I is for Infidel.

J is for Jihad.

K is for Kalashnikov.

This special jihad-themed alphabet was part of a US-designed military training manual for mujahedeens in Afghanistan fighting soviet invaders back in the 1980s. Following the formula that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the US funded and armed conservative Afghan mullahs who were then billed as “freedom fighters” against the “Evil Empire.” Today the US is facing these very same mujahedeens in its global “War on Terror.”

Kathy Gannon’s I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror, 18 Years Inside Afghanistan brings ironies such as these to light in a wide-ranging yet concise account of Afghanistan’s recent history. Alongside the larger political fabric, the clash of contending social forces, and behind the scenes insights, Gannon shows us snapshots of the Afghani people, their everyday life and sufferings in a land ravaged by decades of war.

We are acquainted with the social-imperialism of the former Soviet Union at its worse. Its pretensions of exporting revolution in the world cannot hide the real motive of creating satellite countries that it can depend on as sources of raw materials and dumping ground for its manufactures. The brutal manner in which it conduct its wars of aggression, as exemplified in the case of Afghanistan, is the best negation of whatever “socialist” rhetoric it mouths.

As the end of the soviet occupation of Afghanistan approached, its troops began to apply more desperate measures, one of which include the planting colorful landmines in the desert. These are visible to adults who can readily avoid stepping on them. But its targets are children whose peasant families are forced to go the city for hospitalization and hence remove potential or actual supporters of the mujahedeens from the countryside.

The anti-soviet islamic fighters gained an overwhelming advantage against the soviet military juggernaut when the US provided them with the stinger missiles. Soviet air support were compelled to fly higher to avoid getting hit by an improved antiaircraft capability, thus giving more mobility to the mujahedeens for ambushes against soviet columns, sabotage, and organizing support for the jihad in the villages.

With the eventual withdrawal of soviet troops, the collapse of the soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan followed soon afterwards. The various warring factions of the mujahedeen (later to be collectively known as the Northern Alliance because its bailiwicks are in the northern provinces), backed by the US and Pakistani military establishments, would march to the capital city Kabul and take power in 1992. Recalling this time, Gannon comments:

mujahedeen factions established areas of control based mostly on their ethnic background. They dealt in drugs and precious stones, and killed each other if their territory was threatened. Each of the seven big mujahedeen factions had hundreds of local commanders who imposed their own rules in their own area, like little fiefdoms.

Many neighborhoods were littered with landmines placed by rival mujahedeen factions, with as many as 50 people a week dying or getting maimed by landmine explosions. Most of the victims were children who were scavenging for scrap to sell or who were sent back to retrieve items that were left behind in their homes during sudden eruptions of violence.

One front line between mujahedeen groups ran right outside the Kabul Zoo, which in another lifetime had been the best in Asia. The mujahedeen devastated it. They frightened or killed the animals, taking sadistic potshots at the elephants and bears in their compounds, and even at the caged animals. One black bear limped balefully after a chunk of shrapnel had been lodged in his burly paw. Rockets periodically slammed into the zoo buildings, into the cages, into the watering holes.

Another story situated in the Kabul Zoo is that of the Lion Marjan who mauled a bored mujahedeen to death and survived agrenade attack by the dead mujahedeen’s brother.

The randomness of the violence was appalling. I visited a small boy no more than eight years old in the hospital in Kabul. He had been playing ball in his yard when a rocket smashed into the ground nearby, slicing off his hand at the wrist. Seconds before the rocket hit, he had reached out to catch the ball, and his hand was in midair when a razor-sharp piece of shrapnel sliced it off.

It is in the backdrop of this chaos to it that the Taliban movement took power on an extreme Islamist platform that promised to bring peace and social order along the lines set by its interpretation of strict Islamic law. “For Mullah Omar,” writes Gannon, “his Taliban were the means by which he could bring security to his deeply anarchic country, disarm and disband the unruly and lawless muhajedeen.”

For all the bad publicity heaped on the Taliban, one good thing that did come off it is the destruction of the drug trade in Afghanistan. Gannon observes: “The Taliban had wiped out Afghanistan’s production of poppies, which supply the international trade in heroin. Afghanistan became the first country in the entire world to get rid of its narcotic trade in a single year, without any deaths. Afghanistan went from producing 4,000 tons of opium to zero.”

