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Civil War Certain as "Afghan National Army" Now Over 60% Tajik
By former ambassador Craig MurrayThere are any number of "Big lies" put forward by the USA in Afghanistan and slavishly repeated by our politicians and media. Here are a few of the "Big lies":
- The Karzai government is democratically elected
- The Afghan anti-occupation fighters are all Taliban supporters
- Most opium is produced in Taliban controlled areas
- Women's rights are now respected in Afghanistan
(Actually Afghanistan is a whole pack of "Big Lies" which have a tendency of shifting depending on the season and weather. If I may add a few more:
-We are hunting down "al-Qaeda", and denying them a base in Afghanistan. We are in Afghanistan to deny the bad guys who did 9/11 and killed 3,000 Americans a sanctuary.
"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US(Israel ultimately and their assets in the USA) . . ."
-We're in Afghanistan for comprehensive nation building, construction of schools and all the other goodies of development; that's why we are spending 95% of our budget on such very transparent projects, in partnership with one of the most effective and corrupt free administrations the Afghan's have been lucky enough to have installed by us as a defacto puppet. The rumors that most of our assets in Afghanistan are mafia and narco-criminals is simply not true.
-It is simply not true that we are profiting from the Afghan opium. Its is simply not true that our C-130 transport planes are carrying tons of Afghan heroin into Europe, and North America for a few $ ($50--80 billion market value). Its is simply not true that we are using the surplus heroin to flood the markets of Russia, where 1,000,000 addicts now exists, Iran with 3,000,000 addicts, Pakistan and so forth.
-It is not true that we are in Afghanistan in order to incrementally attack Pakistan, weaken it, destabilise it and ultimately get at its nuclear bomb assets.
-Mullah Iran may be helping the Taliban. Under International Law they can (people of an occupied nation by alien forces can seek the assistance of adjacent countries), but that is not the point. Despite the fact mullah Iran massed 250,000 troops threatening invasion in 1998 against Taliban Afghanistan, after the Taliban massacred Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif, and the subsequent cooperation with the USA since 2001 in Afghanistan, we still have these seasonal accusations. If USA backed Jundullah operatives are killing Revolutionary Guards in Iran in Sistan province, then don't the Iranians have a right to retaliate? But given the nature of the Taliban...hardline Sunni fundamentalists with no space for compromise, and Iran....shia fundamentalism.....is this latest "Big Lie' to be believed, or is it another casus belli being groomed for an eventual attack against Iran?
--The Taliban are about to take over Afghanistan, such fearsome great fighters they are armed with their AK-47's, so we must rush in more troops, and more, and more, and conduct fake military media operations in such places as Marjah, to us a great city teaming with many fearsome Taliban, but in reality a glorified dirt village, with dirt farmers, and Opium growers......and then on to Kandahar......then on to Khost....and then on to Spinboldak.......and then on to....The "Biggest Lie" is that there actually isn't any real war to fight, or a real enemy to defeat in Afghanistan, but for our purposes we gotta look busy. We gotta look as if we are really in a fight of our lives with the 10,000 militia Taliban armed with AK-47, which mercifully for us very kindly is managed by our gofer the Pakistan military/ISI.
We can end this tomorrow, negotiate, patch together a national reconciliation government in Kabul including the Taliban, declare victory and leave........but hey killing civilians with smart weapons, and making billions of doe from Opium.......well you understand dontcha? Thats why we had to have all those moderate Taliban commanders arrested very recently....so as they wouldn't/couldn't come to the negotiating table...see (B-Movie black & white film noir circa 1948)
But I want today to tackle this particular "Big lie":
- The Afghan National Army is ethnically balanced.
There has been a consistent parroting by the Western media of the line that NATO troops operate "in support of" the Afghan National Army, and that this is a genuine force reflecting the whole nation. This propaganda has gone as far as releasing falsified figures of the ethnic composition of the Afghan National Army. These false figures have reflected the "Eikenberry Rule" set out by the Americans.
Under General Karl Eikenberry's rule, the Afghan army should be 38 percent Pashtun, 25 percent Tajik, 19 percent Hazara and eight percent Uzbek. That would bring it much closer to reflecting the nation's ethnic composition.
But a very concerned serving British officer of some seniority has just leaked to me that the truth is that the Afghan National Army is now over 60% Tajik, and that figure is increasing. The Pashtun figure is hovering below 20% and may have been overtaken by the Uzbeks.
In other words the "Afghan National Army" is just the Northern Alliance in very expensive NATO provided uniforms.
By carrying the northern alliance with our troops into the solid Pashtun tribal areas as an alien occupying force, we are stoking still further the ferocity of a future civil war. Karzai of course will be safe in Switzerland counting his looted cash by then.
Don't expect to see this in the mainstream media any time soon. Instead you will hear the "Eikenberry rule" figures repeated as if they were reality rather than a spectacularly failed target.
