Another Mission Accomplished: Afghan Opium Production Increases Again!

Colum Lynch in the Washington Post:

U.N.: Opium Trade Soars in Afghanistan

Afghan opium cultivation grew 17 percent last year, continuing a six-year expansion of the country's drug trade and increasing its share of global opium production to more than 92 percent, according to the 2008 World Drug Report, released Thursday by the United Nations.

Afghanistan's emergence as the world's largest supplier of opium and heroin represents a serious setback [sic] to the U.S. policy [sic] in the region.

The opium trade has soared since the U.S.-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, which had eradicated almost all of the country's opium poppies in 2001.

The proceeds from the illicit trade -- which is concentrated in Taliban strongholds -- are now helping finance a resurgent Taliban that is battling American troops and their allies.

and so on...

"Who Is The Real Terrorist?" Reports From Pakistan And Afghanistan Differ

A couple of days ago I lost the only draft of a piece that was half-finished and already so complicated it made my head hurt. In that piece I had quoted Chris Floyd quoting Scott Horton quoting Carlotta Gall and David Rohde and Barnett Rubin. Are you with me so far?

The subject was Pakistan and Afghanistan: The piece by Gall and Rohde talked about Pakistan having lost control of the extremists that had been nurtured by the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, before Pakistan joined the War on Terror. The Rubin piece linked this loss of control to the bombing of the Serena Hotel [photo], Kabul's luxury spot for foreign visitors.

I don't have the heart to reproduce the post as I originally intended it, especially since reading it might make your head hurt, too. So I will try to give you more or the less the same information in a very different way.

I once read that the best blog entries consist of links, quotes, and comments. Maybe that's the secret.

Carlotta Gall and David Rohde in the New York Times: Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say

Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.
...

One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate Pakistan’s last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption cases against candidates who would back President Pervez Musharraf.

A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.
...

The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.

Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.
...

After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan’s longtime support for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.

In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.

Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.

Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI’s relationship with the militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort.
...

One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency’s control, turned against the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new networks.

In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002. The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.

Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Pakistan’s border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.

“We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in terrorism inside the country or abroad,” he said. Two weeks later, a British-born member of Mr. Azhar’s group, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, kidnapped Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr. Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.

After Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000 people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000 militants who had been arrested were freed. “I never believed that government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut,” said Mr. Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.

At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went “through the motions” when it came to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, he said.

Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from 2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.

Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its own.
...

“Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes,” said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief. “That goes without saying.”

Barnett R. Rubin at Informed Comment: Global Affairs: New York Times on ISI; Serena Hotel Attack

David Rohde and Carlotta Gall deserve huge credit for an outstanding investigative article today on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. This article makes sense out of all the contradictory indications about the ISI's links to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as well as other armed militant groups. It also covers the ISI's role in domestic politics, including election rigging. It is clear from the article that a military regime cannot (and some will not) control the militants it created and that the military will also not permit civilians to take control of the state.
...

The attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul is a shock for all of us foreigners who have gone there for tea. conferences, or brunch, even if we never stayed there. Like most people who go in and out of the Kabul expatriate community, I imagine, I knew a couple of people who were there -- in my case including some Norwegian diplomats.

News reports mention that this was Afghanistan's only "five-star" hotel. They don't mention that nearly all Afghans live in "zero-star" conditions, including the thousands of people who pass that traffic circle every day and see inaccessible luxury behind thick walls. The rioters attacked the Serena in May 2006, apparently believing that alcohol is served there, though it is not.

I am sure that the people of Kabul don't want more violence in their city. They were badly frightened by the riots in 2006. But there is huge resentment and anger building up at the overbearing foreign presence. The May 2006 riots were sparked by an accident where US military vehicles killed a pedestrian. Afghans see and often do not distinguish among the "Chinese restaurant" brothels and the glittering restaurants (by Afghan standards, not ours) serving luxuries, including alcohol, to foreigners, some of whom are being highly paid to destroy Afghanistan's opium livelihood, which Afghan Islamic figures say is no worse than the alcohol they drink at night after destroying farmers' poppy crops.

Many Afghans think that money that is supposed to be used to help them is instead being used to pay for the good life for foreigners in the Serena hotel. Alas, it is true. When aid donors boast of how much technical assistance they are giving Afghanistan, they provide data on the size of the contracts they have given to consultants. I have spent some of the grant and contract money that pay for my salary and travel expenses on meals and tea at the Serena Hotel. These expenses are counted as someone's assistance to Afghanistan.

This is a new kind of target for the Taliban. Foreigners going to restaurants in Kabul (including some where, unlike the Serena, alcohol is in fact served), sometimes joke that they feel like targets. Up to now, however, they have not been. The Taliban have mostly attacked the international forces and Afghan army, police, and officials, as well as other "collaborators," such as employees on reconstruction projects or public figures who support the government. Sometimes they kill civilians indiscriminately when they attack government buildings (including cases when they killed students in schools). But as far as I know, this is the first attack targeted at the foreign assistance community and the "corrupt" lifestyle it has brought to Afghanistan. I imagine it will not be the last.

Scott Horton at Harper's: Pakistan Loses Control

A recent poll suggests that half of Pakistan’s population believes that Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf, or military leaders very close to him, had something to do with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan may be the world’s center of wacky conspiracy theories, but this public perception should not be lightly dismissed. In fact the Pakistani military and its intelligence arm have deep ties in to the Islamic militants who considered Bhutto their greatest threat on the Pakistani political stage.

For those trying to make sense out of the tremendously complex, and tremendously important threads in Pakistan and Afghanistan that tie together Musharraf, the Pakistani senior military establishment, Pakistan’s Interservice Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, tribal chiefs and groups, and various terrorist groups which float in the shadows between all of these players, Carlotta Gall and her colleague David Rohde offer an important contribution in today’s New York Times.

I first met Gall more than ten years ago when she was working for the BBC covering Central Asia. Even then she was a very rare figure, a Westerner who tenaciously dug in to learn what was going on. Gall never thought the answers were to be found in the lobbies of the Sheratons and Intercontinentals, which is where the bulk of the press corps seem to hang out to pick up their scoops. She went to the villages and small towns to form a solid picture of the situation and she probed insistently into the shadowy world of the Pakistani intelligence service and its various cat’s paws.

Her article today gives one of the best accounts of the relationship between ISI and their radical agents, and the ambiguity of much of this relationship. It’s mandatory reading.
...

