear being caught up in what promises to be a bitter fight.

The impending engagement constitutes a critical moment in the operation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban gains increasing momentum and where increased engagement on the battlefield means more civilian casualties - and the ensuing loss of public opinion. Therefore, is a massive engagement really the answer?

NATO has been in Afghanistan since 2001, a war whose cost is estimated at around 252.5 billion USD to date. Frustrated by the Taliban gaining control on a sustainable basis in increasing areas of the country, NATO commanders asked for more troops. The first surge of 21,000 arrived last March.

Since then, engagements have escalated rather than decreased and casualties have reached record proportions. Meanwhile, the Taliban have managed to secure a foothold in every region where the majority of the population are Pashtuns and have expanded from the south and east of Afghanistan into the center and north of the country, despite the fact that combat operations by NATO increased by 55 per cent, air strikes by 39 percent and the number of bombs dropped per month by 460 per cent since the surge began.

In 2009, the Taliban killed twice the number of NATO troops that were killed in 2008. So are massive military operations the answer?

No, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Taliban have learned how to engage NATO and avoid confrontations in which they are heavily outgunned, preferring to retreat fighting and inflicting as many casualties as possible on what is seen as an invading foreign force of occupation.

Secondly, civilian casualties do nothing to gain the hearts and minds of the local population. On the contrary, civilian casualties provide more fuel for the Taliban, whose opium-dollars provide in many areas the only alternative to abject and endemic poverty. 60 per cent of Afghanistan's population of 27 million live below the poverty line, on less than 1 USD per day. Per capita income is 420 USD, the literacy rate is lower than 25 per cent, life expectancy is 43 years of age, 13 per cent have access to potable water.

Thirdly, as soldiers, the Taliban have learned to undo at night what NATO does during the day, when they are passive farmers.

Fourthly, as NATO casualties rise, so does the war-weariness of the populations in the countries that have to foot the bill. And for what? Studies on morale in the US military forces reported a drop of "very high morale" to just 5.7 per cent in 2009, while public opinion has dropped to 39 per cent in support of the war. The scenario is not much better in Britain.

Fifthly, where and what is the exit strategy? How can the NATO forces extricate themselves when on one hand they are trying to build a strong centralised Afghan Armed Force while at the same time equip and pay off war lords and tribal militias?

The answer to all these questions is simple: there is no exit strategy. Great care has been taken to guarantee that there are enough insurgents alive, armed and fighting in Afghanistan to ensure that the fight continues for many years to come. But sustainably. Afghanistan is after all the country whose Taliban government received an offer of billions of dollars back in 1998 from the USA to build a pipeline to channel Central Asian energy resources through to the "big ally" Pakistan.

One look at the US military bases in the area, virtually encircling the Islamic Republic of Iran, while providing a useful foothold on the border of a growing PR China and a Pakistan which threatens to spiral down into chaos completes the strategic picture.

So what will be the outcome of Operation Moshtarak? More casualties, more violence and more of the same.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

American troops are at risk of being defeated in Afghanistan if additional troops are not sent, says the special report that has become available to the Washington Post. In his confidential report, Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan says that the lack of resources may cause lengthy military operation that will be much more expensive and will likely result in a failure Pravda.Ru reports.

"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," the newspaper quotes. Stanley McChrystal warned that the military campaign will result in failure unless more forces will arrive to Afghanistan next year.

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The USA continues Georgia's support despite Moscow's protest, stated the President of Georgia in his recent interview to "Glenn Beck", Fox News - The Izvestia. "I had a few phone calls with President Obama and I have to say that, you know, we have strong support from the United States. You know, the United States has called us strategic ally in the late months of the previous administration. The new administration has confirmed it.  read more...

Al-Qaeda posed a threat to China for the first time, promising to organize acts of terrorism against Chinese workers in Northern Africa in revenge for the death of Moslems-Uygurs. Al-Qaeda threats followed the disorders in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China during the last week. 184 persons were killed and 1,680 wounded in the riots Pravda.Ru reports.

They were mostly the Chinese who fell victims of the Uigurs, but international terrorist network Al-Qaeda promised to revenge the PRC for the death of the Uigurs during recent interethnic collisions in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

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The Conference held by Afghan women activists ahead of the Afghanistan Conference on Thursday served as a launching point for their recommendations on good governance and a lasting solution which will bring stability to all members of society, paving the way towards reconstruction. The key? In a word, inclusion.

The Afghan women activists' recommendations on security, development and governance are the only input from Afghan women concerning the key decisions being taken about their country...by men.

