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Joya Rejects the NATO Coalition, Harper and the Excuses for War
In the United States, many looked to the ballot box and hoped for real change when Barack Obama was elected President in 2008.
To be honest, I never expected that he would be any different for Afghanistan than President George W. Bush. The truth is that Obama's war policies have turned out to be even more of a nightmare than most people expected. Obama talked a lot about hope and change, but for Afghanistan the only change has been for the worse.
After almost two years of Obama, the number of U.S. troops occupying Afghanistan has more than doubled. And the number of drone attacks in Pakistan has increased. Obama's so-called surge of troops has resulted in increased Afghan civilian deaths.
The documents released by Wikileaks prove what we have been saying about war in Afghanistan. There are more massacres by NATO forces than they wanted us to believe. Now the whole world should know this war is a disaster.
All this is why, for our people, Obama is a warmonger, like another Bush. These are the reasons that throughout Afghanistan more and more people are taking to the streets to protest the U.S. occupation.
And Obama's surge of the war has also put more U.S. soldiers at risk. And more Canadian troops have died. Why are Obama and Harper wasting so much money on this war when they cannot give jobs or even houses to their own poor people? There are many homeless in Vancouver, but instead Harper spends billions of dollars and new weapons of war...
It has been five years since I was elected to the Afghan Parliament. I faced many obstacles just to get elected. They cut off my microphone. They threatened me with death and illegally removed [me] from my seat.
We had a new election in September, but I have chosen not to participate. Amidst the chaos of occupation and this puppet regime, rule of drug-mafia and warlords, any hope I once had for using the ballot box to achieve change in Afghanistan is now gone.
It was a difficult decision not to fight for my rightful place in parliament. I had invitations to run from many provinces in Afghanistan, and it was difficult to say no to these friends and supporters.
My personal experience, as well as the advice from those close to me, convinced me that I should sit this campaign out.
As the whole world saw, the 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan was a total fraud. The whole world knows there was ballot stuffing, vote buying and massive corruption. And there was no real choice anyway. The two candidates were enemies of our people. The only [chance] with this vote for Afghanistan was a new saddle for the same donkey. It turned out we were stuck with the same donkey, wearing the same saddle. Karzai and his corrupt brother in Kandahar province, Wali Karzai, who Afghans call "small Bush."
Again, the September 18 that the parliamentary election was a bad joke. According to the news, in one district in Paktika province, the voter turnout was 626 per cent! There was a great deal of buying and selling of votes.
Over the past five years, the U.S. and allies made warlords more powerful so they can now even more easily highjack the election results. It was a selection, not an election. Most members of Parliament are law-breakers not law makers.
This time, many refused to vote. Afghans don't want so-called democracy and so-called elections where guns and money have the first and last word. Your foreign minister, Peter MacKay, and your Prime Minister Harper call this "democracy" and "progress." But Afghans call this a bad joke.
I never really wanted to be a politician anyway. I was a social activist who used politics to continue my social activism on behalf of the poor of Afghanistan. When no justice can be achieved through the ballot box, the people must find alternative ways to fight for their rights. We will never rest for a moment...
Today Stephen Harper and the Canadian government are trying to deceive the Canadian people about the war in Afghanistan.
Harper is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. On one side, he is saying Canadian troops will leave Afghanistan in 2011. But on the other side Harper is saying to US and NATO, don't worry, Canada will stay with troops and help in different ways to occupy Afghanistan.
And Harper is saying that Canada will stay to do "training" of troops of puppet Karzai regime.
We Afghan people don't need any more "training" from Canadian government after 2011.
We Afghans don't want any more bombing after 2011.
We Afghans don't want any more torture by NATO and Afghan puppet forces.
We Afghans don't want any more occupation by NATO. Instead of staying after 2011, it is better that Canadian troops leave sooner, leave now.
- Posted in
23 Comments so far
Show AllPuppet regimes are a disappointment to everyone—both to those who put them in power and also to the population—and leave only a trail of bitterness behind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRRVQyNnRSU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0UNY1Ut5Gw
Are you referring to the Afghan puppets, the Canadian puppets, or the American puppets?
