BY James O'neill

 

The complete and utter shambles that has characterised the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan raises a serious question of whether or not Joe Biden is actually in control of his administration. There are unconfirmed reports that the vice president Kamala Harris refused point-blank to have anything to do with the withdrawal. It was probably a wise decision on her part. On the one hand she has no military experience and has illustrated no special interest in military matters in her career to date. On a political level she has no doubt anxious not to be associated too closely with what is turning out to be an almost entirely unmitigated disaster.

The shambles actually began some weeks ago when the United States withdrew from the massive Bagram military base that had been their headquarters throughout the 20 year occupation of Afghanistan. They abandoned the base in the dead of night, not telling their erstwhile colleagues of their intention. They left behind a vast quantity of military equipment, that opportunistic raiders were quick to seize before the Taliban (banned in Russia) moved in.

Also left behind were thousands of prisoners the United States was holding., without trial and without any plan for their future. They were allegedly all Taliban sympathises, which is probably one of the major reasons they were instantly released by the Taliban when the latter took over the base.

An even greater shambles is taking place at Kabul’s International airport, where thousands of Afghanis are desperately trying to board the United States planes that were able to land. Such is the state of dishevelled disorder that the planes are taking off again with only a few passengers on board. The Taliban have told the Americans that these flights will only be able to continue until 31 August. It seems highly improbable but more than a fraction of those desperate to leave will in fact have been able to do so. The fate of those unable to leave is yet to be determined, but it is hard to imagine that the new Taliban government will have a great deal of sympathy for them.

The two countries that look to gain the most from the precipitous United States withdrawal from Afghanistan are Russia and China. There have been extensive talks between Taliban officials and both the Russian and Chinese governments. Not the least of the Chinese interest will be focused on the huge and still largely unexploited mineral resources that Afghanistan enjoys.

Both Russia and China also offered the Taliban the opportunity to expand Afghanistan’s role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation for which it is currently an associate member. That represents a real opportunity for Afghanistan that they will be anxious to exploit. Not the least of their economic problems is a dire shortage of foreign currency. The position has not been assisted by the United States freezing the estimated $7 billion held in the United States on behalf of the government of Afghanistan. It is highly unlikely the Taliban will ever be able to put their hands on these funds.

The United States has no right to withhold the money from the Afghanistan government. Not to put too fine a point on it, what the Americans have done could reasonably be described as theft. It is not the first time that they have seized funds deposited by foreign governments of which they disapprove. Venezuela has suffered a similar fate and there are plenty of other examples.

A further major issue for China and Russia is the fate of the huge heroin crop the accounts for more than 90% of the world’s supply. During their last time in power, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban showed zero tolerance for the production of heroin, cutting production to 0% in the areas that they controlled and massively reducing production elsewhere.

It was one of the first things that the Americans reinstated after the October 2001 invasion. It is a factor that the western media have been remarkably reluctant to publicise. But the role of the Americans, and in particular the CIA, in control of that massive crop and its distribution throughout the world to the enormous benefit of their coffers, is one of the most important consequences of the United States invasion and occupation.

The Taliban have assured their Russian and Chinese backers that their zero tolerance for the production and distribution of heroin remains unchanged. They have vowed to exercise the same zero tolerance that marked their last period in power. The Russians and Chinese have made it clear that their continued support is contingent upon the same level of zero tolerance being shown this time around.

The CIA is of course profoundly unhappy at the loss of illicit revenue the change of government in Afghanistan represents to them. Whether they will be able to find an alternative country willing to take over from Afghanistan remains a big question. Other countries are acutely aware of the enormous damage playing host to heroin production will incur for them. It is associated for example, with massive levels of corruption in the host governments. There are few that will be willing to take that risk.

Afghanistan itself was the second choice for the United States profiteers from heroin. It used to be the golden triangle of Laos that was the centre of the world production, run by the CIA and distributed throughout the world by the notorious Air America airline. Both Russia and China have been victims of United States narcotic trafficking and both are anxious to see the closure of the Afghanistan production line.