Three quotes, to highlight the plight of Afghanistan's women and to underline why the London Conference gets it right:

"As the global community knows, nowhere are women's rights more at stake than in Afghanistan. Therefore it is of grave concern that women's voices and perspectives are largely missing from this London conference on Afghanistan's future. The international community should stand behind the women of Afghanistan, and elevate their voices, not barter away their rights in the name of short-term peace and stabilization". (Wazma Frogh, Afghan Gender and Development Specialist).

"Besides the high levels of violence experienced by ordinary women and girls, there has been a very high rate of deadly attacks on women human rights defenders and women in prominent public roles. This makes the determination of the women who have travelled to London to share their concerns and proposals all the more inspiring, and the international community needs to hear what they have to say".  (Anne Marie Goetz, Chief Advisor, Governance Peace and Security for UNIFEM).

"Afghan women have the most to gain from peace and the most to lose from any form of reconciliation compromising women's human rights. There cannot be national security without women's security, there can be no peace when women's lives are fraught with violence, when our children can't go to schools, when we cannot step on the streets for fear of acid attacks". (Mary Akrami, Director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center).

The Afghan women activists who met ahead of the London Conference on Afghanistan in London and Dubai are deeply concerned that the Conference will not address fundamental women's rights. 87 per cent of Afghan women suffer domestic abuse.

They point out that by including Afghanistan's women in the peace process, sustainable peace can be attained more easily while violence and extremism can be countered and moderated. Women are currently excluded from any reconciliation and negotiation processes in Afghanistan with the Taliban, the war lords or any other segment of society. Why?

Don't they have the right to exist?  As women's rights activist Orzala Ashraf points out, "Short-term deals with insurgents will not deliver long-term stability if there aren't guarantees of women's rights".

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

Afghan Women's Leaders' Priorities for Stabilization

Statement and Recommendations

January 27, 2010

We, Afghan women leaders and representatives of women's civil society organizations, concerned about the absence of women's perspectives on proposals being discussed at The London Conference on Afghanistan have created recommendations for stabilization that bear in mind the obligation to consult women and address their priorities and needs. These recommendations were developed during consultations with women leaders in Dubai on January 24th and in London on January 26th.

Afghan women are the first to benefit from stability and pay the heaviest price for the resurgence in violence. They are mobilized as never before to protect the gains they have made with the help of the international community since 2001 and to contribute to the peace process by promoting security and good governance grounded in respect for human rights and equality. We call for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and related resolutions calling for women's full participation in peace building as part of all initiatives to accelerate conflict resolution and recovery in the country.

Security

Fundamental to progress in Afghanistan will be enhanced security on the ground. But achieving true security will require more than military stabilization; it will require access to basic services-police protection, health care, education, and clean water. Additionally, it will necessitate social change in private as well as public life; rampant domestic violence and other abuses of women's rights exacerbated by conflict are major contributors to women's insecurity. Women experience instability differently from men; they therefore have specific perspectives on how to achieve security for all Afghan citizens. To fully engage all Afghans in efforts to create a secure environment, we recommend:

1. Ensuring women's representation in peace processes. Consistent with constitutional guarantees for women's representation, women must comprise at least 25% of any peace process including any proposed upcoming peace jirgas. They must be represented in any national and local security policy making forums, such as the Afghan President's National Security Council.

2. Guaranteeing that reconciliation protects women's rights. The government and international community must secure and monitor women's rights in all reconciliation initiatives so that the status of women is not bargained away in any short-term effort to achieve stability.

3. Implementing gender-responsive security policy. All efforts to enhance security in Afghanistan must better serve women. This can be achieved by: a. training national and international security personnel regarding women's rights and security needs;

b. recruiting women to security services, especially national police, UNPOL, international peacekeepers, civilian and military staff of PRTs; and

c. expanding the number of Family Response Units in local police districts to enable more culturally sensitive and responsive engagement with women.

Governance and Development

In 2001 the number of women in government increased dramatically. Further investment to expand women's engagement and effectiveness in public decision-making, in electoral politics, public administration, and in civil society help to deepen democracy, tackle corruption, increase the legitimacy

of government, and concentrate the focus of public sector management on providing basic services. To strengthen women's leadership skills and to promote gender-responsive public sector performance we recommend:

1. Implementing existing national gender equality policies. International donors should make aid contingent on accelerated implementation of existing policies for the advancement of women in Afghanistan, especially the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan, and the cross-cutting gender component of the Afghan National Development Strategy.

