http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...ry/Afghanistan/

'It's impossible to conquer the Afghans'

quote:

'It's impossible to conquer the Afghans' PAUL KORING From Saturday's Globe and Mail July 12, 2008 at 12:44 AM EDT MOSCOW — Head bowed, exhausted, the statue of a young soldier back from Afghanistan's killing fields is flanked by long, grim, lists of his dead comrades. It's a cautionary monument for Western politicians and generals who boldly boast they will succeed where the Soviets failed. In Russia, a country chock full of heroic memorials to enormous military sacrifice, the uniquely dejected pose of the helmetless Afghan combat veteran in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg is a sobering reminder that great powers have an unhappy history of overreaching and then being driven ignominiously from Afghanistan. “Canadians and Americans are learning the hard way. You have been there seven years and you have no prospect of early victory,” said Ruslan Aushev, a highly decorated combat veteran who served two tours, totalling nearly five years with the Soviet army in Afghanistan. “We knew by 1985 that we could not win,” he recalls. It then took Moscow four more years to extricate hundreds of thousands of troops from Afghanistan, while claiming victory on the way out. Afghanistan was plunged into civil war. In Russia, there's a widespread view that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has failed to heed the lessons of history. “You are just repeating our mistakes,” Mr. Aushev said in an elegant, memento-filled office close to the Russian Duma. While some Russians – perhaps many – take some satisfaction in watching the U.S.-led coalition struggle in Afghanistan, Mr. Aushev knows better than most the dangers of a defeated superpower leaving the wreckage of Afghanistan to violent and radicalized factions. “Most Afghans still live in a feudal society, in villages far from the cities,” he said. “For them, there is no difference between being bombed by the Soviets and now being bombed by the Americans … and it won't succeed.” In the West, the bloody, decade-long Soviet war in Afghanistan is viewed as the last gasping failure of a blundering Communist giant, eventually defeated by the proud and fierce Afghan mujahedeen, armed and backed by billions of dollars worth of sophisticated U.S. weaponry, and jihadists from throughout the Islamic world. Tagged as the Soviet's Vietnam, the Afghan quagmire helped sink the USSR. But the view from Russia – tempered by experience and the passage of two decades that allowed some lessons to sink in – suggest the West may, too, have overestimated its welcome and its capacity to rebuild Afghanistan at the point of a gun. “We could take any village, any town and drive the mujahedeen out,” Mr. Aushev said, recalling his two combat tours, first as an infantry battalion commander and later in charge of a full Soviet regiment – roughly the size of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan. “But when we handed ground over to the Afghan army or police they would lose it in a week.” If that formula for eventual defeat sounds eerily familiar, so does much of what Mr. Aushev and other Afghan veterans recall about their efforts in Afghanistan. Mr. Aushev, 53, is no apologist for Russian military adventurism. In the post-Soviet era, he served as president of Ingushetia for eight years, and during the war in neighbouring Chechnya he decried incursions by Russian soldiers and even threatened to sue the Defence Ministry. An able soldier – the youngest to reach the four-star rank of lieutenant-general in the Russian army – Mr. Aushev now heads an international organization for veterans. And he is no stranger to dealing with extremists. He helped broker the release of more than two dozen hostages during the bloody Beslan school siege by Islamic terrorists in 2004. “The Taliban may not be able to win militarily but they can't be defeated and sooner or later the Western alliance will be forced with pullout,” he warned. Support for the insurgents will grow the longer the foreign armies remain in Afghanistan, he said. Although the Soviets deployed more than 100,000 soldiers across Afghanistan – roughly double the number of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops currently deployed – and trained an Afghan army three times the size of Kabul's current security forces, it was never enough, Mr. Aushev said. “If we wanted stability we would have needed 800,000 soldiers,” he said, echoing the estimates of some unheeded American generals who called for much larger occupation forces in Iraq. But no matter how many soldiers are sent (and Washington is expected to significantly increase its deployments to Afghanistan next year as the long-awaited drawdown in Iraq frees up some units), Mr. Aushev said, there can be no military solution. “There will have to be an accord with the Taliban, because at least 50 per cent of the Afghan population supports them,” he said. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979, setting off a decade-long effort to occupy and pacify Afghanistan. Former sergeant Igor Grigorevich, 46, now stands watch over a tiny, seldom-visited museum, tucked away on the ground floor of a hulking building on Moscow's outskirts. Unlike the Great Patriotic War, as Russians refer to the Second World War, there is little about the Afghan war to remember proudly. Instead there are deep scars, both on the national psyche and among hundreds of thousands of largely ignored veterans. “It's impossible to conquer the Afghans … Alexander the Great couldn't do it, the British couldn't do it, we couldn't do it and the Americans won't do it … no one can,” said Mr. Grigorevich, still trim and determined not to let the war be forgotten. The museum began largely as a volunteer effort by veterans, although the government now provides some funding. The exhibits are striking. If the Soviet army looks vaguely dated, the pictures of Afghan villagers would be instantly familiar to Canadian soldiers now serving in Afghanistan. So, too, would the lumbering four-engined military transports with honour guards solemnly carrying flag-draped coffins into the waiting holds on Kandahar air field. The Russians called those flights “Black Tulips.” But there are also poignant reminders of the brutality of a lopsided war that pits the military of a modern superpower against insurgents. Photos show bombed-out villages, a crayon drawing by a young Afghan boy depicts helicopter gunships unleashing a torrent of death and destruction. In another corner is a mock-up of a mujahedeen fighter shouldering a U.S.-made Stinger surface-to-air missile that wreaked havoc with Soviet air power and helped tip the balance to the jihadists. Russian veterans say the huge effort by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to arm and support the mujahedeen from bases in Pakistan was crucial to the eventual Soviet defeat. But even without the active backing of a hostile superpower, the current insurgency has new tactics and new funding that the Russians never faced. Suicide bombers and sophisticated roadside explosives were unknown to Russian occupation forces. For all the broad similarities between the Soviet efforts to pacify Afghanistan in the 1980s and the current U.S.-led campaign, there are also significant differences. U.S. and NATO troops, including Canada's, are in Afghanistan at the request of a democratically elected government headed by President Hamid Karzai. Although dismissed by critics as the “mayor of Kabul” because of his government's limited reach beyond the capital, Mr. Karzai nevertheless represents the first Afghan leader elected in a free and fair national election. There are other lessons still being learned from the Russian experience in Afghanistan. A lost war or a war that has lost public support leaves a different set of scars on its veterans, says Zurab Kekelidze, deputy director of the Serbsky psychiatric centre in Moscow. “The Afghan Syndrome,” he says, afflicts many of the thousands of Russian veterans, and, he predicts, Canadian and other Western soldiers will similarly suffer. “If a society sees a war as a good thing … then that's a form of therapy that helps,” he said at his clinic. Soldiers readjust to society after all the horrors and stresses of battle. “But if a war is unpopular or is seen as lost or pointless, then the situation is reversed and returning soldiers are forced to try and find some justification for what they have done,” he added. The Americans suffered it in Vietnam, the Soviets faced it after Afghanistan and Canadians may have to deal with the problem if the public stops backing the current war, he said.