Like the Northern Alliance regime before it, the Taliban regime also became cozy with Osama Bin Laden and the jihadist network coddled by Pakistan. Like its predecessor, it also set up training camps for jihadis from all over the world: “Bin Laden used the Taliban to entice new recruits to al Qaeda and to his battle against the West. He presented the example of the Taliban as a purely Islamic regime that was loather by the West because of the purity of its devotion.”

One of the Taliban’s strongest supporters were the Pakistani mullahs and military establishment: “behind them, propping them up with money and weapons were Pakistan’s military and its secret service, which had been using the students and their Islamic fervor to wage Pakistan’s proxy wars ever since the young Jihadis had emerged as a force during the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afhganistan.”

In 2001, the United States justified its war of aggression against the people of Afghanistan on the grounds that the Taliban hosted Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. But then again, the “Northern Alliance” that the US made its junior partners for the conquest of Afghanistan are precisely the same warlords who fought with Osama Bin Laden against the soviets and who invited him over to the country before they were overthrown by the Taliban in 1996.

In fact, the name of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group based in southern Philippines was inspired by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the notorious mujahedeen who trained with Abu Sayyaf leader Janjalani back in the 1980s.

Another rationale was the humanitarian concern for the status of women under the Taliban. But when the Taliban first came to power, the US and its allies largely ignored their status because they thought the Taliban would end the lawlessness of the warring mujahedeen factions. In the words of United Nations special envoy Norbert Hall: “Women? Don’t talk to me about women. I don’t mention women. That is a cultural issue. I am trying to negotiate peace.”

As Gannon points out, “It’s ironic that opposition to the Taliban would eventually become almost a feminist issue with the burqa as its symbol, despite the fact that the mujahedeen government the Taliban were fighting, including many of those same leaders the United States would later return to power, were strong advocates of burqa.”

“The only time girls really prospered in Afghanistan,” Gannon notes with irony, “was during the Communist regime, the regime that the West sought to overthrow by using the Islamic fervor of militant Muslims.”

Patching up all the images conjured by Gannon in her journalistic work, we can strongly conclude that Afghanistan is one the worst-hit victims of the imperialist system. The Taliban as an extremist movement is both a reaction to oppression and injustice as well as a reactionary current that actually preserves the oppressive and unjust system rather than dismantle it.

Instead of providing a progressive alternative, it simply attempts to bring back the past:

Mullah Omar’s idea of perfection was a world of simple truths that resembled Islam in the seventh century. The five years he ruled Afghanistan had been characterized by an attempt to go back in time. This regime banned recycled paper for fear Qurans had been destroyed and recycled into paper bags, banned women from wearing white socks because it was considered provocative, and relied mostly on radios to communicate.

Gannon thus describes the Taliban stronghold Surmad:

But for the fact that the guards carried rifles instead of bows and arrows, it might well have been the Middle Ages. The centuries seemed to have slipped past unnoticed in Surmad. Men wore the traditional dress and turbans of their ancestors. Women were neither seen nor heard. There was only one main street and it had never seen pavement. The buildings were a strange mix of cement and mud baked in the blistering sun.

Clearly, the US ruling elites are tolerant to both the Taliban (when it still did not function as the US establishment’s easiest scapegoat and justification for its military adventures) and the mujahedeens (in spite of its virtual destruction of Kabul). Beyond their liberal rhetoric, they are the main sponsors of racism, religious extremism and other reactionary trends in order to mystify the roots of crisis and thwart the success of real radical alternatives to the system.

So in the face of the upsurge of ethnic and religious hatred, the solution is not the liberal injunction for tolerance. Rather, as even the charlatan Slavoj Zizek rightly points out: “on the contrary, what we need is even more hatred, but proper political hatred: hatred directed at the common political enemy.” What is needed is the building of more secular, class-based social movements that pose genuine threats to imperialist hegemony.

