Failure to Prosecute UK War Crimes in Iraq Exposes ICC's Own Failings

The court could have set a powerful precedent in holding Britain to account. Instead, it has become a laughing stock and few will be able to take it seriously again.

by

Moazzam Begg 

 Published on

Thursday, December 17, 2020 

by

Middle East Eye

A platoon sergeant of the 1st Royal Regiment of Fusiliers guards members

 of 39 Engineer Squadron 32 Armoured Engineers as they breach one of

 the first obstacles clearing the way for British troops to enter Iraq on

 March 21, 2003. (Photo: Cpl. Paul (Jabba) Jarvis/British MoD/Flickr/cc)

"A court finds UK war crimes but will not take action." That was the extraordinary BBC News headline last week following the International Criminal Court's publication of its detailed investigation into war crimes committed by British troops during the occupation of Iraq.

The ICC's report is based on the findings of a preliminary inquiry to determine both whether there is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed and to assess whether the UK has itself investigated and sought to prosecute those accused of involvement.

The British government has gone to exceptional lengths to ensure that British troops accused of committing war crimes in Iraq are immune from prosecution.

The ICC concluded that because the UK was "not unwilling" to investigate and prosecute its soldiers for committing war crimes in Iraq, the investigation was being closed.

The truth, however, is that the British government has gone to exceptional lengths to ensure that British troops accused of committing war crimes in Iraq are immune from prosecution. Out of the hundreds of cases pending against British soldiers, by June this year only one such case remained open.

In March, the government presented the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill. The law will place a five-year limit on criminal prosecutions against soldiers accused of war crimes and a six-year limit on civil actions.

Any cases outside of these periods will require the attorney general's consent. There will also be a duty for the government to consider abandoning its commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ahead of military expeditions overseas.

The new law will stop countless claims of war crimes against British soldiers who served as part of the military occupation of Iraq. The bill had its third reading in the Commons in November and is primed to becoming law in the new year.

The aim of the proposed law is to protect British soldiers from what the government calls "vexatious litigation."

The case of Phil Shiner

The government often cites the case of Phil Shiner, the British lawyer who successfully exposed the role of British soldiers in the torture and murder of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi man who died in British custody in Basra in 2003.

Shiner was struck off by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in 2017 after being found guilty of professional misconduct charges including paying an Iraqi middleman to find claimants to make allegations against British soldiers.

Shiner had submitted thousands of claims against the British army so this was the opportunity the government - having previously denounced law firms involved in litigation against British soldiers as "ambulance-chasing lawyers"—was waiting for. In the same year, the government shut down its own investigation, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which had been set up to investigate allegations of torture by British soldiers. None of the IHAT cases led to prosecutions.

Despite denying the allegations of war crimes, the government reached out-of-court settlements with at least 326 claimants. It was, however, following on from Shiner's work that the ICC picked up the baton where the IHAT had dropped it. According to a report by the BBC and the Sunday Times, British IHAT detectives said they had seen evidence of war crimes carried out by British soldiers and alleged that Shiner's case was used to close down their investigation.

Stark contrast

The ICC said that there was a reasonable basis to believe that between 2003 and 2009 British soldiers murdered at least seven prisoners and tortured 54 others. It found there was a reasonable basis to believe that at least seven captives were raped or sexually abused as detainees in Camp Breadbasket run by British armed forces.

The stark contrast between the ICC's findings and its actions are deeply troubling. It is essentially saying that we know you raped and murdered but you're free to go—because we believe you'll police yourself.

This is what one IHAT detective said: "The Ministry of Defence had no intention of prosecuting any soldier of whatever rank he was unless it was absolutely necessary, and they couldn't wriggle their way out of it."

Why was the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The UK sent forces to Afghanistan as part of the international coalition that invaded the country in 2001 following the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in the US, and to Iraq in 2003 as part of a US-led invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

In both countries British soldiers became increasingly bogged down fighting against insurgents opposed to international occupation.

In Iraq, British forces were handed responsibility for security in Basra and three provinces in the south, but their presence was challenged by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army militia fighters.

In September 2007, British forces withdrew from their bases in the city to the airport on the outskirts, the targets of "relentless attacks," according to an International Crisis Group report which said that their retreat was viewed by locals as an "ignominious defeat."