The ISI is the critical prop to Musharraf’s reign. It was responsible for his rigged election successes in the past and certainly will play the same role in the coming election. The Times piece goes on to offer specific detail on an internal review of the agency and its relationship with radicals, which leaves many asking who is guarding whom?

Barney Rubin goes on to link this report with the alarming bombing attack on Kabul’s luxury Serena Hotel.
...

Westerners are now being targeted, and the Taliban’s reach is right into their ultimate luxury sanctuary in Kabul. This development opens the year in Kabul on an appropriate note of alarm. Afghanistan is not Iraq, and the prospects for success of the Western effort there are considerably higher than in Iraq. The stakes are also higher, I believe. This is the challenge at center stage of the current conflict: the amorphous borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the ultimate growth matrix of the terrorist threat that manifested itself on 9/11, and which is, six years later, stronger than ever.

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque: Risky Business: A Reporter in the Eye of the Storm

... a perfect description of Gall at work when I knew her in Moscow. That was how she covered the first Chechen war, a brutal affair on every side, and one swathed with many layers of lies. She went to Chechnya, to the front lines and "to the villages and small towns to form a solid picture of the situation." She would call in her stories on a satellite phone, dictating them to someone at the desk -- often me -- racing to meet the midnight deadline, sometimes with shellfire sounding in the background.

The New York Times has made many egregious hires (Judith Miller, that little Kristol guy, etc.) and many foolish, even sinister moves over the years. But in hiring Gall, who has been covering Afghanistan from the beginning of the American invasion there, they have provided us with at least one figure of great journalistic integrity, tenacity and courage among the upper echelons of the corporate media.
...

Horton links to Gall's latest story, written with David Rohde, exploring the shadowlands nexus between Pakistan's security forces (army and intelligence), and the terrorist factions they created, nurtured, armed, trained and now, occasionally, fight against. The story even manages to make an early mention of the American role in using Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, to arm, fund and train a global jihad network -- the one-time "freedom fighters" now reviled by their own creators as "Islamofascists." It also notes that it was this American intervention -- begun under the saintly Jimmy Carter (even before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan) and greatly expanded under the Reagan-Bush regime -- that "vastly increased" the size of the ISI and extended its dark influence throughout Pakistani society.

This angle is not the thrust of the piece, but it is extremely rare to see even this much context in a story about the troubles in Central Asia, where ham-handed, dim-witted interventions by the bipartisan loot-and-power crowd in Washington have for decades been fomenting vast storms of blowback, which we will be dealing with for many decades hence -- with the worst storms yet to come.

Chris Floyd is right: it's great to have such a brave reporter on the scene. But it's a shame she's shackled to the corporate media, where even a short mention of the CIA's role in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a rarity.

And in this rarity the truth must be hidden in as many misleading ways as possible, by such devices as acknowledging the American influence in the 1980s but no later, hinting but never making the dubious claim that the CIA had cut all its connections with the group it had founded.

Similarly, in the hands of the New York Times, this is a story of militants who have "turned against their handlers" despite the obvious fact that it was the handlers who turned against the militants.

Obvious? If Musharraf had to purge the ISI three times, what does that tell you? It was Pervez Musharraf (at the "request" of George W. Bush) who tried to change the course of mighty rivers.

The "militants" and "terrorists" have been under attack ever since 9/11 was blamed on Osama bin Laden. And those who recall the sequence of events will remember that "blame" is the correct word. The USA asked the Taliban to turn him over, the Taliban offered to send him to any duly constituted international court if the Americans provided evidence against him, and the Americans responded with wave after wave of bombers.

This was the only response available to the United States, after all, since it had no evidence connecting Osama bin Laden with the attacks of 9/11, as even the FBI admits. Bin Laden was the scapegoat; no more, no less. 9/11 was an inside job, a multi-faceted coup d'etat for which he was blamed but which he never could have accomplished.

And you don't see the NYT talking about Pakistan's change of policy toward the militants in this light, nor do you see anything in the so-called "paper of record" about how USA has used and betrayed "freedom-fighters" all over the world.

In short, I'd rather see Carlotta Gall writing for the NYT than not, but we're still obliged to read her reports through the standard filter. In other words, the individual dots may be laid out correctly, but not always; meanwhile there are always some dots missing, and the narrative connecting the others is bound to be twisted.

And I can't deny that I'd be a lot more comfortable with the official story of 9/11 -- as well as the official story of how Pakistan lost control of the militants who attacked us on 9/11 -- if the story about the loss of control had come along before the attack, rather than six years after. But such is the nature of covert ops, I suppose. You can't always fabricate the history your cover story requires, but that's never considered a reason to cancel an operation.

Speaking of 9/11, attentive readers will have noticed that the NYT quotes Robert Grenier, who was CIA station chief in Islamabad on 9/11 and is currently a managing director at Kroll -- a company which ranks very high on the list of corporate 9/11 suspects. If there is any reason to believe this man, I have no idea what it is. So much for the "liberal media".

I disagree with Scott Horton on Western chances in Afghanistan. As I read it, Afghanistan is "lost" and always has been. The invasion was based on lies and will never amount to anything but a crime against humanity. But that won't stop the imperial adventure. Nor will most of the "dissident" media ever acknowledge it. But the "militants" will never stop trying to eject the foreign military presence -- and as long as that presence remains, the "militants" will never have to go recruiting.

Will Scott Horton write about this one day? Or will he continue to present propaganda disguised as journalism, where the "center stage of the current conflict" is "the amorphous borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the ultimate growth matrix of the terrorist threat that manifested itself on 9/11 ..."

It's beautiful English, of course. But as History it stinks.

The evil force that manifested itself on 9/11 was a lot closer to home than the amorphous borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I would have thought Scott Horton was smart enough to see that. But then again, perhaps he's shackled by Harper's. Or perhaps he never would have got the gig at Harper's... but I digress.

Listen: whoever bombed the Serena Hotel seems to understand that the foreign troops are little pawns in a big game and will be replaced as necessary, for as long as the foreigners continue to sip tea in the hotel. In other words, their "tactical shift" seems to indicate a realization that there's no point attacking the troops and leaving the foreign dignitaries alone. They don't seem to realize that the foreign dignitaries are as replaceable as the troops.