2. Promoting governance for gender equality. Good governance reforms should advance gender equality and the capacity of public services to respond to women's needs by:

a. Creating gender offices or focal points in all national institutions;

b. Extending the current 25% parliamentary quota to provincial, district, and village-level governance structures;

c. Special measures to help women overcome obstacles to effective political competition (e.g.: measures to prevent political violence against women, measures to overcome access barriers to public debate, training, and resources);

d. Applying the 25% constitutional quota to civil service positions;

e. Strengthening of the Ministry of Women's Affairs and ensuring it participates in all decision-making clusters to ensure attention to gender and women's needs.

3. Tracking aid for women's rights. Donor aid to address women's needs should increase [by 20%] and all aid should be monitored to track its effectiveness in promoting women's rights and gender equality. Financing for Afghan women's organizations should increase to strengthen women's implementation of the development agenda and civil society participation in reconstruction.

4. Addressing gender bias in traditional dispute resolution. Traditional dispute resolution systems have historically been gender biased; if used, they must comply with national and international human rights standards. Use of these systems must be monitored to ensure compliance with national and international standards and to provide the opportunity to appeal decisions inconsistent with international norms.

5. Expanding peace education through schools and shuras.

Regional Frameworks/International Architecture

We commend the regional cooperative forums focused on trade, refugees, and drug trafficking for their efforts to involve women. As regional mechanisms are developed to address cross-border security challenges, we advise:

1. Building on existent women's regional peace coalitions. Any regional efforts should engage women and leverage the relationships they have built through existing networks.

2. Involving women in efforts to shape new regional mechanisms. Women should help design any new approaches to and structures for stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan as well as efforts to create regional forums for cooperation. Any such processes and structures should engage women at all levels of decision-making and should implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and related Security Council resolutions calling for women's participation in conflict resolution, prevention of violence, and protection of vulnerable groups.

3. Using regional forums to stop labor and sex trafficking.

Why should the international community be spending two hundred and fifty billion dollars of its taxpayers' hard-earned money to perform state-building in Afghanistan when this country now produces 40 times more heroin than ten years ago and when corruption accounts for 2.5 billion dollars a year for NATO-trained officials to get rich?

A recent UN report, "Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as Reported by Victims" issued by the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) reveals that for the vast majority of the citizens of Afghanistan, the worst problem is corruption and not insecurity, despite the fact that this is becoming worse by the day. The report was based upon a survey involving 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and 1,600 villages.

In the last year, Afghanistan's citizens paid 2.5 billion dollars in bribes to the authorities to secure basic services which were supposed to be a right. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of UNODC, states in the report "The Afghans say that it is impossible to obtain a public service without paying a bribe". It revealed that 50% of Afghans had to pay some sort of bribe in the period in question.

The report reveals that in most cases the bribe was requested explicitly by the service provider and was paid in cash. In a country where the per capita GDP is 425 USD per annum, the average bribe is 160 USD, or 40% of the average national per capita GDP. In the USA, this would be equivalent to 19,000 USD.

So is Afghanistan really worth it? According to UN figures, corruption accounts for nearly as much money as the opium trade, 2.5 billion USD as compared with 2.8 bn. Heroin production has risen by 40 times over the last decade and last year is estimated to have accounted for 90,000 deaths worldwide.

Is Afghanistan really worth the 250,000,000,000 spent so far in stabilising the country and training public officials, when 25 per cent of Afghans state they have had to pay a bribe to police and local authorities and up to 20% more had to bribe a government official or senior member of the judicial system?

Is it really worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars and risking soldiers' lives when the bulk of the terrorists have fled over the border into Pakistan and when the very presence of foreign soldiers is a call to loyal Afghans to defend their territory, as they have been doing for hundreds of years?

Is it really worth the effort when over half the Afghans covered in the survey stated that the aid workers in NGOs present in the country are corrupt and are only involved so as to get rich?

Almost ten years after NATO invaded Afghanistan, the security situation is worse, heroin production has skyrocketed and presents a threat to the international community 40 times higher than before the campaign, and for what? For thousands of family members across the NATO member states to mourn their loved ones, for the taxpayers of NATO countries to foot the 250 thousand million dollar bill (to date) - where did people think the money came from? - and for a handful of officials to get rich at the cost of the people who are in an even worse plight than before.

True, international terrorism is an evil and a scourge that must be fought and beaten. Yet while so much money and so many resources are concentrated in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda controllers are operating elsewhere.

We are dealing with cowards who are afraid to fight and who use the mentally diminished to carry out their work through suicide bombings. If things start getting tough they are not going to stay in Afghanistan.

True, giving up is also not the solution. The solution is something which the Soviet Union started decades ago, a policy which was sabotaged by the West launching fanatical anti-Soviet Islamist groups in central Asia, creating the problem in the first place, a policy which has now backfired The monster is created. The solution is called development.

