Articles on Afghanistan after 2006
- (September 2006)
While the world was sleeping,
the Soviet Union killed one million people in Afghanistan.
While the world was sleeping, Islamic "charities" of Saudi Arabia
helped create the Taliban in Pakistan.
While the world was sleeping, the Taliban seized power and created one of
the most disgusting dictatorships in modern history.
While the world was sleeping, the Taliban carried out a scientific extermination
of non-Islamic religions.
While the world was sleeping, the Taliban destroyed two giant Buddhas that
were more than a thousand years old.
While the world was sleeping, Osama bin Laden trained thousands of Muslim
fanatics to fight the USA.
While the world was sleeping, Algerian suicide bombers killed Ahmad Shah Mas'ud, the leader of the anti-Taliban resistance.
A few days later, while the world was still sleeping, Osama bin Laden planned the 2001 terrorist attacks against the USA that killed 3,000 people.
While the world was sleeping (and the USA was busy being humiliated in
Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela and Iran),
suicide bombers have killed hundreds of people in Afghanistan: 20 in june 2005 in a Kandahar mosque, 12 in september 2005 in Kabul, 10 in january 2006 in in Uruzgan province, 24 in january 2006 in Kandahar province, 17 in february 2006 in Kandahar and Farah provinces, 21 in august 2006 in Kandahar province, 17 in august 2006 in the southern province of Helmand, 16 in Kabul in september 2006.
The grand total for the first nine months of 2006 is 78 suicide bombings across Afghanistan, killing close to 200 people.
Afghanistan is collapsing thanks to a double attack on ordinary people and institutions. On one hand, Taliban militants have adopted the suicide attacks successfully used by insurgents in Iraq to destabilize the Iraqi society. It worked in Iraq, and they feel that it can work also in Afghanistan. After all, Islam seems to enjoy an unlimited supply of Muslims who are willing to die in order to kill as many innocents as possible.
On the other hand, the USA has done very little to improve the lives of ordinary people. In five years very little has been built with the billions of dollars that were donated by countries around the world. Kabul is still an awful place
to live in (Rumsfeld's family should be relocated to Kabul, so he would stop
claiming that life in Kabul improves by the day). And Kabul is by far the
safest and "richest" place in Afghanistan. The rest of the country is still
living in the stone age. No wonder that Afghanistan is experiencing record
revenues from drug trafficking: there is no other way to make a living.
The USA has failed to create an infrastructure, and failed to build even the
most obvious necessities for ordinary people. As usual, the Bush administration
has showed no understanding and/or no compassion for ordinary people, the
same syndrome that haunts it from New Orleans to Baghdad.
The combined effect of a spiraling terrorist campaign and of a fruitless
reconstruction policy can lead millions of Afghans to reconsider how much
they hated the Taliban.
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- (September 2005)
The difference between Afghanistan and Iraq
While Afghanistan is recently not pacified and secure yet, there is no question
that nothing on the scale of Iraq's civil war had taken place in post-invasion
Afghanistan. There is a legitimate leader, Karzai, who tops the polls for most
popular leader in Asia. There is a constitution and there have been local
and national elections. There is, in other words, a functioning democracy,
no less primitive than the ones that Japan or Italy had after the war.
Iraq, on the other hand, is witnessing the most brutal campaign of suicide
bombers (the sins of the fathers: suicide bombing was invented by Khomeini,
a shiite leader, and perfected by Hezbollah, a shiite group, and now kills
mainly Iraqi shiites).
Iraq had all the advantages. It was a much more developed and civilized
country than poor and mountainous Afghanistan. Iraq is a relatively homogeneous
country, inhabited by mainly two ethnic groups (Kurds and Arabs) and sharing
the same religion (Islam). Afghanistan, on the other hand, is an ethnic mess,
with more than 100 ethnic groups and often groups who mostly live in
neighboring countries such as Pakistan.
The borders of Iraq are relatively easy to control, as one can easily spot
a man marching in the desert.
The borders of Afghanistan are as difficult to patrol as a border can get.
After the invasion, Afghanistan got relatively little help from the rest of
the world. Iraq got 60 billion dollars for the USA alone, and hundreds of
billions of dollars in different forms from the rest of the world.
