'Dozens dead' in Turkish assault

Turkey's army says its ground offensive in northern Iraq has left five soldiers and dozens of Kurdish rebels dead.

Turkey said its ground forces had crossed the border to tackle rebels late on Thursday after an air and artillery bombardment.

PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the offensive is limited in scale and troops will return as soon as possible.

The UN secretary general and the US have urged Turkey to show restraint in the offensive.

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Gus: the UN secretary general should resign forthwith. Anything less than a strong condemnation of the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish region shall not do — especially from the UN. I believe Saddam would have fought the Turks — even to protect the Kurds as his own wipping boys... The UN, the US and its phoney allies should condemn the Turks for this incursion in what is still called Iraq...

Afghanistan mission close to failing - US

Injection of troops and aid has not brought stability says intelligence chief
the Guardian on Friday February 29 2008

After six years of US-led military support and billions of pounds in aid, security in Afghanistan is "deteriorating" and President Hamid Karzai's government controls less than a third of the country, America's top intelligence official has admitted.

Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control.

The Afghan government angrily denied the US director of national intelligence's assessment yesterday, insisting it controlled "over 360" of the country's 365 districts. "This is far from the facts and we completely deny it," said the defence ministry.

But the gloomy comments echoed even more strongly worded recent reports by thinktanks, including one headed by the former Nato commander General James Jones, which concluded that "urgent changes" were required now to "prevent Afghanistan becoming a failed state".

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A Prince to the rescue...
New Idea pleads ignorance on Harry embargo

Australian women's magazine New Idea says it did not knowingly break an embargo on news of Britain's Prince Harry serving in Afghanistan, but was simply unaware of a media blackout.

News that the third-in-line to the British throne is working as a forward air controller in the frontline fight against Taliban guerrillas in Helmand province has gone around the world after it was confirmed by the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) overnight

Little notice was taken of the January 7 report in Australia, but the US-based Drudge Report website picked up the story this week and posted it on the internet, prompting the British press to follow suit.

The Drudge Report said New Idea and the German tabloid Bild were the first to break a world embargo.

New Idea, which gives extensive coverage to the British royal family along with celebrity gossip, recipes and lifestyle stories, refused to reveal how it had come by the story.

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Is the release of the information on Prince Harry WORLDWIDE an orchestrated smoothie to the public impatience to the war going camel-ised? Or make us swallow a "gallant" loss?

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New role was 'carrot' in response to threat of resigning commission

The job that Prince Harry was doing in Afghanistan was essentially a "carrot" to stop him leaving the army after he was refused permission to fight in Iraq with the soldiers he had led throughout his army career.

After his men left for Basra without him, he retrained for a job he had not before done. He was then deployed to Afghanistan without his regiment or the soldiers he commanded as a cornet in the Household Cavalry, equivalent to the rank of second lieutenant.

Instead of being the troop leader of a group of four Scimitar tanks which work as the "eyes and the ears" of the army and operate on the frontline, his principal job in Afghanistan has been to control aircraft from the relative safety of a heavily fortified camp.


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We are far from the days of the little prince silly garbs

Prince Harry has apologised for wearing a swastika armband to a friend's fancy dress party.

Clarence House issued a statement in response to a photograph published on the front page of the Sun newspaper under the headline, "Harry the Nazi".

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And remember the royals in switzerland...

see toon at top... 

Prince Harry Withdrawn From Afghanistan

By SARAH LYALL
Published: February 29, 2008

LONDON — The Defense Ministry announced Friday that Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, would have to come home from Afghanistan because it was too risky for him to stay there.

The prince, 23, has been in Helmand Province with the British Army since December with the knowledge of most of the British news media, who agreed to keep the news secret for security reasons. Details of his deployment became widely known only when they were reported by the Drudge Report on Thursday and the British media decided that the agreement was off.

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Gus: New Idea is tooted here for leaking like a "no idea" (Daily Telegraph headline) but in the US it is blamed on the "Drudge Report"... Thus me-think, the leak was "organised" and then "blamed" with no damning of "culprits", even buttered with faint praise, just to let the public know "Prince Harry had been to Afghanistan."

One has to ask: "What would have been the payola of sending the Prince there if the public did not know?..." and if many media organisation around the word knew, other nefarious organisation would have had to know..." and three month playing little soldier in a battle going nowhere may have been "long enough..." for a Prince... Some of us are born with a silver spoon...

September 19, 2008
War and Drought Threaten Afghan Food Supply
By CARLOTTA GALL

YAKOWLANG, Afghanistan — A pitiable harvest this year has left small farmers all over central and northern Afghanistan facing hunger, and aid officials are warning of an acute food shortage this winter for nine million Afghans, more than a quarter of the population.

The crisis has been generated by the harshest winter in memory, followed by a drought across much of the country, which come on top of the broader problems of deteriorating security, the accumulated pressure of returning refugees and the effects of rising world food prices.

The failure of the Afghan government and foreign donors to develop the country’s main economic sector, agriculture, has compounded the problems, the officials say. They warn that the food crisis could make an already bad security situation worse.