It is not called propping up a corrupt motley group of gangsters and criminals which was always on the fringes of Afghan society. The bottom line is, if you are going to interfere in a foreign country, get it right from the word go, or be involved in a never-ending nightmare which sucks your resources, your will and your people dry. The alternative is a hands-on policy of development through a carefully structured and monitored aid programme, backed up if necessary by discreet military presence and intelligence.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

Three hundred civilians killed in Kandahar alone in just two years, vast areas of Afghanistan out of control, NATO massacres and cover-ups... Had NATO invaded last year, the chaos would be understandable, but nearly nine years on? What is NATO doing in Afghanistan, apart from overseeing a massive spike in heroin production?

"If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back".

Tangibly, what has NATO's campaign managed to achieve in Afghanistan? There have been 1,685 deaths of NATO soldiers and CIA operatives, 259,308,000,000 USD (Two hundred and fifty-nine billion dollars) spent, thousands of civilian casualties, the wholesale discrediting of the Karzai regime which amounts to a gaggle of warlords, heroin traffickers and smugglers and an increase by 40 times of heroin production. Not bad. Oh, and NATO payments to the Taleban not to attack.

As the toll from Saturday's bomb blasts in Kandahar reaches at least 35 dead and 57 injured, it becomes obvious that the Taleban have the capacity to carry out such attacks at will, striking where, when and as they wish. The latest attack comes in retaliation to a NATO offensive in southern Afghanistan. Taleban spokesperson Yousuf Ahmadi stated to AFP that "This was to sabotage the operation and to show we can strike anywhere, any time we want".

"If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back".

So nine years after the attack was launched in 2001, exactly what is NATO doing? Has a credible government been installed? No, it is full of warlords, criminals and drugs traffickers. Has heroin production been wiped out? No, it has increased by 40 times. Is the civilian population protected? No, in Kandahar alone nearly 300 people have died in violence in the last two years.

NATO massacre and cover-up

Fresh evidence has been unearthed about an attempted NATO cover-up of a massacre of civilians on February 12 near Gardez, Paktia Province, Eastern Afghanistan. The Times newspaper reports interviews with civilians in the area who discredit the official NATO line that shortly after the operation, a "gruesome discovery" was made of women's bodies tied and gagged.

"If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back".

What in fact happened, according to the newspaper report, was that NATO made a botched night-time raid (since then night raids and air strikes have been scaled down) using US and Afghan forces, which resulted in the slaughter of  two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two male civilians.

The report was based on interviews with a dozen civilians in the area, including a police chief and a religious leader who stated that the "gruesome discovery" was not perpetrated by insurgents, but by NATO and Afghan troops. False intelligence or intelligence which has not been properly investigated have led to a series of NATO massacres in Afghanistan.

The male civilians were the police commander Dawood, Head of Intelligence in a district of Paktia and his brother Saranwal Zahir, mowed down as he stood in the doorway protesting their innocence. The women were cowering behind him and were all killed in the same burst of machine-gun fire: Bibi Shirin (22) with 4 children under 5 years of age, Bibi Saleha (37), with 11 children. Both were pregnant. Gulalai (18) was engaged to be married and the family had prepared the wedding meticulously.

"If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back".

NATO denies that its troops were involved and denies any attempt at a cover-up. However, according to The Times report, Rear Admiral Greg Smith stated, when interviewed about the incident, that he did not know if the "hostile" elements had fired any rounds, yet admitting that "they were not the targets of this particular raid" and justified the incident by claiming that "If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back".

And if NATO was not to blame, then why was the family offered 2.000 USD per victim by the American compensation fund?

For NATO, a human casualty is worth 2.000 USD.

If after nearly nine years NATO is incapable of controlling Afghanistan, if after nine years senior NATO commanders admit the war is lost, if after nine years Afghanistan does not have a credible government, if after nine years the civilians in Afghanistan are neither safe from sectarian violence and certainly not safe from NATO massacres, if after nine years the heroin production is 40 times higher than it was, if after nine years NATO continues to perpetrate massacres and lie, then what exactly is NATO doing in Afghanistan, where a human life is worth 2,000 USD in American compensation?

And, while we are asking questions, what exactly is NATO?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

The Pakistan Minister for Interior Affairs Rehman Malik told in an interview with The Sunday Times that Osama bin Laden had left for Afghanistan, therefore the USA should stop missile attacks against the territory of Pakistan Pravda.Ru reports.

Despite Islamabad's protests during the recent ten months, the USA have attacked the north-western tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, where major Taliban bases are located, 40 times already. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the attacks.

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In Afghanistan public sector corruption has got worse over the past two years . According to Transparency International, Afghan corruption is now seen to be more rampant than in any country apart from Somalia Pravda.Ru reports.