Afghanistan is protected by 18,000 USA soldiers and by a few thousand NATO
troops who have pledged not to shoot unless they are shot at. In other words,
the Afghan police and soldiers are mostly on their own.
Iraq, on the other hand, is protected by 170,000 coalition troops that are
more than willing to attack insurgents.
One possible explanation for the difference is that the massive USA
investment in Iraq is backfiring: sometimes less is better than more.
The other possible explanation is that Iraq is a mess because the whole
Arab world is a mess, and has been a mess for a long time.
It is not about the USA, but about the Arab world
that still has to learn to clean up and police itself.
Hundreds of millions of Arabs still pretend that the first explanation is
enough. We rarely hear Arab politicians or clerics accuse the Arab civilization
for the mess in the Arab world.
Arab mosques never blame the Arabs for the mess in the Arab world.
As usual, they think it's all because of the infidels, and that
there is nothing wrong with their civilization.
(See The Islamic world is perfect).
The Afghans have found a hero in Karzai, while the most notorious Arabs in the
world (and especially within the Arab world itself) are terrorists.
In fact, the Arab masses tend to despise any politician who gets democratically
elected in Iraq, as if being elected in a democratic election was some kind
of shameful event. And the Arab masses tend to speak highly of people like
Osama bin Laden and Al Zarqawi and now even of Saddam Hussein
(who have not only killed thousands of
innocents, but also killed more Muslims than Israel or the USA).
Why can't the Arabs have a hero who is a democratic politician, a scientist,
a writer or a human-right activist, instead of a terrorist or a dictator?
Perhaps this is the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq: the Afghans
realized that there was something wrong with their civilization, and are
trying to change it.
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- (September 2005)
Who defends Afghanistan.
Certainly not NATO. France and Germany have steadfastedly opposed any military
duties for NATO troops in Afghanistan. NATO soldiers in Afghanistan routinely
joke that they have barely enough people and weapons to defend themselves,
and don't even think about defending the people they were sent there to defend.
The USA is mostly engaged in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the mountains
at the borders with Pakistan. Thankfully, British and Canadian reinforcements
are arriving that will most likely trash NATO's orders and use force against
insurgents who use force.
Very few European countries seem seriously interested in maintaining peace
in Afghanistan. Countries such as France and Germany seem more than willing
to relinquish Afghanistan to the Taliban and let another Islamic regime
prevail. The logic is that they should only defend their own countries,
not other countries. A selfish logic indeed, but also a foolish one: do
the French and the Germans really think that the Islamic revolution would
stop in Afghanistan? Do they really think that, paraphrasing Churchill,
it is good to be eaten last by the crocodile? Wouldn't it be wiser to
simply get rid of the crocodile before it eats anybody at all?
Afghanistan's president KArzai has been criticized by Europeans for having
tolerated warlords, druglords and even Islamic jihadists (Abdul Rasul Sayyaf,
the mentor of Philippines' main Islamic terrorists, is even running for
election in the 2005 parliamentary elections). But how can Karzai fight
these powerful men, mostly funded by foreign entities (Saudi Arabia still
being the main source of support for the Taliban, Pakistan still being the
main source of support for the terrorists, and European heroin
consumers being the main source of support for the warlords), with his small
30,000-unit army that is not even enough to defend the capital Kabul?
2005 has been the deadliest year since the invasion for USA troops (69 USA
soldiers have been killed in the first eight months). Given the trouble in
Iraq and popular demand that Bush starts withdrawing troops from abroad,
and Pakistan's inability to deal with its own troublemakers,
and the USA's reluctance at attacking their bases inside Pakistan,
summed with chronic European indecisiveness,
the Taliban and Al Qaeda feel that they have an opportunity to regain some
territory. Rightly so. Candidates to the parliamentary elections have been
murdered in broad daylight. Many more may have been intimidated into
withdrawing.
Reinforcements such as the ones being sent by Britain and Canada are badly
needed. But why is it that in 2005 it is still only the Anglosaxon countries
(the same countries that fought Hitler, Mussolini, Petain and Franco) who
carry out most of the work to defeat the forces of tyranny?
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- (May 2005)
The vicious circle: how Islam fights its war.