MEANWHILE

Federal Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon says it is too early to say whether Australian soldiers were responsible for mistakenly killing an Afghan district governor yesterday.

Australian Defence Force (ADF) officials say Australian troops might have killed the governor and some police officers during a shootout with militants.

The Afghan Government and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are conducting a joint-investigation into the incident.

Mr Fitzgibbon says the investigation should be allowed to run its course.

"We believe our rules of engagement are quite robust and appropriate for the circumstance we find ourselves in in Afghanistan," he said.

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see toon at top

From the New York Times

October 4, 2008
‘Dictator’ Proposed for Afghanistan in Leaked Cable
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS — A coded French diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper quotes the British ambassador in Afghanistan as predicting that the NATO-led military campaign against the Taliban will fail. That was not all. The best solution for the country, the envoy said, would be the installation of an “acceptable dictator,” according to the newspaper.

“The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust,” the British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as saying by the author of the cable, François Fitou, the French deputy ambassador to Kabul.

The two-page cable — which was sent to the Élysée Palace and the French Foreign Ministry on Sept. 2, and was leaked to the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé, which printed excerpts in its Wednesday edition — said that the NATO-led military presence was making it harder to stabilize the country. 

...

Acknowledging that there is no option other than supporting the Americans in Afghanistan, the ambassador reportedly added, “But we must tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one.” The American strategy, he is quoted as saying, “is destined to fail.”

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Gus: if that stuff is in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé, there's 99.99 per cent chance that the information is correct despite the Pommy denials... The little "duck in chains" knows. ...

Meanwhile at the coalface of Aussie troops: 

Losing hearts and minds in Afghanistan

Amin Saikal
October 4, 2008

Until a fortnight ago, the Australian troops deployed in Afghanistan to provide security and reconstruction had had a reasonably clean run. They had managed to distinguish themselves from their American counterparts by operating in ways that avoided antagonising the local population.

But this approach was dealt a severe blow on September 19, when Australian SAS soldiers reportedly killed in a firefight an influential figure in Oruzgan Province. This incident received limited coverage in the Australian media, yet its significance must not be underestimated. The man killed was Rozi Khan, a respected tribal leader and the district governor of Chora, in Oruzgan. An ally of the US-backed Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, he was elected as the district leader of Chora in the area's first free election in June, by a healthy majority.

He was the Provincial Police Chief of Oruzgan between 2002 and 2006, and a close ally of the then governor of Oruzgan, Jan Mohammad. The two played critical roles in helping and safeguarding Karzai when he launched his resistance to the Taliban, with US backing, in October-December 2001.

In other words, Khan was a very popular and influential anti-Taliban ethnic Pashtun figure in a province that has been the hotbed of the Taliban insurgency. His loss has the potential for a popular backlash and tribal revenge against the Australian forces, which are jointly involved with a Dutch contingent in a provincial reconstruction team and security operations.

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It took 20 years for the Taliban and the warlords (and the CIA who supported them) to oust the Russians from Afghanistan. In reality, the Russians could have carried on for another 20 years but they lost heart in trying to support the fledgling communist Afghan government that no-one wanted, especially the USA, because it would have demanded equality of sexes, be godless and imposed other egalitarian structured values, these latter values mostly opposed by the corrupt practices of modern capitalism — where opportunity for all is tooted, but in practice is modified into greedy opportunism for the shrewdest and the richest.

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Rapists Freed in Afghanistan to be Investigated

There will be a full investigation into the case of two convicted rapists who were given a pardon by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May. The victim, Sara, discovered that the men had been released from prison when she they saw them walking in their village and she has since been forced into hiding with her husband, Dilawar, according to BBC News.
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Obviously if this story is true, the USA can no longer trust Afghan President Hamid Karzai if they ever did.

The Taliban is the pits of human organised behaviour, especially in regard to women. But they are not the only ones. While the Taliban group do it "philosophically" and to some extreme (yet they do not tolerate some violence against women) other people can behave worse "individually" in all corners of the globes including in the USA.

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May be the USA should invite the Russians back in force (presently the Russian are only a token element of the allies "fighting" in Afghanistan) to re-install a fully operational "semi-or full communist" government and use fully armored troops, aka invasion of Iraq style, to crush the Taliban into insignificance without fear or favor. Let the Russian do the "dirty" work, which we only do from the tips of our guns because of our guilty morality...

The Warlords would have to come to terms with this new imposed arrangement in which no god would have anything to do with government. NATO can deal with the Warlords, forcefully if needed. Set in place for ten years maximum, this "semi-communist" outfit can slowly evolve into a more "democratic" governing body progressively.

Trying to do the sauce "alla americana" freedomola with the semi-sharia Afghan laws is on its way to failure like gluggy instant soup to which ones adds melamine for flavor.