But the replaceable foreigners are hiding now, according to Eleanor Mayne in Kabul for the Telegraph: Party's over in Kabul after hotel bomb

It could have been a scene from the trendier parts of Paris, New York or London - a smart restaurant-bar packed with chic 20-somethings, debating which club to head on to as midnight approaches.

Yet L'Atmosphere, a funky French bistro with open fire, is not a hang-out on the Left Bank, Soho or Greenwich Village but in the Afghan capital, Kabul, the city that once hosted the world's most hardline Islamic regime. Its customers have been the foreign aid workers rebuilding the country.

But last week's suicide bombing of the upmarket Serena hotel, where the swimming pool and coffee bar were popular gathering points for Westerners, and the Taliban's threats have alarmed Kabul's aid workers, who have until now regarded the city as a place to let their hair down after arduous postings in remote Afghan provinces.

Many aid organisations are now in temporary "lock down" - barred from going out for anything other than essential business. On Friday night, a tour by The Sunday Telegraph of the city's nightspots, which are discreetly located in private ­villas, found most closed or nearly empty.

During the six years since the fall of the Taliban, the city has slowly acquired an unlikely status as a party town among the tens of thousands of charity workers, diplomats and security staff now based here.
...

The prospect of further attacks -part of a deterioration of security in Kabul in the past year - have raised the question of whether the city may end up building a version of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where aid and construction workers live in spartan compounds.

Such a move would not be welcomed by the capital's aid workers, many of whom club together to rent spacious Kabul mansion houses. While their colleagues in Baghdad cannot venture out without an armed escort, they can come ago largely as they please. On Fridays and weekends throughout the summer, sun-bathers crowd the grass at the swimming pool at one United Nations compound, enjoying the pool-side bar. And there are beauty salons offering relaxing Thai massages, as well as therapists, counsellors and yoga classes.

Late-night dancing, meanwhile, is guaranteed at Bayou Blues or Crazy Eight, a security contractors' hang-out where weapons must be handed in at reception.

So lively is the social scene that Kabul has its own version of Hello! magazine in the form of the monthly Afghan Scene, which features a "Be Scene" section with pictures of various expats attending photo gallery launches, dinners and occasional black tie parties.

That tells you more than you ever needed to know, doesn't it? They hate us for our freedoms?

And finally, some remarkable journalism: a point of view you will never see from the New York Times, Carlotta Gall or no.

Nawab Khair Buksh Marri interviewed by Rashed Rahman, editor of Pakistani daily The Post: "We fear extinction"

I want to ask who defines international standards. Who creates the world order? Who forms international public opinion? America and her satellites decide the price of petrol and the fate of nations. And whosoever dares disagree is a terrorist. Human beings need to think as to who is the real terrorist: the one who kills or the one who defends his right to life, the one who cons or the one who resists being conned? It is not predetermined that a superpower is civilized and peace loving by definition. Who invented and dropped the atom bomb before any other nation had an atom bomb? That is quite akin to the parable of the lion distributing the bounty. The phrase “lion’s share” does not refer to a fair and just distribution of resources. America is the lion of the international community and then she has quite a coterie of hired servants, stooges and cronies. America has colonies all over the world apart from vast interests in technology, science and research. Whoever resists America, is being labelled as a terrorist. When Osama asks America to leave his lands, he is called a terrorist, even if Osama and those of his ilk have been working for the American interests in the past. When Mullah Omar asks America to leave Afghanistan, he is given the title of a terrorist.
...

Those who wield power are also the arbiters of justice. Processions are taken out at Trafalgar Square every day and the British are not bothered. The rule of law is a nice accessory of the civilized world. Protests are not the sole method of defending rights. These methods can be a pressure tactic. However, they are ineffective when the powerful decide to have their way. Protests could not stop the American aggression against Iraq. The Americans said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as if America did not have any weapons of mass destruction. Well, America was the referee and it failed to find any such weapons in Iraq. Civilized protests are ineffective in addressing deep-rooted grievances.
...

If you give up hope, you are dead. One needs to keep hope alive to live on. As you know the elections are round the corner. On the one hand we have the clamour of the weak. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the noise and the power of the regime. The weak are neither resourceful nor united at the moment. They do not trust each other either. It is not necessary that the equation remains the same forever.

If you haven't had enough yet, please read all of "We fear extinction".

I think you should also read all of "Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say", but don't forget to remember the parts that aren't mentioned.

Barnett Rubin's piece, "New York Times on ISI; Serena Hotel Attack", contains a lot of detail on the terrorists who have been blamed for the attack on the Serena. Blame is not the same as guilt, as Rubin himself points out when he writes "In case this hypothesis proves true, here is some background." Regardless of who was behind the bombing, this is a very informative post.

I've said this before but just in case: bookmark Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque and read him every day. That's an order. You can thank me later.

And as for Scott Horton, I've been a bit rough on him, but he does fine work on a number of fronts. So here's another bookmark for your collection of hard-working patriots, not all of whom agree on all issues.

The Solemn Remembrance Endurance Test

Eighty-nine years ago today, on November 11, 1918, World War I finally ended.

Of course it wasn't called that at the time; it was called The Great War.

How could anyone have known it would be the first of many?

Who could have guessed that barely twenty years would pass before the beginning of the next one?

The day when peace finally arrived was given the name Armistice Day. Thereafter, it was commemorated every year with solemn ceremonies and sacred vows of "Never Again".

In many English-speaking countries, November 11th is now called Remembrance Day, and it's still commemorated every year with solemn ceremonies and sacred vows.

But in the USA, November 11th is now called Veterans Day, and its primary function is to glorify the President, even though he's a deserter.

Its secondary function is to glorify the fools and killers who put more stock in shameless and transparent propaganda than in their own consciences; who cared more for obvious lies than they did for humanity; who claimed to be Christians but somehow managed to ignore all the most important Commandments; and who now suffer the inevitable consequences.

In civilized countries on November 11th they mourn their dead. In America we worship hired killers.

What should be a day of somber reflection becomes an endurance test: Can you survive 24 hours of it without retching?

Just once in my life I would like to hear the following conversation:

Do you support the war?

No. I don't support the killing of innocent people for any reason.

Do you at least support the troops?

No. I condemn killers-for-hire no matter who hired them.

Just once!

But no! Instead people say "We don't support the war, but we do support the troops!" ... as if that made any sense at all.

You want to know why our government treats us like fools? Because we are, that's why.

We might as well say "I hate plumbing but I support the plumbers."