RV; Good one and it has to be all three!! Tony
Joya is too young to tell us how it was before the US brought the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers to power...and then back to power.
A pity (not that I wish her any older).
But I have to wonder what it is in her background that she draws on for her inspiration and her courage.
I don't know where you have your head, but the color of choice must be "fecal brown," and the ambiance pungent with foul odors.
Your patently obvious American ethnocentricity isn't even subtle.
I think you have thoroughly misread Michael F's intent in his post. And vulgar and unfounded personal attacks do no credit to your own good sense and character.
Thank you. What the hell was that all about?
TOO YOUNG?
You don't know anything about Malalai Joya. But she knows her own country...and the US, as well.
She wrote a book called "A Woman Among Warlords". You ask me, SHE should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, not a president wedded to the idea prosecuting an illegal war.
Here's how Joya sums it up in her own words:
"The people of Afghanistan are fed up with the occupation of their country and with the corrupt, Mafia-state of Hamid Karzai and the warlords and drug lords backed by NATO.... It is clear now that the real motive of the U.S. and its allies, hidden behind the so-called “war on terror,” was to convert Afghanistan into a military base in Central Asia and the capital of the world’s opium drug trade. Ordinary Afghan people are being used in this chess game, and western taxpayers’ money and the blood of soldiers is being wasted on this agenda that will only further destabilize the region....Afghan and American lives are being needlessly lost."
"As I write these words, Afghanistan is getting progressively worse. We are caught between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other.... Obama's military build up will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians.... I hope that the lessons in this book will reach President Obama and his policymakers in Washington, and warn them that the people of Afghanistan reject their brutal occupation and their support of the warlords and druglords." ("A Woman Among the Warlords", p. 5)
"While the United States bombed from the sky, the CIA and special forces had already arrived in the northern provinces of Afghanistan to hand out millions of dollars in cash and weapons to Northern Alliance commanders. They were the same extremists whose militias had pillaged Afghanistan during the civil war: Dostum, Sayyaf, Khalili, Rhabbani, General Arif, Dr. Abdullah, Haji Qadir, Ustad Atta, Mohammad, Daoud, and Hazrat Ali among others. ...Fahim, another ruthless man with a dark past. The western media tried at the time to portray these warlords as "anti-Taliban resistance forces and liberators of Afghanistan," but in fact Afghan people believed they were no better than the Taliban." (Ibid, p. 52)
Joya in the New York Times November 19, 2001: "The galaxy of warlords who tore Afghanistan apart in the early 1990s and who were vanquished by the Taliban because of their corruption and perfidy are back on their thrones, poised to exercise power in the ways they always have."
"Most people in the west have been led to believe that intolerance, brutality, and severe oppression of women in Afgahnistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie, more dust in the eyes of the world from the warlords who dominate the American-backed, so-called democratic government of Hamid Karzai. In truth, some of the worst atrocities in our recent past were committed during the civil war by the men who are now in power."
During the blackest days of the Afghan civil war in 1992, a group of warlords seized Kabul razing much of it to the ground. "The militias of Dostum, Sayyaf, Massoud, Mazari, and Hekmatyar pillaged the city, robbing families and slaughtering and raping women. Eventually, anywhere from 65,000 to 80,000 innocent people were killed in Kabul alone, though there are no official figures for the staggering death toll. According to the United Nations, more than 90 percent of the city was destroyed. (Eventually) "the country was split up into fiefdoms, ruled by the whims of rival thugs and warlords." (Ibid p26)
These are the monsters the US continues to support in Afghanistan today.
JOYA'S SOLUTION: "Withdraw All Foreign Troops"
"Some people say that when the troops withdraw, a civil war will break out. Often this prospect is raised by people who ignore the vicious conflict and humanitarian disaster that is already occurring in Afghanistan. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people. The terrible civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal certainly could never justify... the destruction and death caused by that decade-long occupation." (p 217)...Today we live under the shadow of the gun with the most corrupt and unpopular government in the world. (p 211)
The war that one reads about in the media, is not the real war. It's a fiction created to justify occupation. "A Woman Among the Warlords" shreds many of the myths surrounding the war and reveals the truth behind the hype; that the United States deliberately handed over Afghanistan to a group of genocidal maniacs. The same policy persists to today, which is why it's time to bring the troops now.
mojada: Thanks for your post, and for including the words of Malalai Joya. I have so much respect for Malalai and the work she does.
