2007 Deadliest for US in Afghanistan

dcbeltway

Remember my original statement of November 11th, 2007 2:55 am

"Although these activists have feminist belief systems which are diametrically opposed to the Taliban's belief system, they still oppose the NATO war against the so-called "Taliban". These Afghan women want the NATO forces to leave. They claim resistance is growing because of the destructive and indisciminate nature of the occupation. Nationalism against foreigners is being mobilised against the NATO forces just as it was against the Soviet occupation"

Please note the main point here...THEY BELIEVE NATO IS LOSING SUPPORT!

dcbeltway please accept I do not support RAWA. I am just reporting their view of the occupation.

dcbeltway you said
"Nuclear armed Iran to the West"
You seem to be convinced that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. Are you so easily convinced of what the U.S. propagandists are pushing about Iran?

"Nuclear armed Pakistan under the Taliban to the East"
Isn't that a bit paranoid? Taliban has nowhere near the numbers in Pakistan to run that country.

"War lords"
I at least called them "EX-warlords". The nation is stitched together by some sort of concensus between what once were waring parties. To disband them as you advocate was obviously totally unrealistic in those early days. Each has his own local power base. The only Afghan who has no local power base is Karzai...His strength (ie foreign support) is his weakness. If the foreigners ever leave, Karzai's regime falls because it is widely seen as a foreign thing rather than as an expression of the voting public. This is the almost inevitable anomily of trying to set up democracy by invasion.

WHO FUNDS THE RESISTANCE?
Money must be flowing in the provinces from the drug business. Of course the farmers themselves only get a tiny slice of the pie, but you can bet the ex-warlords, the nationalist resistance and any remnants of the Taliban get their sizeable cut. Karzai's unenviable position in parliament etc. as a lamb amongst lions (or are they wolves) is made worse by the fact that he appears dependent on NATO and the US for his survival. His enemies do not need support from Pakistan - they have plenty of drug money to buy whatever they need on the black-market.

This unenviable position Karzai finds himself in is exactly what Zoya from RAWA was telling us about. She said the occupation is FAILING. I never supported RAWA activities but merely added Zoya's voice to the many who describe the occupation as inevitably failing.

I am sorry for genuine people who are caught in the middle like the meat in the sandwich between the growing resistance and the invasion/ occupation forces from the west. But being genuine is no guarantee of the rightness of either Karzai's or Zoya's policies. I personally prefer a non polarizing approach to life and so rather warm to some of those you mentioned (e.g. Shorish-Shamley). But war is the ultimate in polarization. So to be realistic, when Karzai talks of the need for unity he means that what he "heads" should co-operate with him. And the less radical women's groups are probably more effective within Karzai's realm. But when a regime is planted by an invading force, how can they ever overcome the quizling label, especially as a war escalates against the occupation.

The PRO Karzai PRO occupation people want us to believe the resistance is merely the old Taliban trying to return. Study history and see how many peoples accept occupations without resisting. Why should NATO and the U.S. look any different now to the nationalist/religious Afghans than the Russian occupation once looked to them?

I strongly suspect you are too ready to accept the mainstream messages about Iran and Afghanistan. It is the U.S. that is the major world aggressor. Who else has so much weaponry and bases all over the world? Wake up to the real threats in the world dcbeltway. Karzai is a sacrificial lamb for the U.S.. You have generally appeared progressive and aware on other issues but have a blind spot for Karzai and the US here.

The U.S. often sets up individuals into positions that can't be defended adequately. Look at that poor Sunni Chief in Anbar province in Iraq who got assassinated after the U.S. announced his important collaboration with them against al qaeda. And those Iraqi chiefs who met to cooperate more and got hit on the way home.

In the end people like Karzai need so much protection that they lose touch with real people and the state of the real situation on the ground. His U.S.led protectors get in the way of a clear vision. Once committed to his role he is not free to jump ship even if it isn't working. Then he has to find people to blame like Pakistan. The resistance doesn't need Pakistan because it gets enough money from the drugs. Better to blame the U.S. for putting Karzai into an impossible situation where he has to submit to everyone else to just keep up a semblance of a regime. Very sad really.

Jan my problem with RAWA is that they are just too polarizing. I know Shorish-Shamley personally and also have met Dr. Sima Samar and the last thing the Afghan women's right's movement is division and back-stabbing. If Afghan women are rejecting RAWA this is why. RAWA is also anti-Karzai gov't which is the current government of Afghanistan and at the moment the only hope possible. I admire Hamid Karzai as he is working under extradonarily difficult circumstances every day risking his own life against war lords in his gov't who would like to see him gone. Its hard to accomplish much when your own life is in danger. They are a good family the Karzai family and their hearts are with their people.
My current concern is the instability across the boarder in Pakistan as outside the capital the Taliban are gaining ground there. The thought of the Taliban gaining a nuke is absolutly terrifying as they will threaten Kabul and Delhi with it. Afghans will then be surrounded by a Nuclear armed Russia to the North, a Nuclear armed Iran to the West and a Nuclear armed Pakistan under the Taliban to the East. A very scary neighborhood to be in.

dcbeltway,
thanks for that article from August 2002. Why don't you just post the link instead of the whole article as you did. I think the original article was at:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_do_afghan_women_want

I will read it again and digest it before I comment on it.

