Category Archives: Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism

Anti-American Iraqi “Shi’a Taliban”, Pro-American Afghan Taliban, Godfather & Chinese Food………..

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“Tom Hagen:
Some of the other families won’t sit still for an all out war.
Sonny:
Then you tell them to hand over Sollozzo!
Tom Hagen:
Your father wouldn’t want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal.
Sonny:
They shoot my father and it’s business, my ass!
Tom Hagen:
Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!….…“ The Godfather

“An anti-American Shia militia in Iraq backed by Iran that once killed US soldiers has agreed to give up its weapons and join the political process in a move likely to fuel US paranoia about growing Iranian influence in the country. The group, the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which split from the Mehdi Army militia of the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, carried out some well-organised attacks on US troops at the height of the tit-for-tat covert conflict between Iran and the US in Iraq in 2007. They were also responsible for kidnapping the British IT consultant, Peter Moore, from the Justice Ministry in Baghdad. They later killed four of his bodyguards whom they now say tried to escape. The group says it wishes to run in local and parliamentary elections and is willing to hand over its weapons………”

This business of identifying a militia as ‘anti-American’ is a favorite way for much of U.S. media to identify some of these armed foreign groups. Apparently this title is reserved for certain Iraqis, including Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the largest single party in the Iraqi parliament. These people opposed American presence in Iraq during the occupation, so they were anti-American at the time. But the American forces are out of Iraq now, so they can’t be anti-American. This is not to downplay the very violent nature of this particular group or its possible Iranian connections.

The al-Anbar terrorists were never called anti-American, although they caused more killings and damage than anyone else (meaning Iraqis). No doubt if the Chinese had occupied Iraq these people would be anti-Chinese. That wouldn’t mean they hate Chinese food (they probably do). Who knows, once the Iranians overplay their hand, in the future maybe Iranian media will start identifying some Iraqi groups as anti-Iranian (there already are several). People don’t like lengthy foreign interference in their internal politics, be that American or Iranian interference. It is all business, nothing personal, as Tom Hagen told Sonny in The Godfather.

There is no doubt that the Afghan Taliban, and their Pakistani cousins, have killed many many more Americans than this violent small Iraqi group.
Yet there is also no doubt that the Obama administration is willing and maybe eager to negotiate with them and practically hand them half the power in Afghanistan, (half for now, the rest probably later).
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Funny US Anti-Terror Policy: Today the Taliban, Tomorrow Hezbollah and Hamas?…………..

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“After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war. As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody. It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate. ………”

Interesting: the Taliban hosted al-Qaeda and were part of the September 11 attacks that killed thousands of Americans and disrupted the economy and politics of the country. They have been at war with the United States for years and they support terrorism in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and in other places. They have been responsible for many more American dearth.
Hezbollah and Hamas have never tried any terror attacks inside the United States. Their attacks were almost always confined to the Lebanese Israeli Palestinian theater, with possibly one or two reported minor exceptions that were not against the United States. They both represent either a majority or a plurality of the people in their respective countries. Hamas won a clear majority of Palestinian votes the last time they had elections, despite the nonsense Secretary Clinton talks about the PLO being a “legitimate government”.
Yet the United States is ‘negotiating’ with the even more fundamentalist Salafi Taliban, the partner in September 11 attacks. Not a single Republican or Democrat politician objects to that. Not even the right-wing. Yet any hint of an approach to Hezbollah or Hamas would cause a twin earthquake and volcano in the country. You wanna know why? It is one word, a six-letter word “Israel”. Or maybe it is a four-letter word: “Iran”.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Apartheid, Israel, Middle East Women, Religion

Rosa Parks of Jerusalem, Shikses of old Alabama and Free Afghanistan………

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“It was supposed to be just another regular Friday morning for Tanya Rosenblit. Tanya had to get from her hometown Ashdod to Jerusalem for a meeting there. On the way, Rosenblit experienced one of the most intimidating stories of religious coercion I’ve seen lately: She was told by a Haredi man to get to the back of the bus, or nobody was going to go anywhere. And what do you think Rosenblit did? That’s right – she stayed put. And she took pictures of the whole ordeal and later wrote about it on Facebook……… At the next stop, Orthodox Jews started mounting the bus. At first, they just stared at me, but said nothing and moved on to sit somewhere in the bus behind us. Only one passenger decided that he preferred standing on the stairs near the driver, although there was plenty of space. I didn’t mind that, and focused on the music in my ears. But then, another one entered the bus, but instead of entering, he prevented the driver from closing the door. He looked at me with despise, and when I took off the earphones, I heard him call me “Shikse”, which means “whore” in Yiddish. He demanded I sit in the back of the bus, because Jewish men couldn’t sit behind women ………….”