Releasing its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on Tuesday, the watchdog said Afghanistan had sunk for the second straight year in its ranking of 180 nations based on perceived levels of corruption in the public sector.

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So far the war in Afghanistan has cost 234,384,981,000 dollars, rising by approximately one thousand USD a second, every second of every day and night. More tragically, it has also had a tremendous human cost, both in terms of troops and civilians. How then is it possible that 75% of the enormous quantities made from the drugs trade go into the pockets of the Afghan authorities, supported by NATO? Is it for this that people are dying?

When the USA attacked Afghanistan in 2001, there was hardly a voice raised around the world in opposition. Some had their doubts about the legality of the issue but the connections of the Taliban regime with Al Qaeda and the wholly barbaric terrorist attack against the Twin Towers on 9/11 forced the Conspiracy Theorists for once to swallow their venom and nod whole-heartedly in support of the USA.

However, with mounting civilian casualties and ever-more dubious results on the ground, serious questions have been raised around the world. Those of us who abhorred the barbaric and illegal criminal attack against Iraq gain no pleasure whatsoever in the rising cost of the war both among civilians (between 13.390 and 34.000 since 2001) and NATO troops (1,477 of whom 864 are from the USA, 239 British, 133 Canadian) in Afghanistan. Families in 24 countries are mourning loved ones.

The organization CIVIC reported in 2009 that the NATO coalition is losing the hearts and minds of the people because civilian casualties are rising (2008 was the worst year in civilian casualties since the fall of the Talebaan regime with 2,118 casualties confirmed by the UNO).

What is totally unacceptable, and one is certain that many people in the USA are unaware of this, is that today, Afghanistan produces twice as much heroin as the entire world did in 1999. This week, Viktor Ivanov, the head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, declared that "the military and political situation in Afghanistan" is "alarming" with the growing numbers of foreign troops "giving rise to growing resistance from the local population".

He added that the continued military presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is now reduced to less than 100 persons, meaning that the war effort is no longer against Al Qaeda, but has morphed into (once again) a foreign military invader against the myriad of peoples and alliances which constitute the social fabric of Afghanistan, where not one single occupation force has been successful throughout history.

What is also totally unacceptable is the fact that it is not even the Talebaan that are receiving the vast majority of the drugs money, but indeed the very authorities who NATO is supporting. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in the report "Addiction, Crime and Insurgency" 3.4 billion USD are generated from opiates every year in Afghanistan. Of this the Talebaan receives around 4 per cent, the farmers 21 per cent. And the remainder, the 75%?

The report is crystal clear: the remaining 75% goes to the mafia-style government of Afghanistan, supported by NATO. Yet the press reports the Talebaan connection with heroin, while this represents a mere 15% of the movement's funding, at most. In short, the entire campaign is a profound insult to the 15.000 Soviet troops killed by the Mujaheddin (armed, aided and abetted by NATO forces), a profound insult to the NATO troops who gave their lives, and their families and a profound insult to the thousands of civilians who have been murdered, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of the campaign.

The US-led coalition allied itself with anti-Taliban warlords and drug barons, provided them with money and impunity and in turn these new authorities then turned to milking the opium trade, reviving what the Talebaan had banned back in 2000.

The empowerment of the drugs lords in Afghanistan was coupled with the creation of supply routes created throughout the world economic system. The UN report claims that the global turnover created by opiates is worth some 65 billion USD, of which between 90 and 95% is laundered through "legal" trade activities and the banking system.

And at the epicentre of the drugs traffic into Europe, which represents 20 billion USD for the Afghan trade, is NATO member Turkey. So while the Talebaan were banning opium production, NATO and its protectorates are benefiting from it?

And where in the middle of all this do the troops fit in, those who are risking their lives for...for what? And why is protection money being paid to drug lords and the Talebaan to protect NATO troops and contractors?

And isn't it strange that the attack against Afghanistan appeared as soon as the Taliban declared war on opium production?

For the statistics on the cost of this war, see http://www.costofwar.com/

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

Medvedev met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as part of the SCO summit currently under way in Yekaterinburg. "We'll do everything possible to help Afghanistan build its effective political system and promote its further development," the Russian president said on Monday ITAR-TASS reports.

Medvedev met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as part of the SCO summit currently under way in Yekaterinburg. "We'll do everything possible to help Afghanistan build its effective political system and promote its further development," the Russian president said on Monday. "There are problems that pose a threat to our countries and our neighbours and we'll deal with them jointly," the Russian leader noted. "In this aspect our permanent consultations are fruitful and useful," he added.