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

Nice posts. Appreciate.

Somehow for a moment I thought situation in Afghanistan was getting better. Or so I thought. This is perhaps the most striking article so far, I had to re-read it several times. Make your own conclusions, I wont bother ...


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...fghanistan/home

Reversal of fortune leaves Kabul under Taliban's thumb

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October 14, 2008 at 12:31 PM EDT KABUL — At a gas station on the outskirts of Kabul, lounging in the shade of a transport truck, Mohammed Raza describes how he escaped death. Last month, a U.S. contractor promised him $10,000 if he'd drive a truck full of diesel from Kabul to Kandahar, offering seven times more than he could earn by transporting his usual shipments of sugar. But the Taliban forbid drivers from carrying fuel to the foreign troops, he said, and the insurgents run checkpoints on the road between Afghanistan's two largest cities. He rejected the offer. One of his friends took the assignment, he said, and the Taliban cut off his head. “Many drivers now are selling their lives,” the 25-year-old said, nervously twisting the fringe of his beard. The Taliban are isolating Afghanistan's capital city from the rest of the country, choking off important supply routes and imposing their rules on the provinces near Kabul. Interviews suggest that the Taliban have gained control along three of the four major highways into the city, and some believe it's a matter of time before they regulate all traffic around the capital. That marks a shocking reversal of the insurgents' fortunes. Taliban were fleeing along the highways out of Kabul less than seven years ago, abandoning their government offices, dying under a hail of U.S. air strikes as they scrambled to flee. Now the Taliban and their allied militias are creeping back up the same roads, quietly showing their presence on the outskirts of the city. Kabul itself is heavily guarded, and nobody expects a frontal assault. But the insurgents don't need to attack the capital; by hobbling the government's ability to reach its own citizens beyond the city gates, security analysts say, the Taliban make the rulers of Kabul irrelevant in broad swaths of the country. It's more than a propaganda victory; the insurgents are grabbing the same political high ground the Taliban exploited during their previous sweep to power in the 1990s, by positioning themselves as the best enforcers of security in rural Afghanistan. The roadblocks have also started to pinch the foreign troops. Military bases find themselves running short of fuel and other supplies. Commercial aircraft were repeatedly warned this summer that they would not be able to purchase fuel at Kandahar Air Field, and the airfield shut down some facilities to reduce electricity needs during the peak fighting season. The insurgents have also targeted aid shipments, with 800 tonnes of food stolen from World Food Program truck convoys in the first half of the year – only about 0.5 per cent of the WFP's average food deliveries in Afghanistan for a six-month period – but still enough to feed 80,000 people for a month during a food crisis in which the WFP says it's facing a vast shortfall in supplies. Figures obtained from Afghanistan's Interior Ministry show the government's count of major attacks on supply trucks around Kabul has increased sharply this year, with 80 incidents in the first six months as compared with 45 over the entire previous year. Analysts say those numbers are conservative, but even so, the official statistics illustrate how strikes on supply routes are growing faster than the general rise in violence. People who work for the government, or have any association with the foreign presence, now travel covertly on the main highways of southern, central, and eastern Afghanistan. They disguise themselves as rural peasants, carry no identification cards, and erase numbers from their cellphones that might connect them with the government. Some devise even more elaborate strategies for dealing with Taliban checkpoints, arranging for friends to impersonate religious figures who can vouch for them if they're stopped by the insurgents. Truck drivers often leave a rear door open at the back of their tractor-trailers, securing their cargo with a spider web of ropes, so that Taliban can easily look inside and check the shipment for anything forbidden by the insurgency. The Taliban even scrutinize the drivers' customs paperwork to certify that the goods are destined for non-military consumers. The problem of Taliban influence on the southern highways grew especially acute this summer, said Brigadier-General Richard Blanchette, NATO's chief spokesman in Afghanistan. “There was this saying, that the insurgency begins where the highway finishes,” Gen. Blanchette said, referring to a popular aphorism among the foreign troops. “Well, for a while it was almost the opposite.” The Taliban make a point of allowing ordinary Afghans to drive the roads without harming them, but Gen. Blanchette said their actions are starting to affect the average traveller. “We had the infrastructure attacked – which was a first, you know, the insurgents had not destroyed bridges before,” he said. “The farmers couldn't bring their products any more, and it choked the economy.” He added that NATO has recently successfully countered the Taliban strategy by devoting more aircraft, surveillance, and Afghan troops to patrolling the highways south of Kabul. The result has been a drop in insurgent attacks on those routes in the final weeks of summer, he said, although he acknowledged that the slowing violence may represent a seasonal trend; attacks always decrease as winter approaches. He added that patrolling the highways has been difficult for Afghan troops because they're spread thin. Not only do the Afghan security forces lack numbers, but they're also corrupt and even colluding with the insurgents, said Colonel Asadullah Abed, chief of the criminal investigation division for the 10 central provinces around Kabul. The 40-year-old policeman says he's no friend of the Taliban, and has a sheaf of threatening letters from the insurgents to make his point. But he worries that his colleagues at small posts outside the city are not so devoted to the government's cause. Each of the four major gateways into Kabul are guarded by Afghan police, soldiers, and intelligence officers, Col. Abed said, but the insurgents easily bribe their way through. People with loyalties to the insurgents have also infiltrated the ranks of Afghanistan's security establishment, he added: “They're not working honestly.” Col. Abed paused to