The David Evans trained 3 year old bay filly Redair is back at Wolverhampton this afternoon looking for her 4^th win at the track in what will be her 5^th visit.  She takes to her racing incredibly well as she is making her 21^st career start today.  She had a very busy 2 year old campaign running no fewer than 12 times.

She was first seen at Kempton on 26 March when she won her Maiden and she was tried at a high level during the season.  Her third start was in the Class 2 Lily Agnes Conditions Stakes at Chester where she finished placed and she also ran three more times in Class 2 and was tried once in a Listed race but failed to be placed on all four starts.  In fact she did not win again all season.

She started her 3 year old season at Kempton in January in a Class 5 Handicap but obviously needed the run after 3 months off and finished down the field.  She was then dropped into Claiming company for the first time at Lingfield on her next run and she won by 1 length.  After finishing unplaced on her next two runs she ran at Wolverhampton on 20 February in a Class 5 Handicap and recorded her third win.  She was also successful on her next two visits to Wolverhampton, winning a Class 5 Handicap and a Class 5 Claimer respectively, running up a hat-trick.  She was then given a month off and ran respectably at Bath on her return, finishing 4^th considering her record on turf.

Redair runs over 5 furlongs today and she has run 12 times over the trip winning on 5 occasions.  However, her form on the all weather is far superior to her turf form on which surface she is yet to win.  In fact she has run 6 times on the all weather over 5 furlongs and has won 5 times.

As mentioned earlier she has an excellent record at Wolverhampton winning three times from four visits to the track.  Her only defeat was when she ran over 6 furlongs and she is unbeaten over the minimum trip here.  She is ridden by the excellent Kathy Gannon today.  Kathy rode Redair nine times last season, but has not ridden her so far this year.  She rode her on her debut which was a 5 furlong win on the all weather at Kempton and then rode her eight times on the turf flat.

Redair must be high on the list of possible winners today.  She has a fantastic record over 5 furlongs in general on the all weather and in particular at Wolverhampton where she is unbeaten.  She is ridden by a very competent jockey and also carries bottom weight and has a decent draw, all of which are in her favour.

by Prof. Marc W. Herold Global Research, March 8, 2010 Email this article to a friend Print this article Let the numbers tell the story. The following presents a detailed summary and analysis of Afghan civilians killed directly – so-called impact deaths – by U.S/NATO forces in Afghanistan during a single month, February 2010. The Obama killing machine left 80-86 dead Afghan and Pashtun civilians. By contrast, the number in February 2009 was 50. The intent here is to set the record straight as regards Afghans killed by the U.S/NATO, and in so doing challenge the UNAMA to move beyond its “faith-based” counting. Regrettably, data put out by the UNAMA gets widely cited less for its validity (which cannot be fact-checked given the organization’s refusal to publish disaggregated data) and more because of a vague public yearning to believe (have faith in) in the U.N’s alleged impartiality and credibility. As I have repeatedly demonstrated, the UNAMA data barely captures one-half of the Afghan civilians killed by U.S/NATO direct actions and by so doing serves Obama and the Pentagon in their news management effort.[1]
In a cemetery marked by green and white flags in Helmand’s provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Marjah, men buried one Marjah resident who died of his injuries suffered in what his brother said was coalition bombing three days ago. “I buried him here, because I couldn’t take him back to my village,” the brother, Sayed Wali, a thin man in a faded blue tunic (from
http://www1.cw56.com/news/articles/world/BO136048/
).

Veteran reporter, Kathy Gannon, with a record of independent reporting on Afghanistan going back to October 2001, noted that the Taliban fighting foreign forces in Marja are villagers.[2]  She also provided rare details on victims of foreign forces there: Musa Jan’s home was hit by an aircraft around February 16th killing five occupants inside including children; Sayed Lal was outside in a field with a friend when he was shot by foreign soldiers. Assadullah, 22, was riding his motorcycle when the Americans fired at him shattering his arm; Abdul Hamid, 12, was in front of his home when raiding foreign forces arrived,

…they were running and shooting. I tried to get back in my house, but they shot me in the leg, and there were more bullets, and they shot me again in the belly. Near me some other people fell into a canal. They called a plane and they bombarded.[3]