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The latest UN report spells an alarming tale of ineptitude both by the Afghan government and by the international community, which has seen the situation in Afghanistan deteriorate to the point that it faces a serious threat of catastrophic irreversibility. After thousands of civilian deaths, nearly 1,000 military fatalities, eight years and $ 250 bn. the country is teetering on the edge of a chasm.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report, released on Monday minces no words, calling the situation "critical", describing the Presidential election as "flawed", referring to the "adverse effects of increased Taliban...attacks", "insufficient resources", "lack of coordination", "lack of political readiness" which if not addressed and redressed, will lead not only to diminishing prospects of success but worse, "the deteriorating overall situation will become irreversible".

After thousands of civilian deaths, nearly 1,000 military fatalities, eight years and $ 250 bn. spent, this report spells out an F minus for the strategists involved as the entire campaign lurches from disaster to calamity. In 2009, the number of incidents per month increased by 65% over the same period the preceding year to 1,244...monthly, not yearly, an average of 41.4 incidents per day.

Civilian casualties increased by 12% over 2008 while the influence of "insurgents" rises by the day to such an extent that it "posed obstacles to programme delivery".

Therefore the high-level Afghanistan Conference in London on January 28 to discuss the agenda of the international community comes at a critical time in the history not only of Afghanistan but of the entire region. While the report focuses on the flaws and weaknesses which need to be corrected, it also states that there is no place to "abandon what has been achieved and what must now be built upon".

In the report, which was delivered to the UNSC on Monday, Ban-Ki Moon states that "The situation cannot continue as is, if we are to succeed in Afghanistan. Unity of effort and greater attention to key priorities are now a sine qua non."  The Secretary-General goes on to state "There is a need for a change of mindset in the international community as well as in the Government of Afghanistan. Without that change, the prospects of success will diminish further".

It is too late to question the policy adopted by the West against the USSR in the 1970s, when extremist anti-Soviet regimes were launched in Central Asia, which in turn morphed first into the Mujaheddin and later into the Taliban. It is too late to complain that the socially progressive regime in Kabul had turned that city into the Paris of the East and Afghanistan into one of the most socially advanced countries in the region and was promptly destroyed by a bunch of Medieval murderers pouring out of Pakistan's madrassahs.

Today, the international community cannot afford to have a failed State in Afghanistan because the consequences would be too disastrous to contemplate, namely another safe haven for global terrorism, drugs and arms traffickers and a focal point for the most evil and demonic elements of society across the globe.

The Soviet Union tried to address such impending calamities through a policy of social development not only at home but abroad, providing education, providing public services and rewarding excellence. If the West had not sabotaged the model and sent numerous countries back to the Stone Age, most of the problems the world faces today would not exist. The bottom line continues to be: development.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

On the eve of the Afghanistan Conference in London, a male dominated affair hosted and chaired by six men, where decisions will be taken by men and for men, a handful of Afghan women activists, backed by UNIFEM and the Institute for Inclusive Security, are meeting in London to release their recommendations - the only input from consultation with Afghan women on key issues affecting their country and society.

On the eve of the Afghanistan Conference in London, a male dominated affair hosted and chaired by six men, where decisions will be taken by men and for men, a handful of Afghan women activists*, backed by UNIFEM and the Institute for Inclusive Security, are meeting in London to release their recommendations - the only input from consultation with Afghan women on key issues affecting their country and society.

The statement to be released in London one day before the Afghanistan Conference on Thursday will represent the view expressed at a broader meeting on Afghan women civil society activists in Dubai on January 24.

The statement will be released by 4 Afghan women's activists at Central Hall, Westminster (John Tudor Room), Storey's Gate, London SW1H 9NH at 11.00 GMT on Wednesday January 27. The message will be that to achieve stability in Afghanistan, it is necessary to guarantee equal rights and security for women. And how can there be peace, if half the members of society - its women - are excluded from any decision-making processes? The women will deliver their recommendations on security and governance priorities for Afghanistan, hoping to galvanise sectors of public opinion before the Conference begins on Thursday.

While the hosts of the Conference (British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon) and the Co-Chairs David Milliband (UK Foreign Minister), Rangin Spanta (Afghan Foreign Minister) and Kai Eide (UN Special Representative to Afghanistan) - all of them men - debate around themes such as the need "to match the increase in military forces with an increased political momentum", to "focus the international community on a clear set of priorities across the 43-nation ISAF coalition" and "marshal the maximum international effort to help the Afghan Government deliver" the women will be pointing out that for too long they have been denied a place as key partners in conflict resolution, in combating extremism and in promoting social and economic revitalization.

Yet Afghanistan's women are ready, they are organized and they are poised to assume their role as equal partners, defining their place in contributing their equal part towards the country's future.

