By now most every knows of the sad news, for the U.S. Military, of the 9 Americans Killed in the Afghan Attack, with 15 wounded as well as others at the firebase.
A more recent report can be found here, Afghanistan: ‘Hundreds’ attacked NATO base with their Story Highlights being:
**Afghanistan: Attack involved 400 to 500 militants. 9 American soldiers killed
**Attack was the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since June 2005
**NATO spokesman: “This was a larger scale attack than normal”
**Bomb kills 6 Afghan guards accompanying vehicle of U.S. private security firm
And many know the deaths of Afgans and Coalition forces occupying Afganistan, especially U.S. forces, has surpassed those in Iraq for several weeks now, even before the above attack.
What does the general American public think when they hear of Afganistan, which is rare:
9/11
bin Laden (now that one is thought of rarely, even by the potus!
Taliban
Poppy i.e. drug trade
Backward People hey if you lived there, and stayed alive, how much would you invest in better living if you could first find a job and second purchase the modern materialistic wants, all while living through decades of others invading and blowing your country up, while you wait for the next invaders who are there now, what’s next. If I was Afgan, you’d find me in a cool semi comfortable cave, growing my own food and tending a flock of goats or cows for milk and meat.
I’ve been saying recently that I’m getting the feeling these theaters are combining, if they weren’t before. Remember ‘Whack-A-Mole’ in Iraq, still going on to a certain extent, in Iraq. Starting before the so called ‘surge’, i.e. escalation in reality, that was getting under a certain control. Lt. General Robert G. Gard Jr. (USA, Ret.) has a post up today, 7-14-08, Here and Here about what was happening prior to the escalation and against the wishes of the administration. It further went to a touchy but controlled condition.
And all along people were not only fleeing the cities and country but were being forced out of their homes if not of a certain sect.
As attacks still occurred but were fewer in number the Iraq definition of the ‘Gated Community’ started expanding, enclosing the ethnically cleansed neighborhoods and suspected troubled neighborhoods, in the cities, behind huge concrete blast walls.
My microbus driver zig-zagged aimlessly, changing course or going straight as other drivers made hand gestures to indicate that the road ahead was closed or open.
After a while we were all moving like a convoy, a convoy of microbuses searching for a way out of the neighborhood.
It was the day after the wall went up. The wall consists of gloomy concrete chunks, 12 feet high, set side by side to enclose my neighborhood.
Seven miles of it went up overnight. We call it “the Black Night.”
Let me ask a few questions, would you want to be a Refugee in your own country or forced to move to anothers? Would you want to live in neighborhoods surrounded by huge chunks of concrete with limited entrance/exit capabilities, let alone with bombed out buildings and homes around you and sewage in the streets, as well as limited electricity? Would you want to be burying family members and friends on a regular basis, or have no idea where they may be or even if they were alive?
But it controlled the insurgent parties waging fights and destruction to rid their country of foreign occupiers, somewhat, because the fighting, killing, and destruction goes on.
Now directly above we have the paying of former insurgents to not be insurgents, we have millions of refugee’s in and out of their own country, we have neighborhoods under almost total control behind huge blastwalls and we also can add very shaky ceasefires between the sects and government.
Why the growing violence in Afganistan?
With our takedown of the Taliban government while seeking out bin Laden, remember him, and al Qaeda we pushed the remnants to the Afgan Pakistan border region, already a well known.
Then we pretty much left to Invade a Country for Absolutely No Justifiable Reason, pulling out resources and troops there for the coming invasion and occupation of Iraq, again an already well known.
When we left behind a much smaller force in Afganistan, joined by a small coalition of other countries, as well as not putting into that country the monies promised to rebuild and give some semblance of a normal society back, something greatly lacking for years, we started paying that countries warlords to supposedly maintain a very shaky quiet.
Sound familiar, well we’re doing the same in Iraq now and word is that program might be coming to an end at least for the payments from us.
There’s a new report out in US News and World Report about some old friends, from another occupation, not ours, and possibly some of the new friends after our invasion, and well seem to have gotten tired of our friendship, which prompted me to try and put a few things together for hopefully abit of a better picture of our Forgotten War and equally Forgotten Troops untill attacked and killed or maimed, than back to quiet.
Afghan Warlords, Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn Their Guns On U.S. Troops
They defeated the Soviets with Washington’s help, but now they attack Americans as the new occupiers
And these folks don’t play games, they’re well seasoned guerilla fighters, in their own country and the terrain well known by them!
They also don’t need to raise up hatreds or indoctrinate others, we’re doing a damn good job across the region, from Iraq, raising the civilian hatreds towards us in Iran by our rethoric and threats, through Pakistan and into Afganistan, making enemies of tens of thousands if not millions, and this has nothing to do with religious ideology, that’s used on both sides to embed fear and control the masses not directly involved, pure propaganda!
But amid a well-coordinated assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai and large-scale bombings last week in the capitals of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. forces are keenly aware that they are facing an increasingly complex enemy here-what U.S. military officials now call a syndicate-composed not only of Taliban fighters but also powerful warlords who were once on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency. “You could almost describe the insurgency as having two branches,” says a senior U.S. military official here. “It’s the Taliban in the south and a ‘rainbow coalition’ in the east.”
Indeed, along with a smattering of Afghan tribal groups, Pakistani extremists, and drug kingpins, two of the most dangerous players are violent Afghan Islamists named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, according to U.S. officials.
And these two are whom:
were once among America’s most valued allies.
I’ve always thought that bin Laden, and it has been suspected and reported, because of his family thus the connections to possible U.S. officials, was on the CIA payroll and a middle man for the arms dealings for us in the Afgan/Soviet conflict.
Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.
immortalized in the recent film Charlie Wilson’s War
We even made him a cult hero in our movies, now that’s the American Way.
Today, the Haqqani network is driving the recent rise in violence in eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. military officials.
In the course of conducting these operations, insurgents have benefited greatly from the shortage of U.S. and allied troops here, say U.S. officials.
My guess, just like during the Afgan/Soviet conflict, the rise in violence, especially the changing tactics, is drawing fighters from Iraq as well. If that’s the case, and violence abates in Iraq, if we still have troops in that country it won’t be quiet for long. With quiet comes complacency and if that complacency is seen an felt by the insurgents a very quick rise in insurgent actions will follow for we will still be occupiers in their land, some coming from those we’re paying now not to fight us!
U.S. officials had an even higher opinion of Haqqani, who was considered the most effective rebel warlord. “I adored Haqqani. When I was in Afghanistan, Haqqani was the guy who made sure I would get out,” says Wilson. “He was a marvelous leader and very beloved in his territory.”
In Guerilla Warfare everything becomes a weapon to use when the need arises!
Now we know where some of the funding is coming from for the new mujahideen in Afganistan, the drug trade from the wealth of the poppy. And we know about the want for the oil in Iraq and possibly Iran, Huge Markets for both, but really there is more, especially in and around Afganistan.
Minerals and such used daily in our societies and especially the things the wealthy and wanna-be wealthy want around them like:
The mountain of white marble shines with such brilliance in the sun it looks like snow. For four years, the quarry beneath it lay dormant, its riches captive to tribal squabbles and government ineptitude in this corner of Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Now in the construction professions and one of the many things people want around them is that Beautiful Marble you see in our buildings and on a smaller, but still expensive, scale in our homes, well more the homes of those who can afford it, some who can’t will at least try for a marble countertop.
But in April, the Taliban appeared and imposed a firm hand. They settled the feud between the tribes, demanded a fat fee up front and a tax on every truck that ferried the treasure from the quarry. Since then, Mir Zaman, a contractor from the Masaud subtribe, which was picked by the Taliban to run the quarry, has watched contentedly as his trucks roll out of the quarry with colossal boulders bound for refining in nearby towns.
And there’s even more:
Another recent article caught my eye and clicked these tired memory cells from a few years back:
Afghan Minister for Mines Ibrahim Adil has said that his ministry had discovered varieties of mines worth of 300 billion U.S. dollars in Afghanistan’s central high lands, a local newspaper reported Saturday.
Daily Outlook quoted the minister, who had recently visited the above provinces, as saying the coal mine reservoir discovered in Yakawlang district of Bamyan province could be more than 200 million tons.
He said that the iron mine discovered in the same district could have some 1 billion tons of the metal.
That reminded me, also mentioned in above report, about something I had read awhile back:
Chinese state-owned mining group China Metallurgical Group Corp. and Jiangxi Copper Co. have won the right to develop a copper deposit in Afghanistan after agreeing to invest $3.7 billion in the project, according to statements by the companies.
Now guess what the Chinesse are going to have to do to work these contracts with the Afgan Government, well they’ll need to pay off the Warlords of the regions there in as long as that country stays Unstable!
And though I doubt the Chinesse will play our game of arming the new mujahideen, the money will support and supply and the Chinesse can claim no knowledge, just as we would!
Here’s a PDF of Afgan Minerals
Here’s a document site with a number of links about Afghanistan on the Aynak Copper Deposit
Now need I say how valuable copper is to everyday living?
Here’s a Wikipedia page of Afghanistan’s natural resources
Now just to add to the mix to what we’ve caused Pakistan militants focus on Afghanistan
In early June, about 300 fighters from jihadist groups came together for a secret gathering here, in the same city that serves as headquarters to the Pakistani army.
The groups were launched long ago with the army’s clandestine support to fight against India in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. But at the meeting, they agreed to resolve their differences and commit more fighters to another front instead: Afghanistan.
“The message was that the jihad in Kashmir is still continuing but it is not the most important right now. Afghanistan is the fighting ground, against the Americans there,” said Toor Gul, a leader of the militant group Hezb-ul Mujahedeen.
Now, and this is just speculation, if we had stayed in Afganistan, after taking down the Taliban, and desimating al Qaeda, forcing both towards the mountains and the boder region.
And looked at Terrorism for what it is, a Criminal Act.
With the help of the Military and other Militaries if needed, and the Overwelming World Support after 9/11.
Both groups would have been boxed in, and wether Pakistan wanted to help or not it would have faced World Preasure to do so, than chances would have been good to eliminate al Qaeda and stop the growth of the Taliban.
Would it have eliminated Criminal Terrorism, probably not, but it would have been a much smaller and scattered group, easier, with the Intelligence and Criminal Organizations from all over to find and route out the Criminals thus shutting down their organization abilities and contained much of it, it would have disappeared on it’s own.
We could have, along with the rest of the World, all pitched in and Helped Afganistan Rebuild It’s Country and It’s Society and Helped them Develope their own Contries Resources, non Drug.
Millions of Iraqi’s and Afgans would still be alive and not maimed.
Thousands of ours and others Military Troops would still be alive and not maimed.
Millions of Iraqi’s and Afgans would not be Refugee’s in and outside of their country.
Saddams government was already well contained and the Iraqi’s would have eventually taken him down.
Other dictators, some we supported like Saddam, would have seen a New World rising in the 21st century and so would their people, changes would have come.
But that wasn’t what was to be, now We and We alone have Created possibly Tens Of Thousands who look at us in Hatred and niow are Enemies of All we Say We Stand For, for they have seen and lived the Reality!