Not exactly a Rosa Parks story, that of Ms Rosenblit: it probably happens all the time in the new free Afghanistan, been happening since the Taliban came to power after the American-Saudi liberation of that country in 1989. The term “shikse” does not mean a whore in the USA. Among American Jews I knew back East, “shikse” was a not-nice term meaning a non-Jewish girl, often very anglo-looking. But then, among the fucking fundamentalist Haredis in Jerusalem, who are like the fucking Salafis in our neck of the woods, the term probably does mean something like a “whore”.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Espionage, Finance, Hezbollah, Iraq, Latin America, Lebanon, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Mel Brooks and Oliver Stone of Persia: a Taliban-Hezbollah-Colombian-Iranian-alQaeda-Mexican-Texan-African Network………

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“The court action, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks nearly half a billion dollars in penalties from three Lebanese financial organizations — the now-defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank and two Beirut-based money exchange houses — and 30 auto dealers in the United States. The $480 million in penalties is the sum of the drug proceeds that are alleged to have been laundered; the government is also seeking to freeze and seize assets traceable to those companies………… Thursday’s complaint offers fresh details about the workings of what it says was a scheme to launder South American cocaine cash and Hezbollah’s own money, naming the American-based auto dealers and people it says were Hezbollah operatives. For example, the action charges that Oussama Salhab was a Hezbollah operative in Togo who ran a network that transported cash from cars sold in Benin on flights to Beirut. Prosecutors say he worked with Maroun Saade — suspected of being a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Lebanese Christian political party allied with Hezbollah — who has been charged in a separate case with aiding the Taliban………”

I wonder what Mel Brooks is up to these days? Is he teaming up with Oliver Stone? Could those two be working on something like this, this topic of my piece here?
Is it just the holiday season or is the world going crazy around me? At least from my current perspective in the Pacific Northwest it seems like many heretofore otherwise sensible people are going mad. Look at all this:

  • Hezbollah alliance with the Taliban (across fourteen centuries of separation, across five nations of separation)?
  • Iranian alliance with al-Qaeda which is the mortal Wahhabi enemy of the Shi’as (including Iranians and Iraqis and Lebanese and Bahrainis and Pakistanis and all others)?
  • Iranian and al-Qaeda alliance allegedly but ridiculously improbably going way back to the 1990s, mostly via the good offices and miraculous guesswork of Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia?
  • Iranian-Mexican Drug Cartel-Texan Nutcase alliance to blow up a restaurant in Georgetown and its famous clients just because it serves mediocre food to smug bureaucrats and charges too much? This last one allegedly courtesy of the DEA and the U.S. Department of Justice, and possibly Mujahideen-e-Khalq, among others.
  • Iraqi-Iranian-Syrian (wtf?)-Lebanese alliance to conquer Bahrain as a prelude to conquering the rest of the world and forcing Rick Santorum and Rick Perry to become Muslims and make the Hajj to Mecca?
  • Lebanese-Columbian-Taliban-Hezbollah-Maronite Christian plot to make money from a new triangular trade but without the rum and the African slaves.
  • Hezbollah-IRGC-Wehrmacht-Goldman Sachs…….. oh zut, sorry. Got carried away.


WTF is going on here? Is everyone going paranoid or are all of these plots real? Should we start looking under our beds each night for Iranian mullahs and Lebanese Shi’as? Are the Wahhabi princes now financing the hated Shi’a militants as well? Or is it just that the ‘plots’ are thickening?
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Pakistan, Women 100

An Epidemic of Rape: American Women, Congolese Women, Afpak Women………….