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Now, is the purpose of the war in Afghanistan to:

run a pipeline from east to west?

improve the quality of life of women?

defeat the Taliban?

create a stable government?

defeat Bin Laden?

enforce Pakistan to deal severely with its "terrorist" schools?

minimise the bullshit and propaganda?

sell expensive French perfume in Kabul's exclusive store?

give our troops live ongoing ground training?

give the god of the west an edge upon the god of the east?

carry on without knowing what we're doing? and what for?

do peace-meal what needs to be done once and for all?

other reasons? other non-reasons?

profits?

whatever?

Please explain...

see toon at top...

ps: I am anti-war. I hate war. But if one does war, one cannot do it half-baked, claiming righteousness and morality and all that stuff. Do it or don't.

Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Heroin Trade

WASHINGTON — When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.

Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Mr. Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.

Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.

The assertions about the involvement of the president’s brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.

U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan.

The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a global campaign against terrorism.

Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in neighboring Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of Afghanistan’s most vexing problems are of the country’s own making, the officials said.

The report cites gains in the building of Afghanistan’s national army, the officials said. But they said it also laid out in stark terms what it described as the destabilizing impact of the booming heroin trade, which by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan’s economy.

The Bush administration has initiated a major review of its Afghanistan policy and has decided to send additional troops to the country. The downward slide in the security situation in Afghanistan has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, along with questions about whether the White House emphasis in recent years on the war in Iraq has been misplaced.

see toon at top and blog here...

Nato to target Afghan drugs trade

Nato has agreed its troops will be allowed to attack opium factories for the first time in Afghanistan.

Alliance spokesman James Appathurai said troops will act with Afghan forces "against facilities and facilitators" using drugs to finance the Taleban.

Agreement was reached during a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Budapest.

Nato countries have been under pressure from US officials, who want more aggressive tactics against the booming opium trade in Afghanistan.

Several Nato members have expressed reluctance to take such action, fearing that any crackdown would prompt a violent backlash against allied troops.

Mr Appathurai said participation would be "subject to the authorisation of respective nations".

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Baksheesh and backlash... 
see toon at top...

Civilian dead are a trade-off in Nato's war of barbarity
The killing of innocent Afghans by US bombs is the result of a calculation, not just a mistake. And it is fuelling resistance

          o Seumas Milne
          o The Guardian,
          o Thursday October 16 2008

While the eyes of the western world have been fixed on the global financial crisis, the military campaign that launched the war on terror has been spinning out of control. Seven years after the US and Britain began their onslaught on Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and capture Osama bin Laden, the Taliban surround the capital, al-Qaida is flourishing in Pakistan and the war's sponsors have publicly fallen out about whether it has already been lost.

As the US joint chiefs of staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen concedes that the country is locked into a "downward spiral" of corruption, lawlessness and insurgency, Britain's ambassador in Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, is quoted in a leaked briefing as declaring that "American strategy is destined to fail". The same diplomat who told us last year that British forces would be in Afghanistan for decades now believes foreign troops are "part of the problem, not the solution".

The British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith was last week even blunter. "We're not going to win this war," he said, adding that if the Taliban were prepared to "talk about a political settlement", that was "precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this". The double-barrelled duo were duly slapped down by US defence secretary Robert Gates for defeatism. But even Gates now publicly backs talks with the Taliban, which are in fact already taking place under Saudi sponsorship.

This is the conflict western politicians and media continue to urge their reluctant populations to support as a war for civilisation. In reality, it is a war of barbarity, whose contempt for the value of Afghan life has fuelled the very resistance that western military and political leaders are now unable to contain.

see toon at top... and pray to your favorite godperson...

George Bush today pledged that the US would not walk away from Afghanistan despite the rising levels of violence in the country.

After flying from Baghdad - where an Iraqi reporter called him a "dog" and threw his shoes at him - under cover of darkness, the US president expressed confidence that the west would succeed in Afghanistan because its cause was just.

"I told the president you can count on the United States," Bush, alongside the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, told a news conference in Kabul.

"Just like you've been able to count on this administration, you will be able to count on the next administration as well."

Bush arrived in Afghanistan as the resurgent Taliban is tightening its grip around Kabul and other major cities.

The US president-elect, Barack Obama, has accused the Bush administration of neglecting Afghanistan, and has promised to make the country a higher priority.

Bush - who has already ordered more troops for Afghanistan - appeared to lend tacit support to Obama's pledge to further increase troop levels after he takes office next month.

"I want him to succeed, I want him to do well," he said. "I'd expect you'll see more US troops here as quickly as possible in parts of the country that are being challenged by the Taliban."

However, Bush said much progress had been made in Afghanistan since US and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban after the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001.

When accused by an Afghan reporter of failing to make good on US promises to bring security, Bush said: "I respectfully disagree ... I just cited the progress.

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No progress made in real terms. Nothing to be cited except more grief...

The Taliban has strengthened in "retreat". Its ideals are still as brutal and regressive as ever, if not more, and its resolve is planned for a conflict that will last another 20 years — forcing our armies to increase the sauce. After seven years of Bushit wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the end is not even in sight. and people are fed up with it. See toon at top and throw your shoes at the tele... please don't, you'll damage your screen, just do it virtually...

There is no "just cause" for war — on any side...