On 27 February, foreign soldiers killed three people, including two children, in Alasai district of Kapisa province. Mohammad Ashraf, a tribal elder of Kotki area of Alasai district, giving details of the incident, told AIP that last night at around 2200 local time, French soldiers descended from their helicopter in an area far from Waldikhel village of Kotki area.and and laid an ambush. When people of the area learned about the arrival of these forces, they started fleeing from their village when the French forces opened fire at them.” The tribal elder added: “As a result of the firing, three people have been martyred, one of whom was nine-year-old Joma Gul, son of Gholam Rasul, another was 10-year-old Aghar Khan, son of Morad Mohammad, and the third one was Faqir Mohammad, a young man.”

A man who identified himself as Hamidullah said he had been in the home as some 20 people gathered to celebrate the birth of a son when a group of men he described as “U.S. Special Forces” surrounded the compound. Saying he witnessed one man’s death, Hamidullah said, “Daoud was coming out of the house to ask what was going on. And then they shot him.” Then they killed a second man, Hamidullah said. The rest of the group were forced out into the yard, made to kneel and had their hands bound behind their back, he said, breaking off crying without giving any further details. A deputy provincial council member in Gardez, Shahyesta Jan Ahadi, said news of the operation has inflamed the local community that blames Americans. “Last night, the Americans conducted an operation in a house and killed five innocent people, including three women. The people are so angry,” he said.

Occupied Afghanistan, March 5, 2010. An Afghan horse cart approaches a U.S. occupation force Stryker armored personnel carrier near Shah-Wali-Kot, Kandahar (photo by John Moore, Getty Images at
http://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/97456605/Getty-Images-News
)

Rare photo of an injured victim of U.S/NATO forces., shot during U.S. offensive near Marjah, February 14, 2010

(photo by AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito at
http://topics.philly.com/photo/09Opdbv6joaZZ
)
LASHKARGAH, Feb 17, 2010: An eight-year-old girl weeps while laying head on her knees as foreign soldiers handed over the bodies of her family members killed during the ongoing operation Moshtarak in southern Helmand province. The girl, resident of Marja district, lost her 10 family members in a NATO missile strike (Source:
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/02/17/bodies-of-12-civilians-killed-by-nato-handed-over-to-families.html
)

The following Table details the 80-86 Afghan civilians killed by direct U.S/NATO actions along several dimensions. The numbers represent a low-count insofar as they do not include many Pashtun civilians killed in the Pakistani border regions by U.S drone strikes. The Table demonstrates that close to three-quarters of all civilian deaths resulted from air strikes (including the rocket strike in Marja on February 14th). U.S/NATO occupation forces killed civilians in the provinces of Uruzgan, Helmand, Kunduz, Kandahar, Paktia, Kapisa, Farah and in Miranshah (drone strike in Pakistan). The average number of civilians killed in an air strike was ten, whereas in a ground attack it was 2.4. But ground attacks are more deadly for foreign occupation forces. Some 46% of civilian casualties were accounted for by two deadly air strikes – the HiMars rocket strike upon a home in Marjah on February 14th and that by U.S. Special Forces in Dai Kundi, Uruzgan on February 22nd. A Marjah resident noted,

Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban.[4]

Table  Afghan and Pashtun Civilians killed by U.S/NATO Occupation Forces during February 2010

And what is reported in the mainstream western press? For the first two months of 2010, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission’s Fareed Hamidi trumpeted a dip in civilian deaths, announcing for all those willing to listen that 71 civilians had died at the hand of Afghan and foreign forces.[5]  The UN naturally parroted this gross under-count. In fact, as I reported, foreign forces alone killed 150-156 Afghan civilians during the first two months of 2010.[6]  In other words, the AIHRC only counts one in two Afghan civilians killed by foreign forces. Another font of propaganda, the Soros-bankrolled Open Society Institute, reassured its readers that protecting civilians and protecting troops in Afghanistan was part of the “new” counterinsurgency-style offensive.[7]

In 2008, the UNAMA captured about 70% of Afghans killed by foreign forces, but in 2009 the figure was under 40%, justifiably earning UNAMA’s performance as being faith-based (or ideologically-inspired) counting. Sadly, ‘groupies’ like the western media, peace groups and even the World Socialist Web Site (wsws) uncritically go about citing spurious UNAMA figures, for example endlessly mentioning that Afghan civilian deaths caused by “coalition forces” have declined: naturally they have since the UNAMA missed only 30% of such deaths in 2008, but 60% in 2009.