In Afghanistan, British forces had been deployed in 2006 to Helmand Province. But they proved ineffective against the resurgent Taliban and in 2009 more than 100 British soldiers were killed.

British troops eventually withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014, with 454 service personnel killed over the course of their 13-year campaign in the country.

Around 120,000 British troops served in Iraq for six years. In light of all that has emerged with US atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, and revelations of the atrocities and coverups unearthed by WikiLeaks, it is not inconceivable that British troops committed many war crimes or that the British government would seek to cover them up.

After all, these soldiers were part of and allied to the most powerful and organised military machine in the world. They were armed, trained and motivated to fight, capture, interrogate and kill in the name of Queen and country.

Of course, it wasn't just Iraq. The brutality had begun in Afghanistan following the US-led invasion in 2001. A BBC Panorama investigation this year found a deliberate "policy of execution-style killings was being carried out by [British] Special Forces" against unarmed men.

Panorama also uncovered communications from Afghan Army officials who refused to go out on patrol with British soldiers because of their penchant for murder and their tendency to blame their Afghan counterparts in order to avoid investigation. They also said British soldiers planted drugs and guns on the bodies of unarmed Afghans they had killed.

Once again, the government was left to investigate itself. Operation Northmoor was set up in 2014 but the investigation was closed down in 2017 after looking at 675 allegations of abuse, but without interviewing key Afghan witnesses. The investigating Royal Military Police (RMP) "found no evidence of criminal behaviour by the armed forces in Afghanistan."

In November, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) released findings from a four-year inquiry that found Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan, "fuelled by bloodlust" and "competition killing," tortured and executed unarmed Afghan prisoners and then covered up their crimes by planting guns. Thirty-nine people were killed. Some of them were shot dead. Two children reportedly had their throats slit.

The report includes the chilling account of one special forces operative and how ADF troops idolised British and American soldiers' atrocities: "Whatever we do, though, I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse. I've watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people."

Although, at times, it has backed ICC prosecutions of individuals, the Trump administration has shown its open hostility to the court by freezing ICC assets and placing prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and others on a travel ban.

A paper tiger

The ICC is also being penalised by the US for investigating Israeli war crimes. It is now hoped that President-elect Biden will reverse the sanctions but it won't be an easy rise for the ICC either way.

It is now hoped that President-elect Biden will reverse the sanctions but it won't be an easy rise for the ICC either way.

It could have achieved something meaningful with Britain but once again it seems the ICC is quite willing to prosecute Africans but far less able to prosecute powerful Western nations.

It may be because Britain is, by the government's own account, one of the largest contributors to ICC coffers that this prosecution didn't go ahead. Or it may be that the ICC is just a paper tiger. Whatever the case, there is no escaping the connotations of this.

The ICC could have set a very powerful and visible precedent in holding Britain to account. It could have given hope and a semblance of justice to those who have neither. Instead, the ICC is a laughing stock and few will be able to take it seriously again.

Moazzam Begg is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and spokesman for Cageprisoners

© 2018 Middle East Eye

History shows us that outsiders can never bring peace to Afghanistan


The US and British withdrawal has set off panic, but the truth is they were exacerbating the problem they were trying to solve
‘

What Afghans really need help with is getting everyone else to leave them alone.’ 

A British army flag-lowering ceremony. 

Photograph: Ministry of Defence/Getty Images

Tamim Ansary

Mon 12 Jul 2021

Friends keep asking me to sign petitions urging President Biden to change his mind about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. They all agree that the US can’t stay in the country for ever but this, they say, is not the time to leave: the Taliban are surging, and the social gains of the past 20 years are in jeopardy.

I’ve not signed any of those petitions. Yes, the Taliban have committed horrific offences, and they won’t stop. And they must be stopped. Just the other day I saw a video of villagers in northern Afghanistan burying a dozen civilians killed by a bomb: an old woman wept because her whole family had been wiped out. Oh, but wait – that bomb was dropped by the government, delivered by drone.

Both sides in this war kill civilians. I’d sign any petition that would stop the fighting and bring peace. What’s more, when this war ends, I hope the government now in Kabul emerges victorious. I hope Afghans resume their social and material progress on every front. But I can’t forget a pattern of Afghan history so blatant that I’m amazed it’s not central to this conversation.