If we can't even obtain that much clarity in our own minds, how can we expect anything better for our children?

And speaking of our children ...

How many times have you heard a distraught mother say: "I gave them my sweet little boy and they turned him into a monster!"

Just once I would like to hear the response: "Well of course they did! What did you think you were doing, sending him off to finishing school?"

Officially, there are nearly four thousand Americans dead from a nasty little war of choice, started by a nasty little president we didn't choose. Unofficially I keep hearing whispers that perhaps the total is more like twenty or thirty thousand.

Our government admits there are something like thirty thousand Iraqis dead from the same cause. But reliable reports indicate the number is more like a million.

This is just from one war, one among many. All over the world, throughout many decades, the USA has inflicted similar suffering in countless countries. For what? Oil, bananas, cocaine, more oil, aluminum, opium, more oil ...

In solemn remembrance of 1918, it's time to open our eyes to the simple fact that this has been America's most important "contribution" to world civilization: Death and destruction, murder and mayhem, and more grief than anyone can possibly imagine.

When will it end? When will our sweet little boys stop signing up to become monsters?

The song was wrong. It should have gone like this:

Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be soldiers.

[A shorter version of this essay appeared in this space exactly one year ago. When will we ever learn?]

Surprise! Shrub Wants More Foreign Troops In Afghanistan

Surprise? It's not as if we didn't know it was coming. What's surprising is the bluntness of the headlines.

The Belfast Telegraph let its readers draw the conclusion themselves:

Bush: NATO nations 'obliged' to help in Afghanistan

Readers of Canada dot Com got things spelled out for them a bit more clearly:

Bush chides allies for not doing enough in Afghanistan: Canadian role ignored

The Toronto Star hit a similar note but held it longer:

Pull your weight, Bush urges Afghan allies: Bulgaria, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Iceland praised for contribution, but Canada ignored

Perhaps the bluntest headline of all came from The Guardian, and ABC, and CBS, who are all saying:

Bush Tells NATO to Reinforce Afghanistan

~~~

According to CBC, the president's "Afghani Surge" is part of a Five-Point Plan which we are supposed to think of as a "Strategy for Success". In addition to sending more troops, Bush's plan includes the following four [quite hilarious] points:

* Working with allies to strengthen the NATO force in Afghanistan and convincing NATO allies to lift troop restrictions to "make sure that we fill security gaps."

* Pouring more resources into infrastructure development, with the goal of building an additional 1,000 roads before 2008 in order to open up commerce and trade routes.

* A crackdown on Afghanistan's poppy and opium cultivation — a major source of funding for Taliban weaponry. Mobile poppy eradication units can destroy the crops, then offer farmers seeds and other assistance to help them pursue an alternative livelihood, Bush said. The U.S. will also launch a task force to fight public corruption and train more Afghan judges and lawyers to establish the rule of law.

* Helping Pakistan to defend its porous border from unwanted entry by Taliban insurgents seeking sanctuary by funding more than 100 border landing posts and offering better surveillance equipment to border guards.

~~~

Last week, when the details of this speech were anonymously leaked, your cold typist couldn't resist a jab about what the Shrub considers "diplomacy". Tim Harper's article in the Toronto Star provides a chilling illustration:

George W. Bush today appealed to NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan and remove restrictions on those already fighting there – but never mentioned the Canadian contribution as he heaped praise on the alliance.

In telling the world that the Afghanis have "a lot of friends" in the world, Bush lauded contributions made by such players as Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Iceland and Norway and he mentioned the efforts of the British who are engaged in the most intense fighting in south along with Canadians.

But the omission of Ottawa was notable, particularly since the Harper government has banked on the 2,500 Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan to help raise Canada’s profile as a partner in the war on terror here.

A White House spokesperson did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the Bush speech.

You can tell a lot about a person -- whether an ordinary citizen or the the so-called president of a formerly great nation -- by the way he treats his neighbors.

Of course in this case we learned all we need to know a long time ago.

Surge? -- Countersurge! Next Stop: Afghanistan

You could see this coming a mile away:

The Guardian, January 16:
U.S. Officials Say Taliban Attacks Surge

Taliban fighters seeking to regain power in Afghanistan are taking advantage of a recent peace deal with the Pakistan government to dramatically increase attacks on U.S. and allied forces in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, several American military officials said Tuesday.

Hmm... Several American military officials? All saying the same thing at the same time?

[BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!]

Did you hear that? That was the detector going off. I apologize for the disruption. Unfortunately, the people who need it most just can't seem to hear it.

New York Times, January 17:
Commanders in Afghanistan Request More Troops

American and NATO military commanders in Afghanistan are worried about the resurgent Taliban insurgency and have asked for additional troops, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today, adding that he was “sympathetic” to the request.

Mr. Gates said that the commanders had “indicated what they could do with different force levels,” but he would not say how many additional troops the commanders had asked for.

Of course not. How can they fudge the figures later if they divulge them now?

New York Times, January 17:
As Raids on Afghan Border Increase, U.S. Military Seeks More Troops

American commanders say the surge in cross-border attacks has coincided with an agreement reached last September in which the Pakistani government pulled back its soldiers in the North Waziristan region in return for a pledge from tribal elders not to shelter militants or allow them to engage in illegal behavior.

In the two months before the agreement, the senior American intelligence official said, there were 40 cross-border attacks in Khost and Paktika Provinces. But in the two months after the agreement there were 140 attacks.
...
Asked about increasing American troop levels in Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said that if military commanders sought more, “I would be strongly inclined to recommend that to the president.”

He also urged other NATO counties to fulfill their pledges to send more troops and equipment to Afghanistan.

It's a good thing Pakistan is our "ally". It's tough to imagine what would be happening if Pakistan were our enemy.

Reuters, January 17:
Gates to consider more troops for Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday he would consider sending more troops to Afghanistan where U.S. commanders say they expect the Taliban to step up attacks from Pakistani sanctuaries.

Gates, in Afghanistan to ensure commanders have the resources to counter an expected Taliban offensive in the spring, said it was very important the United States and its allies did not let the success achieved in Afghanistan slip away.

Success? What Success?

Oh, right -- I almost forgot. Opium production is way up.

And what's good for the global heroin trade is good for the United States.

U.S. military commanders said attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan had surged, several-fold in some areas, and the violence was expected to increase in the spring and summer.

Do you hear that?

Surge, surge, surge.