look at a reporter's military-issued accreditation card, and noted that the small piece of identification would be a death warrant on most highways outside the city. “You're a foreigner travelling with this,” he said, pointing to the ID badge, “and you can travel the Shomali road okay, but any other road they will capture you after one kilometre.” The colonel may have been exaggerating for effect, but it's widely accepted that the road to the Shomali plains now serves as the only genuinely safe passage out of the capital. Even foreigners drive the road for fun, roaring up the paved highway that crests the ridges north of Kabul and enjoying a picnic by the river, or meandering up the scenic Panjshir valley. But at a bus stop on the dusty edge of the Shomali plains, drivers and ticket-sellers say even this road is getting worse. “Only one road remains now, this road, but in a year you won't be able to travel even this one,” said Nafis Khan, 36, a ticket vendor. “The Taliban are not the problem,” he added. “When people saw the bad behaviour of the foreigners and government, the Taliban stood up to protect them. Day by day, their power increases.” Still, insurgent leaders admit they still don't have a choke hold on the city. The Globe and Mail sent a researcher to the mountains of Nirkh district in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, where a large group of Taliban often gather to raid the main highway between Kabul and Kandahar. Wearing a black turban, surrounded by heavily armed men, the Taliban commander bemoaned the fact that his power is vastly greater on the Kandahar road than the Shomali road. He claimed that his men ambush vehicles three times a week on the Kandahar road, but such brazen acts are not possible on the northern road. “Only the Shomali road is safer than others, because the influence of Taliban is less,” he said, in a video-recorded interview. “Those are Farsi-speaking people [on the Shomali road], so for Taliban it's difficult to enter that area, and that road is the only one secure for government and their convoys.” The Taliban's struggle to gain control of Shomali road reflects the insurgents' broader effort to get a foothold outside of their traditional ethnic group. In recent years, most of the Taliban's support has come from Pashtun tribesmen, and during the previous Taliban government the Pashtun-dominated regime fought bitter wars against the Farsi-speaking Tajik and Uzbek warlords of the north. One of the ways the Taliban are trying to broaden their appeal is by proving themselves better than the government at providing road security. It's a propaganda move aimed at people such as Del Aga, 40, a bus driver, who says the police have robbed him more often than bandits or insurgents. He usually doesn't slow his bus for men with guns because he's afraid of criminals, he said, but he feels obligated to stop for uniformed police with marked police trucks. “I stop for the police, and they rob my passengers,” he said. Even when the police aren't directly implicated in the shakedowns, Afghans often blame the government forces for failing to stop them. Nasar Ahmed, 38, said his bus was ransacked by bandits only a short distance from a police checkpoint, leaving him with the impression that the local authorities were either neglecting their duties or helping the robbers. He has been working as a bus driver for 14 years, mostly on the road between Kandahar and Kabul, and he says security on the highways has reached its worst point since the civil wars of the early 1990s. The major exceptions to the worsening trend are the zones where the Taliban have completely seized control, Mr. Ahmed said. Buses frequently had trouble with a large band of thieves in Nimroz province until the Taliban drove them away, he said. “The areas that belong to the government are less secure than the Taliban areas,” said the big-bearded driver. In areas of Wardak province described by locals as dominated by the insurgents, only 30 kilometres' drive away from Kabul, shopkeepers told The Globe and Mail's researcher that security has largely improved since the Taliban took over. “Our security is better, we don't have any problem with Taliban, and the government is far from us,” said the keeper of a mud-walled shop selling dry goods and hardware. That's the impression that Taliban say they're trying to create. An insurgent commander emphasized that the Taliban do not demand road tolls and refrain from attacking vehicles not associated with the government or the International Security Assistance Force. “Local traders' vehicles can go and transport every kind of thing that they need to carry,” the commander said, surrounded by fighters on a riverbank about two kilometres from the government centre for Wardak province. “And the tankers or vehicles that belongs to ISAF or government, we shoot them and burn them.” Despite the insurgents' claims of bringing security for ordinary people, however, the highways in Taliban territory are still rife with stories of banditry. Mohammed Amin, 52, a shopkeeper, said he was driving on a winter morning toward Kabul from Kandahar in a convoy of five buses when they were stopped by a roadblock. Criminals searched all the buses, he said, taking money, cellphones, and other valuables from the passengers. A man sitting beside him lost all the money he'd saved from working six months in Pakistani coal mines. “The thieves did their work very slowly and with confidence, because they weren't afraid of anybody,” Mr. Amin said. Taliban checkpoints also terrify many travellers, if they have the slightest connection with the government or reason to worry that the insurgents might get suspicious. A man who identified himself only as “Matin” said he was riding a bus to Kabul from Kandahar with friends when the vehicle was pulled over by insurgents. “My friend looked like a military guy, because he was tall and clean-shaven,” the young man said. “The Taliban pulled me aside with my friend. When the bus was driving away, I slipped back into the crowd and got inside the vehicle. My friend was captured.” His friend worked for a logistics company and the Taliban eventually released him, after local notables petitioned for his freedom. Many others aren't so fortunate. Taliban have executed so many suspected collaborators on the highways this year that local truck drivers held a protest at the Spin Boldak border crossing in Kandahar in late June, refusing to work until the government gave them better security on the roads. Mohammed Naim, 40, a ticket seller for a bus company in Kabul, said the situation has become so well known that he doesn't bother warning most passengers about the likelihood of hitting a Taliban checkpoint.