I met Zoya this year and had some deep, searching questions for her about how it was possible for RAWA to operate in Afghanistan. Zoya seems very genuine to me. She did NOT come across to me as any kind of grandstander (as the openiing part of the article seems to say she was all those years ago) The truth of what RAWA does throughout Afghanistan and even in Pakistan is not easy to determine as they are probably working rather secretly for their own safety and the safety of the women and families they help.

You might be right that they are more radical than the mainstream in Afghanistan can cope with. Well maybe the mainstream can't cope with enough. Just tonight I watched a TV program about a woman who was elected to the parliament in the new Afghanistan. After she kept raising uncomfortable issues about the treatment of women she was barred from Parliament. Seems like the Karzai government is trying so hard at nation building that elected women who raise tricky issues in parliament are not to be part of that process. No wonder that RAWA works outside of the formal government "nation building" processes. What they have to say is not welcome. Karzai is so week in Kabul, that he has had to compromise so much with traditional minded ex-warlords that fixing injustice will not become part of the Afghanistan being built.

So if the occupation is sacrificing human rights and justice for ALL on the alter of "establishing central control" (called "nation building"), then what is the point of the occupation other than for pro-western geopolitics and "the pipeline".

What Do Afghan Women Want?
The American Prospect
08/05/2002
By Noy Thrupkaew

A dramatic and militant Afghan feminist group has captured the West's imagination. But does it offer what the women of a shattered society need most?

The unveiling took place amid the giddy whirl of a $1,000 ticket, all-star production of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues on Feb. 10, 2001. Raucous merriment had come and gone: Ensler conducted a chorus of ecstatically groaning celebrities, Glenn Close urged the audience to reclaim the c-word by yelling it at the top of its lungs. Then Oprah Winfrey recited Ensler's latest monologue, "Under the Burqa," and a hush fell over the crowd as Oprah exhorted its members to "imagine a huge dark piece of cloth / hung over your entire body / like you were a shameful statue." As the piece wound to a close, a figure in a burqa ascended to the stage. Oprah turned and lifted the head-to-toe shroud.

Voila! There stood Zoya, a young representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the group of 2,000 Afghan women who had seized the West's imagination with ferociously anti-fundamentalist rhetoric, secret footage of Taliban atrocities and clandestine schools and hospitals for Afghan girls and women. Center stage, Zoya delivered a fiery speech about the oppression of Afghan women and RAWA's ongoing resistance to the Taliban regime. Eighteen thousand people leaped to their feet, and New York City's Madison Square Garden rang with cheers.

RAWA has always had a flair for the dramatic, and this appearance was no exception. It was pure, delicious theater: the stark words, the ominous, oppressive burqa and the "hey presto" transformation of suffering into strength with the flick of a hem. The unveiling also captured part of RAWA's appeal to American feminists, as it let the audience appreciate the friction between the image of silenced Afghan women and the brand of outspoken feminism that RAWA espouses.

Although the Pakistan- and Afghanistan-based group was founded in Kabul in 1977, RAWA didn't receive worldwide recognition until U.S. feminist campaigns for Afghan women's rights hit their stride in the late 1990s. After September 11, the attention only intensified. Hundreds of articles and two books chronicled RAWA's struggle, the group's burqa-clad members spoke across the United States and, at one point, a flashing banner reading "Welcome, Oprah viewers!" greeted visitors to RAWA's Web site.

But is a group that is inspirational in the United States effective in Afghanistan? With its confrontational, no-holds-barred language and allegiance to a secular society, RAWA reflects much of the Western feminist community's own values -- a fact that has earned RAWA strong support in the West but few friends in a strongly Muslim country weary of political battles and bloodshed. Similarly, part of RAWA's allure, for Ensler at least, has been its militant, radical, "uncompromising" nature, as Ensler told Salon.com in November 2001. But this quality has a dark side. RAWA has denounced numerous other Afghan women's groups as insufficientlly critical of fundamentalism. It has also publicly attacked prominent Afghan women activists -- some of whom have in turn raised questions about RAWA's own political connections. As a result, Afghan women's nongovernmental organizations and Afghan feminist expatriates have expressed concern about a radical, lone-wolf organization garnering so much Western attention. In Afghanistan's slow, painful shift from war to nation building, they say, perhaps the country needs stronger support for voices of coalition building rather than for those advocating solitary revolution.

