Thousands block NATO supply line to Afghanistan

Activists of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) shout slogans as they arrive to
 attend a protest rally in Peshawar on November 23, 2013
(AFP Photo / A Majeed)

10,000 protest US drone attacks

• NATO supply line blocked in Pakistan.
• Let's face facts.  The US is not wanted by just about anyone in Pakistan.  The Muslims in the streets hate westerners, burn churches and attack Christians.  Running NATO line trough Pakistan is crazy at best.  But there is no choice.

Thousands of demonstrators protesting US drone strikes in Pakistan blocked a main road Saturday in the Peshawar province used to transport NATO supplies to and from Afghanistan.

The protests was led by the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which is led by Imran Khan, a former international cricketer now turned politician.

They were supported by their allies in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government and they were also joined by the Jamaat -i-Islami (JI) and the Awami Jamhoori Ittehad (AJIP) political parties.

“We will put pressure on America, and our protest will continue if drone attacks are not stopped,” Khan told reporters reports RT News.

“We are here to give a clear message that now Pakistanis cannot remain silent over drone attacks,” said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, a senior member of the PTI, addressing the protesters.

Imran Khan has been a fierce critic of US drone attacks, arguing that they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. Khan said that the Pakistani government is doing nothing to stop drone attacks except for issuing statements of condemnation and that the protest would continue indefinitely. 

Khan stressed that NATO supplies would not be allowed to pass through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly called North-West Frontier Province, and added that the province’s PTI-led government had the mandate to block NATO trucks from passing through its territory.

Earlier Imran Khan had warned that NATO supply routes will be blocked if continuing US drone strikes in Pakistan threaten the country’s peace talks with the Taliban. 

Party workers from the PTI and the JI travelled to Peshawar from across Pakistan and an estimated 10,000 people participated in Saturday’s protests. The protesters shouted anti US slogans such as “Stop drone attacks” and “Down with America”. 

“I am participating in today’s sit-in to convey a message to America that we hate them since they are killing our people in drone attacks. America must stop drone attacks for peace in our country,” Hussain Shah, a 21 year old university student, told Dawn, Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper.

American drones are performing regular extrajudicial killings of Islamist leaders, accompanied by the collateral damage of many civilian casualties.
.
Strict security measures were in place Saturday, with 500 police personnel on duty. Trucks were directed to use an alternative route, although Tahir Khan, a government official, said there was normally little NATO traffic Saturday as most of the trucks arrive by Friday night to clear the border crossing.

Also see Daily Times of Pakistan

Activists of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) arrive to attend a protest rally.
(AFP Photo / A Majeed)

 

NATO supply trucks.

Long and Exposed Supply Lines.
NATO supply lines from both the north and south.  Very, very long supply lines running through hostile lands to an even more remote and hostile Afghanistan.  Long, exposed military supply lines are never a good idea, plus the expense to supply a large modern army is insanely high. 

And the supply trucks go Boom

Smoke rises from NATO supply trucks following a strike by militants on a U.S. base in the Torkham area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the strike.

(Rahmat Gul, Associated Press / September 2, 2013)

Read More: Los Angeles Times.

US & NATO encourage Afghan poppy production

Making the world safe for drugs

A funny thing happened on the way to Afghanistan, the US

and NATO protected poppy producers from the Taliban.

The "War" on Drugs  -  Silly, and you thought the war in Afghanistan was about terrorism.

The Taliban was eradicating poppy production as "un-Islamic".  Then in comes NATO and poppy farmers are allowed to grow their crops again.

Today, with 87,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, cultivation of poppies has hit record levels as NATO forces prepare to exit the country. The UN warned warlords may be the biggest benefactor of the situation.

The report, the Afghanistan Opium Survey for 2013, provides little cause for optimism among countries that have witnessed a surge in incidences of heroin abuse among their populace since US-led forces started a military offensive against the Taliban on Afghan soil in 2001.

Afghanistan, long the world’s main heroin supplier, has seen its total area of poppy seed plantations explode to 516,000 acres - a 36 percent increase from 2012, according to the report, released on Wednesday reports RT News.

Last year, the war-torn Central Asian country accounted for 75 percent of the world’s opium supplies; Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan, has said in the past that supplies may reach 90 percent of the global total this year.

US Soldiers guarding opium in Afghanistan?

There is a single anti-Israel photo at the end of this video that I do not like. 

But 99% of the video is so cleaver that I felt I needed to post it.  Let those

with open minds view it and decide for themselves.