The Taliban have also promised that they have no interest in territory beyond their existing border. Neighbouring countries, of which there are seven, will be particularly concerned to ensure that happens. Not the least of the neighbours’ concerns are the movement of terrorist groups from Afghanistan across their borders. These groups are almost invariably proxies of the United States which has no interest in avoiding disrupting countries in the region, and especially fermenting trouble in China. The Uighur area has been an area of long time interest by the Americans who have actively pursued a propaganda campaign against China for its alleged mistreatment of the Uighur population.

Although the United States is now in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan, their interest in fermenting trouble in the region remains undiminished. Several of Afghanistan’s neighbours are former republics of the USSR. It is interesting how the Russian government has recently displayed an increased level of interest in these countries, and has held military exercises with some of them. The Americans have finally been kicked out of Afghanistan. It would be naïve to assume however that they have lost their interest in causing trouble in the region.

 

 

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/08/23/the-removal-of-the-united-states-from-afghanistan-is-only-part-of-the-solution-to-the-region-s-problems/

 

assange

 

 

Conservatives Give Bush and Trump a Free Pass on Afghanistan

 

 

by Laurence M. Vance

 

The debacle in Afghanistan is all the fault of President Joe Biden and his  predecessor, Barack Obama, says James Jay Carafano at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

 

Carafano is “a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges” and is Heritage’s “vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, E. W. Richardson fellow, and director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.”

In an article that originally appeared at 1945, where Carafano is a contributing editor, this Heritage expert laments that Biden’s “decision to withdraw abruptly from Afghanistan, without any discernible exit strategy, has plunged that nation into a bloody, ruinous chaos.” He believes that “the only good thing that can come from this debacle is that our leaders might wake up and recognize that the Obama Doctrine of foreign policy is an abysmal failure and must be abandoned once and for all.”

Carafano describes the Obama Doctrine as:

• America will ratify more treaties and turn to international organizations more often to deal with global crises and security concerns like nuclear weapons, often before turning to our traditional friends and allies;
• America will emphasize diplomacy and “soft power” instruments such as summits and foreign aid to promote its aims and downplay military might;
• America will adopt a humbler attitude in state-to-state relations; and
• America will play a more restrained role on the international stage.

He sums it up as America reaching out to other countries as “an equal partner” rather than as the “exceptional” nation that many presidents before Obama had embraced.

Carafano later remarks that the debacle in Afghanistan “is part of a pattern of Obama-Biden foreign policy” since “the current policies are being managed by much the same people.” The default position of “Obama-Biden foreign policy default is accommodation and appeasement.” It “disengages in dangerous situations,” and hopes “everything doesn’t go to hell in a handbasket.”

Carafano believes that it is a canard that “this fiasco was inevitable and that it’s all former President Donald Trump’s fault.” During Trump’s tenure, “Afghanistan had made great strides,” “the government controlled most of the country’s territory,” “there was real economic growth,” “women could work,” and “children could go to school.” The cost of nation-building in Afghanistan was reasonable and the effort sustainable. After all, “the U.S. was spending less in Afghanistan in a year than we used to spend in a week,” “American forces were training and advising Afghan forces,” and “our troops were not fighting wars and taking causalities.”

Conservatives are fond of saying that Trump didn’t start any new wars. He inherited the war in Afghanistan from Obama and “handed Biden a problem mostly solved.”

While it is technically true that Trump didn’t start any new wars, he didn’t end any wars, even though he campaigned on a platform of ending “endless wars.” He also engaged in numerous murderous actions, as detailed by Caitlin Johnstone, such as:

vetoing the bill to save Yemen from US-backed genocide and actively blocking aid to its people, murdering untold tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, rolling out many world-threatening cold war escalations against Russia, engaging in insane brinkmanship with Iran, greatly increasing the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration, killing record numbers of civilians, and reducing military accountability for those airstrikes.

 

Trump doubled down on the worst of Obama’s foreign policy actions. He redefined Russia and China as enemies of the United States and led the United States back into a Cold War with them. He pushed for a perpetual increase in the already bloated U.S. military budget. His legacy is one of continued U.S. wars, militarism, aggression, and intervention. There were more U.S. troops in Afghanistan when Trump left office than when he entered office, something that Carafano never mentions.

