[Peace-discuss] We're told we're killing & dying for these people

[C. G. Estabrook]

"Washington’s warmongers have been getting away with mass murder in Afghanistan 
for far too long. Obama is now at the helm of this disastrous imperial 
adventure. 'Troops out now' is the only viable exit strategy, yet it can also 
easily fit onto a bumper sticker. Those who argue for prolonging the U.S. 
occupation until the U.S. transforms its mission into a benevolent one are 
likely to be kept waiting forever."

 From <http://www.counterpunch.org/>:

	Et Tu, CodePink?
	By SHARON SMITH

...Through blackmail, bribery and brute military force, the U.S. has determined 
the political landscape of post-Taliban Afghanistan.

U.S. conquerors installed Karzai as Afghanistan’s transitional head of state in 
December 2001. But Karzai was never meant to build a genuine democracy in 
Afghanistan. Nor was he expected to champion the rights of women. On the 
contrary, he was chosen not for his ethical credentials but rather for his close 
ties to the band of warlords with which the U.S. partnered to quickly overthrow 
the Taliban in November 2001.

Renamed the “Northern Alliance” for the purpose of casting these warlords as 
freedom fighters, in reality they were veterans of the National Islamic United 
Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, an unstable coalition that ruled 
Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, when the Taliban overthrew it.

Together, they constituted seven separate Mujahideen political parties, each 
representing the fiefdom of a corrupt warlord. Their president, Burhanuddin 
Rabbani, suspended the constitution and issued a series of religious edicts 
banishing women from broadcasting and government jobs, and requiring women to 
wear veils. More severe repression soon followed.

Karzai served as Deputy Foreign Minister in Rabbani’s government, while the 
feuding Mujahideen parties unleashed a rein of terror against Afghanistan’s 
already war-torn population. Women were routinely abducted, beaten and raped, or 
sold into prostitution. According to human rights expert Patricia Gossman, 
“Between 1992 and 1995, fighting among the factions of the alliance reduced a 
third of Kabul to rubble and killed more than 50,000 civilians. The top 
commanders ordered massacres of rival ethnic groups, and their troops engaged in 
mass rape.”

In June 2002, in what the U.S. media depicted as a “flowering of democracy,” a 
Loya Jirga, or tribal council, elected Karzai as Afghanistan’s interim 
president. But most of the decisions were made behind the scenes, where 
then-U.S. envoy Khalilzad -- a former Unocal oil executive -- worked hand in 
glove with Karzai and the Northern Alliance to manipulate the votes. During the 
Loya Jurga, Karzai announced his own election as president before the vote had 
actually taken place, to the dismay of many delegates.

In the run up to the 2002 Loya Jirga, eight delegates were murdered amid a 
general rise in political violence and intimidation by warlords guarding their 
own fiefdoms. Meanwhile, Karzai used a rumored plot to overthrow his government 
as an excuse to round up 700 of his political opponents in the weeks before the 
voting.

Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has long been flagged as a drug trafficker 
in Southern Afghanistan, but the allegations have never been investigated. He 
continues to head the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the 
region. He also has played a role in passing information to international 
intelligence agencies. According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, writing in the 
Washington Post, while aware of information implicating Karzai in the drug 
trade, "U.S. and Canadian diplomats have not pressed the matter, in part because 
Ahmed Wali Karzai has given valuable intelligence to the U.S. military, and he 
also routinely provides assistance to Canadian forces, according to several 
officials familiar with the issue."

Under President Karzai’s watch, Afghanistan has returned to providing roughly 95 
percent of the world’s heroin supplies while the U.S. military looks the other 
way. As Jeff Stein recently reported from the Huffington Post, Republican Rep. 
Mike Rogers of Michigan, explained bluntly why Karzai’s brother has never been 
charged: "We certainly need the president to be with us. That would be hard if 
we're hauling off his brother to a detention center."

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