Afghan Drugs

A Russian point of view - poppy production had been nearly abolished.

 

The new data surpasses the previous record set in 2007, when 477,000 acres were cultivated, according to the UN drug watchdog. Total opium output is estimated at 5,500 tons, up 49 percent from 3,700 tons in 2012.

With profits from opium cultivation nearing $1 billion, or 4 percent of gross domestic product, insurgency groups like the Taliban will only benefit from the cash crop.

A massive inflow of cash connected to the sale of opium has helped the Taliban insurgency, which imposes a tax on poppy farmers in areas it controls, in addition to the outright participation in the selling and transferring of the crop.
.
Afghan government officials and tribal warlords have also helped themselves to a piece of the opium trade action.
.
"The short-term prognosis is not positive," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, as quoted by Reuters. "The illicit economy is establishing itself, and seems to be taking over in importance from the licit economy."
.
One reason for the surge in opium cultivation is the lack of political will, which is noticeably lacking with April presidential elections on the horizon, Lemahieu said. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is ineligible to run again, while some of the potential candidates receive their financial support from poppy producers.
.
The US-led coalition has rejected any crop eradication operations by its soldiers for fear of bankrupting farmers and forcing them to join the insurgency, a policy criticized by Russia, among others.
  

2001 Blast from the Past Article
But only a "crazy" fringe person would suggest that the US and NATO went into Afghanistan in order to keep the supply of drugs flowing.  Only a conspiracy nut would suggest that governments want to keep their populations in a perpetual drugged stupor so they will not question their Masters.  It would be wrong to say these things, so I will not do it.

Fast forward to 2013
Afghanistan, long the world’s main heroin supplier, has seen its total area of poppy
seed plantations explode to 516,000 acres - a 36% increase from 2012.

87,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan

This October 2013 map displays approximate numbers of forces provided to ISAF by Allied and other contributing nations, and countries responsible for ISAF Regional Commands.
See more at:  ISAF.nato.int/troop numbers.

U.S. Marines Training 1,500 Syrian Al Qaeda-Linked Rebels In Saudi Arabia

Idiot Alert

Why again have we spent trillions of tax dollars and had our

soldiers come back as triple amputees????

Story #1

US Marines to train troops chosen

by Islamist Saudi Arabia

Free Syrian Army (FSA) units are receiving intensive training from US Marine Corps personnel in Saudi Arabia, a senior FSA source has told IHS Jane’s .

The source said the United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed to train around 1,500 insurgents. The programme began a few months ago and most of the personnel will be trained by the end of 2013 reports IHS Janes.

The courses last for 100 days and include fighting in built up areas (FIBUA). The most recent intake that arrived from Jordan on 13 October consists of around 40% from insurgent groups operating inside Syria, with the rest recruited from refugees in neighbouring countries.

___________________________________

Story #2

Afghan Special Forces Commander packs Humvee

full of guns and high-tech equipment, defects

to Taliban

An Afghan army special forces commander has defected to an insurgent group allied with the Taliban in a Humvee truck packed with his team’s guns and high-tech equipment, officials in the eastern Kunar province said on Sunday.

Monsif Khan, who raided the supplies of his 20-man team in Kunar’s capital Asadabad over the Eid al-Adha religious holiday, is the first special forces commander to switch sides, joining the Hezb-e-Islami organization reports Reuters News.

“He sent some of his comrades on leave and paid others to go out sightseeing, and then escaped with up to 30 guns, night-vision goggles, binoculars and a Humvee,” said Shuja ul-Mulkh Jalala, the governor of Kunar.

Zubair Sediqi, a spokesman for Hezb-e-Islami, confirmed that Khan had joined the group, saying he had brought 15 guns and high-tech equipment.

The NATO-led coalition is grappling with a rise in “insider attacks” by Afghan soldiers who turn on their allies, undermining trust and efficiency.

It has reported four lethal incidents over the past month taking the total number this year to 10, according to a Reuters tally.

____________________________________

 

Story #3

Two years after Obama's illegal war

Libya on brink of another civil war as fighting rages after assassination

of police commander by Islamist Militia.

Libya marks the second anniversary of the death of Muammar Gaddafiwith the country on the brink of a new civil war and fighting raging in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of its Arab spring revolution.