They need the solidarity of the international community, especially civil society activists and women's rights groups.

Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies during childbirth

87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate

30 percent of girls have access to education in Afghanistan

1 in every 3 Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence

44 years is the average life expectancy rate for women in Afghanistan

70 to 80 percent of women face forced marriages in Afghanistan

Source: IRIN

Contact: oisika.chakrabarti@unifem.org

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

US General Stanley McChrystal is now the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan instead of General David McKiernan. None of high-ranking officials of the Pentagon could explain the reason why the previous commander was dismissed and why Mr. McChrystal could handle the Taliban better than Mr. McKiernan could Pravda.Ru reports.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates only said that the United States was in need of a new military command and a new thinking because of a new strategy for the war-torn country.

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The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) follows the instructions from President Dmitry Medvedev, who ordered to increase the military constituent and develop the coalition force development. A strong military group, which may appear in Central Asia in the nearest future, will make the CSTO become an analogue of NATO. The following post-Soviet countries are included in the treaty: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Pravda.Ru reports.

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Backdrop, Soviet Union 1980s and 1990s

After a ferocious fight for survival, the Soviet Union moved to the forefront of economic, scientific and industrial development.  Throughout a Civil War and Cold War, the west threw trillions of dollars at trying to sabotage the USSR.  The Civil War and the Great Patriotic War had left the country devastated, with 27 million citizens losing their lives.

Despite this, numerous are the examples of Soviet built schools, hospitals, roads, etc. in Africa, Asia and South America.  The Soviet Union helped many people and worked to free them from the yoke of colonialism.  This is one great, proud legacy of the USSR.  Soviet economic and technical assistance became dynamic and prolific after the war. Over 350 industrial and other projects were developed in Asian, African and Latin American countries with the aid of the Soviet Union. Most of them are large enterprises of decisive importance for the economic advancement of the respective countries. They include a score of iron and steel works, 12 large mining, 10 chemical, 22 engineering enterprises, seven oil refineries and many electric power stations.

These enterprises are able to produce annually nearly 8.5 million tons of pig iron, steel and rolled stock, about 2.5 million tons of coal, refine 7.5 million tons of oil, generate over 20,000 million kwh of electricity, manufacture tens of thousands of tons of equipment and machinery, hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical fertilisers and cement. Food factories and plants producing building materials are also going up with Soviet assistance.

Defenders of colonialism and imperialism got hysterical and thought that something "had to be done" about the increasing good will and positive feelings the Soviet Union was engendering throughout the Third World, all without asking anything in return.  They were also bitter about the defeat of colonialism in Vietnam.

Zbigniew Brzezinski has finally revealed what was hidden from the US public and Congress:  that on July 3, 1979, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia with the aim being to "de-stabilize" the Soviet Union... The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and in the following years $4 billion was dispensed into setting up Islamic training centers in Pakistan (Taliban means "student").  These people were then sent to the CIA's training camp in Virginia, where prospective members of al-Qaeda were taught the "skills" needed for terrorism.

Many experts and officials in Afghanistan finally admit that the Soviet Union acted correctly to counter the terrorist element in Afghanistan to protect its progressive government.  The Soviet Union tried to bring progress to a profoundly conservative and traditional Afghanistan.  Most of Afghanistan's roads, ministries, major schools and hospitals are Soviet built. Even now, many of the upper echelons of the civil service, army and police are Soviet trained.  The rows of apartment blocks around Kabul were all built by the Soviet Union.  Though many are now shabby and pock-marked with bullet holes from the fighting, they are still highly valued as absolutely no public housing has been built since.


After Afghanistan

After successfully toppling the progressive government in Afghanistan, Bin Laden and the mujahadeen moved on to the Balkans where the breakup of Yugoslavia was orchestrated.  Washington incited secessionist movements, knowing quite well it would lead to bloody conflicts.  But it was cleaner to them than just marching in like Hitler did.  In fact, PR firms were paid to disseminate lies as they chose a scapegoat, an ally of Russia, and made their conquest look like a humanitarian gesture.  They also moved to the Caucasus, where conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya included these same terrorist mujahadeen fighters.

NATO Expansion

NATO absorbed virtually all of the former Warsaw Pact members (Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999;  Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuanian, Estonia, Slovakia and Romania in 2004; Georgia and Ukraine are awaiting acceptance in December of 2008).  NATO, acting as a drug pusher and weapons pusher, will now be making huge profits since every one of those countries have to replace their weapons arsenal with NATO equipment, and also provide NATO a way to get its hands on Soviet equipment.  NATO wages perpetual war for perpetual weapons dealing.