As I have argued and documented, in fact a trade-off exists between protecting foreign occupation forces and Afghan civilians.[8]   Such trade-off is best captured by the ratio of Afghan civilians killed per dead foreign occupation soldier. This ratio was 4.97 in 2007, 3.19 for 2008, 1.94 for 2009, and for Jan-Feb 2010 it was 1.48.[9]  In effect, the Obama regimen involved trading off US/NATO soldier deaths for fewer Afghan civilian ones in order to placate critical NATO members.[10]

Conclusion

Air strikes still kill the majority of Afghan civilians. The absolute number of Afghan civilians killed by foreign occupation forces is not declining.[11]   The mainstream western media with few exceptions and organizations like UNAMA and the AIHRC de facto serve the Obama news management effort by severely under-reporting Afghan civilians killed by foreign forces.

Notes

1. Most recently in my “Technology Spectacles: the Country that Produced MRE’s now gives Afghans Drones and GRR (Government-Ready-to-Rule) Kits,” RAWA News (March 3, 2010) at
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/03/03/technology-spectacles-the-country-that-produced-mres-now-gives-afghans-drones-and-grr-government-ready-to-rule-kits.html

2. Kathy Gannon, “Afghan Wounded Tell of More Left Behind in Marjah,” Associated press (February 24, 2010) at
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEB2VT9-Ux1pdXs8XuxMSo6zcajgD9E2N4Q00

3. Ibid

4. Jay Boone, “Thousands of Civilians flee Afghan Region as NATO Plans Onslaught,” The Guardian (February 5, 2010)

5. “Afghanistan: Dip in Civilian Deaths in First Two Months of 2010,” IRIN News (March 1, 2010) at
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SHIG-835JLW?OpenDocument

6. Herold (2010) in Table 1.

7.  Erica Gaston, “Protecting Civilians and Protecting Troops in Afghanistan,” The AFPAK Channel (February 19, 2010) at
http://blog.soros.org/2010/02/protecting-civilians-and-protecting-troops-in-afghanistan/

8.  In my “Killing the Innocents to Save ‘Our Troops’,” RAWA News (October 15, 2009) at
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/10/15/killing-the-innocents-to-save-our-troops.html

9. Herold (2010), op. cit

10. See my “Obama’s Unspoken Trade-Off,” Frontline. India’s National Magazine 26, 18 (August 29 – September 11, 2009) at
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2618/stories/20090911261813000.htm

11. See Table 1 in Herold (2010), op. cit. ]]> http://canadasworld.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/afghanistan-behind-the-headlines-what-canadas-media-isnt-telling-us/ Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:20:40 +0000 reneethewriter http://canadasworld.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/afghanistan-behind-the-headlines-what-canadas-media-isnt-telling-us/

Hamid Karzai - the usual predicted speeches are here, but what's really going on behind the scenes? Photo by Remy Steinegger, NowPublic.

As predicted earlier, Afghan President Karzai must now face a run-off vote in two weeks. Our Prime Minister follows a nobel peace prize winner in mouthing the accepted speaking points. And you can read one view about Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s position on the torture of Afghan prisoners here, along with issues of the day.

Today’s statement of the obvious: the mess in A/Stan will deepen and our role will get stickier. Forewarned is forearmed – clichés to keep us warm and alongside them,  a reading list to keep handy in the next month.

President Karzai’s chief rival – Abdullah Abdullah – an ophthalmologist, former advisor to  various mujahedeen ( remember them? What the US funded when  “we” were against the Commies; oops. Then they “became” The Taliban) and a spokesperson for the Northern Alliance. Always useful to read Malalai Joya on that configuration.