Someone that Carafano and most conservatives curiously never mention is President George W. Bush, the one who launched the unnecessary, unjust, and immoral war in Afghanistan in the first place. And as journalist James Bovard has well said:

Bush’s lies turned U.S. intervention in Afghanistan into a quagmire that pointlessly killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers.

Rather than targeting Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, Bush chose to conquer Afghanistan and seek to rebuild it as some type of female-friendly utopia.

Bush frightened Americans with a bogus nuclear threat.

The U.S. military and CIA brazenly tortured Afghans, atrocities that President Bush perpetually denied even though it was reported as early as December 2002.

Bush’s Afghan war was not good intentions gone awry: It was profoundly dishonest from the start.

Carafano gives Bush and Trump a free pass on Afghanistan while laying all the blame on Obama and Biden. The truth, of course, is that Bush did not have to go to war in Afghanistan, and Trump could have withdrawn the U.S. troops that Obama failed to. As former congressman and GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has always said: “We just marched in, we can just march out.”

Something that Carafano says in his article deserves a closer look:

The Taliban’s offensive should surprise no one, given the conditions handed to it. Why would it not take advantage of Biden’s abandonment of Afghanistan? It knew full well the odds that this president would try to stop its orgy of murder, rape, forced marriages, and mayhem was near zero.

 

After the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the justification for the war shifted away from justice for 9/11 to justice for the people of Afghanistan, especially women and children. Let’s suppose for a moment that the Taliban in Afghanistan or the bad guys in some other country do nothing but murder, rape, torture, and mistreat the citizens of the country they have control over. That would be a terrible thing. But since when is it the job of the United States, its president, and its military to put a stop to it?

This is what separates the interventionists from the non-interventionists. Interventionists will always be able to find some injustice in the world to justify bombing, drone strikes, or the deployment of U.S. troops to “fix it”—even if doing so results in the killing and maiming of U.S. soldiers and the spending of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Non-interventionists, although they deplore the violations of human rights that occur throughout the world, know that the United States cannot right every wrong and should not even try to do so. It is not the role or purpose of the U.S. government or the U.S. military to intervene in another country under any circumstance.

If individual Americans or groups of Americans are outraged by the conduct of those who govern or rule the citizens of a particular country, then let them recruit other Americans to their cause and go fight on their own dime. Just leave the rest of us out of it.

 

Read more: https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/conservatives-give-bush-and-trump-a-free-pass-on-afghanistan/

 

15 years ago, I wrote something to the effect that the Taliban was going to be "patient" and wait until the situation becomes favourable... 10 years. 20 years or 30... No matter what "our training" of the government troops and our support for the Afghan government, they were not enough. The big question is why? Why an army 4 times the size and better equipped could not defeat (or ran away from) a bunch of medieval loonies... OR JOINED THEM... Let's face it, spiritually, many people were aligned with the Taliban at all echelons of the Afghan military and government. Corruption was massive as well. Dealing with this is an impossible chaos, while playing officious parades...

 

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assange

Kamala Harris’s trip through South-east Asia, touting the US’s commitment to human rights, was full of ironies.

 

By Teow Loon Ti

 

 

When the newly minted US Vice President Kamala Harris breezed through South-east Asia on a “you don’t have to choose sides trip”, stopping at Singapore and Vietnam to reaffirm President Joe Biden’s commitment to the world that “America is back”, she brought with her not solutions to the problems of her hosts of which they have few and the US itself has many, but the tired old rhetoric of human rights, “common values” and care for their security.

One wonders whether the US’s choice of these two particularly successful countries to cut its new VP’s teeth on arose out of astuteness or the lack thereof.

The World Bank’s statistics indicate that Singapore has a GDP per capita of US$59,797.8 against the US’s $63.543.6. Vietnam’s much smaller per capita GDP is made up for by its robust 2.9% GDP increase in 2020 against the US’s -3.5% decrease. It is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. These geopolitically astute and adroit economies are successful primarily because they understand the Malay expression “Gajah sama gajah berjuang, pelandok mati di tengah-tengah” (When elephants clash, the mouse deer dies between). They are not just very adept at avoiding being crushed between elephants but able to handle the giants with a high level of sophistication.  In perfect timing two days before Harris’s visit, Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s Foreign Minister gave Channel News Asia an interview in which he said, “Singapore must remain relevant to the US and China, but not be made use of …We will not be one or the other’s stalking horse.”