To understand the nature of RAWA's partnership with Western feminists, it helps to return to the starting point for U.S. feminist activism on Afghan women's rights: the Feminist Majority's "Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan." Although the campaign has come under fire for a few alleged missteps -- some critics have charged it with focusing too much on the burqa as a symbol of victimhood -- the Feminist Majority's project has earned widespread praise for mobilizing grass-roots support and scoring significant U.S. political victories for Afghan women's rights.

After the Taliban militia seized control of Afghanistan in 1996, the Feminist Majority's staff began noticing "one-inch Associated Press clips that women couldn't go out unattended, couldn't gather, wear noisy shoes, white socks," according to Eleanor Smeal, the Feminist Majority's executive director. Shocked by these reports and by news that the Taliban had denied countless women access to work, health care and education, Feminist Majority staff consulted with the U.S. State Department and Afghan women activists in the United States before launching their campaign in 1997. Through a series of petitions, protests, celebrity fundraisers and political negotiations, the Feminist Majority played a significant role in the 1998 refusal by the United Nations and the United States to grant formal recognition to the Taliban. Its next pressure campaign helped push U.S. energy company Unocal out of a $3 billion venture to put a pipeline through Afghanistan, which would have provided the Taliban with $100 million in royalties. Within three years of launching the campaign, the Feminist Majority and its allies had also improved U.S. refugee policy toward Afghanistan, set up support for Afghan schools for girls and pushed through increases in emergency aid.

RAWA was only one of about 240 U.S. and Afghan women's groups the Feminist Majority contacted over the course of its campaign. But when the Feminist Majority invited RAWA to its Feminist Expo 2000, the campaign helped catapult the Afghan group into the spotlight. Dispatches from the exposition, a conference of 7,000 feminists from around the world, invariably mentioned the RAWA delegates' powerful speeches and passionate conviction. RAWA had officially caught the eye of the feminist world.

Ensler, too, played a vital role in bringing RAWA to the U.S. public's attention. After seeing RAWA's Pakistan-based orphanages and schools, where little girls were "being brought up as revolutionaries," Ensler became "completely smitten by [RAWA]" and decided to help, she told Salon.com. "V-Day," Ensler's worldwide campaign to eradicate violence against women through performances of The Vagina Monologues, awarded RAWA $120,000 in 2001 and a similar grant in 2002.

Nothing, however, drew attention to the plight of Afghan women like the aftermath of September 11. The Feminist Majority and RAWA were soon deluged with calls from the media. Smeal was quoted in countless articles; RAWA was so overwhelmed that members had to decline interview requests. RAWA's secret footage of public hangings and shootings, captured on video cameras hidden under its members' burqas, aired over and over on Saira Shah's Beneath the Veil documentary, which was in heavy rotation on CNN. Oprah viewers sent more digital cameras than RAWA could use, while poems from Western women imagining themselves under the burqa choked the group's Web site. The site also featured numerous songs, including one about RAWA's martyred founder written by the women's rock band Star Vomit. In short, RAWA became "the darling of the media and the feminists," recalls Illinois State University women's studies director Valentine M. Moghadam.

September 11 brought both the Feminist Majority and RAWA new momentum. The Feminist Majority purchased Ms. Magazine and published a special insert on its Afghanistan campaign to introduce itself to Ms. readers. Along with coalition partners Equality Now, the National Organization for Women and Ensler, the project, renamed the Campaign to Help Afghan Women and Girls, pushed for an expansion of security forces beyond Kabul and an increase in funding to the interim government and women-led NGOs. RAWA continued to raise funds for its schools and hospitals and went on speaking tours around the world. Both organizations were busy but productive, blessed with a resurgence of public interest and largely positive media attention.

And then came the letter.

On April 20, 2002, a U.S.-based RAWA supporter posted an open letter to Ms. on RAWA's listserv. It would later appear all over the Internet -- on Middle Eastern studies' listservs and feminist online communities. Written by Elizabeth Miller from Cincinnati, the letter called Ms. Magazine the "mouthpiece of hegemonic, U.S.-centric, ego driven, corporate feminism." Miller proceeded to take the Feminist Majority to task for failing to mention the work of RAWA in its Ms. Magazine insert; it also charged the organization with ignoring the atrocities Afghan women suffered under the current U.S. allies in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance. Even worse, the letter continued, was the Feminist Majority's support for the work of Sima Samar, then Afghanistan's interim minister of women's affairs. Miller claimed that Samar was "a member of the leadership council of one of the most notorious fundamentalist factions Hezb-e Wahdat [the Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan]."

Asked about the letter, Smeal chuckles, then sighs. "The idea [behind the insert] was to introduce us by one of our campaigns," she says. Part of the insert's role was to tell "the pre-September 11, U.S. feminist story behind the campaign," according to Jennifer Jackman, the Feminist Majority's director of research. That story necessarily highlighted the unsung work of UN feminists, the two women appointed to the interim Afghan government and Afghan expatriate activist Sima Wali. The omission of RAWA was not political, Smeal insists. "We felt everyone knew RAWA," she said.

