The total failure of the Tory-Labour-Lib Dem alliance’s war in Afghanistan has been confirmed once again with the news that a new poll has shown that more than half of Afghans view western troops as “occupiers.”
The survey, conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany, has found that ten years after neocons conned Americans and Europeans into invading Afghanistan, a “majority of the local population has come to see the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as little more than occupiers.”
According to the survey, 56 percent of Afghans now see the foreign troop contingent as an occupying force. Furthermore, only 39 percent of those surveyed said they saw ISAF as a guarantee for security.
In addition, 60 percent think that the country will descend into civil war once ISAF forces withdraw.
The war was started by the necons under George Bush junior with the lie that the West needed to drive out Al-Qeada and “liberate the people of Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny.”
In reality, the attacks of September 11, 2001, were re planned in Germany and Spain, and conducted mainly by US-based Saudis to punish America for supporting Israel against the Palestinians.
The Taliban, a militant religious, anti-Communist movement of Pashtun tribesmen, was totally surprised by the events of /11. Osama bin Laden was in Afghaninstan at the time as a guest because he was a regarded as a national hero for fighting the Soviets in the 1980s, and was in fact aiding the Taliban’s struggle against the Afghan Communist-dominated “Northern Alliance.”
The Taliban also received US aid right up until May, 2001. The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and to employ Taliban against Russia’s Central Asian allies.
Most of the so-called “terrorist training camps” in Afghanistan were being run by Pakistani intelligence to prepare mujahidin fighters for combat in Indian-held Kashmir, a fact which makes a mockery of the neocon’s claim that Pakistan is a “great ally in the war against terror.”
In 2001, Al-Qaida only numbered 300 members. Most have since been killed. A handful escaped to Pakistan, and only a few remain in Afghanistan. Yet David Cameron, Nick Clegg and the Labour Party leaders all claim that western troops must “stay in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaida and prevent extremists from reacquiring these terrorist training camps.”
This claim, like Saddam’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, is a subterfuge top keep the public supporting the war. In reality, half of Afghanistan is today once again under Taliban control. Muslim extremists are currently using Somalia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, North and West Africa, the Sudan—and Muslim demographic strongholds in Europe—as headquarters to plan attacks.
How many more soldiers must die needlessly for this war? How much longer will the public stand for this outrage?
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I would have guessed it anyway. Too many of us in their part of the world obviously feels the same way as too many of them in ours. It’s really not surprising is it? How would you feel if Afghan soldiers were patroling your streets with AK 47’s. Probably the same as we do with black drug dealers patrolling our streets with Uzi 9mm’s. What could anyone else really expect?
In 1980, the UK government put great pressure on British athletes to boycott the Moscow Olympics, because of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. And many athletes complied.
So, because UK foreign policy is always consistent and fair….
In 2012, the UK government should be putting great pressure on British athletes to boycott the London Olympics.
BNP support plummets in yesterday’s South London ward by-election
Shortlands by-election results:
ABBIT, Gareth Wyn – The Labour Party Candidate – 256 votes
JAMES, Anna Louse – Green Party – 75 votes
JEFFERYS, David Barrington – The Conservative Party Candidate – 1480 votes
JENNER, Emmett – United Kingdon Independence Party – 153 votes
PAYNE, Michael Lionel – British National Party – 35 votes
PRASHAR, Anuja – Liberal Democrats – 490 votes
Yesterday’s by-election in South London where the result was 1.4% tied in with the by-election in North London in July in Bush Hill Park, Enfield, where the hapless Steve Squire received just 2.5% of the vote is a good snap shot of voters’ intentions in our capital. Griffin has created this, it’s a bloody disaster for Nationalism. And Griffin thought the recent riots would cause huge support for us, what a complete fool.
I just found this interesting perspective from an Australian ‘aid’ worker in Afghanistan. Its not the opinion you might expect or at least not completely. Makes you wonder what the hell this man is doing there himself.
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“PHIL SPARROW THE AID WORKER
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I HAVE been an aid worker with my wife and three kids now, in various parts of Afghanistan since 1999, since before Afghanistan was on the world’s lips, before it became a byword for ruination and violence.
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During these years, I’ve been shot at, my wife was struck by Taliban thugs, we lost our home and everything in it in the 2001 evacuation; our work has been corrupted, interrupted, our offices shot up and ransacked, our staff beaten and imprisoned, our things stolen and sold, and in the past few years, we have seen our Afghan and international colleagues and friends killed.
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The Minister for Health in Mazar-i-Sharif still has our office sofas, tables, and last time I was there, he was using my stationary. But one reason why I am still here is because I am waiting for the troops to go. Not just the Australians – all of them.
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The utter futility of the military effort is not really apparent unless you have been in Afghanistan a long time; but for those of us who have – and there are many in our agency who have been here two and three decades – it is clear that this war is not being won, and will not be won by the international military. Nor will the international aid circus pave the way to peace. If the heads of the coalition effort ever stopped to ask those of us who live here, who speak the languages, who know the culture, and who have seen the folly of short-term hearts-and-minds efforts, the ridiculousness of soldiers teaching plumbing to country boys in towns without running water, we would tell them: it is not working – leave. Take the troops out tomorrow, reduce by 90 per cent the aid budgets. Save yourselves the money, the trouble, the embarrassment.
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The Afghan government has no political, security nor economic legitimacy: it is the government in Kabul only, propped up by the US. The Afghan army and police are hopeless, as every Afghan knows (at a recent gunslinging in the next street, the police arrived, the belligerent threatened to shoot them, the police ran away), and the economy rides on a cloud of foreign money, with only 8 per cent of the budget generated internally. To remove the troops will lead to a crash, but that crash is inevitable, and better to have and get it done now, than waste more years.
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Go away, and let us keep doing our work, alongside our Afghan colleagues. They will sort it out, slowly, untidily, incompletely. But it will be their solution, and if they aren’t altogether sick of foreigners, we’ll be here to assist. On their terms, in their time”.
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Phil Sparrow is a volunteer with TEAR Australia (Transformation, Empowerment, Advocacy, Relief).
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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-question/should–australia-pull-its-troops-out-of-afghanistan-20111125-1nyy6.html#ixzz1eoSB6R1B