I can't help but wonder if all this talk of attacks surging is designed to whip up support for the so-called president's plan to send more than 20,000 more troops to Iraq. After all, if "the enemy" are surging, shouldn't we surge, too?

It looks as if our so-called leaders are preparing us for multiple surges -- one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and options still open with respect to Iran and Syria.

Am I stretching? I don't think so. The preparations haven't been hard to spot. They're not exactly being subtle about it. Even TIME Magazine has noticed.

TIME, January 17:
A Surge in Afghanistan Too?

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan has asked for "significant increases" in resources for what some critics call America's "invisible" war. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has recommended to Gates that the U.S. send more troops and more money to Afghanistan. He has proposed almost tripling the spending on assistance to the Afghan Security Forces and reconstruction projects to some $8 billion.

While the request needs the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before it can be presented to President Bush, Secretary of State Robert Gates — on his first trip to Afghanistan — appears receptive to the idea.

The full-bore lying campaign, clearly designed to obfuscate the possible implications, has already begun.

When asked by a reporter today if the U.S. military was too strained by Iraq and other commitments to send more troops to Afghanistan, Gen Peter Pace acknowledged that "any kind of deployment is going to add a short term strain." But he said that a short-term increase in troops could actually mean less strain on the force over the longer run.

And how will that work? The more troops we have getting slaughtered in Afghanistan in the near future, the stronger our Army will be in the distant future? I guess that must be it. Peter Pace thinks we're all as dumb as a stick. And maybe some of us are.

As if this weren't impossibly sad already, even some so-called leaders of the putative opposition are receptive to the idea.

The Guardian, January 17:
Hillary Clinton opposes Iraq troops 'surge'

Ms Clinton said she opposed George Bush's plans to send a 'surge' of more than 20,000 extra troops to Iraq.

More should instead go to Afghanistan, she told NBC's Today Show.

She said the US president was "taking troops away from Afghanistan, where I think we need to be putting more troops, and sending them to Iraq on a mission that I think has a very limited, if any, chance for success".

Never mind whether the mission in Afghanistan stands any chance of success. Never mind whether the notion of "success" in Afghanistan has ever been defined. Just get us out of Iraq, without getting us out of the Middle East. Is that the idea?

It all seems like a cynical ploy to me; Ms. Clinton can appear to be critical of the so-called president on Iraq, but in the meantime she can appear to be "strong" on "National Security" in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was "one of the great missed opportunities", Ms Clinton argued, urging an increase in US troops there before a likely "spring offensive" by the Taliban. "Let's focus on Afghanistan and get it right," she said.

I have an even better idea. Let's focus on 9/11. Let's have an honest investigation for a change. Let's find out -- once and for all -- whether Afghanistan had anything to do with it.

Maybe the Taliban were behind the attacks. Or maybe the Taliban were sheltering al-Q'aeda who were behind the attacks. Or maybe al-Q'aeda and the Taliban were merely blamed for the attacks. If we really knew, maybe we could decide what to do about it. But considering that we don't know, how can we decide anything? And for that matter, why are we in Afghanistan at all?

Are we still looking for Osama bin Laden? Sorry, he's dead. And according to the FBI, he was never wanted in connection with 9/11 anyway -- because they have no evidence against him.

So why are we still there?

This wouldn't have anything to do with a pipeline, would it?

Blair Calls The Kettle Black While Labour Tries Not To Devour Itself

Afghanistan: British Troops Promised, Denied, Dying ... And NATO Wants More ... Meanwhile: Humanitarian Crisis: Mass Starvation Looms ... but Opium Production Hits Another Record Level

Originally blogged at The BRAD BLOG | September 10, 2006

Here's a quick roundup of some relevant stories from far away and even farther. Let's see whether you can spot any connection between these stories and some others, from near and even nearer:

In Great Britain, as you may already know, there is open revolt among the governing Labour Party.

From September 6th:
Gordon Brown scents victory as Blair suffers massive revolt

Gordon Brown left Downing Street tonight looking like the cat that got the cream.

After three hours of bad-tempered talks with Tony Blair, the Chancellor still wore a big smile.

Mr Brown had apparently won a promise that the Premier will finally come clean about his departure plans.

But sceptical allies of the Chancellor were still asking: Can we really believe Blair this time?

The Labour crisis came to a head after one of the most tumultuous days Westminster has ever seen.

Blairite MPs feared the Premier was being pushed to the brink of losing power as:

Seven Ministerial Parliamentary aides quit in protest at his refusal to name the day;

Junior defence minister Tom Watson resigned minutes before he was due to be sacked for signing a rebel ultimatum to the Premier;

His move triggered an acrimonious exchange of letters, with Mr Blair branding him discourteous, disloyal and wrong'.

Commons Leader Jack Straw and Education Secretary Alan Johnson met Mr Blair in Downing Street, fuelling the impression of a Premier in crisis.

More than 100 MPs hardened their plan to send a delegation into Downing Street this weekend to tell Mr Blair the game is up if he fails to budge.

Tory leader David Cameron said the Government was falling apart and called for an end to uncertainty'.

The day of drama, unmatched since the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, left Mr Blair at bay and Labour's claim to be a disciplined political force in tatters.

If you're not familiar with British politics this may make no sense to you. You may be thinking "Labour? That must be like Work, with a U thrown in. And Party, well we all know what that means. So this must be an umbrella group, then; some people who work, and some people who party."

I'd forgive you if you thought of it like that, but it's not quite right. More on that later, maybe ...

But that was four days ago. And things didn't work out quite so simply for Gordon Brown. They never do.

Cabinet turns on Brown in hunt for 'alternative PM'

Gordon Brown's long-held dream of taking over as Prime Minister received a significant blow this weekend after it was revealed that up to 10 cabinet ministers are discussing backing an 'anyone but Gordon' candidate and that Tony Blair will not give the Chancellor a personal endorsement.

Senior government figures are threatening to make the contest a bitter referendum on Brown's personal integrity after last week's vicious bout of infighting. They spent Friday discussing their choice of candidate and the mechanics of a bid after concluding they could no longer support him.

This follows a serious breakdown between the two rival camps, culminating, according to one very close confidant of Tony Blair, in the Prime Minister telling friends: 'I have never known how mendacious he [Gordon] was, how full of mendacity.'

Did you catch that?

Not just mendacious but full of mendacity.