As for the letter's allegation that the Feminist Majority had not spoken out against the Northern Alliance, Smeal's own words to the media discount that. "The Northern Alliance is better than the Taliban toward women, but they are still not good," Smeal told me shortly after September 11. "We have to think beyond wartime, and we can't call some crowd 'freedom fighters' if they're not."

But the allegation against Samar was the most disturbing and difficult to dismiss. Human Rights Watch has charged Hezb-e Wahdat, a largely Hazara group, with taking part in reprisals against Pashtun civilians in northern Afghanistan. Some probing, however, finds little evidence that Samar has anything to do with Hezb-e Wahdat. Rather, what comes to light is a pattern of RAWA-led smear campaigns against other Afghan women who rise to prominence.

A strongly outspoken advocate for women's rights and a former RAWA member herself, Samar seems an unlikely member of Hezb-e Wahdat, although she is Hazara. Samar is renowned for her nonprofit group Shuhada, which operates hospitals and schools for girls throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan. In light of her women's work, the allegation of Samar's affiliation with a fundamentalist group is "baseless," says Jackman, especially considering the recent ultraconservative attacks that effectively prevented Samar from being reappointed to her position as women's affairs minister.

The Hezb-e Wahdat allegation surfaced throughout RAWA's interviews with the press, and also in a series of e-mails that a RAWA supporter named Sarah Kamal sent to Afghan expatriate activist Zieba Shorish-Shamley and the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a Canadian organization that planned to award Samar a human-rights award in 2001. (The e-mails also included attacks against Fatana Gailani, executive director of the Afghanistan Women's Council and a four-time humanitarian-aid award winner for her work on behalf of Afghan refugees.) After conducting an investigation, the president of the organization wrote a letter dismissing the charges and lauding Samar's humanitarian work. Backed by Amnesty International research, the Canadian group found that Samar had set up schools and hospitals in Hazarajat, a Hezb-e-Wahdat-controlled area, and it concluded that "it would have been inevitable for Dr. Samar to be in touch with leaders of this party to facilitate her work. Contact with party officials is a common feature of humanitarian activity throughout Afghanistan but does not amount to taking up the membership of the party." Bolstered by references from organizations including the UN and the U.S.-based Afghan Refugee Information Network, the jury panel granted Samar the award.

As for Shorish-Shamley, she says she was initially supportive of RAWA but that her feelings changed when she saw the "vicious" nature of the accusations against Samar and Gailani. Shorish-Shamley shared an e-mail that she said RAWA wrote to Samar:

While our beloved land is being reduced for more than a decade to a pulp in the filthy claws of a handful of fundamentalist executioners ... and RAWA, as the sole anti-fundamentalists organization, is at a tough strife with the insane Taliban and JeHadi gangs, it sounds really illogical to discuss the 'fighting with each other' but we are committed to expose it, for you are no longer 'ours,' as it is long ago you have aligned yourself to the rank of the most traitorous enemies of our people. We, thereby, treat you as a leader of the fundamentalists' party; alas it is as a part of our struggle against fundamentalism.

After continuing on for eight more vitriolic pages (" ... persons like Sima Samar enjoy the favor of the fundamentalist slaughterers") the letter ends with an absurdly polite postscript: "As I was busy with many other preoccupations, sorry that it took time to reply [to] your letter."

Not surprisingly, RAWA's letter offensives and the distrustful atmosphere in Afghanistan have fueled rumors about the group's own political ties. Azadi Afghan Radio has reported that RAWA is "alleged to be run by men who belong to the former Afghan Maoist (pro-Chinese Shohla Communist Party) group." Other rumors include RAWA's alleged connection to Pakistani intelligence or Mujahideen-e Khalq, a group the U.S. State Department deemed a terrorist organization in 1999. RAWA member Saba denies all accusations, saying, "When women ... are leading a movement, it is difficult for people to tolerate. They think politics is only something for men."

The allegations haven't slowed RAWA down much. As the only Afghan feminist organization with significant Western support, media access and an Internet presence, RAWA has remained productive and resilient. Nor have RAWA's accusers chosen tactics likely to scorch the earth. The Azadi Afghan Radio, which has ties to the Northern Alliance, was careful to praise RAWA's "courage," and it advised Western supporters to speak to Afghans and NGOs about RAWA before making up their minds about the group. Afghan expatriate activists Wali and Shorish-Shamley have fielded many complaints from Afghan NGOs about RAWA, but both women were initially reluctant to air the grievances they heard.

Many of RAWA's Western backers, in turn, remain unfazed by rumors of unsavory political connections. Ensler has denied RAWA's alleged Maoist ties, telling Salon.com, "I may not be the most thorough investigator -- that's why I'm not a journalist." Nonetheless, she said in the same interview, "I've become RAWA's greatest defender."