The government in Kabul has never been able to secure authority in Afghanistan as a whole when it is held in place by an outside power’s military.

In 1839, the British replaced the Afghan monarch Dost Mohammed with his rival Shah Shuja, who had just as legitimate a claim to the throne as he. But the British had put him in power, so the country went up in flames and two years later the whole British community in Kabul had to flee on foot, most of them dying on the way out.

In 1878 the British tried again: this time, they ousted Afghan ruler Sher Ali and tried to rule the country through his son, Yaqub. Sure enough, the British cantonment was sacked, their representative was killed, the country went up in flames. The British had to give up and leave the country to a strongman, Abdul Rahman, who knew what he needed to do to secure his position with Afghans: he made a deal with the British and Russia to keep them both out of Afghanistan.

Jump ahead to 1978: the Soviets helped Afghan communists topple the last of the Afghan ruling family and elevated their own man, Nur Muhammad Taraki, to power. What happened? The country went up in flames. The Soviets sent in 100,000 troops to keep the communists in power, but that only turned the fire into a bonfire. The war raged for 10 years until at last the Soviets simply left – with the country eviscerated.

Then came the Americans. They dropped a fully formed government on to Kabul, picked Hamid Karzai to run the country, and clothed him in all the markers of legitimacy recognised in western democracies: constitution, parliament, elections. Under Karzai, girls went back to school, women’s rights improved, infrastructure was restored, progress was made.

Sure enough, however, as with all the previous great power attempts to manage Afghans through Afghan proxies, Kabul proved unable to secure countrywide legitimacy. Resistance brewed in the villages and spread to the cities.


Taliban sweep through Herat province as Afghan advance continues

In its war with forces based in the countryside, the Kabul government was hobbled by one huge disadvantage – the outside military forces that were helping it hold power. Because of that, it had no narrative to counter the one the Taliban wielded, which said: the government in Kabul isn’t Afghan, it’s a bunch of puppets and proxies for Americans and Europeans whose main agenda is to undermine Islam. Drones and bombs could not defeat that narrative but only feed it.

The US and Nato can’t stay in Afghanistan for ever, but is this the time to leave? The answer has to be yes if, as I am arguing, the US and Nato military presence in Afghanistan is causing the very problem it is supposed to be solving.

Many people assume the Taliban are the face of what Afghanistan would be without US help. But the American military presence might be obscuring the single most crucial fact: the Taliban don’t represent Afghan culture. They too are, in a sense, an alien force.

Before the Soviet invasion 40 years ago, it’s fair to say most Afghans were deeply devoted Muslims. The underlying issue among Afghans was not Islam or not-Islam but which version of Islam: Kabul’s urban, progressive version or the conservative version of the villages. Afghans involved in that debate were the ones who rose up against the Soviet invaders.

But the Taliban are not those Afghans. The Taliban originated in the refugee camps of Pakistan. Their worldview was moulded in religious schools funded by elements of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. They were armed by Islamists from the Arab world, some of whom are in the country now, calling themselves Taliban. If the western military presence were removed, the Afghan energy that refuses to accept outsiders telling them who to be might recognise the Taliban as the alien force.

The great irony of the western project to bring democracy and social progress to Afghanistan is this: Afghans have a powerful progressive current of their own. It’s Islamic, not secular, but it is progressive. In the six decades after the country gained independence from the British and before it was invaded by the Soviets, Afghanistan was governed by Afghans. During that time, what did that Afghan government achieve? It liberated Afghan women from the previously obligatory burqa. It promulgated a constitution. It created a parliament with real legislative power. It set up elections. It built schools for girls nationwide. It pushed for coeducation. It opened women’s access to a college education at Kabul University and it opened public employment opportunities for them in professions such as medicine and law. It is staggering to look back at that era.

As the US and British withdrawal proceeds, the country is surrounded by outside forces hungering to get in: Pakistan, Iran, Russia, India, China. Before any of them succeed, there ought to be a global conference at which international actors can work out a way to keep one another out of Afghanistan. For what Afghans really need help with is getting everyone else to leave them alone.


Tamim Ansary is the author of Games Without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BRITISH AFGHANISTAN 

Narco Politics

The British alternative is what? More civilian deaths from air strikes?

