Some things about the war in Afghanistan you may not know (talked with soldier today)

[The Straight Story]

Was on the phone with my friend there. To spare you a long drawn out post I will try to simply hit some things point by point:

(update: Our call was cut short by a mortar alarm, talking to him now online - he is ok thankfully and said they never aim they just shoot em their way once in a while)

(these are his observations)

1. 10% of the people are educated, and want to try and keep the other 90% ignorant (ie, no education outside of the koran). Example of some issues. A school is built, a few weeks later a warlord is living there, they come back, kick him out, someone else moves in (these schools are nicer then many homes in the area). Teachers are killed. Now why would anyone want to keep people from being educated ? Those with something to lose - hard to control an educated people.

2. Opium/Poppy fields. Why is production up? Real simple answer but with some surprising things: People need to make money, and this makes them a real living.

So in come the troops, and destroy the fields. More enemies are made. So we offer them other crops, but they don't make much. So it finally comes down to the warlords again and how we make deals. Example of that, to do our job we cut a deal - you let us burn 60% of some guy's crop in your area, and we give you new trucks, etc (ie, he said it is like the Sopranos there).

3. The people that WANT us there the most - are those in power. I know it may seem odd, but they are getting more money and security with us there. We are building roads, etc that they want and need, and they use them to their benefit more so than others. It is probably built better now than before, and we have built more then we destroyed. The poor folks aren't getting as much as they are kept ignorant, while the war lords are getting a ton more (they have more power, so we give them better deals - the ones we don't kill, and when we kill em new ones crop up).

4. We are doing good there for many, but more people are needed - less in Iraq, more there. Our soldiers are trying hard to help all the people, but their poverty is beyond imagining. Religion is the one thing that holds them together and keeps them happy with a purpose.

5. Example of issues to think about. We saw two bodies on the road. Probably been there a few days. Think about that in our country occurring. In US you call the cops, ambulances are rushed it, there are investigations, etc, here it is just like a shoulder shrug and someone from the area comes along and buries them and nothing is really done most the time. Someone is taking over a school in the US, media is there, swat teams, and so on. Here, it is different. Laws are not really made and followed, it's like the mob.

More to come later....

Edit: Here is an article worth reading on some of this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1963357,00.html

[angstlessk]

1. I think booosh and his minions should have played sim city more before

we decided to nation build...couln'ta hurt?

[htuttle]

2. They were expecting it to be like 'Risk'

You know, you put some of your troops in the other country, and 'ding!', it changes color to your side.

[Salviati]

11. Right, and then you leave 1 guy behind to "hold down the fort" while the rest go off somwehere new..

[BrotherBuzz]

10. LOL

:thumbsup:

[QuestionAll...]

3. about the poppy fields...

I was under the impression that the Taliban was responsible for shutting down production and when Bush's war came about, the fields were up and back in production.

This is info from way back and I don't have a link handy. perhaps someone else can support or disprove this.

[The Straight Story]

4. I am asking his view on that right now (nt)

[QuestionAll...]

8. found a link on this..

With Taliban gone, poppy crops return

By Paul Salopek, Chicago Tribune,
26 December 2001

SORUKH ROAD, Afghanistan -- The muddy waters of the Red River are eked out carefully in the fields of Sorukh Road, a parched farming village largely depopulated by two punishing years of drought.

...

“It is good to be growing poppies again,” said Muhammad Tauib, a barefoot farmer who is replanting his fields with the narcotic plant once banned by Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime. “At least my family will be able to eat.”

In fact, Tauib's family never stopped relying on the illicit crop, even when the Taliban outlawed all drug cultivation in Afghanistan last year. To survive the drought, he and other villagers simply fell back on sales from their large hoards of opium gum, the source of heroin.

With the recent defeat of the Taliban regime by the United States and its Afghan allies, the harsh anti-drug laws imposed by the old Islamic government have fallen by the wayside. According to United Nations drug-control analysts, poppy plantations that had been abolished on religious grounds are under renewed cultivation.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/124.html

[The Straight Story]

9. Here is another conversation I had with him btw:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2848877

[The Straight Story]

7. Ok, basically:

The taliban had a lot more control, very ruthless. We are in a different situation now. Before it was one mob that had most the control, that is fractured and no iron rule is able to handle all these issues ;and it is but one of many issues we work on, not the highest priority - the taliban was more religious and stopped it some based on that, the warlords are using islam and don't fully follow it - they just want more money and power.

[QuestionAll...]

13. well, I'm always suspicious on who really wants the more money and power...

and who is most able to win at this game.
I find it very believable that BushCo has their grubby wallets in the whole deal.

[dysfunctional press]

12. i had heard that the taliban outlawed poppy production for a year-

in order to drive up prices due to the glut of smack they were sitting on.

[stellanoir]

14. If memory serves, in May of '01 our gov gave the taliban

at least 4 million (if not 4 bill-it's been a while) to stop growing opium.

Yet another sound investment from the *-ies.

For one thing opium has legal uses when its used medicinally or under strict spiritual supervision. . .or so I'm told and have read.

When it's overly refined, concentrated, and crystallized into heroin, it's a whole other issue. For another thing it's one of the few things that flourish there. You can't just say stop making money off the only resource people have known how to produce for generations without education and training in other areas.