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“An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought. Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported being beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report. “That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey. “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent…………”

Shocking statistics. Who would have thunk it. Most people think the things happen in places like the Congo or Pakistan or maybe parts of Sweden
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Iran

Taliban Chutzpah in Iran and Afghanistan and Egypt………….

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“Until two months ago, Hamid had spent the better part of the past decade under house arrest in Iran, he said, after being detained entering the country when Afghanistan fell to coalition forces in late 2001…….. Now, after a sustained lobbying campaign by family members, Hamid is free. We met back in his Egyptian homeland nearly two years after we first began talking online, a months-long conversation (and, at times, debate) we had over email about our respective ideas. “I thought Iran intended to hold me forever,” he said when we met at the cafe. “They denied that I was there but after the campaign from my family, my presence became known and if the outside world knows someone is there, then they have a chance of a deal being made for their release.” Hamid knows more than most about the machinations driving Iran’s detention and release of foreign fighters who had illegally crossed its borders; he served at times as the unofficial Taliban emissary to the country. But he hotly contests that he represented al Qaeda or its interests to the government in Iran, as is alleged by the United States. “Al Qaeda did not send me, nobody sent me. I made the proposal to Mullah Omar to reach out to Iran when he came to visit us in the village south of Kandahar airport, in 1997, and he agreed.” The proposal Hamid recounts would have been part of efforts aimed at unlocking the Iranian embargo that later intensified after several Iranian diplomats were killed in 1998 by Taliban forces at Mazar-i-Sharif…………”

He was an al-Qaeda man: the Arabs in Afghanistan were all al-Qaeda, not Taliban. To say that those Iranian diplomats were “killed” by “Taliban forces” is an understatement. Actually those Iranian diplomats at Mazar-e-Sharif had their throats slit in public by the Taliban when they took the city. That is not simply killing, that is like what al-Qaeda did to American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. It is interesting that the Taliban were outraged because the Iranians would not help them in 2001. Some Arab Salafis on the Gulfnare still bitter about that, that Iran in 2001 did not help the Taliban who during their rule slit the throats of Iranian diplomats and persecuted most Afghans not just Shi’as. That is what their former and future Saudi allies would call Taliban chutzpah.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Economics, Europe

Floating To Loftier EU Afghan Relations: Trade, Aid, War, and Drugs…………

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“The European Union agreed Monday to negotiate a partnership pact with Afghanistan including counter-terrorism, development and fighting drugs, ahead of the departure of NATO combat troops in 2014. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels gave the European Commission and EU chief diplomat Catherine Ashton a mandate to negotiate a “Cooperation Agreement on Partnership and Development” with the Afghan government. “There is a need to plan for what happens after transition to Afghan security control in 2014 and the continued involvement and support of the European Union for Afghanistan,” said British Foreign Secretary William Hague. NATO-led combat troops are gradually withdrawing from Afghanistan with the aim of handing Afghan security forces full control of the battle against the Taliban in three years. “The international engagement in Afghanistan is evolving from its focus on security and stabilization towards political and economic cooperation,” EU foreign ministers said in a statement. The EU and its 27 member states provide around one billion euros a year in assistance to Afghanistan…………”

Europe and Afghanistan have an even tighter trade relation: that of drugs. Afghanistan is the major source of drugs to Europe. It is smuggled from Pakistan and Afghanistan and through Iran and Turkey, among other routes. Maybe Catherine Ashton and the Taliban Salafi mullahs will get together and smoke the “peace pipe” from the local poppy, singing Kumbaya as they drift toward loftier heights of Euro-Afghan cooperation.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, US Foreign Policy

Kabul: Clinton Talks Taliban Reconciliation, as Ahmadinejad Stalks in a Holding Pattern….