Reports that some USA soldiers desecrated the Koran were exploited
by Islamic leaders in Afghanistan to start anti-American riots in
Jalalabad.
(Note that the same Islamic leaders routinely desecrate the USA flag,
and find nothing offensive about burning it).
After the end of the war, Afghanistan has been doing relatively well,
posting the highest growth rate in the world and working in earnest
on rebuilding its infrastructures after decades of war.
This is hardly in the interest of Islam. Wealthy, happy, healthy people
don't rely on Mohammed to provide their food, comfort and healing.
What happened in Jalalabad is typical of how Islam fights the "other" jihad,
the jihad with no weapons other than words. The riots have scared away
international organizations. And no business will think of opening offices
in this city. Jalalabad is now condemned to poverty and isolation.
People will lose jobs, children will have no future.
That is precisely what Islam desperately needs: poor, unhappy, sick people.
Everywhere in the world, Islam is using any pretext to create hatred against
the infidels, which in turn causes economic collapse and isolation, which in
turns enables Islam to stand up as the protector of the poor, which in turns
enables Islam to keep children from going to (real) schools and to keep
women under slavery.
Basically, Islam realized that it failed militarily, and it is now using
a different tactic to destroy Afghanistan.
Islam is an enemy of peace, and it is important that we find a way to explain
this vicious circle to the Muslim masses.
Nobody has tried yet. Respecting mosques and Korans is not the way to explain
to the masses that the mosques and the Koran (like most organized religions)
are one huge ripoff.
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- (June 2004)
Bring Afghanistan into NATO
NATO (the "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" has to reinvent itself, now that there are obviously no more enemies in the "North Atlantic" sphere). Instead
of defending itself from enemies of democracy, NATO should start defending new democracies from their enemies. It is, after all, in the common interest of all
democracies that new democracies are created and succeed.
Afghanistan will become a democracy in september, but countless (internal and
external) enemies conspire to derail the democratic process.
NATO and other countries are involved in
Afghanistan to protect the democratic process, but it would make a gigantic
difference if Afghanistan became part of NATO: instead of NATO being a mere
mentor of Afghan democracy, Afghanistan would become its front line. Any attack
on Afghanistan would automatically constitute an attack on the USA, Italy,
Britain, Poland, Germany, etc (that's the spirit of the NATO treaty).
And Iraq could be next. All new democracies should be allowed to join NATO
and benefit from the joint defense forces of the other democracies.
A truth that nobody wants to face is that in 2004 it is virtually impossible
for a democratic state to be born without any external help. Democracy is,
by definition, vulnerable because its enemies (both the domestic warlords,
the extremists/terrorists and the neighboring countries)
have different interests and do not abide by its rules
(respect for human rights, respect for people's opinions and so on): they
shoot to kill. The only way to create a democracy is to have other
countries provide the level of protection needed for the democracy to
survive and grow. This should become NATO's new mission in the 21st century.
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- (October 2003)
What ever happened to the war on drugs?.
One of the reasons to remove the Taliban was their tolerance for the druglords
that used Afghanistan as a sanctuary. Guess what. Now that Afghanistan has been
liberated and a USA ally is (theoretically) in control of the country,
three-quarters of the world's opium and about 90% of Europe's heroin
are still coming from Afghanistan.
(In november, the New York Times estimated that opium production had increased
1900% over the Taliban era, and that Afghanistan had become the world's major supplier of heroin).
Don't blame it on poverty. Afghanistan has posted an amazing 28% economic
growth last year. Two millions exiles and refugees have returned to the
country because of the vastly improved conditions. There is no famine, no
epidemics, no major bloodshed. For the first time in a long time, the
people of Afghanistan are going to the workplace, to school and to the soccer
stadium.
Since Noriega was removed in Panama by a USA invasion in 1991,
drug trafficking through Panama is estimated to have doubled.
Since Aristide was restored as president of Haiti by a USA invasion in 1994,
drug trafficking through Haiti is estimated to have tripled, and now accounts
for 15% of all drugs that enter the USA.
Since the Taliban have been removed by the USA,
Afghanistan has returned to be the main producer of drugs in the world.
The truth? The war on drugs is often a drug for war.