He's a cocky and articulate little prick who spears his opponents with both adjectives (like "mendacious") and nouns (like "mendacity")!!

Nice, fancy-pants words there, Tony. Who cares what they mean?

mendacious:

(adj) lying, given to lying : "a lying witness"; "a mendacious child"
(adj) intentionally untrue : "a mendacious statement"

mendacity:

(n) mendacity (the tendency to be untruthful)

So ... is this not the world's all-time most ironic example of the line about the kettle and the pot?

Who could possibly imagine Tony Blair calling anyone mendacious?

Only a glib, articulate, cocky little prick, a natural-born leader full of mendaciousness who can't quite get the kids to stop fighting.

Blair Says Labor Party Must End Feuding

Prime Minister Tony Blair warned on Saturday that Britain's Labor Party would lose power if it did not show it was "hungry for power" and halt the "irredeemably old-fashioned" personal feudings surrounding his succession.

After a week of bitter infighting and pressure from his rival and onetime ally Gordon Brown, Mr. Blair was forced on Thursday to set a 12-month time-limit on his continued tenure after nine years in office.

But the feuding has continued.
...
Mr. Blair said, "We are not going to win if we have personal attacks by anybody on anyone because it turns the public off and makes them think we are interested again in ourselves and not in them."

Right! We have to show that we are hungry for power but we want that power for the public and not for ourselves. Again! Gotcha, Tony!!

Gordon Brown must be wondering whether he wants the job after all!

And your prize, Gordon, is ... a poisoned chalice

The rise of dissent against Blair can be mapped against two events: Labour’s decline in the opinion polls and the alignment of the government’s foreign policy with America’s.

Those seem like one event to me. I mean, did the polls go south before or after Britain aligned its foreign policy with America's? Or more to the point, if hypothetically just suppose pretend if ever Britain were to cut herself loose from the Americans, would that result in a gain or a loss at the polls? Or maybe we should look at it from a different angle: suppose Britain remains in lockstep synch with the Americans on all "foreign" matters. How much and in what direction could those polls be swayed?

Here's something else American readers might not understand right away: in Britain, probably because their system of government is so much more primitive than ours, it still matters what people think -- and an unpopular government can be toppled in a heartbeat!

Some kinda primitive! But I digress...

Labour finally lost its patience with Blair over his support for Israel in Lebanon. Following the catastrophe of the Iraq war, it was the last straw. The pressure is on Brown to divorce himself from the United States. He has kept (disgracefully) silent on Iraq and Lebanon, so his options are open. But it would be amazing if he began his premiership by pulling out of Iraq (and/or Afghanistan), causing a breach with Washington. He could not easily put an honourable gloss on a British retreat.

Nor can we assume that the next US president will favour early troop withdrawal. It will be difficult for any presidential candidate to campaign as anti-war without appearing un-American. In any case, most of the presidential hopefuls have a track record of supporting the Iraq war.

So it is likely that Brown, struggling to control a party accustomed to flexing its muscles and from which he cannot demand loyalty, will trail in the polls, and will not reverse Blair’s unpopular foreign policy positions.

So ... the next British Prime Minister -- no matter who -- is going to be bound by a blood oath, one sworn in his absence, no less: Stay The Course!

Staying the course is not going to be easy; it was never going to be easy; only the maddest of hatters would even bring the word "easy" close to a phrase like "troops in Afghanistan".

Britain has fallen down a rat-hole.
Into the Long War

Many people expected that the termination of the Taliban regime nearly five years ago would mean that Afghanistan would no longer be a country of concern, and would be able to make the transition to peace for the first time in nearly three decades.

Instead, the past few months have seen a Taliban revival that is causing concern around the world and may suggest that the 2001 war is actually far from over.

Some analysts were predicting a Taliban resurgence last summer, but that did not happen, almost certainly because the Taliban were developing their capabilities and planning for the longer term.

Instead, it has been this year that has seen the upsurge, most worryingly with Taliban units able to operate in groups of a hundred or more, in marked contrast to their much smaller-scale activities in recent years.

... where stuff like this happens with ever-increasing frequency:

Afghan suicide attack kills 16

A suicide bomber smashed his car into an American military vehicle just yards from the U.S. Embassy in downtown Kabul on Friday morning, killing as many as 16 people and wounding 29, Afghan and American officials said.

The bombing was one of the most powerful to shake the capital since American forces drove the Taliban from power in 2001. The U.S. military issued a statement confirming the deaths of two American soldiers and said two others were wounded.

The Afghan police at the scene put the toll at 11 civilians and five American soldiers killed, including a woman soldier. Witnesses said they saw three American soldiers lying in the street. Other soldiers might also have been killed, they said, as the blast ripped apart the armored Humvee, making it hard to believe anyone inside could have survived.

Soldiers later pulled shredded American uniforms off the trees and picked up body parts. A seat from the Humvee was left hanging in a tree.

Kabul residents said they were bracing for still more violence as they prepared to mark the five-year anniversary on Saturday of the death of the warlord Ahmed Shah Masood, who was killed by two Qaida suicide bombers in an assassination linked to the 9/11 attacks. The Kabul bombing came amid a sharp escalation of violence in Afghanistan, where NATO and American military commanders are waging an offensive to crush a Taliban insurgency that has revived with unexpected strength this year.

Suicide bombers have struck more than 50 times in the last year, killing more than 100 civilians. Most often the attacks have come in the country's south, where the insurgency thrives.

But don't worry! We support the troops! We've got your back!! Yes Indeed and Jolly Good, Old Chap! ... and Let's Roll! too ... but in the meantime it turns out that Britain originally promised to send more troops to help the troops already there; then didn't send 'em. Guess who got ambushed? Oops!

Troops die as UK holds back Afghan reinforcements

BRITAIN agreed to provide an extra 800 troops to allied forces fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan but later withdrew the offer, Nato officials disclosed last week.

Lieutenant General David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, planned to use the 800-man force as troubleshooters, sending them into any area where fighting broke out.

However, John Reid, then the defence secretary, was so angry at the reluctance of other Nato countries to supply troops that the offer was retracted.

Reid, who famously said that he hoped British troops would leave Afghanistan without firing a single shot, indicated that the UK would send no more troops other than the 3,300 men to be based in Helmand province.

Last week the US general in charge of Nato made the obvious link between the shortage of troops and the casualties faced by the allied forces in southern Afghanistan.