It's so unbelievably insensitive and counter intuitive to think that plan was at all reasonable.

[alfredo]

18. It was 34 or 43 million. Before the war, Afghanistan only

shipped the raw opium. Now they have labs to refine the opium into heroin. That cuts out the middleman and increases profit. Much of that profit goes into al Qaeda's bank accounts.

We must explore what Richard Secord is doing in the region. His air transport companies have been tied to the illegal drug trade. Air America was reputed to be involved in the opium/heroin trade in SE Asia during the Vietnam war. Opium was transported from the Laotian highlands down to the coast. Air America planes then transported to air fields in the China Sea. SE Asia where Secord met Ollie North. They became buddies there. Air America changed names to Southern Air. It was then implicated in the drugs (cocaine) for weapons deal during the Iran Contra years. Secord was one of the first American presence in the "Stans" as we marched to war with Afghanistan.

[stellanoir]

23. Thanks for the correction

I think it was 43 million. I knew I was remembering the figures wrongly but it definitely involved a "4" in the first digital placement. Didn't feel like googling as it's all so wastefully pathetic.

Peculiar how often our military endeavors are waged in drug or oil rich regions. Wouldn't you say. . .?

The fact that all the Iran/contra characters were pardoned and now are players is deeply disturbing.

Oh well. We'll sort it out over time I reckon.

Thanks again.

[alfredo]

24. I think we forced Afghanistan into a corner. They had no choice

but to get their licks in while they could. They knew they would have one shot and they took it on 9-11.

[formercia]

5. democracy is just another foreign word.

it's not in their culture. Don't expect them to change overnight. Stay the course. Look stupid.

[porphyrian]

6. Our troops never should have been pulled out of there to go to Iraq.

We should already have bin Laden, and Afghanistan should already be well on it's way to being more stable than it's been in a century. Thanks to this administration, these are not the case.

[OzarkDem]

15. Somewhat similar to GOP controlled Ohio

Not to diminish the suffering and obvious need to help the people of Afghanistan, but in some ways we're not too far off.

Let's hope the Dems in Congress can force the blivet to focus more funds on Afghanistan instead of Iraq.


Here in Ohio, the GOP uses religion the same way - to placate the masses. They've made heavy cuts to education and have funneled huge chunks of the education budget to right wing religious corporations that open for-profit charter schools. Those warlords then give an inferior education to students and funnel millions in profits back into the GOP via campaign contributions.

Conversely, Ohioans don't have an option for a lucrative cash crop to make up for the loss of good paying jobs that the GOP has shipped overseas. They're stuck working at Walmart.

[Union Thug]

16. "Religion is the one thing that holds them together and keeps them happy with a purpose"

This says EVERYTHING.

[American liberal]

22. yeah, that sentence resonated with me, too...

Religion: opiate of the masses.

[rainbow4321]

17. Provides 92% of world's opium; 49% increase in a year

Someone is raking in the bucks...

http://english.people.com.cn/200611/30/eng20061130_327020.html


The Afghan government launched a big anti-narcotics campaign in the northern Balkh province, Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

It is the second anti-drug operation in Balkh province over the past six months, it said, adding Balkh is a well-known major cultivator of poppy used in producing high quality opium.

The statement also said, "Authorities have destroyed 67 heroin labs and seized 65 tones of narcotics including opium from the northern and eastern provinces over the past one year."

Afghanistan produced 6,100 tons of opium in 2006, which witnesses a rise of 49 percent from last year and accounts for 92 percent of the world's total supply.

[Jacobin]

19. Very interesting

It sounds like this guy has a real grasp of what is going on. Sounds intractable, really.

Thanks for the post

[HamdenRice]

20. Contrast with other "tribal" societies, eg Africa, strange

Reading this is both discouraging and perplexing. Over the last 30 years, I have travelled and worked in several parts of Africa, in societies that are also plagued with some lingering "tribalism".

But to my best recollection I have never met a single African who was opposed to education -- from government ministers, to university professors, to village elders, to poor farmers, to school kids. Maybe the only exception was some rich asshole in post-coup Liberia (summer of 1981), living in a recently evacuated American timber company compound, who made a comment that "the people must be brought along slowly." But that was more of a dismissive comment than an actual desire to hold anyone back.

The longer I have studied and investigated Africa the more confused I am about the disconnect between the basic decency of the people I have met and the rotteness of many but certainly not all, of their governments, but some of the best political theorists of Africa say that the problem is that the governments were not built on local traditions and values and are considered "foreign."

The things I read and hear about both Afghanistan and Iraq -- about underlying political values -- are so depressing, and it's hard to figure out where those ideas and values come from.

[Disturbed]

21. Afghan Autopsy

Afghan Autopsy

America began its so-called war on terror with the intention of driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Five years later, the Taliban is back, Osama bin Laden is still alive, and insurgent fighters cite the U.S. presence in the country as their main wellspring of rage. How did it come to this? Truthdig contributor Christian Parenti, just back from Afghanistan, reports.
by Christian Parenti

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1201-23.htm

[The Straight Story]

25. I think the govt wants education

But the local warlords see it as a threat to control. Keep the people praying and growing dope, they don't need much else then that - and when they do they become a threat to power.