The color revolutions and attempted color revolutions remove all doubt about intentions for full global dominance.  F. William Engdahl's book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order," discusses America's grand strategy, first revealed in the 1998 US Space Command document - Vision for 2020. Later released in 2000 as DOD Joint Vision 2020, it called for "full spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.

For the United States, the loss of an undivided Georgia was a major strategic setback, since not only is the BTC pipeline now threatened, but Europe will almost certainly no longer be so eager to support Washington's dangerous provocation towards, and encroachment upon, Russia.  Thanks to the Internet, full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment.

Since They Cannot Be Trusted

One wonders why any current agreements on weapons reduction would be any different than previous agreements:  ignored, violated, set aside.  Washington makes no agreements it intends to keep, nor do they agree to anything not totally in their favor.  Look at how they violated UN Resolution 1244, allowing Albanian mafia capos to rip 15% of Serbian territory away.  Then they jump up and down about territorial integrity in the Caucasus, knowing full well they themselves have shown no respect for territorial integrity.

Now in Afghanistan, Russia gives the west assistance, allowing movement of men and materials over Russian territory.  Russia continues to play nice guy, open, honest, helpful, friendly and conciliatory, yet the USA/west stands there belligerent, arrogant, stubborn and determined to get everything they want, their way all the time without one single iota of concession.

The only reason Washington seemingly conceded on missile defense in Europe was because it was costly and obviously would not work, possibly also because they found another more devious way to build it.

One of the ugliest facets of US/western propaganda is the claim that they "won" the Cold War and caused the Soviet Union to "collapse"  Neither are true.  The Soviet Union did not collapse, it merely changed form as provided for in the Soviet Constitution.

History shall record that it was Russia that won the so called cold war not through the force of arms, even though the USSR was armed to the teeth, but rather the moral victory achieved through the renunciation of wasteful spending on weapons of mass destruction in consideration of the poverty and hunger seen worldwide which the USSR did everything to alleviate.  Not all victories in life or history have to be military victories.  Now that is the truth.

Lisa KAPROVA
PRAVDA.Ru

We really have to take our hats off to NATO. This clique of arms lobbyists and defender of jobs for the boys invaded Afghanistan in 2001 on the pretext that Osama bin Laden was using the country to attack western interests. Almost a decade after the Taleban declared war on drugs production, NATO's Afghanistan is not only the world's largest producer of opium but now, of hashish also.

Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taleban, had stated in an interview with Pakistan's Dawn newspaper in 1998 that the USA would invade Afghanistan because he had refused to let them build a gas pipeline across his country in exchange for 5 billion USD. He was right. The invasion came three years later after those two jets flew into the Twin Towers, that one jet crash-landed in the Pentagon, managing to avoid two lamp posts with its wings and to fail to produce a single piece of evidence either on camera or otherwise and then there was the other one that simply disintegrated without trace.

Like 200 tonnes of metal vaporised.

No, really.

And nearly ten years later, NATO's considerable coalition has not managed to gain control of the country, the NATO-installed President, Karzai, is railing against his NATO masters because he has been accused of corruption and considers it is their fault (no really) and now we learn from the United Nations Organization that NATO's Afghanistan, already the world's leading supplier of opium, has now become the record-breaking producer of hashish as well.

Wow, NATO 2 world population 0. Is this why they insisted on expanding eastwards (after saying they wouldn't) to create new markets?

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its report Afghanistan Cannabis Survey, released on Wednesday, estimated that between 10 and 24 thousand hectares of cannabis per year are cultivated in Afghanistan. Not only is the figure shocking, worse still is the affirmation that this production takes place in half of the country's 34 provinces.

UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa declared in the report that "the astonishing yield of the Afghan cannabis crop makes Afghanistan the world's biggest producer of hashish, estimated at between 1,500 and 3,500 tons a year," being 145 kg per hectare, compared with Morocco's 40 kg. Cannabis fetches 3,900 USD in income per hectare, compared with opium's 3,600 USD.

The UN report states that there are both cannabis and opium trading centres throughout the country.

So what exactly is NATO doing in Afghanistan, where the Taleban was supposed to surrender ten years ago and still has not, where heroin production has risen no less than 40 times in the same period and now Afghanistan's claim to fame is world record holder of opium and cannabis production?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

Jorge Cadima *
"The confession by the highest military official of the NATO war in Afghanistan [Gen. Stanley McChrystal] that it is a monstrous crime against the civilian population was not considered a news theme". It is with "news criteria" like this from the mainstream press in this world that imperialism shapes the social conscience of the people.

The war in Afghanistan continues to make many victims. The most numerous are those about which less is said: the Afghan population.

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