According to Global Times, the voice of the CPC, Vietnam was said to have made a similar commitment. Poignantly, China delivered 200,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam on the eve of Harris’s arrival, pre-empting her promise of a gift of 1 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. The idea seems to be that the least one could get out of clashing elephants is to use their rich droppings as fertiliser.

A perusal of VP’s speech in Singapore reveals a number of ironies and contradictions. The most salient was her remark, “Our engagement in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific is not against any one country, nor is it designed to make anyone choose between countries”, followed soon after by “… we know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate, and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea”. The Americans think that they are selling to a naive audience – the usual door to door salesperson’s talk using half-truths, exaggerations and leading statements.

Close to the opening of her speech, Harris said in reference to the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, “Months ago, President Joe Biden made the courageous and right decision to end this war because we had achieved what we went there to do”. Singaporeans must be scrambling to look up their dictionaries for the meaning of “courageous”. Running away and leaving your charges and supporters to the mercy of a brutal regime isn’t an act of courage. They made another Faustian deal, this time with the Taliban in Doha in February 2020 without the involvement of the Afghan government. They are now washing their hands off the Afghan affair with none of the guilt that plagued Lady Macbeth: “Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”. The VP was essentially telling Singaporeans, “Trust us, we have just abandoned our allies in Afghanistan once our own purpose was served. We are now making a commitment to make your region secure”. She did not spare the Singaporeans the absurdity of her proposition. The relevant statement she made was:

“In this region, we have put forward a vision of peace and stability, freedom on the seas, unimpeded commerce, advancing human rights, a commitment to international rules-based order…”

The statement is replete with ironies. Firstly, recent history indicates that wherever the US went, it brought war and destruction instead of peace and stability: Vietnam, Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Indonesia (the toppling of the Sukarno government), Afghanistan, Libya and the list goes on. What could one make of her iteration of “… freedom on the sea…” based on “ … a commitment to international rules-based order” when the US is not even a signatory to UNCLOS! And “ … unimpeded commerce…” when she is trying to impede China’s commerce with her containment strategies.

As for her commitment to human rights, Colin Mackerras observed, “The irony is that, just as Afghanistan has incentives to help reduce terrorism in Xinjiang, the U.S. is likely to increase hostility both to Afghanistan for pursuing Islamist terrorism and to China, for taking actions aimed against it, but which the West interprets as human rights abuses.”

Human rights? When we see people who were supporters of the Americans, and who died fighting for them, were abandoned when time suits their master’s convenience. We are reminded of the Hmongs, in Vietnam, Kurds in the Syrian conflict; and now the Afghans who fell into the trap of believing in the Americans. In Afghanistan for 21 years, the Americans set up a puppet government for a hapless populace who had little choice but to fall in line. They created a dependency and then abandoned their dependents. How’s that for betrayal? Human rights? When the enemies of the US are killed by drones without charge or trial; and the murder labelled “collateral damage” of innocent people who unfortunately found themselves in the vicinity or are the victims of mistaken identities.

Even the ordinary folks of Singapore would have doubts about the American brand of “human rights” when they recoil in horror at the sight on TV of an American policeman pressing a knee on the neck of a black person until he expired right before their eyes. Most people understand that the most fundamental of human rights is the right to life.

The richest of all statements was her righteous declaration, “And I will always be true to our values and support those who seek a better future for all people”!  Such a statement when they have just abandoned the Afghan people, when children in Iran are deprived of essentials and medicines as a result of American sanctions! Isn’t China trying to seek a better future for its people through industry and trade? Values and human rights are constructs that can be interpreted in different ways under different circumstances. The US government has sequestered the words for their exclusive use as a weapon to ostracise any country with slightly different interpretations, ones that dare challenge their supremacy.

Such statements are like rich food that does not sit well in one’s stomach.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/human-rights-by-us-vice-president-the-last-refuge-of-scoundrels/

 

 

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Free Julian Assage Now before talking about human rights...