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

If you are a foreigner or a person of a different faith and living in Afghanistan, you will almost certainly require protection, armed convoys and such because life in Afghanistan would otherwise result in your untimely death.

And also - Kabul is a HEAVILY defended city. How come its STILL not safe enough? Arent hundreds of NATO troops stationed there enough, along with thousands of Afghan troops?

http://www.thehamiltonspectator.com/article/453429

quote:

Christians in Kabul will be targeted, officials warn October 22, 2008 The Independent, London KABUL, Afghanistan (Oct 22, 2008) Kabul's Christian community is on high alert amid claims that their congregations are under surveillance by Taliban agents after Monday's killing of Gayle Williams. The Christian charity worker was shot dead in the street by two men on motorcycle while on her way to work. The city of 2.5 million has Sikh, Hindu and Muslim citizens and is diverse culturally. Afghan intelligence officials have warned missionaries they may be followed home from church. Investigators say they were considering the possibility Williams knew her killers. Friends revealed that Gayle had asked to be buried in the Christian cemetery in Kabul. Her body is being kept in a makeshift morgue until her London-based mother, and her sister who lives in South Africa, arrive for the funeral. Speaking to The Independent yesterday, her mother Pat Williams said: "I am still trying to cope with what happened and it is very hard. The only thing that gives me comfort is knowing that she was doing what she loved most when she was taken from us. "I have heard that Gayle was thinking of coming to see me for Christmas, but she did not tell me that so it must have been meant as a surprise. I say to myself that at least Gayle is with our Lord." Yesterday, police were patrolling the road where Williams lived and the street where she was shot. A regular churchgoer in the same neighbourhood said his staff had been warned not to walk outside because of threats against Christians. He said: "All of us are having to be careful about what we do, where we go and what we say." Sayed Ansari, a spokesman for the secret police, said officials would try to protect Westerners, but he warned: "People need to be vigilant when they leave their homes, especially if they are on foot." A coffee shop close to where Gayle was killed, which was popular with missionaries, was closed yesterday "until further notice". Staff at Chai La, in Kart-e Char, said they did not want Westerners congregating in one place while security was sketchy. The Taliban said they murdered Williams because they claim she was converting people from Islam, a capital offence under Afghan law. The South African aid worker, who had moved to Britain, was volunteering for Serve Afghanistan, a UK-based Christian charity. Staff insisted she was running a project to help disabled children and had never tried to proselytize.