Violence between radical militias and regular forces broke out on Friday night and continued yesterday, while the capital Tripoli is braced for fallout from the kidnapping earlier this month of prime minister Ali Zaidan. Federalists in Cyrenaica, home to most of Libya’s oil, open their own independent parliament in Benghazi this week, in a step that may herald the breakup of the country reports the UK Guardian.

For months, radical militias and regular forces in Benghazi have fought a tit-for-tat war. Last week two soldiers had their throats slit as they slept in an army base. But Friday’s killing of Libya’s military police commander, Ahmed al-Barghathi, shot as he left a mosque, has became the trigger for wider violence. Hours after an assassination branded a “heinous act” by US ambassador Deborah Jones, armed units stormed the Benghazi home of a prominent militia commander, Wissam Ben Hamid, with guns and rockets.

Fighting continued into the night, with army units heading for the home of a second militia commander, Ahmed Abu Khattala, indicted by the US for the killing of US ambassador Chris Stevens last year. There, they were turned back by powerful militia units.

“There’s fighting everywhere, checkpoints everywhere, I’ve moved my wife and children to somewhere safe,” said one Benghazi businessman, Mohammed, who declined to give his second name.

Ben Hamid went on live television to insist he had no role in the killing of al-Barghathi, and vowed reprisals against those who destroyed his home.

Libya’s militias are in the spotlight as never before, in a country racked by violence and economic stagnation. Zaidan has blamed the Revolutionaries Control Room, headquarters for the biggest militia – Libya Shield – for his kidnapping 10 days ago, promising harsh measures once the Eid religious holiday week ends.

Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi:

"We came, we saw, he died."

Yeah, that worked out well.  What a fucking Bitch. 

Happy Birthday Afghanistan - 12 Years Old and No End in Sight

Afghanistan - The gift that keeps giving.

The war that never ends because "peace" does not make

profits for the military-industrial complex.

Why no declaration of war?  -  A proper and Constitutional Declaration of War is always made against a government of another nation.  A declaration is made and later a peace treaty is signed and hostilities end.  But these vague "authorizations of force" appear to have no end.  Thus the wars and war profiteering can go on and on.

Dead or wounded soldiers?  No problem.  The politicians always provide an endless stream of fresh young men to feed the war machine.  But I am just a "crazy" anti-war Conservative.

The war in Afghanistan officially began 12 years ago. To put it in perspective, the last time we didn't have boots on the ground in Afghanistan, Obama was still an Illinois state senator, the first iPhone was six years away from release and "Friends" was still on the air.

In the past 12 years, at least 2,146 members of the U.S. military have died while serving in Afghanistan. This figure includes four American soldiers who were killed by an IED explosion in the south of the country on Sunday.

A recent study found that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will end up costing taxpayers between $4 trillion to $6 trillion. Unsurprisingly, most Americans think their tax dollars have been wasted.

As the conflict drags on, tensions between Afghans and international soldiers of the NATO coalition have only gotten worse. According to the Economist, one in seven of all NATO service member deaths this year "has been at the hands of the very Afghan troops the coalition is trying to help and train."

In August, an Afghan soldier opened fire on his Australian colleagues at a military base, killing three. In September, three NATO troops were killed by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform.

So the Afghan War goes on and on with no real plan from the politicians about an exit.  So what else is new?

The common soldier always pays the price.
The top generals and liar hack politicians remain safe behind the lines far from
danger, but they are the first to parade themselves on TV to claim "credit" or
place blame for any given war.

Afghan Guides, 2nd Anglo-Afghan War - 1879.
The British fought three Afghan wars.  It changed nothing, Afghanistan stayed the same.  But it did make the politicians and companies that make weapons feel better.
.
But don't worry, either next year or in ten years the politicians will find some "vital" issue and go into another war somewhere.  The dead and wounded vets from the old war will be forgotten as our leaders seek glory on some new battlefield.  

Officers of the 10th Hussars at Jellalabad - 1879
South West of Jellalabad in North Eastern Afghanistan.
See The Battle of Futtehabad.

45th Rattray's Sikhs guard Afghan prisoners during an advance
through the Khyber Pass.



Maiwand, Afghanistan 1880
British Officers with Captured Cannon, Second Anglo-Afghan War, 1880. 
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
See The Battle of Maiwand.



Afghanistan 1869
Not much has changed.  Sher Ali (center) surrounded by court officials, tribal leaders, and sons.

Afghan Warlord - 'America has failed. The Taliban will return.'



A former warlord, Ismail Khan is now calling for
the West to rearm him and his fellow
former mujahedeen leaders.