Like you, I can only wonder what is meant by the comment that labels Malalai Joya as "too young."
With a name like Malalai Joya, you can safely assume that she isn't "American." Anyone that migrates to the US does so to...well, escape the Empire.
Ok, you can laugh at the joke now. Cruel as it may be.
Michael F. Read her book " a woman among warriors" many of your questions will be answered. I am glad to hear from her. She is a true patriot.
Thank you. Why didn't I think of that?
Is she the gal from Afghanistan, running for office against the warlords? Sorry, I didn't recognize the name at first either. Just know her story. Very courageous young woman.
Fredhb: right!
Would that we had more citizens with the kind of clearheadiness and guts this woman has displayed
Fusion
Amazing that Harper can still talk out of both sides of his mouth with american dick firmly wedged in the middle of it.
LOLOLOLLOL
Like Afghanistan, the US election was also bought and stolen. I think all the nations on this dying planet are all working on the same plan. The one the Bildenberg corporation has put in place. Australia decided that they too would be in this illegal invasion for 10 more years. All countries now are doing their best to take away social networks like SS, SCHIP, Medicare and other things that help the poor. Lots of money for the wars, defense contractors and banks tho.
Countrywide's CEO paid a fing fine for fraud. So have other banks and oil companies. BP's lack of security murdered 11 people. Massive Energy murdered 29. If it were any little corporation that had done this then those people would be in jail.
Like Joya, I and many other Americans will no longer vote for the whores and psycopaths in congress. They are not even trying to appear to help us. Tax breaks for the rich will go on after the next fraudulant election. Obama will succeed in the rebups wet dream of cutting SS. Look what he already did for the insurance whores. Plus furthering the decline of a women' choice to choose.
The US has so much blood on it't hands. From the Idians and slaves to all of the coups it orchestrated and put in brutal dictators. Baby Doc, Pinochet, the Shaw just to name a few. And of course the Karzis.
I saw a huge sunscreen on the back of a SUV today. It sais. AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE, BRAVE and GENEROUS. What a joke. We are none of those. Were we ever?
The message to Joya from Obama is the same message Obama has for the American public: don’t let anybody tell you that your vote does not matter. So far the American public seems to be buying that message.
Malalai Joya is a sweetheart and a strong role model of what pols should be like. If the USA had more like her, the whole planet would be better off by now. Unfortunately, this nation will have to crumble before we can even think of electing people just like her to office.
"In the United States, many looked to the ballot box and hoped for real change when Barack Obama was elected President in 2008."
This paragraph should have ended with "by 2009, the United States realized that they had been punked."
I heard Ms Joya when she spoke at Georgetown
U here in the District of Columbia. She is
old enough to tell it like it is.
But I post to ask again: are there any CD members
in the D.C. area who can help us with our button
selling and yard signs? We raise money by
selling our gorgeous "No Afghan War" buttons and
use the profits for our "No War in Afghanistan"
signs. (For pictures and info, see
www.waifllc.org )
A couple of us bring in lots of money, and get
lots of signs taken by citizens who feel as
we do. But we need more sellers, and more people
who will go door to door to get the signs
accepted. It is easy and pleasant work.
Again: we are local to the D.C. area. But
I bet our ideas would work anywhere in the
U.S. or Canada.
Alan McConnell, in Silver Spring MD
Malalai Joya: " We Afghans don't want any more bombing after 2011 ". Obomba is not going to stop bombing your country and murdering your fellow Afghans, until he is told to by the MIC. His mantra in the last election was: yes we can, but it should have been. Yes we can bomb you!
"Why are Obama and Harper wasting so much money on this war when they cannot give jobs or even houses to their own poor people? There are many homeless in Vancouver, but instead Harper spends billions of dollars and new weapons of war..."
If Americans still had any brains or compassion they would find this article heart-breaking. My old coat button says, "A nation of sheep ruled by wolves owned by pigs." That's 21st century Amurka.