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- (October 2001)
False myths of Afghanistan
- The Taliban defeated the Soviet Union. False: the Taliban had barely started when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. The entire population of Afghanistan fought the Soviet Union. The Taliban arrived years after the Soviet Union had already withdrawn.
- The Taliban are the government of Afghanistan. False: all countries in the world but one (Pakistan) recognize the old government of Afghanistan, the one that was overthrown by the Taliban. The United Nations seat for Afghanistan is
still held by a representative of that government. The Northern Alliance that
is fighting the Taliban inside Afghanistan is related to the old government (it also includes other groups).
- "Taliban" is a word that stands for "Afghan". False: a "talib" is a
religious student, and "taliban" is simply the plural of "talib". The taliban
are all religious students who study in madras (Islamic schools).
This group came to be called "Taliban" because they originated from Pakistani
madras and were the most orthodox among the religious fighters in Afghanistan.
- The Afghans are Arabs. False: the Afghans are closer to Iran (most speak
the language of Iran, farsi) and have a completely different history (they even
used to be a sanctaury for Buddhism). The Arabs currently fighting with the
Taliban were brought to Afghanistan by the USA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fight the Soviet Union.
- The population of Afghanistan supports the Taliban. False: the Afghan
population may have supported them at the beginning, when they promised to
bring to an end the civil war that followed the withdrawal of Soviet troops,
but many years of dictatorship, crazy laws, torture, killings, extermination
have alienated even their own ethnic group. And Afghanistan has many minorities,
from shiites to Tajiks, that have been persecuted by the Taliban and are
actively fighting them (as part of the Northern Alliance). Literate women who
are now reduced to the status of animals have formed a secret resistance.
- Osama Bin Laden is a Talib. False: first of all Osama bin Laden is from
Saudi Arabia and he actually arrived way before the Taliban were even born.
He was among the first Arab volunteers recruited by the US to fight against
the Soviet Union. The Taliban arrived a decade later, when OSama Bin Laden and
the other volunteers had already kicked the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.
Osama Bin Laden has
certainly helped the Taliban and the Taliban are protecting him, but he has
never been part of the Taliban army. Ditto for the Brigade 55, which is made of
Arab volunteers more or less reporting to Osama Bin Laden.
- Osama Bin Laden's organization Al Qaeda is based in Afghanistan.
False: Osama Bin Laden may be in Afghanistan, but his organization is spread around the world, with
strong financial centers in Europe and the US and operatives in as many as 60
countries.
- Osama Bin Laden's men are Afghans. False: Osama Bin Laden has recruited
Muslims from all over the world. His deputy is Egyptian. The attack in New
York was carried out by Lebanese, Algerian, Saudi and Moroccan men.
One of those men was even a French citizen.
- The terrorists that attacked America on September 11, 2001 were Afghan. False: none of them was Afghan. They were from different Muslim countries.
- Mnay of the most wanted terrorists in the world are Afghan. False: there isn't a single Afghan national in the list of America's most wanted terrorists.
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- (September 2001)
Who blew up the World Trade Center?
Laden is consistently described as a weak, shy, fragile, ill man,
surrounded by lightly armed bodyguards, hiding in caves in the
desert. It appears that the only way to communicate with him is to
physically go and see him in his hide-out, which requires days of travel
if you are coming from abroad.
This is hardly the man who can coordinate terrorists
around the world, especially the terrorist organizations that
look a lot better organized and ferocious than these poor Afghans.
Laden boasts about his holy war against America, but there are many other
groups who are actively plotting against America day and night.
Laden wants to go down in history as a hero, therefore he talks a lot.
He never missed an opportunity to give an interview and repeat his mantra
that America is the enemy of Islam.
While his staunch anti-Americanism may have contributed to the recruitment
of hundreds of fanatical Muslims, other groups may be more responsible than
him for the real damage inflicted to America. These other groups may
have no interest or no desire to talk about their mission and identity,
and may not boast about their successes.
For being the leader of a gang of suicide bombers who do not hesitate to
give their lives, Osama Bin Laden is also unusually afraid of being captured
and killed by the United States. Instead of sacrificing himself as a martyr,
he hides in caves and refuses to give himself up.
Any of "his" men would have simply boobby-trapped himself,
surrendered and then blown himself up killing a few more Americans.
Osama Bin Laden, instead, is amazingly afraid of dying.