The international coalition "has taken away our artillery and tanks and turned them into scrap metal."
- - - Ismail Khan



(From Der Spiegel)  Ismail Khan grabs a pointer, taps it onto an area west of Herat and says: "This is where I came across the border from Iran with 17,000 men in 1996, during the Taliban era.

Then we continued through Faryab and Mazar to Faizabad and back to Herat." He drags the pointer to the north and then to the east, sweeping it across all the wind turbines and power plants, as if they were nothing but hindrances. "My militias fought bravely everywhere," says Khan.

But when he mentions the Taliban, he is also talking about the future. He foresees a return of the fundamentalist Taliban, the collapse of the government in Kabul and the eruption of a new war between ethnic groups.

He sees a future in which power is divided between the clans as it was in the past, and in which the mujahedeen, the tribal militias seasoned by battles against the Soviets and later the Taliban, remain the sole governing force.

But when he mentions the Taliban, he is also talking about the future. He foresees a return of the fundamentalist Taliban, the collapse of the government in Kabul and the eruption of a new war between ethnic groups.

He sees a future in which power is divided between the clans as it was in the past, and in which the mujahedeen, the tribal militias seasoned by battles against the Soviets and later the Taliban, remain the sole governing force.

The 'Lion of Herat'

In truth, the 65-year-old minister is still what he was 30 years ago: a mujahed, or warlord, although he doesn't like the latter term. "The Americans and English tried to discredit us with that word, until they realized that they couldn't do without us in their fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban," Khan, now an older, more peaceful man, says with a smile.

But he is also a man who had entire armies march across the Hindu Kush Mountains in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. He was one of the commanders in the ensuing civil war, in which Afghanistan's ethnic groups -- the Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbeks and Pashtuns -- massacred one another and laid waste to the capital Kabul.

Khan, governor of the most important province in western Afghanistan until 2004, was known as the "Lion of Herat." He still prefers to be addressed by his former title of Emir. But then he became too powerful for the Americans and President Hamid Karzai, so they removed Khan from office and brought him to Kabul to keep a closer eye on him.

He was finally given the somewhat laughable position of water and energy minister, despite his feeling that he should have been offered the job of defense or interior minister instead. "I'm not in this position voluntarily," says Khan.

"Ah! the Generals! They are numerous,
but not good for much!"
Aristophanes
(446 BC – c. 386 BC)
Generals and politicians have always loved to play war games with the lives of their soldiers.  If they die or are torn apart there are always more to replace the fallen. 
.
The Afghanistan War strategy was doomed from day one.  Afghanistan is larger in size than Nazi Germany which took millions of troops to subdue.  It is also over four times the size of Vietnam which 1.8 million allied troops could not control.  The small Allied force was never able to control Afghanistan.  The smart strategy would have been to arm and fund local Afghan warlords to do the heavy lifting backed by Allied air power and a small number of trainers and support.   

The year 2014 is approaching, and with it the withdrawal of NATO troops. When Khan appears in public today, it is with the demeanor of the mujahed. "We cannot allow Afghanistan to be destroyed once again," he said publicly late last year. He has also said that government forces are powerless in large parts of the country, that Afghans should arm themselves once again, new recruits should enlist and the command structures of the former militias ought to be reestablished.

The international coalition "has taken away our artillery and tanks and turned them into scrap metal."

"Instead, they have brought Dutch, German, American and French girls to our country, along with white soldiers from Europe and black soldiers from Africa, who were supposed to bring security to Afghanistan. They have failed," Khan said in a speech at a rally in Herat.

"So you believe that the Taliban will return as soon as NATO is gone?"

"The arrogant Americans drove the most important Taliban out of Kabul, bombed the rest from the air and then ended the war," says the minister. "So far, 2013 has been the bloodiest year yet in Afghanistan. The Taliban are in all the villages once again. They want all the power. Our army won't be able to stop them."

"And you could stop them?"

"We have 20 years of combat experience, and we defeated a superpower. We can deal with the Taliban too," says Khan, leaning back in his chair. "But not this army," he adds, waving his hand in the direction of the defense ministry. The Afghan army, trained by the West, has lost 63,000 men, or one in three soldiers, to desertion in the last three years.


To read the full article go to Der Spiegel - International.

Christians Should Be Executed, Afghan Lawmakers Say

Afghanistan then Iraq and now Syria

No matter how many Americans die or return

as triple amputees they will always hate us.