Deconstructing the Taliban – who are they? The New York Times this week runs a series by David Rohde – held captive for 7 months. His account is picked up by many “Af/Pak” news sources.  My thoughts so far on Rhode’s account: nerve-wracking to read, thought-provoking to contemplate, and needful of the wisdom of this seminal piece by one of the world’s best journalists – Ryszard Kapuscinksi’s The Other. Irritated by too much “politically correct neo- colonial deconstruction”? (ahem). This guy’s got the real stuff and still comes down on the side of less Kipling, more thinking.

If you get your foreign affairs news from the CBC, the Globe and the Asper clan, also recommended:

A refresher on our Canadian Military mission – Parliament’s library staff provide us with this 2007 report. I welcome update links.

The War Report – a historic trove of Afghan archived essays and reports, including the  must read, Ahmed Rashid for the New York Review of Books.

Kathy Gannon’s book I is for Infidel – note how rarely Canada’s mainstream press pick up her by-line: she’s Timmins born  and once wrote at the Kelowna Courier before becoming an AP reporter based in Pakistan and Afghanistan for 18 years.

And yes, there’s more:

Important and new: Jo Comerford’s statistical analysis (National Priorities Project) of what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the US commonweal. Where is our Canadian equivalent? Sample Item: every gallon of gas used by US forces in A/Stan costs $400. The Marines reportedly consume 800,000 gallons of  gas each day.  Comerford maintains that next month US war making in Iraq and A/Stan will hit the $1 trillion mark. What are Canada’s total  A/stan mission/war expenditures to date?

Sidebar: New America Media reports that the divorce rate triples for U.S. Female Soldiers – linked, of course to increased tours of duty. What are the figures for Canadian personnel?

Important and not as new: Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books – if you read only one thing about our war in A/Stan read this. Sample: ” …a bewildering range of different logical connections and identities can be concealed in a specialized language derived from development theory and overlaid with management consultancy.”

Is Afghanistan Vietnam or Iraq? This will continue to come up:  Sunday,   the NYT ran an op/ed  by retired Army lieutenant  Lewis Sorley, which among others things suggested a favorable assessment of Vietnam’s  Nguyen Van Thieu’ regime aka Hamid Karzai. But check out Thieu’s obit in the Independent. Which brings us back to my starting point: Hamid Karzai – hand maiden and puppet of the U.S.   See  Gwynne Dyer, The Mess They Made – the middle east after Iraq.

There’s also, as always, Glenn Greenwald’s continuing blog rebuttal of almost everything published in the New York Times ( which does seem to be ramping up pro-surge pieces reminiscent of Judy Miller’s WMD fantasies); Greenwald takes on  Slate, (Kaplan), and The New Republic (take your pick; although a good piece worth reading is A.J. Rossmiller, “Stalemate”: yes, A/stan is like Iraq, in the bad days and that means, a/the insurgency can’t defeat US/NATO forces and b/ US/NATO forces can’t defeat the insurgency.)

If you missed PBS’s new documentary, Obama’s War, head to the site and watch and read. In addition to a download there’s analysis. Is there a CBC equivalent? Harper’s War. Let me know if I’ve missed something.

And last but not least, tucked away in the Globe and Mail’s drumbeat for “supporting our mission/our troops/our way of life/” – this chilling little number by  a military expert from Calgary. I agree with his prediction: if either the Liberals or the Tories in this country win a majority, we citizens will see our mission in Afghanistan extended and our troop deployment increased.

A book was published recently called “Seeds Of Terror” By Gretchen Peters.  In a review of that book, by Kathy Gannon in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Gannon states that Afghanistan was nearly poppy free in 2001, when the US government and it’s allies put into power  ” the very warlords and drug kingpins who had given rise to the Taliban”

It is not obvious just who is profitting most from the drug trade, but part of the hundreds of millions from the sale of opium that comes from the poppy crops, are being used to fund al Qeada. UN estimates say that 300 million goes to funding the Taliban. 

The Taliban helps farmers with the  production of the poppy crop, providing  farming services and assistance.

One way that the United States could return Afghanistan to the traditional crops that were being grown in 2001, is to start  a micro-lending/subsidy program for Afghan farmers, instead trying to eradicate the poppy crop physically to reduce opium production.