British diplomat opposes legalized Afghan poppy crop

Britain’s top diplomat in Canada has dismissed a poll, commissioned by the international think-tank that is championing the legalization of Afghanistan’s contentious opium poppy crop, which shows that Canadians overwhelmingly support for the use of Afghan opium for medicinal purposes.

Cary was responding to the release of an Ipsos Reid survey of 1,000 Canadians, conducted on behalf of the Senlis Council, which found that nearly eight in 10 Canadians (79 per cent) want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get behind an international pilot project that would help transform Afghanistan’s illicit opium cultivation into a legal source for codeine, morphine and other legitimate pain medications for the international market.

Oh so you could do it just that after six years you don't have the infrastructure.....right-o that's why Harper sent our troops into the Opium Fields. The effectiveness of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams can be measured in opium production.

Cary noted that while opium production has been licensed in such places as Thailand and Turkey, it took 15 years to achieve such a system. Afghanistan simply lacks the infrastructure and regulatory framework to cultivate opium legally and to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers, he said.

And for the British who created this problem in the 19th Century in order to expand their Empire to be telling us they oppose legalization, well that is a bit rich isn't it. They have a history of creating infrastructure and regulations for opium production.

It was not until the British Empire started organizing and commercializing opium production in the 19th century that the opium poppy became entrenched in the world economy. The opium produced in British India was the first drug to become integrated into the then emerging globalization.

Tea, which was then only grown in China, was bought by British merchants with silver extracted from South American mines.

This triangular trade went on at least until the British Empire, together with the East India Company it had set up, created a thriving opium market in China, first through illegal smuggling and then through forced imports.

The two so-called “opium wars” (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) waged by the British to impose their opium trade onto China resulted in “unfair treaties” that not only made Hong Kong a British colony but also provoked, in China, the biggest addiction ever to happen in world history.

Chickens, home, roost.

And after all this is a British problem, which they created back then and again today in Afghanistan.

Britain is stoned at home and sold out in Helmand

The vast increase in opium poppy farming in Afghanistan is indicative of an inability to grasp a basic law of economics

The British government for sure knows how to do one thing. It knows how to help farmers in need. Since it arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 and was put in charge of the staple poppy crop, ministers have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on promoting it. On Monday the United Nations announced the result. Poppy production in Afghanistan has soared since the invasion, this year alone by 34%. The harvest in the British-occupied protectorate of Helmand rose by 50% in 12 months. This is a dazzling triumph for agricultural intervention.

Ministers may deny this was their policy, but they cannot be that inept. They faced a heroin epidemic at home. Suddenly finding themselves charged with controlling almost all the world's opium production, they must have known what they were doing. By alienating farmers and forcing them into the arms of the Taliban, they would drive up illicit production and encourage oversupply. While that would increase heroin consumption in Britain in the short term, as it has done, oversupply would eventually cause prices to collapse. At that point, the British policy of "poppy substitution" with wheat and other crops would start to bite and supply would be stifled. What happened when that stifling drove prices back up again was someone else's concern.

I cannot think of any less daft explanation for a policy that otherwise defies every law of economics. Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister responsible for flooding British streets with cheap heroin, may squabble with his American colleagues over whether poppy eradication is better than substitution, but one thing is certain. Since Nato arrived in Afghanistan, opium has become to the local economy what oil is to a Gulf state. It is roughly 60% of the domestic product and 90% of exports, with productivity per hectare rising by the year.

Those into conspiracy theories might be forgiven for thinking this might also be a policy of the CIA to destabilize Iran by increasing the number of heroin addicts in that country.

Despite US suspicions, Iran - which has one of the world's highest drug addiction rates - argues that it has legitimate interests in combating the influx of heroin and opiates from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. More than 3,000 Iranian police and security personnel have been killed in clashes with drug smugglers along the Afghan border since 1979.

Legalization would of course cure this problem by recognizing drug addiction as a medical problem, a curse of capitalism, rather than a crime.