An anti-Christian hate campaign involving several leading Afghan lawmakers and media outlets is proving what many of us already knew - there is no freedom of religion or freedom of thought under Islam.

The anger is directed at Afghan Christians in India – where thousands of Afghan refugees remain and a small church congregation meets in New Delhi – and that the lawmakers concerned are calling for them to face the death penalty reports CNS News.

Converts from Islam to Christianity should be killed according to Islamic law (shari’a), in a bid to stop the growth of Christianity among Afghans inside and outside the country, according to one leading member of parliament cited by the Afghan Voice Agency news service.

Mohabat News, an independent Iranian Christian news agency, reported on Sunday that Nazir Ahmad Hanafi said several weeks ago that “Afghani citizens continue to convert to Christianity in India. Numerous Afghanis have become Christians in India. This is an offense to Islamic laws and according to the Qur’an they need to be executed.”

Hanafi, an independent who represents the province of Herat, is a prominent lawmaker who heads the parliament’s Legislative Commission and reportedly received the third highest number of votes in the 2010 parliamentary election.

Pastor Obaid S Christ (far right) in the Afghan Church in New Delhi.

Mohabat said another lawmaker, Abdul Latif Pedram, blamed the reported increase in conversions to Christianity on the presence of U.S. forces. “The presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan results in the conversion of Afghans to Christianity,” it quoted Pedram – an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004 and 2009 – as saying. “The United States’ long-term plan is to attack Afghani culture.

Converting Afghan citizens serves that purpose.” Mohabat and Barnabas Fund both noted that the speaker of the national parliament, Abdul Rauf Rahimi, also waded in to the debate over converts, instructing the parliamentary national security committee to follow up the issue. Barnabas Fund said that after the parliamentary debates some media outlets got involved.

“For ten consecutive nights at the end of August, two TV channels broadcast photos of the leader of the Afghan church in Delhi, calling for him to be executed, and also showed images of other Afghan converts in India plus footage of baptisms,” it said.

The Union of Catholic Asia News reported last month on the New Delhi congregation of Afghan Christians, quoting a pastor as saying its members are frequently threatened by Afghan Muslims, and saying the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) did not pay proper attention to the plight of Afghan Christians.

 

.
And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all 


Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?
.
 "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" 

 

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."

~Agatha Christie

Was Seal Team 6 Assassinated by Obama?

Assassination?  Maybe Not.

But Obama did conduct a massive cover up and refuses

to speak with the families.

The Hill reports Congress has launched an investigation of the helicopter crash that killed 30 Americans in Afghanistan, including members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 unit.

The victims’ families say the Pentagon hasn’t provided answers to their many questions about the deadly attack, which took place on Aug. 6, 2011, three months after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Team 6 forces.

Charlie Strange, whose son Michael was among those killed, said he asked President Obama two years ago at Dover Air Force Base to fully investigate.
Obama praised Michael’s service to Strange, who responded, “I don’t need to know about my son. I need to know what happened to my son.”

The president promised he would investigate, Strange said, but he never heard back from the White House.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on National Security, told The Hill, “We’re going to dive into this.”

Chaffetz said he met with the victims’ families about a month ago in what he described as an “emotional” gathering. He is poised to send questions to the Pentagon and may hold hearings on the matter.

The Pentagon claims the Chinook was shot down by Afghan militants, and all 38 on board perished. Among the dead were 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALS, seven Afghan soldiers and one Afghan translator.

• Insurgents were boasting on the Internet they had taken out Team 6 shortly after the helicopter crashed.

 

• Shortly before the CH-47 Chinook helicopter took off on a rescue mission (operation Extortion 17), seven Afghan commandos who were on the passenger list were replaced by other Afghan military "officials".  The victims’ families noted that their sons didn’t trust Afghan soldiers. One was quoted as saying, “They are loyal to the highest bidder.”

 

• The bodies of the SEALS were later recovered, but the helicopter’s black box "vanished".   Pentagon officials have said that the box was "lost" in a magical "flood" that occurred exactly at this moment.

 

•  The Pentagon ordered that all the bodies were to be cremated.  After all you can't do an autopsy on ashes.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to answer detailed questions.

Read more: The Hill.

Dr. Michael Savage  -  The Seals were Assassinated 

Michael Savage reviews the Navy Seal families press conference of the downing

of Extotion 17.

.

The families present detailed evidence directly blaming the administration and Barack Obama for the deaths of more Seals in a single moment than in the entire history of the Navy Seals.