The Feminist Majority, however, was none too pleased with RAWA's role in lobbing accusations at other groups. "We really have problems with groups attacking each other," says Jackman. "There needs to be solidarity among women's organizations." The Feminist Majority has refuted RAWA's attacks, but not as a matter of "public debate" because "we have not wanted to engage in debate other than over what strategies are most effective. It's not our role to be passing judgment on groups," Jackman says.

Now that the Feminist Majority is focusing on nation building rather than on fighting the Taliban's oppression of women, RAWA has ceased in any case to represent the strategy in greatest demand. "They're not involved in the [push for] security, women's participation, reconstruction, working with a lot of different groups," says Jackman. Some Afghan and Afghan-expatriate feminists put a finer point on this concern. The ability to work with others, build coalitions and use tactics that are in keeping with the more moderate "Afghan norm," says Wali, are all crucial skills for making the transition from resistance to reconstruction -- and they are skills that RAWA seems to lack.

Navigating the factionalism and distrust of post-war Afghanistan would be a challenge for any political group, but the ground is clearly most fertile for one that is moderate and inclusive. Civil war, drought and interference from neighboring states have contributed to an atmosphere of mutual suspicion among Afghans, according to Neamat Nojumi, a Central and South Asian specialist and former mujahideen unit commander in the Soviet-Afghan war who is currently a United States Agency for International Development consultant. After years of Soviet occupation and wars among factions with extreme agendas, intimations of Maoist, Marxist or any overtly political agenda are terrifying for many Afghans, he says.

In this fragile environment, RAWA's perceived strengths -- the uncompromising, radically feminist quality that Ensler recognizes as that of a "kindred spirit" -- seem more like liabilities. As Ensler's quote attests, for many Western feminists, RAWA reflects a familiar yet glorified self-image: the fiery words, the clenched fists and protest signs, the type of guerilla feminism that seems unflinchingly brave. But to many Afghan women, RAWA's tactics look altogether too dangerous. Says Sayed Sahibzada, an Afghan United Nations Development Programme officer who has worked with more than 40 Afghan women-led NGOs, "I have not heard one group that goes along with RAWA. They say, 'If there is a RAWA participant [in a training], we are not going to participate.'" New York City's large Afghan-American population is similarly conflicted about the group. Masuda Sultan of Women for Afghan Women lauds RAWA's "long and committed history" of bravery. But she notes that "most Afghan women don't feel that RAWA represents them," because of the group's revolutionary rhetoric and alleged ties to Maoism.

RAWA has done little to build bridges. In addition to the campaign against Samar and Gailani, it has often shunned other women's groups. RAWA member Saba took issue with all the prominent Afghan and Afghan-American women I mentioned, saying that they had been part of the Northern Alliance, or the Soviet regime, or hadn't taken a strong stand against fundamentalism. This stance hasn't won over many Afghans: One activist calls RAWA the "Talibabes" because of its fiercely judgmental attitude.

But to effectively counter RAWA's perceived intolerance, opposing feminist groups need to build coalitions themselves. "I'm not trying to bring [RAWA] down. We have to work across political boundaries and viewpoints," says Wali. "They are one of the diverse voices of Afghan women." But RAWA's radical language and tactics, along with the strategies of some Western feminists -- such as Ensler, who brought The Vagina Monologues to Pakistan and Afghanistan -- "backfire on people like us," says Wali. "We are trying to influence the men, many of whom still have Taliban ideology, and they say, 'You are part of these extremists.' It's not time yet. We can't do something extreme and leave Afghan women to deal with it. [RAWA has] a very Westernized radical approach. They are revolutionary. The Afghan people are saying we don't need a revolution, we need a democracy."

Afghanistan may be closer now than ever to a day when voices such as RAWA's won't seem dangerously radical. But in the meantime, Western feminists need to support, fund and take their cues from the other "moderate ... diverse voices of Afghan women," and keep the pressure on their own governments, says Wali. This is something that even RAWA fan Ensler is beginning to do by working with Samar and by contributing to other groups. The Feminist Majority has nurtured connections with Samar's Shuhada group, which kept open numerous clinics, hospitals and schools in the central part of Afghanistan despite the Taliban's restrictions, as well as with the Pakistan-based Afghan Women's Resource Center, among many other Afghan NGOs.

In their own way, these Afghan groups are themselves "revolutionary," says Jackman. "This is a place where giving a girl a book and a pencil is revolutionary." Equally revolutionary is the dedication "to sharing the same agenda," adds Jackman. Even women who were formerly "arch rivals" are working together, says Wali, and their willingness to reach across ethnic and political divides is an important step toward forging trust in the strife-torn country. "There are so many non-partisan Afghan community organizers and leaders," says Wali, "but no one hears them because they are trying to mend society. RAWA has a place in that society, but we need to sit down together -- especially with the dissenting, far-fetched voices -- and realize that we have a common agenda. ...We are waging a jihad of social justice and peace. We need to transcend our differences and work together -- that is the key to rebuilding Afghanistan."