The United States should focus on setting in place, a nationwide program that offers an option to farmers and that provides the farming services and assistance that the Taliban are now offering.

Thus killing two birds with one stone – reduce funding to the Taliban which will lessen their power in Afghanistan and possibly cutting funding for Al Queada. (also helping Afghan farmers get out of the drug trade)

 Write to your congress person and ask that they look into this issue.

PEACE

Note: “Power of the Poppy ” article by Kathy Gannon in the Wall Street Journal , Friday June 26 2009

“Seeds Of Terror” Book By Gretchen Peters 

From China- Daily News , June 16, 2009

Help us or we’ll grow opium, say Afghan villagers

 TALBOZANG, Afghanistan – Fifty-year-old Abdul Wadud walked for two hours across Afghanistan’s remote northern mountains to hear a police commander give yet more promises of aid for those who turn their backs on growing opium.

Wadud does not grow drugs. But if no money comes soon, he will.

“The government told us several times they would help us and they didn’t,” he said, crouching barefoot on the ground in traditional Afghan loose shirt and trousers and explaining he feeds a family of 15 on occasional work as a day laborer.

“If the government or the aid organizations don’t help us — yes we will have to start growing opium,” he said.

“If they build us schools and roads we promise never to grow opium.”

Wadud and around 30 other village elders from the area had gathered on a hillside deep inside the Hindu Kush mountains, to attend a “shura”, or meeting, organised by provincial authorities to dissuade the men from growing the drug.

Their Badakhshan province in remote northern Afghanistan has been a showcase for government efforts to battle the drugs trade, which accounts for nearly all the world’s heroin.

Until 2006 Badakhshan was one of the main opium growing areas in Afghanistan, producing the country’s second biggest crop.

But last year its output fell by 95 percent, to a mere 200 hectares under cultivation, close to being declared ‘poppy free’ by the United Nations, which credited government information campaigns and eradication programmes for the success there.

The United Nations has warned, however, that last year’s improvement may not hold without more aid for poor farmers.

“Badakhshan may bounce back to opium cultivation if the government fails to deliver promises made to farmers for alternative development activities,” the UN drugs agency said in its opium survey report last August.

 “DISGRACE”

Sayed Musqin Wafaqish, a police commander sent in from Kabul to head counter-narcotic efforts in the area, told the bearded men seated on rolled-out plastic carpets that the aid is coming, as long as they do not revert to growing opium.

“We know you are poor and because you are poor you want to grow poppy,” he said. “It is bad for Afghanistan. It is a disgrace. It gives a bad name for Afghanistan because we are growing poppy. I promise you in the near future you will get some help. Your village is on the top of the list.”

Despite a marginal drop in production, Afghanistan last year still produced more than 90 percent of the world’s opium, a thick paste from poppies which is processed to make heroin. But the overall numbers hide wide variations from province to province.

As a result of improvements in areas under government control in recent years, most of the production is now concentrated in southern provinces such as Helmand, in areas partly or wholly controlled by Taliban militants.

Fighters use the trade to fund their insurgency, and it also breeds corrosive government corruption. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this year Afghanistan was in danger of becoming a failed “narco-state”.

The government and its Western backers say the drop in production in northern provinces under their grip, like Badakhshan, is a sign they can fight drugs in areas they control.

Afghan and Western anti-narcotics officials tout “alternative development” projects such as providing wheat seeds to farmers. But locals at the shura say they have yet to see the benefits.

Sayed Amir, 60, an elder from the village of Talbozang, shook his head when asked if he has received any government help.

“No, no, no. Never,” he said. “The government promised us seeds but we never received them.”

Officials in the peaceful north say they have received far less international aid than in the violent south, where donors spend money to win over hearts and minds from insurgents.

“We hear in radio broadcasts that the international community is helping our country. Where is the help?” said Sayed Ayub, head of Talbozang’s development council, as US military and State Department officials who traveled to the shura looked on.

“We are ready for any cooperation with the government. If the government asks us not to grow poppy, they should help us.”

www.my.barackobama.com

www.chinadaily.com

www.wallstreet.com

www.congress.org