Appealing to Nato countries to send more soldiers, General James Jones, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said: “It will help us to reduce casualties and bring this to a successful conclusion in a short period of time.”

Well, that's what they say. That's what they always say ...

But would sending 'em have been an even bigger mistake?

We may find out soon because NATO wants more ...

NATO Officials Want More Troops for Afghanistan

Senior military officials from NATO’s 26 nations agreed Saturday that they needed more troops and fewer limitations on the use of their forces to step up the fight against insurgents in the violent south of Afghanistan.

NATO planners have said they want 2,000 to 2,500 extra troops, plus helicopters and transport aircraft, to fuel the offensive in the south.

“Our collective assessment is that we are satisfied with military-related progress to date, particularly in the north and in the west but less so in the south,” Gen. Ray Henault, a Canadian who was chairman of the talks, said at a news conference.
...
“Raising the number of troops will be a political decision,” he added.

Hmmmm ... a political decision? Hmmmm ... hadn't thought of that before!

What to do? What to do?

Well, what are our frozen friends thinking?

Funny you should ask. There's a loud and growing chorus of "get us outta there" being sung in The Great White North:
NDP delegates vote for Afghan troop pullout

The New Democratic Party has made it official party policy to oppose the current mission in Afghanistan and to call for the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from there.

On Saturday, NDP delegates at a party convention in Quebec voted overwhelmingly in favour of leader Jack Layton's call for a pullout.

About 90 per cent of more than 1,500 delegates voted for a "safe and immediate" withdrawal from the region, which has seen a spike in Canadian casualties recently.

Sustained applause swept over the convention floor after officials announced the vote results.

"We have a really strong show of support from our members here today," Layton told reporters following the vote.

"Now we're calling on Canadians to join with us in calling on the Harper government to change the track he's currently on with (U.S. President) George Bush."

Oooh, a great many Canadians are very unhappy with their new pro-US minority government ... and for a variety of reasons:

NDP slams Harper Tories

NDP Leader Jack Layton saved his toughest words for Harper's foreign policy, which he said is moving in lockstep with U.S. President George W. Bush, while avoiding the world's most significant issues.

"When it comes to those issues affecting human security on this planet, our government is dramatically and significantly failing to take action," Layton told reporters.

"All of the focus has been on the issues and the world view as identified by George Bush and what he regards to be the greatest threat," Layton said.

Thus, he said, the Conservatives are ignoring crises such as the AIDS pandemic, global poverty and climate change.

"The toll is taken in lives. This isn't political rhetoric," he said.
...
Speaking at the convention was an Afghan parliamentarian who says Canadian soldiers are fighting to sustain a government that includes murderers, rapists, drug-dealers and warlords.

Malalai Joya says the new government is just as repressive as the Taliban and is even more dangerous because it has powerful international support.

"They are like brothers of the Taliban and this is the main reason why the security situation in Afghanistan is getting worse and worse," Joya told Canadian Press.

... so the battles continue, have continued, will continue, have always continued, will always continue ...

Nato forces battle Taliban in southern Afghanistan

Nato forces battled Taliban holdouts in the deserts of southern Afghanistan today amid a security crackdown in the capital after at least 16 people were killed by a suicide bomber.

Ali Shah Paktiwal, head of the police crime bureau, said officers were checking every main intersection in Kabul after Friday's blast near the US embassy, which killed at least two American soldiers.
...
A resurgent Taliban have mounted daily attacks during the summer, primarily against foreign forces in the south where Nato took over security from the United States at the end of July.
...
Many military officials and analysts say the fighting in Afghanistan is now heavier and worse than Iraq.
...
More than 2,300 people have died his year in the Taliban resurgence that has led to the heaviest fighting since US-led troops toppled the hard-line Islamists.
...
The guerrillas have moved beyond small-scale hit-and-run operations to pitched battles and larger strikes, sheltering and training in Pakistan despite efforts by Islamabad to stop them.

What to do? What to do?

The mixed messages don't really help much, truth be told.

Taliban `surrounded' in stronghold -- But general wants 2,000 more troops

PANJWAII, Afghanistan—Canadian commanders said yesterday a NATO assault in southern Afghanistan has Taliban forces "surrounded" and on the verge of collapse.

But a different assessment seemed to come from Warsaw, where a Canadian general said at least 2,000 more North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops are needed to battle the region's unexpectedly strong insurgency.
...
"There's good indication that they are on the brink of collapse in a number of different areas," said Lavoie, commander of Canadian troops on the ground in Afghanistan. He gave few details as to how he reached the conclusion.

"Like most insurgents, they don't have the sustainment ability to have long, protracted engagements. What we see is mostly hit-and-run tactics."

Mostly Hit-And-Run Tactics? This is worth mentioning? This is surprising?

Sniff Sniff Sniff. Fishy Fishy Fishy. They're using hit-and-run tactics! Who could have guessed??

What to do? What to do?

Nato Afghan troops talks continue

A number of Nato soldiers, most of them British or Canadian, have been killed in recent weeks.

Gen Henault urged member states to send "all the people and the capability" that had been signed up to.

"We are currently at about 85% of the requirements and want the remainder," he was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
...
Officials from Turkey, Germany and Italy have expressed reluctance to move their troops from reconstruction work in safer parts of Afghanistan to the troubled south, our correspondent adds.

Of course, all this is doing the people of Afghanistan an enormous amount of good:

UK charity warns of Afghan famine

Millions of people in Afghanistan face starvation after a drought destroyed crops, a UK charity has warned.

A Christian Aid survey of 66 villages suggests farmers in the worst affected areas have lost all their produce.

The aid agency is urging the British government and international bodies to give money to prevent people starving in north and west Afghanistan.

The crop failure comes as fighting continues in the south between the Nato-led troops and the Taleban.

Most of the water has dried up in the provinces of Herat, Badghis and Ghor, and the wheat harvest is down by 90% to 100% in parts of Faryab province, the study indicates.

The Afghan government has set up a drought appeal which needs £41m.

Well, not all the people are starving. In fact some of them are making money by the kilogram!

Afghanistan ready to flood Europe with first-grade heroin

For the umpteenth time now, Afghanistan is breaking all records in opium production, and is ready to flood Europe with first-grade heroin.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the area sown to opium poppy has increased this year by 59%, and reached 165,000 hectares against 100,000 hectares last year, while the gross opium harvest will amount to 6,100 tons.