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“US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has encouraged Afghanistan’s wary leadership and civic leaders to keep up Taliban reconciliation efforts and boost counterterrorism co-operation with Pakistan, as the Obama administration presses ahead with troop withdrawal plans. On an unannounced visit to Kabul, Clinton told civic leaders on Thursday that the US would not abandon Afghanistan and pledged that reconciliation would not come at the expense of women’s and minority rights. Clinton, who arrived in the capital on Wednesday, was to see President Hamid Karzai and other top Afghan officials to repeat her message later on Thursday. She assured women’s rights activists, educators and politicians that their concerns “are being heard at the highest levels of the US government”. “These are some of my heroes,” she told reporters before the start of a meeting at the US embassy……. Clinton’s trip comes after Karzai expressed frustration with attempts to woo Taliban fighters away from the fighting amid increasing attacks by the Taliban-allied, Pakistan-based Haqqani network. In her meetings with Afghan officials, Clinton was also to underscore the importance of linking Afghanistan to its neighbours, a consideration for a regional conference in Istanbul, Turkey.………”

Apparently Clinton read Karzai parts of the riot act (long overdue). But keeping minority and women rights, such as they are, will be hard with the Taliban in government. Meanwhile Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has delayed his own approach to Kabul until she leaves. His jet was practically in a holding pattern as he follows her into the Afghan capital.
Come to think of it, Ahmadinejad has away of descending onto Kabul right on the heels of departing American potentates. I recall hims descending into Baghdad right after Dick Cheney had left: the difference was that he entered the city in broad daylight. He did the same in Kabul once: arriving just as Cheney left. Do you suppose he is trying to send a message with his stalking (well, not him, but his mullah bosses)? It is possible he was trying to tell Cheney that Iran will always be lurking across the border: to the northeast of Iraq, to the West of Afghanistan.
They say Hillary is heading to Pakistan. I wonder what Ahmadinejad’s post-Kabul travel plans are.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Espionage, Middle East, Pakistan, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Decimating Jihadists: America’s Secret Muslim President Succeeds where Cheney, Talk Radio, and Fox News Failed …………

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“Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight……..”

“Same US military unit that got Osama bin laden killed Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born al-Qaeda leader linked to terrorist plots in the UK and US, has been killed in a drone strike in central Yemen, the country’s military has announced…….”

“A senior leader of the militant Haqqani network, Haji Mali Khan, has been captured in Afghanistan, the Nato-led international force Isaf has said. He was detained during an operation by Afghan and coalition forces in Paktia province on Tuesday, Isaf said. He was heavily armed but did not resist, it added……”

So this “Manchurian” American president with a Jewish-sounding first name, an African last name, and a decidedly Muslim middle name has bested Dick Cheney in the war against al-Qaeda. I wonder what the Cheneys are up to these days.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear wepoans, Pakistan, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

The Next Nuclear Failed State………….

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“Shi’ites, who make up over a quarter of Pakistan’s population, are deemed “apostates” by many extremist sectarian Sunni groups. Responsibility for the attack on the long-suffering Hazaras of Baluchistan was claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) — a group also suspected of a devastating attack earlier in the week on the home of a senior police officer in Karachi who has a record of taking on the militants. Though little known in the West, LeJ, a sectarian extremist outfit linked to al-Qaeda and to the Pakistani Taliban, is now widely considered Pakistan’s most dangerous terrorist group…….. The army is reluctant to confront its bases with force; the police have failed to protect those it threatens; the judiciary is unable to successfully prosecute its leading members; and some politicians have sought to appease it with shady deals. While al-Qaeda has suffered a series of setbacks after CIA drone strikes killed successive leaders based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, its local affiliate remains unimpeded. LeJ began life as a particularly vicious offshoot of the banned anti-Shi’ite Sipah-e-Sahaba organization. The sectarian group, with its cells seeded throughout the country, held both doctrinal and organizational appeal for al-Qaeda, which used LeJ’s deep and pervasive network to expand its own presence into Pakistan. While al-Qaeda had operational command, LeJ supplied foot soldiers to carry out attacks…………..”

“Admiral Mullen accuses Pakistan’s ISI of treachery, but says let’s keep talking…….The chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff said to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that Pakistan’s
intelligence agency was in the background of the recent attack on our embassy,
as well as a bunch of other assaults. But he seems happy to keep on chatting
with them……….” Media (Sept 23, 2011)

What was all the ‘Western” talk about the dangers of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands through “extremist” states?
Cheers
mhg


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