Jan my husband lived under the warlords during the Afghan civil war and they are the scum of the earth. He left Afganistan shortly after that lucky to have his life intact. The biggest mistake the coalition did was not to bring these men to justice and to reinstate them into power. This caused Afghans to lose faith in the rule of law concept as they despertly want justice.

Again, the Afghan community does not like RAWA. They are biased and radical and anti-Islam. If you truly want to support Afghan feminists I suggest you look at this organization:
Suraya Sadeed founder of Help the Afghan Children
http://www.helptheafghanchildren.org/

When we opposed the invasion of Iraq many people started contrasting Iraq with Afghanistan. Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan was the good war. Many U.S.
Democrats for instance would claim the Taliban as a legitimate enemy but the case against Saddam Hussein was manufactured.

Well I saw bad signs for the new regime very early on. One example of the way things would go can be seen in what happened during an attempt on Karzai's life along the road. Someone reached into Karzai's car and shot off a handgun but was immediately dragged to the ground by another local who was standing beside the culprit and had also been reaching into the car (but to welcome Karzai). The hired American guards were in the vehicle behind Karzai's car and opened fire on where the two men were ALREADY lying on the ground beside Karzai's car. In one inattentive burst of gun fire the guards had killed the would-be assassin AND the man who actually foiled the assassination. The crass reaction by the "guards" meant that no-one could speak to the assassin to find out if he was acting alone or whatever, and the death of the hero who had pushed the assassin to the ground, boded very badly for what was to come. The paid "saviours" had made matters worse by their reaction. Many more innocent people are being killed by troops for whom it is just a job. It is not THEIR people they are killing in order to beat the enemy. The war has escalated because of the bombing of innocent people...people in the provinces blame the occupation and increasingly support the resistance.

Try reading:
Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence.
By Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls

Reviews at
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=49&ItemID=11312

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/06/1350253

As is Obvious this is the Big Time on this Earth, etc For those of you not
aware of the astoundingly accurate predictions concerning this Now moment;
The US and our global police role and the ongoing human war machine and it's
seemingly inevitable Cosmic climax–from the Pleiadeans via Billy Meier called
the HENOCH PROPHECIES check this out:
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/Henoch%20Prophecies.html

"So many of the Plejaren predictions given to Swiss contactee Billy Meier have come true, that we'd be wise to heed the warning that terrible things will befall humanity and our planet if we can't learn to live together".

dcbeltway November 11 10: 12 said

"I would never endorse hurting the Pushtun people…that's a sick thing to suggest Jan as many of my dearest Afghan friends are Pushtun including members of the Karzai family"

I am saying that as the resistance to the occupation grows the occupation forces are escalating the bombing in areas they cannot control. As the main ethnic group active in resisting the invaders are Pashtun...how many Pashtun have to be killed in order for the will of NATO and the U.S. to prevail.

ABOUT PAKISTAN - It is true that Karzai and NATO were not happy with the cease-fire agreement that Pakistan had for a while with more radical elements nearer the Afghanistan border. These peoples live on both side of the border. The border to them was drawn artificially by the British Empire. A peace agreement that had been reached between two groups at war in Pakistan hardly constitutes Pakistani support.

I have had contact with different people from within Afghanistan and they are not simply all for the occupation. Of course there are supporters of the current regime as there are opponents depending on a number of things.

"Jan you are probably talking about RAWA which most mainstream Afghans both male and female find too radical for their tastes. They also have communist affiliations"

It is far too easy to dismiss someone with bad news for you by using a label like "communist". And of course there would be massive pressure on U.S. groups not to listen to the women speakers from groups like RAWA. For a starter if RAWA condemn the NATO/US war effort in Afghanistan by saying things we normally don't hear, it is easy to appeal to Patriotic support for our troops in order to ostracise such eyewitnesses. I have experienced personally the pressure against you if you are bringing information that challenges the mainstream pro troops line.

Why not read what the RAWA site says about themselves? RAWA were against the Russians and were FOR a secular democracy even while the U.S. was supporting the fundamentalists. See it at: http://www.rawa.org/rawa.html

Not quite understanding how you can call that dictator Musharaff clean and not lacking in corruption but I will agree with you Metamorph that the best thing for both sides of the Durrand Line is development aid particularily economic and education aid. Bhutto is no better as far as corruption goes on that I agree. Part of the reason Afghan reconstruction is failing right now is the fact that the Taliban keep coming across the boarder and aid workers are being threatened and killed, headmasters and school children and schools are being threatened and burned by the Taliban. This is a huge problem.

BBC news:
Last Updated: Saturday, 28 January 2006, 12:46 GMT
Militants 'burn Afghan schools'
Militants in southern Afghanistan are reported to have burned down three schools in their latest move against the government's education system.
Officials blamed the former ruling Taleban for burning down the newly-built schools in Helmand province which serve some 1,000 boys and girls.