Afghan experts maintain that this year opium will be exceedingly rich in morphine. A mere seven kilograms of raw opium will produce one kilogram of heroin.

This ratio is very rare. Usually it takes from 10 to 15 kilograms of opium to make this amount.
...
UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa has dispelled the illusions about Europe's potential anti-drug action at the international conference on Afghan drugs in Moscow. In his words, pilot ISAF involvement for the destruction of opium fields and chemical labs did not produce the desired effect in 2005, but only generated tension in relations with the locals. Now the efforts will concentrate exclusively on logistics and training of the Afghan personnel.

Inadvertently, Maria Costa also put an end to the myth about "caravans with drugs" next to the U.S. and ISAF troops. There are caravans indeed, but with precursors rather than drugs both in Afghanistan, and especially around it. Precursor is any chemical reagent, which takes part in the production of a toxic chemical by any method. From two to six tons of acetic acid anhydride is a reagent required to produce heroin from one ton of raw opium.

Maria Costa said that more than 10,000 tons of this anhydride was brought to Afghanistan last year to produce heroin from the 4,000 tons of raw opium harvested. This was a real caravan of more than 500 twenty-ton trailers.

The acetic acid anhydride is not made in Afghanistan, and is only available in China, India, and Russia. It is a real mystery how such caravans can remain unnoticed in Afghanistan with its poor road network, or in approaches to it.

It can't ALL be about money, can it? No, not quite!

Al Qaeda Finds Its Center of Gravity

OVER the last year, as Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have dominated headlines, hopes of gaining firmer control of a largely forgotten corner of the war on terrorism — the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region — have quietly evaporated.

On Tuesday, the Pakistani government signed a “truce” with militants who have resisted Pakistani military efforts to gain control of the region, which is roughly the size of Delaware. The agreement, which lets militants remain in the area as long as they promised to halt attacks, immediately set off concern among American analysts.

Al Qaeda’s surviving leadership is suspected of using the border areas as a base of operation to support international terrorist attacks, including possibly the July 2005 London subway bombings. Meanwhile, the Taliban leadership is widely believed to be using another border area to direct spiraling attacks in Afghanistan.

“There’s a link with broader international terrorism,” said Robert Grenier, the former top counterterrorism official for the Central Intelligence Agency. “There’s a link with what is happening in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, such as it is now, really has its center of gravity in the area.”
...
Analysts say the problem in the border region is an explosive mix of conditions: a lack of government authority, a vast amount of weaponry and the rise of Islamic militancy. Until the 1980’s, the area was ruled by local tribes, whose brute self-government kept the population isolated and impoverished but allowed for a degree of stability.

In the 1980’s, the American-backed anti-Soviet jihad unfolded in the region and began to wear away longstanding tribal structures. Huge piles of weapons and cash empowered Islamist organizations to open dozens of training camps, hard-line mosques and conservative religious schools along the border. In the 1990’s, the Taliban emerged there.

Huge piles of weapons and cash from where?

The Taliban emerged how?

You can start connecting the dots now ...

But no matter what sorts of connections you make, always remember: there's
One friend Britain must stand by

If the next prime minister is a real leader, and not a mere implementer of the latest public opinion trends, he will take a firm stand against the seductive anti-Americanism that has Britain and much of Europe in its grip.

He should state, categorically, that whatever our reservations, whatever our irritations, Britain will stand with America. Not because Britain is a weaker power that has little choice, or in the hope of some quid pro quo, but because it is the right thing to do.
...
The post-Blair foreign policy should above all seek to elevate the British public’s vision above the trials and errors of the past five years. It should remind the people that America represents still, as it has for the past 60 years, the last best hope of freedom.

One would hope for a slightly sharper analysis, at this point, surely. Dismissing all the deliberate and clearly criminal behavior of the Bush administration(s) as "trials and errors"??? Puh-lease!

But on the other hand, "elevating the British public's vision" might be a good idea -- if their collective vision could somehow be elevated to the point where they could recognize what they -- and we -- are dealing with here!!

Oops! I nearly forgot: If you're a world leader, it almost never hurts to be away from home during a domestic crisis, especially if you can can spend some of your time impersonating a statesman.

Blair to meet Palestinian leader

Tony Blair is to meet the president of the Palestinian Authority on the second day of his visit to the Middle East.

The prime minister's meeting with Mahmoud Abbas comes a day after he met the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Mr Olmert said he was ready to meet the Palestinian leader to advance peace efforts. It follows Mr Abbas's calls for fresh negotiations with Israel.

Mr Blair will not be meeting the leaders of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government.

Well then. I guess that's settled, too.

What else? Only one question still outstanding, I believe. And the question is: Why?

Why is Tony Blair such a glib articulate little prick?

Because that's exactly the type that was needed to play the role he has played -- the role he will allegedly vacate before the end of May, 2007. Supposedly.

Many Americans do not "get" this. And that's easy to understand, because in America, the type needed to play the corresponding role is almost the opposite: a glib inarticulate cocky little prick.

And you see, the glib inarticulate cocky little prick we have in America right now is so thoroughly incompetent -- not so much "intellectually challenged" as "comprehensively defeated" -- that I would have bet (Euros to crumpets) on the glib articulate cocky little prick being in office long after the glib inarticulate cocky little prick was dismissed. Or hanged. Or both.

But apparently I was wrong. This makes twice so far that I've been wrong. Oh well. No wonder I don't make my living at the racetrack! But don't tell anyone, and I'll cover for it by insisting I've never been wrong at all, and if that doesn't work I'll call all my critics "crazy conspiracy theorists" ... and it that fails, I'll do my statesman impression.

Should keep me going till the spring, anyway ... maybe even longer ...

Hey, Wait!!! I've got an idea!!

What if I Launched a Peace Mission???

Blair Launches Mideast Peace Mission

Mr. Blair opened his visit in Jerusalem, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. At a joint news conference, the British Prime Minister said they discussed shoring up the fragile cease-fire in Lebanon and reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"The majority of people here, I'm sure, want to see what the majority of people in my country want to see, which is a Middle East that is stable, and democratic, with people living side by side in peace. It is very easy to be pessimistic in the light of everything that has happened recently, but I do believe that with good will and the right leadership it can be done," he said.

Sure, Tony. But where is "the right leadership" gonna come from? Unless it turns up by next May, you're cooked!

Ahhh, well, never mind. You're cooked anyway.