The year 2009 will mark the centennial of the Shanghai Opium Conference, the first world-wide agreement on the reduction of opium use and production. China, then still an extremely poor feudal nation, was spending most of its foreign exchange on opium it imported through British traders. The British sold their cheap Indian Opium for pure silver to the Chinese, and had almost two centuries of opium fortune-making behind them. The fledgling United States of America tried to conquer a share of the profits in this lavish market, at a time when prohibitionist ideas about alcohol and opium control were expanding all over the globe. It was time for the American Disease to be born.

But don't expect support for that from Bush or Harper. They represent the traditional prohibitionist culture of social conservative Christians. The folks who oppose heroin legalization used to oppose the 'demon rum'.

In later analyses of the history of drug and alcohol controls other names for the American Disease have been coined. The most appropriate one, not tied to any nationality per se, is the 'Temperance Movement'. It was comprised of a collective of local movements prevalent in a group of nations. Later these nine nations would be identified as a special group, the nations where the temperance culture would endorse far reaching control policies in the attempt to regulate medical and recreational drugs. The global impact of these temperance cultures has varied from almost nothing to considerable.

Meanwhile it is telling that not only are Afhgani's the largest producers of opium they are also its victims.

Afghanistan is hooked on opium. The drugs trade has become the largest employer, its biggest export and the main source of income in a land devastated by decades of war. Opium is grown on 10 per cent of the farmland and employs 13 per cent of the population as labourers, guards and transport workers.

The ubiquity of the drug has now created the world's worst domestic drug problem, a crisis threatening to engulf any hope of economic revival. The first nationwide survey on drug use, by the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, estimated that one million in this nation of 30 million were addicts, including 100,000 women and 60,000 children.

Defending the rights of Afghani women and children, the mantra of the Harpocrites used to justify their warmongering. And their war efforts have resulted in increased addictions amongst women and children. That surely is a measure of success of this mission.




SEE:

Two Canadians In Afghanistan

Say It Ain't So

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Afghanistan, War, Harper, Britain, UK, Canada, politics, military,
NATO, Helmand, drugs, heroin, opium, Iran, narcotics, addiction, opium war, Afghanistan, CIA, Narco Politics,

UK speeds up granting asylum to Afghan interpreters, families as insecurity rising

May 31, 2021 
AT News
Afghanistan Times

KABUL: The UK is speeding up granting asylums to the thousands of Afghans who worked for the British military-mostly interpreters as fears grow of possible dangerous outcomes of post-international force exit.

UK Secretary of Defense, Ben Wallace said that it was “only right” to accelerate such plans due to interpreters being “at risk of reprisals” from the Taliban.

More than 3,000 Afghan workers will relocate in UK in next months.

“This is allowing people a route to the United Kingdom for safety, the people who supported the British armed forces and the British government over many, many years in Afghanistan who feel they are in danger and it’s absolutely right that we stand by those people,” Wallace said. “It’s my duty as Defense Secretary, I believe, to do the right thing by these people, and when they come here they will be supported and I very much hope that the British population also supports them, because these people have taken great risks very often to protect the men and women of our armed forces.”

More than 1,400 Afghans and their families have already relocated to the UK, and hundreds more have received funding for education and training.

The procedure of the applicant’s role have been changed as the earlier scheme had not eligible a large number of interpreters, but currently any of former locally employed staff member deemed to be under serious threats will be offered priority relocation in the UK.

This will be regardless of their employment status, role, rank or length of service, and the scheme will be open for applications even after British troops have left Afghanistan.

The arriving Afghans in UK will be offered help with housing and other essential needs, Wallace added.

“Following the decision to begin the withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan, the prime minister has agreed with the Ministry of Defense, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to rapidly accelerate applications through the policy,” the UK government said in a statement.

The UK has around 750 troops in Afghanistan. The withdrawal of British military become under action after the U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he will pull all American Service Members out of Afghanistan by September 11.

UK to relocate thousands of more Afghans as troops pull out

Home Secretary Priti Patel said the move is "a moral obligation"

THE WEEK Web Desk May 31, 2021 

File: British soldiers with NATO-led Resolute Support Mission arrive at the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan | Reuters

The UK has announced that thousands more Afghans who worked for the British troops would be able to settle in the UK as troops pull out and fears for the safety of the Afghans grow.

The programme allowing Afghans who worked as interpreters for the British troops—The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy was launched this year and over 1,400 Afghans and their families have been relocated to the UK. Hundreds of the families received financial aid for education and training.