The men who attacked on September 11 were reportedly seen drinking alcohol
in bars and strip joints, hardly the behavior of a Islamic fundamentalist
who is willing to die for Islam so he can go to heaven.
These 19 terrorists (coming from all over the Arab world) got to know each
other in Europe. They trained in Britain and Germany. Then they moved
to the United States and they hardly had any contact with Afghanistan since.
Afghanistan is an extremely poor country, devastated by 20 years of Soviet
invasion (1979), civil war (1989), Taliban religious dictatorship (1996),
earthquakes, droughts, etc. There are virtually no road, no railways,
no airports, no telephones, and even no radios (the Taliban made it a crime
to listen to the radio). The vast majority of Afghans can't read or write.
True: millions of Afghan refugees living in sub-human conditions at the border
with Pakistan constitute the ideal ground to recruit suicide commandos.
But this is hardly the country where you can organize or coordinate anything,
even a family reunion, let alone an attack against America.
Afghanistan is surrounded by enemies: Iran is the only country to have fought
the Taliban and to have helped their enemies; Turkmenistan, Uzbelistan and
Tajikstan have been threatened by terrorists funded by Osama Bin Laden;
Russia fought (and lost) a lengthy war against the Afghan people and is fighting a war in
Chechnya where Afghan elements have shown up; the United Nations
and all countries in the world but three still recognize the government that
the Taliban kicked out in 1996; last but not least, the Afghan population
has been massacred and terrorized by the Taliban dictatorship and they must
be far from cooperating with the Taliban.
The only help has come from Pakistan (arms) and Saudi Arabia (money).
But even Pakistan is weary of them
because it is afraid of its own fundamentalists. Today, the Taliban fight
mainly with weapons stolen from the Soviet Union during the liberation war.
Afghanistan is hardly the country that could create, maintain or fund an
international network of anything. At best, it is the place where terrorists
could be recruited (because it is so poor and deadly) or hide
(because it is so isolated and lawless).
The more you think of it, the less Afghanistan looks like the place where
this plot could have been organized.
There is a possibility that we are simply on the wrong trail.
The Islamic world has precious few heroes these days and Laden may have
sensed that he could easily fill that spiritual vacuum.
Laden may be truthful, after all, when he says that he congratulates
the terrorists but they are not his own men.
No doubt we would do the world a favor by annihilating the Taliban and Osama
Bin Laden because they constitute something terribly evil (and that could
spread around the world). But they may just be relatively naive compared
to the real perpetrators.
It may well be that the real mastermind is alive and well in western Europe
or, why not, in the United States.
See the history of the Middle East
for more details.
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- (February 2001)
Centuries-old Buddha statues under threat in Afghanistan
The latest casualties of religious stupidity are the giant Buddha statues
in Afghanistan that the criminal Taliban rulers want destroyed
because they are much better than anything Islam ever created.
The Taliban also resent the meaning of the
Bamiyan Buddha, the main
Afghan monument and one of the main monuments in Asia.
The 55 meter high statue in the Ghorband Valley was built in the fourth century
after Christ by the Kushan empire that came from nearby central Persia
and annexed Afghanistan. That empire was far more powerful than anything
the miserable Taliban can ever hope to be.
Bamiyan is about 140 kms west of the Afghan capital of Kabul.
This happens while there are weekly reports (e.g.,
by Human Rights Watch) that the Taliban are massacring thousands of
people belonging to the Hazara ethnic group, who are largely Shiite Muslims.
(The Taliban are truly from hell, but they pretend to be
Sunni Muslims and mostly ethnic Pathans. Iran is Shiite and has been so far
the only country that opposed the Taliban. The USA and Europe have
been mostly supporting the Taliban).
This happens while the Taliban have reduced women to the status of animals.
Why the international community is so obsessed with Iraq when the Taliban
are a much worse threat to civilization and peace remains a mystery.
Russia and China both have to fear from Afghan fundamentalists. The United
States already paid dearly for terrorists trained and armed in Afghanistan.
Iran has been flooded by millions of refugees. Why can't Russia, China,
America and Iran wipe out the Taliban and restore order in Afghanistan?
Note:
Pakistan has been supporting Afghanistan and is justifying their actions.