The Taleban banned girls from school when they were in power.

Insurgents have frequently targeted schools and teachers since the fall of the Taleban.

Nobody was hurt in the fires.

In neighbouring Kandahar province, three policemen were injured in a bomb attack on a convoy of Afghan and Canadian forces on Friday night.

the trouble with giving 10 billion dollar to a military group is that the military is then paying all kinds of partners and cronies and spreading military values such as sexism, brutality, limit civil rights and freedom of expression. Sure the military will sometimes help during a catastrophy such as an earthquake in Pakistan- that is their job, but they are not good at being peacekeepers. ther eal NJO's that are expert at peacekeeping are shut out by the military regime.

This is going on in the US as well as in Pakistaon- puffing up the military industrial complex results in not enough progress to relieve proverty, build jobs, decraase global warming . build alternative energy etc etc.

Bush is reaping the consequences of pouring 10 billion into Pakistan only at the military level rather than at other sectors of the backward society.

Butoh is not the answer- she was corrupt and stashed millions in Swiss bank accounts. at least Muchareff supposedly has been "clean" in not doing corruption personally - I could be wrong on that- but that is admirable about him.

Nato's top brass accuse Pakistan over Taliban aid
By Ahmed Rashid in Kabul
Last Updated: 1:28am BST 06/10/2006

Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.

Nato's report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban's military capability and states clearly that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it.

President Pervez Musharraf

Commanders from Britain, the US, Denmark, Canada and Holland are frustrated that even after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met George W Bush and Tony Blair last week, Western leaders are declining to call Mr Musharraf's bluff.

"It is time for an 'either you are with us or against us' delivered bluntly to Musharraf at the highest political level," said one Nato commander.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001 America gave Mr Musharraf a similar ultimatum to co-operate against the Taliban, who were then harbouring Osama bin Laden.

"Our boys in southern Afghanistan are hurting because of what is coming out of Quetta," he added.

advertisementThe Taliban use the southern province of Balochistan to co-ordinate their insurgency and to recuperate after military action.

The cushion Pakistan is providing the Taliban is undermining the operation in Afghanistan, where 31,000 Nato troops are now based. The Canadians were most involved in Operation Medusa, two weeks of heavy fighting in a lush vineyard region, defeating 1,500 well entrenched Taliban, who had planned to attack Kandahar city, the capital of the south.

Nato officials now say they killed 1,100 Taliban fighters, not the 500 originally claimed. Hundreds of Taliban reinforcements in pick-up trucks who crossed over from Quetta – waved on by Pakistani border guards – were destroyed by Nato air and artillery strikes.

Nato captured 160 Taliban, many of them Pakistanis who described in detail the ISI's support to the Taliban.

Nato is now mapping the entire Taliban support structure in Balochistan, from ISI- run training camps near Quetta to huge ammunition dumps, arrival points for Taliban's new weapons and meeting places of the shura, or leadership council, in Quetta, which is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group's leader since its creation a dozen years ago.

Nato and Afghan officers say two training camps for the Taliban are located just outside Quetta, while the group is using hundreds of madrassas where the fighters are housed and fired up ideologically before being sent to the front.

Many madrassas now being listed are run by the Jamiat-e-Ullema Islam, a political party that governs Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. The party helped spawn the Taliban in 1994.

"Taliban decision-making and its logistics are all inside Pakistan," said the Afghan defense minister, General Rahim Wardak.

A post-battle intelligence report compiled by Nato and Afghan forces involved in Operation Medusa demonstrates the logistical capability of the Taliban.

During the battle the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells, which slowly arrived in Panjwai from Quetta over the spring months. Ammunition dumps unearthed after the battle showed that the Taliban had stocked over one million rounds in Panjwai.

In Panjwai the Taliban had also established a training camp to teach guerrillas how to penetrate Kandahar, a separate camp to train suicide bombers and a full surgical field hospital. Nato estimated the cost of Taliban ammunition stocks at around £2.6 million. "The Taliban could not have done this on their own without the ISI," said a senior Nato officer.

Gen Musharraf this week admitted that "retired" ISI officers might be involved in aiding the Taliban, the closest he has come to admitting the agency's role.

fpress@telegraph.co.uk

Jan you are probably talking about RAWA which most mainstream Afghans both male and female find too radical for their tastes. They also have communist affiliations..given the soviet occupation of Afghanistan most Afghans are also strongly anti-communist. The Feminist Majority folks and other American Progressive groups will no longer work with RAWA. They see them as detrimental to helping mainstream Afghan women.

Pakistan continues to support the Taliban to this day and they have a long history of doing so. See the national security archives here.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm

I would never endorse hurting the Pushtun people...that's a sick thing to suggest Jan as many of my dearest Afghan friends are Pushtun including members of the Karzai family. By the way they don't endorse the Taliban. Pushtuns do not endorse the Taliban again its Pakistan. Do you even know any Afghans? Apparently not as your ideas are coming out of a vacuum.