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

A typical day in Afghanistan this week ...

http://www.thespec.com/article/465279

quote:

Suicide truck bomb rocks Kandahar, girls attacked with acid November 12, 2008 The Canadian Press KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Six people were killed and 42 hurt when a suicide bomber at the wheel of a tanker truck blew himself up today outside a provincial council meeting in Kandahar city – an assault one senior Canadian military official denounced as an attack on "the weak and the innocent." The explosion, which rocked the downtown core, occurred near the provincial council offices and the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency. The blast in this former Taliban stronghold also flattened two nearby homes and damaged the NDS office. "They're reverting back to the pure terror tactics that they used to exercise here a couple of years ago," said Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, commander of Canada's land force, who is on a visit to Kandahar Airfield. "For a while they tried to take us on in a toe-to-toe confrontation and now they're going back to terrorizing their own population," he added. A group of Canadian soldiers rushed to the scene of the explosion from the nearby Provincial Reconstruction Team at Camp Nathan Smith to lend assistance. Canadian Maj. Don Schell, head of medical services at Kandahar Airfield, said initial reports indicated there might be 300 or 400 injured. All medical staff were called to "mass casualty stance" as personnel there braced for the worst, but the toll was much lower and the Canadian hospital received just two victims of the attack. In a separate incident today, a group of girls on their way to Mirwais Minna Girl's School in Kandahar were attacked when two men on a motorcycle sprayed them with acid. All were taken to hospital but only one sustained serious injuries. Schoolgirls in Afghanistan's second-largest city are easily identified by their uniform – black pants, a white shirt, black coat and white head scarf. Bibi Athifa, one of the girls who suffered acid burns to her face, said she and her friends were walking to school when two armed gunmen on a motorbike stopped. "One guy squirted acid from a bottle on us," she said. "Nobody warned us. Nobody threatened us. We don't have any enemies," said Athifa, who added that she is now afraid to go back to school. Under the Taliban's hardline regime from 1996 to 2001, girls were banned from schools and women were not allowed to leave the house without a male family member escorting them. "This story will spread through Afghanistan and the Taliban, our foe, will not win any friends by the tale of two young thugs scattering acid on two young girls trying to get an education," Leslie said. "There's no upside for them on this so it's an act of desperation," he said. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, giving the name of the man behind the wheel of the tanker. But a spokesman denied the group had anything to do with the acid attack on the school girls. "We totally deny it. We didn't do this thing," said Qari Yousaf Asmazi. "I don't like these incidents to occur with civilians. The commander of the International Security Assistance Force, Gen. David McKiernan also condemned the incidents saying that only ``the most despicable of people" would resort to these kind of attacks. "The insurgents are not only cowards, but liars," added McKiernan. "The insurgents seek to create fear and panic because they cannot compete with hope." Leslie agreed. "What's happened over the last year is that the foe has elected not to take on the well-trained, well-equipped ISAF and NATO forces and so they're reverting more and more to... targeting the weak and the innocent." Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is on a visit to New York to attend a United Nations conference on culture for peace, offered his condolences and sympathies to the families of today's victims. "These are the ruthless acts by the enemies of peace and prosperity in Afghanistan," he said in a statement. Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairman of Kandahar's provincial council, was in a meeting when the explosion occurred behind the council building. "I was in the compound and we were discussing our problems," said the council chairman, who is also Karzai's younger brother. ``Suddenly I heard a big explosion." "Most of the casualties went to the civilians. It was a cowardly act by the Taliban."

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN self-determination for women is "nothing" ??

then why is your administration friends with saudi arabia!? they are even more crazy than the taliban

Even when it comes to heritage and respect for other cultures, America doesn't give a rats ass.

Going to Iraq with this story.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4177577.stm

quote:

Originally posted by Lemonad Even when it comes to heritage and respect for other cultures, America doesn't give a rats ass. Going to Iraq with this story. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4177577.stm

Wait what?

I think you missed this part...let me hi-light...

quote:

"Any of the excavations or earth work that we have done in order to do our operations... was done in consultation with the Babylon museum director and an archaeologist."

Point being that the Americans weren't as arrogant as you're making them out to be...

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"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

how about this then

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4908940.stm

US troops building a helipad on those ancient ground.

On the news it showed that one of the troops even scribed his named into the walls.

yep... pretty bad.

quote:

Originally posted by Lemonad how about this then http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4908940.stm US troops building a helipad on those ancient ground. On the news it showed that one of the troops even scribed his named into the walls. yep... pretty bad.

thats fucked.