About 3,000 more Afghans, including those who worked for the British military and the UK government, mostly as interpreters, and family members are expected to be relocated to the UK.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said it was "only right" to accelerate plans to relocate the Afghans or they might “be at risk of reprisals” from the Taliban.

Wallace said, "This is allowing people a route to the United Kingdom for safety, the people who supported the British armed forces and the British government over many, many years in Afghanistan who feel they are in danger and it's absolutely right that we stand by those people.”

Earlier versions of the scheme limited the number of people who could be relocated, as they were being considered based on their specific roles and length of their service.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said the move is "a moral obligation". “I'm pleased that we are meeting this fully, by providing them and their families the opportunity to build a new life in this country," Patel added.

Concern over the safety of the interpreters has been in the spotlight since the British forces ended combat operations in Helmand in 2014.

Logistics on how the Afghans would be flown out of the country along with the British troops will need to be worked out. The government will also need to liaise with local authorities on where and how to resettle the Afghans.

Total War

Enough already.

Afghanistan is about WAR
not PEACEKEEPING.

Its about defending a corupt City-State; Kabul which is surrounded by enemies.

It's about maintaining a country with a porous border with Pakistan.

It's about being a cop between warring clans/gangs.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe called on the Harper government Monday to address the effectiveness of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan in light of reports regarding the resurgence of the heroin trade in the battle-scarred country.Duceppe says Afghanistan mission falls short


The unfinished war in Afghanistan has taken a turn with the expansion of the supposedly defeated Taliban into neighboring Pakistan. The latest expression of concern over the new threat came last weekend from Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende as 1,400 Dutch troops moved into Afghanistan to help counter the Taliban-led insurgency. He told a press briefing that part of the challenge was "people coming from Pakistan." He urged that the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly address the problem. Taliban at the Border

Now, as the administration of US President George W Bush hands off "peacekeeping" to NATO forces, Afghanistan is the scene of the largest military operation in the history of that organization. Personal e-mail brings word from an American surgeon in Kabul that her emergency medical team can't handle half the wounded civilians brought in from embattled provinces to the south and east. American, British and Canadian troops find themselves at war with Taliban fighters - which is to say "Afghans" - while stunned North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders, who hadn't bargained for significant combat, are already asking what went wrong. Why it's not working in Afghanistan

There is a full-scale war going on in Afghanistan, shattering British government claims that its troops would act as “peacekeepers”.

Every day the agony of the Afghan people intensifies and more British soldiers are killed or wounded.

Twenty one British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001. But, by Tuesday of this week, eight of those deaths had come in August alone.

The scale of suffering inflicted on the Afghan people is far greater still. More than 1,600 people have died in the past four months.

Far from being an amiable “security mission”, Nato’s offensive in Afghanistan has now embroiled British troops in some of their fiercest fighting for half a century.

British freighters packed with weaponry and ammunition arrive in the country five times each week. Last week alone over 80 tonnes of munitions arrived.

But the more troops go in, the more the violence escalates.

The nightmare of occupation in Afghanistan

With Canadian forces unable to tell friend from foe in Afghanistan there is only one solution.

Total War.

Round up all men and boys in the villages regardless of age, ship the women and girls to the safety of Kandahar and Kabul. Burn all opium crops, destroy all the villages, shoot all males as the enemy.

Victory is ours.

"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"

Any one who is opposed to this final solution is a bloody whimp liberal or a cautious conservative armchair warrior. After all it worked in VietNam until the liberals in the Pentagon whimped out for an airwar. The only way to introduce capitalism and democracy in Afghanistan is Total War!

The claim that capitalism is a total war, and this is its essence, is more or less accurate. Capital, in classical Marxism must always expand insofar to new markets and to create new commodities. Capital presupposes an empty space that is open for which it can grow and spread. Yet, the space for which it can grow is never empty. People, environment, societies, culture, etc generally impede its growth. Sartre and Vietnam


With thanks to J. Swift for the inspiration





See: Afghanistan



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
, Harper, Afghanistan, Kandahar, corruption, Karzai, Kabul, criminal, Taliban
Canada, Afghanistan, Walsh, soldiers, NATO, friendly-fire, war, Harper, Canadian-Forces, army

Getting The Body Count Right

The sacrifice: We count the dead. But not the injured
Soldiers in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed than those in Iraq, new research shows. But the true cost isn't counted in bodybags alone.