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- (January 2000)
Women's hell in Afghanistan.
The Taliban who seized the power in Afghanistan have established one of the most
ferocious dictatorships in the world. The foremost victims are women, who have
been murdered by the thousands for crimes such as not wearing a veil or
reading a book.
In 1989 the religious groups that were fighting in Afghanistan issued a decree
forbidding women to work for foreign humanitarian organizations. The penalty:
death. Every nurse in Afghanistan became a criminal, liable to be hanged or
shot on the spot. This caused the deaths of countless people who suddenly
lost health care, at a time when most of Afghanistan was a battlefield.
Thousands of widows also lost the only source of income they had.
A few months later the same groups issued another decree forcing women to
wear the veil and a long dress, a cruel and insulting
tradition that goes back to the criminal Mohammed in person.
In 1990 women were forbidden to attend schools, even elementary schools.
If a child is caught reading a book, her parents are in trouble: it means
somebody taught her to read. Schools for girls were demolished and teachers
persecuted. Countless may have lost their lives. Since 1990 no female in
Afghanistan has (legally) received any education. Female children who are now
ten years of age do not know how to read or write. They are not supposed to
work, so an education is pointless. In 1992 women were fired from all
government posts. In 1996 the Taliban made it illegal for a woman to work,
anywhere anyhow. The Taliban also extended the dress code to the full dress
covering the entire body: not a centimeter of a woman must be visible.
Faithful to Quran's teachings that women are little more than animals,
the Taliban removed any civil rights for women: a woman who is raped, for
example, cannot sue the rapist, unless she has a male witness.
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-
(September 1998)
With the help of the United States, the Talebans have installed one of the
worst religious dictatorships in the world.
Now that the Talebans have proved to be muslim fanatics, Afghanistan has formed
a triangle of human rights enemies (with Iraq and Iran), but the odd fact is
that Afghanistan was created and armed by the United States.
In fact, the Taleban
have the strictest restrictions of personal freedom (especially for women)
and the most arbitrary justice in the whole muslim world.
An Afghani can only envy the freedom that
Iranians and Iraqis enjoy in their respective countries.
Among the crimes punished in Afghanistan with whippings and jail (and sometimes
torture and physical mutilation) are:
watching television, playing music, playing cards, flying kites,
trimming beards. Women cannot walk outside their homes and in particular girls
cannot attend schools.
The Talebans won the civil war with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia
(both U.S. allies). The civil war had started when the U.S. financed the
rebellion against the government installed by the Russians. The civil war
fronted the Russian-armed government troops against the "mujahedeens",
muslim freedom fighters.
Thousands of such "freedom fighters" came from Pakistan and are still coming.
Then the mujahedeens split in several militias, one of which, the Taleban,
showed better organization and eventually took over 90% of the country,
including (in 1996) the capital Kabul. Most of the other militias were
annihilated or fled the country, especially the ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks.
The Talebans, who are ethnic Pathans, have not only been fighting their enemy
forces in the north (led by Ahmad Shah Massoud): they
have scientifically exterminated Afghanistan's minorities (especially the
hated Tajiks). After last summer's offensive, hundreds of thousands of
people are missing. The population of Aghanistan is now estimated at 18 million,
down from 1990's 24 million. As of september 1999, about 130,000 refugees were
cramped in the Panishir Valley, at the mercy of the Talebans who can finish
them any time.
The Talebans never made a mystery of training muslim fundamentalists.
Osama bin Laden
is but the most famous of the international terrorists who operate
from camps inside Afghanistan. All of this has never been secret.
The Talebans have more than tolerated the opium trade that brings in most of
their revenues: Afghanistan now produces 75% of the world's opium (over 5000
tons) and therefore controls a large share of the world's heroin trafficking.
Most of the free world including the United States still
recognizes the government that was driven by the Talebans out of Kabul in
1996: the president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, lives in exile in
Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, and his defense minister, another ethnic
Tajik, is the same Ahmad Shah Massoud who commands the largest anti-Taleban
militia (about 10,000 men against the Taleban's 45,000).
Pakistan is the country responsible for all of this. If Pakistan stopped
supplying the Talebans with money, weapons, munitions, volunteers and logistic
support, the Talebans could be defeated.
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