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these are the same assholes that cry about the cause of terrorism.

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OK, so now even the British say that democracy is no longer achievable in Afghanistan. Now its just the drug trade and NATO control over the turbulent country.
Is this what dozens of my fellow Canadian troops have died for, this stupid new "realism" and waste of so many resources and lives?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7747145.stm

quote:

New realism in Afghanistan rhetoric When the commander of British forces in Afghanistan tells you that "good enough" is the best that can be achieved here, you have to sit up and listen. Brigadier Gordon Messenger is every inch a military man, which makes it all the more surprising to hear him settle for something that sounds suspiciously close to second best. He would deny that characterisation of his words, but accepts there are limits to the Afghanistan project. The Afghanistan British troops leave behind - and no-one is willing to commit to any timeline other than to repeat the mantra that it will take "many years" - is going to be an imperfect state. Parts of it may well remain beyond the reach of central government in Kabul, and some of those responsible for the mayhem of the last 30 years could well retain much of their power and influence, perhaps even their militia. New realism It is a far cry from the beacon of democracy some had hoped for. "I don't think it will be recognisable in Western Europe, but Afghanistan will be something which will provide good enough security for the people. I think good enough should be what we look for," the brigadier said. "It's not second best, it's realistic." Security remains an urgent concern for Afghans There is a new realism in the air. In fact, all that has happened is that the rhetoric is finally catching up with what is actually happening on the ground. My guess is that ordinary Afghans have known for some time that the liberation of 2001 offered more promise than delivery. While on a foot patrol with British troops in Lashkar Gah, I spoke to Javed Ameri and his brother Sharaga. Their verdict on life in Afghanistan was gloomy. "It is less good now than it was five years ago," I was told. "Travelling on the roads there is no safety." And it was not just the bandits they were worried about. "At night, even the police ask for money," they said. While there has been genuine progress in retraining the Afghan National Army, the police force remains far more susceptible to local politics and is notoriously corrupt. Further down the street, doctors at the busy Ibn Sina clinic told me the Taleban - supposedly vanquished in 2001 - were targeting medics. Health care has proved to be one success story in Afghanistan "The government cannot give us the protection we need," one said. "Government forces and the international troops are just in the city but outside it is different." The Taleban may not rule in Kabul, but in large parts of this vast country - notably in the south - they remain a threat and retain the power to disrupt people's lives. They have largely given up the full-scale attacks on coalition positions - the assault on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah in October was stopped by a pre-emptive operation by Afghan forces and the British - and switched to attacks designed to undermine the government. Clinics are an obvious choice, especially as health care represents a genuine success story. According to figures published by the UN and the Kabul government, 85% of the population now have access to some form of basic health care - defined as having a clinic within two hours walking distance. It has to be said that any attempt to calibrate progress in this way is fraught with difficulties. Nobody actually knows how many people there are in the country. There has not been a census for decades and the one planned by the UN has been postponed to 2010 at the earliest. Security may be an issue. Malcontents The ultimate test of the mission in Afghanistan is the extent to which there is tangible change in the quality of life for ordinary Afghans. That is how the military mission is now defined. No-one talks about a victory over the Taleban. Indeed, the Taleban were never the only enemy. Afghanistan's fractured and violent history means there are any number of people with the power to take up arms. It is time to dismantle the insurgency by opening up a dialogue Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles British ambassador The old warlords who reduced parts of this country to rubble in the 1990s, the al-Qaeda networks with sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and criminal elements comprise an explosive mix of malcontents confronting Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul. Given that backdrop, it is not altogether surprising that many more diplomats now accept the possibility of talking to the Taleban - though there are always plenty of caveats and conditions. "It is time to signal to those prepared to accept the Afghan constitution, lay down their weapons and who are not linked to al-Qaeda that there's a place for them in an Afghan political settlement," says British ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. "It is time to dismantle the insurgency by opening up a dialogue." So that is the prospect. Seven years after the defeat of the Taleban was being trumpeted as a victory over evil, they may once again be a part of the political landscape. That will send shivers down the spines of all those who suffered at their hands.

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