Says a report issued in the UK. They look at the body count of British, Canadian and American troops in Afghanistan compared to Iraq, and include the injured. The results are more injured troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And the body count is as high as the Soviet count when they fought the Mujahedin in the final days before they left Afghanistan. Can you say Khyber Pass?!

In recent months death rates are so high they even outstrip fatality rates during the initial occupation of Iraq, when fighting was most intense and UK forces were engaged with Saddam Hussein's army - twice as high, in fact.

"This way of looking at fatalities is important for politicians," she said. "The relative fatality rate is a measure of the true threat."

The latest casualty figures released by the MoD list only four soldiers wounded in action in August, although it is understood a further 10 were seriously injured in the last few days of the month - a period for which no official figures are available. According to the MoD's published statistics, the 5,000-strong British force has suffered 35 deaths since the start of this year, with 41 injured in action, a ratio of little more than one to one.

In contrast, the United States had a ratio of one to three, with 278 soldiers killed since the start of the war in 2001 and 956 listed as wounded in action, while Canada had a ratio of one to four, with 29 of its 2,500 soldiers killed since the start of the year and 128 listed as wounded in action.

Why British government conceals true casualty figures

The British "Daily Mail" reported on Sept. 22 that "the number of British soldiers being wounded in Afghanistan is far higher than the public at home realize... There is the lack of openness over casualty figures in both Iraq and Afghanistan... Though the British government publicizes some figures but they are incomplete, ignoring relatively minor battlefield wounds or injuries and that latest figures exclude the last seven weeks which have seen some of the fiercest battles to date in Afghanistan."

The charitable institutions that provide aid to these wounded soldiers disclose that the Ministry of Defense (MOD) covered up true casualty figures in excuse of maintaining secrecy, so that their aid activities have greatly been effected.

War news from the Illustrated London News

Afghan War - February 1, 1879 86K

Afghan War - February 8, 1879 441K

Afghan War - February 15, 1879 445K

Afghan War - October 11, 1879 524K

Also See:

Afghanistan






Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Nukes, Pakistan, Taliban, Balochistan, Harper, Bush, Afghanistan, nuclear, nuclearfuel
NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, Graham, Liberals, Canada, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics, values,


Tags
Canada
USA
War
Friendly Fire
Canadian Troops
Afghanistan
Kandahar
NATO

Opiate Of The Masses

Iran suffers from being the conduit for Afghanistan opium and heroin. It more than any other country is directly affected by the increased narcotic production in Afghanistan.

While the Canadian media hyped the latest UN Drug Report on the increased opium production in Afghanistan quoting the RCMP claim that we are getting more heroin from there than from the old Golden Triangle.

The Golden Triangle; Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, etc. was the result of the CIA's involvement with black ops there during the Viet Nam war as Afghanistan production is a result of CIA involvement during the anti-Soviet offensive. The fact remains that NATO and American operations against opium production in Afghanistan have been a failure because they have no real alternative to the value of this agricultural product a historic crop in the region. A product first used by British Imperialism to spread its power through out Asia in the 19th Century.

However, in Afghanistan as in other parts of the world, in Burma for example, opium has long been at stake in armed conflicts as its trade has allowed these conflicts to be prolonged. As the complex history of opium in Asia demonstrates, opium production and trade have been central to world politics and geopolitics for centuries and the role of the opium economy in Afghanistan does not represent a new trend. In many ways, history reinvents itself.

It was not until the British Empire started organizing and commercializing opium production in the 19th century that the opium poppy became entrenched in the world economy. The opium produced in British India was the first drug to become integrated into the then emerging globalization. Tea, which was then only grown in China, was bought by British merchants with silver extracted from South American mines. This triangular trade went on at least until the British Empire, together with the East India Company it had set up, created a thriving opium market in China, first through illegal smuggling and then through forced imports. The two so-called “opium wars” (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) waged by the British to impose their opium trade onto China resulted in “unfair treaties” that not only made Hong Kong a British colony but also provoked, in China, the biggest addiction ever to happen in world history. Eventually, opium consumption and addiction also spurred tremendous opium production in China. In response to the Chinese national consumption that drained its silver reserves, China became the world’s foremost opium producer.