"Although these activists have feminist belief systems which are diametrically opposed to the Taliban's belief system, they still oppose the NATO war against the so-called 'Taliban.'"

Liberating women from burqas and ensuring that little girls and boys can attend the same classrooms has just about as much relationship to US geopolitical strategies in Afghanistan and elsewhere as 'spreading freedom and democracy' does. It may play well with the sheeple at home, but obviously Afghani women are too smart (and too close to the realities) to fall for the propaganda.

dcbeltway November 10th, 2007 8:09 pm said
"See this article here about Pakistan's support of the Taliban:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011008/rashid "

That was in 2001. The U.S. and Britain also used all sorts of people like Al Qaeda in the past but are now at war with them. Up to date accounts of what is happening now show the resistance in Afghanistan to be more nationalist in nature.

I have heard talks by women activists from Afghanistan who are currently active there in the countryside in villages in support of local women and their families. Although these activists have feminist belief systems which are diametrically opposed to the Taliban's belief system, they still oppose the NATO war against the so-called "Taliban". These Afghan women want the NATO forces to leave. They claim resistance is growing because of the destructive and indisciminate nature of the occupation. Nationalism against foreigners is being mobilised against the NATO forces just as it was against the Soviet occupation.

It is not true that support for NATO or the U.S. in Afghanistan is progressive. You can not bring in pro women policies at the end of a gun. There are never enough troops to protect the women and the intended pro women's practices will always thereafter be associated with the invaders and so will be rejected.

The Pashtun people naturally live on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those who went from the Madrasas in Pakistan as Taliban were as much Afghani Pashtun as they may have been Pakistani Pashtun. They do not constitute a Pakistani force in Afghanistan.

Just because Musharraf uses the issue to justify his dictatorship, it does not mean Musharraf or his military can control this Taliban movement. Does dcbeltway want the religious Pashtun (ie the majority) to be exterminated to stop them from ever having any power?

dcbeltway November 10th, 2007 8:08 pm said

"I'm married to an Afghan and I have family in Afghanistan. For them living under the Taliban is a hell they would prefer not to return to."

Does the prospect of unending warfare in their country appeal to them as a way to keep "Taliban" from coming back to power?

Marlboro Marine
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/marlboromarine/

As mentioned above we have been in this theater of operation longer than in WWI & WWII.

No administration could be so incompetent; this is what they want. These elitists(how many of their sons and daughters are fighting)have no soul and care little for the maiming and deaths of others as long as it keeps the military industrial complex humming along.

The Dems are no better. How much longer will it take before this country begins to wise up and demand real change; hopefully before "We The People" no longer exists.

See this article here about Pakistan's support of the Taliban:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011008/rashid

If you are truly a progressive and care about human rights don't allow Afghanistan to fall back under these monsters.

Its Pakistan that is supporting the Taliban. The Taliban are unpopular with the majority of the Afghan people and Afghans as we all know suffered enormously under their reign. The Taliban recently killed over 90 people in Northern Afghanistan with a suicide bomber in a sugar factory. Many Afghans fear a pullout of NATO/US troops as this will lead to the Taliban and Pakistan ruling over Afghanistan again. Afghanistan is not Iraq. Don't confuse the two. I'm married to an Afghan and I have family in Afghanistan. For them living under the Taliban is a hell they would prefer not to return to.

Mission Accomplished!

Ironic isn't it? In both theaters of conquest, 2007 has been the bloodiest year. The Ministry of Information has been hard at work, succinct beer soaked one liners like "We're winning, we can't quit now when we're ahead, or we can't let them 9/11 us again"
The body count is nearly 4K in Iraq, but like any other count, thousands and thousands have been crippled, sustaining physical and mental debilitation, As an ironic twist to the immigration debate, many illegals are fighting in both theaters, some die, some come back to Walter Reed with a missing body part or more, and then die. Actual figures therefore, warrant much closer scrutiny.

Afghanistan has been eating foreign armies since the time of Alexander.

It succeeded in almost bankrupting the CCCP (with our help) and forced them to leave. Now it would appear to be our turn.

I'm sorry but am I supposed to feel sorry that American imperialistic aggression is being held in check? Even though I am an American, I sincerely hope the United States military is not capable of meeting its strategic goals of stealing Afghanistan and Iraq for the oil corporations. Imperialism must never be rewarded.

"We stay there as part of NATO and responding to a UN mandate to assist the Afghan government with its security."

Yup. It really is tragic how NATO and the UN are always forcing the good ol' United States to do things against its will.

We have been in Afghanistan longer than it took us to win World Wars I and II combined.

We went there to fight the people who supported the 9/11 suicide attackers.

We stay there as part of NATO and responding to a UN mandate to assist the Afghan government with its security.

Celebrate the 11th also as Armistice Day, when World War I ended. It's good when wars end.