This trend emerged first in Laos and in Burma, then in Afghanistan in what came to be known as the Golden Crescent. In both Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Communist covert operations and secret wars benefited from the participation of some drug-related combat units or individual actors who, to finance their struggles, were directly involved in drug production and trade. To cite just two, the Hmong in Laos and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.

Today, Afghanistan’s opium production is the direct outcome of Cold War rivalries and conflicts waged by proxies who helped develop a thriving narcotic economy in the country. Afghanistan has been the world’s leading opium-producing country for years now, with Burma and Laos ranking second and third respectively.

And NATO has not engaged the Iranians in controlling the border and transit points used by the opium producers in Afghanistan. And they will continue to fail until they engage the Iranians as allies in the fight against opium.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a major transit route for opiates smuggled from Afghanistan and through Pakistan to the Persian Gulf, Turkey, Russia, and Europe. The largest single share of opiates leaving Afghanistan (perhaps 60 percent) passes through Iran to consumers in Iran itself, Russia and Europe. There is no evidence that narcotics transiting Iran reach the United States in an amount sufficient to have a significant effect. There are some indications that opium poppy cultivation is making a comeback in Iran, after a long period during which poppy cultivation was negligible. There are an estimated 3 million opiate abusers in Iran, with 60 percent reported as addicted to various opiates and 40 percent reported as casual users. With record levels of opium production right next door in Afghanistan, the latest opiate seizure statistics from Iran continue to suggest Iran is experiencing an epidemic of drug abuse, especially among its youth.

And contrary to the RCMP reports in the press, the United States government report above states that NO Afghani opium is getting into North America. Now do ya think the RCMP may be doing a bit of PR for their pal the PM to justify his war in Afghanistan?

NATO has relied upon American forces practicing large scale opium field eradication supported by air strikes which has led to large scale civilian deaths and friendly fire deaths to NATO forces.

Joanna Nathan
International Crisis Group analyst

Aerial eradication of poppies is not the solution. While some ground-based manual eradication is important as a stick, to discourage particularly new growers, it hits the poorest hardest. Aerial eradication can be too indiscriminate and would enrage a large sector of the population possibly driving them into the arms of the insurgents. On the other hand the proposal to license opium for medicinal use is unfeasible at this stage. Most of the drugs grown in Afghanistan are in Helmand which they haven't been able to stop when it is completely illegal. How would you then insert a massive licensing bureaucracy there and stop those who continue to grow for the black market? The price differentials would be so large there would be no incentive to grow for a licensed market.

The American war on opium production, like the rest of its Afghanistan mission, has been a failure, since it is America's allies in Helmand Province that turn out to be the opium producers themselves.

Eradication in Helmand

This season, the governor of Helmand asked the AEF to eradicate in Helmand. Despite making progress due to the AEF's heavy use of mechanized eradication, insecurity and waning political will hindered the AEF's efforts. Helmand will likely continue to be Afghanistan's largest opium cultivating province. Any future eradication strategy for Helmand needs to first account for security and political will.

It should be noted that 75% of the opium poppy cultivation in Helmand is new cultivation that did not exist two years ago. By definition, then, at least 75% of the poppy in Helmand is not being grown by poor farmers who lack licit economic alternatives-two years ago these farmers were doing something else.

In other words, the vast majority of the poppy in Helmand is not being grown by poor farmers who have been growing poppy for generations and lack economic alternatives. The reality is that cultivation has expanded rapidly in the past two years as opportunists have scrambled to exploit Helmand's lawlessness for profit. Many of Helmand's poppy growers are wealthy land-owners, corrupt officials, and other opportunists. Helmand's land is fertile; infrastructure and access to markets is good, and alternatives to poppy are available. Moreover, if Helmand were a country, it would be the fifth largest recipient of U.S. development aid in the world, having received over $270 million in USAID funds in recent years. Opium poppy grown by wealthy land-owners and corrupt officials funds the insurgency. There is no reason to avoid eradicating their poppy fields aggressively.

SEE:

Two Canadians In Afghanistan

Say It Ain't So

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military,
NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, heroin, opium, Iran, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics,