The war for wealth

Afghanistan's immense mineral wealth is estimated to be worth around £2trn, according to the Kabul government. Afghanistan's mineral wealth extends over a huge range of valuable resources: iron, gold, copper, niobium (used in hardening steel), uranium, marble, cobalt, mercury, caesium, molybdenum (a metal which can withstand high temperatures and is used to make various alloys), and other rare earth minerals. The country has especially valuable deposits of lithium, the metal used in the world's batteries. Indeed, a Pentagon official is on record suggesting that Afghanistan could be "the Saudi Arabia of lithium".

As far back as 2008, China agreed a deal to develop the Aynak copper mine in Logar province. This is said to be the world's second largest deposit of high-grade copper. The Afghan National Police has deployed 1,500 officers to guard the mine. As part of its agreement to develop a massive copper mine in Aynak, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) is being asked to build a 575-mile railway from the mine, south-east of Kabul. One branch would head to the Pakistani border, another in the opposite direction through the capital and connecting with the new Hairatan line in the north. The deals are not confined to minerals. In late December, China's state-owned National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) won a contract for three oil fields in Zamarudsay, Kashkari, and Bazarkhami in the northern provinces of Sari Pul and Faryab, which will make it the first foreign company to exploit Afghan-istan's oil and natural gas reserves. The intention is that CNPC will build a refinery within three years, and this will be guarded by dedicated units of Afghan police and army.

Chinese state firms have also been involved with seven infrastructure projects, including roads in Kondoz and Jalalabad. They have also won contracts for telecommunications systems in Kandahar and Kabul. And last year, the Asian Development Bank announced it had allocated more than $200m for the development of the gas wells of Sheberghan, and an attendant pipeline.

Italy, Turkey and Germany are also actively pursuing deals. PricewaterhouseCoopers is advising the Ministry of Mines in Kabul, and the US bank JP Morgan is active, having put together a consortium that won rights to the Qara Zaghan gold deposits. An Indian consortium has secured the rights to two blocks in the huge Hajigak iron ore field, the other block going to a Canadian firm. The Afghan government is also negotiating with the Indian-led consortium that won the contract for the equally huge iron deposits at Tajigak in central Afghanistan for the companies to fund a 560-mile railroad – likely through Iran – to bring out the heavy ore. India will also contribute to the establishment of an Institute of Mines in Kabul, and last October signed a strategic partnership with Afghanistan.

China, Iran, Pakistan and India all have government or corporate plans for separate rail projects across Afghanistan. Turkmenistan is completing its own plans for another line, and it was Uzbekistan that built the first major rail link, a 47-mile line from the border town of Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif in the north of Afghanistan. "We would be able to import and export to Russia, Turkey, and even European countries," says Noor Gul Mangal, Afghanistan's deputy public works minister. Opening new transport gateways would also reduce Afghanistan's dependence on neighbouring Pakistan as its only link to sea ports.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/an-ios-investigation-to-the-chinese-and-the-indians-the-spoils-of-a-terrible-war-7576426.html

Taking lessons from the masters

The BBC gets all indignant about the latest , and very predictable news from Afghanistan. The Taleban made an estimated $100m (£50m) in 2007 from Afghan farmers growing poppy for the opium trade, the United Nations says. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said the money was raised by a 10% tax on farmers in Taleban-controlled areas. The UN estimates last year's poppy harvest was worth $1bn (£500m).

The same BBC website carries an interview with the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh about his new book Sea of Poppies .

"...Under the British Raj, an enormous amount of opium was being exported out of India until the 1920s... India was the largest opium exporter for centuries. ..I had no idea that opium was essentially the commodity which financed the British Raj in India. Opium steadily accounted for about 17-20% of Indian revenues..."

What did the Indians gain out of it ? Before the British came, India was one of the world's great economies. All the empirical facts show you that British rule was a disaster for India. Before the British came 25% of the world trade originated in India. By the time they left it was less than 1%.

Afghan mess

Some $10billion (£5bn) in aid promised to Afghanistan has still to be delivered, aid organisation Oxfam has said and of the money that is , 40% goes back to donor countries in "corporate profits and consultant salaries," . Most full-time expatriate consultants working for private companies in Afghanistan cost 250,000 to 500,000 dollars a year . This is some 200 times the average annual salary of an Afghan civil servant, who is paid less than £500.
Five American companies are named as having scooped the lion's share of their country's cash . The five US companies said in the report to swallow almost half of USAID's Afghanistan budget are KBR, the Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point, Chemonics International and Dyncorp International.
The report asserts "Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50 per cent on a single contract. A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors." It also says the Afghan government has no idea where more than £1 billion of the aid money has been spent. A stretch of road between Kabul city centre and the airport that cost £1.2 million a kilometre – at least four times the average local cost.

The Scotsman says "The consultants' six-figure salaries are in shocking contrast to the millions of Afghans who live in extreme poverty. About half of the 27 million population are thought to live on 50p a day, and one in five children dies before his or her fifth birthday."


"Western countries are failing to deliver" is the clear message of the Oxfam report

Seems that the only thing that the USA/UK Alliance can deliver is bombs , and thats never very accurate , either .

USAid official confirmed that since 2001 it had only spent two-thirds of the money it pledged - a shortfall of $8.5billion . And the official said only 6% of the overall budget was spent through the Afghan government "to ensure US taxpayers' money could be accounted for" - implying a lack of trust in the Afghan government .

So just who are we fighting for ?

Over the same period the European commission and Germany distributed less than two-thirds of their respective $1.7bn and $1.2bn commitments while the World Bank distributed just over half of the $1.6bn it committed.

The Oxfam report points out that while the US military spends $100 million a day, the average amount of aid spent by all donors combined has been just $7 million a day since 2001. Canadian army gunners in Afghanistan are now cleared to fire the Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shells at Taliban militants - at the cost of $150,000 a round (Ordinary high-explosive rounds cost up to $2,000 apiece.) The funds going towards reconstruction are, meanwhile, just "a fraction" of military expenditure, with 25 billion dollars spent on security-related assistance, such as building the Afghan security force, since 2001

So much for the humanitarian side of the intervention that has been often lauded by the invaders .

Just 13 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are categorised by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as "poppy free" ( The country supplies more than 90 per cent of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin) , and of those who aren't in the opium trade "...although they have lost a profitable crop, for now another alternative is bridging the gap....In the autumn vast forests of marijuana plants scatter the landscape.."

Soldier of Fortune

So the wealthy privileged blue-blood Prince Harry eagerly sought adventure and excitement in the battlefields of Afghanistan to prove himself a real soldier , a true gentleman officer of the regiment , and has according to the press reports organised bombing attacks on the Taleban .

How gratifying it is that he is offered a choice and it is not out of economic necessity that he has to risk dying for a cause .

Abdul Malik, aged 17, joined Taliban insurgents in the south after two Taliban supporters gave him a mobile phone. A short while later his dead body was brought to his family. "In our district many young guys join Taliban ranks for pocket money, a mobile phone or other financial incentives," said Safiullah, a resident of Sangeen District in Helmand.

"The government of Afghanistan lacks the funds to provide for its citizens and is unable to create sustainable job opportunities for a large proportion of the population. Therefore, the south is a rapidly growing recruitment ground for the Taliban. Where the government is failing to provide basic services, often the Taliban are filling the gap with more radical alternatives. This means that sought-after trust from the Afghan people is going to the radical militants rather than the elected government," The Senlis Council, a London-based international policy think tank, said in a report in February 2008.

High levels of rural poverty or unemployment are probably helping to drive young people like Malik to join the Taliban. A report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission on the social and economic rights of Afghans estimated that in some parts of the country the unemployment rate was as high as 60 percent.

A reason why there are so many rural poor is the fact that agriculture, which employs over 60 percent of the estimated 26.6 population, has received only US$300-400 million of the over US$15 billion of international development aid given to Afghanistan since 2002, Oxfam International reported in January.

Edward Girardet, a programme director for the Geneva-based Media21 Global Journalism Network, told IRIN that immediately after the demise of the Taliban regime Afghans had high expectations for a rapid rebuilding of their country and a positive change in their living conditions. However, six years on there is an enormous amount of frustration, "particularly among young Pashtuns who have returned from Pakistan only to find no jobs," he said.

According to Girardet, Oxfam and others, billions in aid to the war-torn country have been misused and/or mismanaged, and have produced only limited results. To defeat Taliban insurgents the US military spends $65,000 a minute in Afghanistan ($35 billion for 2007) .

Aid agencies and some experts doubt an increase in military spending will end the growing violence in Afghanistan: "There are no military solutions to Afghanistan..." Girardet said.

A resident of Kajaki District in Helmand Province put it simply "All we want is a job - to earn some money and support our families."

No-one questions Harry's personal courage or his bravery or his commitment to his chosen martial career , but for those Afghanis like young Abdul Malik , Prince Harry is representative of an economic system where power and wealth dominates and divides and continues to leave youths like Abdul powerless and in poverty .

And they call it Freedom

What is the "freedom" that the US-UK-NATO axis are fighting for in Afghanistan . Forget the Taliban , it was the pro-west Afghan government which sentenced a journalist student , who also worked as a reporter for the Jahan-i-Naw (New World) newspaper, to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed. The Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

Aminuddin Muzafari, the first secretary of the houses of parliament, said: "People should realise that as we are representatives of an Islamic country therefore we can never tolerate insults to reverences of Islamic religion."

Maulavi Ghulam Rabbani Rahmani, the heads of the Ulema council, said: "We want the government and the courts to execute the court verdict on Kambaksh as soon as possible."

Rahimullah Samander, the president of the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association, said: "This is unfair, this is illegal. He just printed a copy of something and looked at it and read it. How can we believe in this 'democracy' if we can't even read, we can't even study? "

The circumstances surrounding the conviction of Mr Kambaksh are also being viewed as a further attempt to claw back the rights gained by women since the overthrow of the Taliban.

The Independent is launching a campaign today to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh.

The other war in Afghanistan

There is another war going on in Afghanistan - one which is being ignored by the media - and that is the class war .

The Safi fur and wool factory, in Herat city, western Afghanistan, has more than 350 female and 300 male workers who earn only 300 Afghanis (US$6) for their 48-hour, six-day week. The factory produces coats, jackets, hats and other garments for the European and North American markets. There are more than 1,500 women working in four such factories in Herat city. Workers have to separate fur from goats’ hair and weave sheep’s wool without protective gloves or masks.

Ahmad Zia Rahmani, a lung and chest diseases specialist at the Herat city hospital, says workers in fur and wool factories are vulnerable to virulent microbes, which harm the respiratory system and cause chest infections. “Sheep’s wool and goats’ hair usually contain harmful bacteria which can easily be transferred to a human via close contact and inhalation,” Rahmani said. Mothers who regularly breastfeed their babies and consume food at the factory can also transfer dangerous microbes to their children if they do not wash their hands with antibacterial soap, Rahmani added.

Jamila has worked in the factory for more than a year and recently experienced an unrelenting pain in her chest. “First, I was coughing and now I feel a terrible pain in my chest,” the 32-year-old said. “Doctors and medicine are expensive,” she said.

In the past 12 months, seven women workers of the wool and fur factories in Herat have died due to respiratory diseases and chest infections.

According to Afghanistan’s labour law, public and private employers should provide medical insurance to employees who work in hazardous environments. However, there are too many hurdles - including poor law enforcement institutions, lack of awareness about women's rights and conservative traditions - which constrict the law on paper with weak or no practical power. Almost all workers in factories in Herat province have no written contract with their employers, particularly in the private sector. Workers and employers have only verbal agreements, which do not cover medical and hazard insurance.

Meanwhile

Iran is deporting thousands of Afghans . Most deportees are young, single men who migrated to Iran mostly in search of employment and economic opportunities, aid agencies say. Provincial officials, however, are concerned that hundreds of women, children and elderly people have also been evicted.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says there are more than 900,000 registered Afghan refugees in Iran. However, the large numbers of Afghans who do not have refugee status and are considered illegal are not protected by UNHCR. Since April, some 200,000 Afghans living in Iran illegally have been deported .

The price of war

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said .

According to analysis, the U.S. has already spent about $604 billion on the wars .

Nato has "lost in Afghanistan" and its failure to bring stability there could provoke a regional sectarian war "on a grand scale", according to Lord Ashdown . The former United Nations High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina delivered his dire prediction after being proposed as a new "super envoy" role in Afghanistan.

Lord Ashdown said: "We have lost, I think, and success is now unlikely."

Not the right type of bombs

Nato commanders are hoping to reduce 'collateral damage' . Nato is considering the use of smaller bombs in Afghanistan to try to curb the rising number of civilians killed during operations against the Taleban. Nato commanders were "working with weapon loads on aircraft to reduce collateral damage"

Aid agencies say Western forces have killed 230 civilians so far this year. Between 700 and 1,000 civilians were killed by both sides during 2006, according to the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief . Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer acknowledged civilian casualties had hurt the alliance politically . He insisted it was impossible to eliminate non-combatant deaths entirely.

Cure worse than the disease

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs :-

“The overall number of deaths attributed to pro-government forces, which include the ANA [Afghan National Army], ANP [Afghan National Police], NDS [National Directorate of Security] and international military forces, marginally exceeds that caused by anti-government forces”.

Given the high number of civilian casualties due to bombing the Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission called on multinational forces to minimise their current reliance on air strikes .

A former interior minister during the Soviet invasion of 1979-1989 and now a member of parliament, Saeed Mohammad Gholabzoy, said international forces should not repeat the mistakes the Soviets made in Afghanistan said :-

“Stop bombing villages and civilian locations” .

war drums 2

Just in case people think i have misread the situation concerning the alleged Iranian involvement in supplying the Taleban with weapons when later these statements were made

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says "substantial" quantities of Iranian weapons are flowing into Afghanistan.

"I would say, given the quantities we're seeing, it is difficult to believe it is associated with smuggling or the drug business, or that it's taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian Government," he said.

BUT he goes on to say he has not seen specific intelligence of Iranian involvement but the latest analysis is based "on the weapons themselves and the explosives that have been seized".

War drums continue to beat

from todays newswire :-

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking to reporters in Paris, said Iran was funding insurrections across the Middle East - and "Iran is now even transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Yet elsewhere we have read :-

Defence Secretary Robert Gates told a press conference on Jun. 4, "We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling, or exactly what is behind it." Gates said that "some" of the arms in question might be going to Afghan drug smugglers.

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil implied that the arms trafficking from Iran is being carried out by private interests. "When you say weapons being provided by Iran, that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting these weapons here," he told Jim Loney of Reuters June 5. "That's not my view at all."

It is well known that Afghan drug lords who command huge amounts of money have been able to penetrate the long and porous border with ease. They have undoubtedly been involved in buying arms in Iran with their drug proceeds for both themselves and the Taliban, which protects their drug routes. Smuggling is relatively easy because of the money available for bribery of border guards.

Noted by former Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Momand in an interview on Pakistan's GEO television Apr. 19, is that the Taliban now controls areas on the Iranian border for the first time. Momand said the Taliban, which is awash in money from the heroin exports to Iran, buys small quantities of weapons in Iran and smuggles them back into Afghanistan. But the Iranian government itself is not involved in the trade in arms, Momand insisted.

Tony "The Liar"Blair, of course , added his tuppensworth to fan the flames of war
"In Afghanistan it is clear that the Taliban is receiving support, including arms from ... elements of the Iranian regime," Blair wrote in the May 31 edition of the Economist. Nothing about the weapons from Pakistan . A Nato report on the Taliban's military capability states clearly that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it. Blair along with Bush is too busy downplaying Pakistans nuclear missiles programme and Musharraf's attacks on democracy .

But what does the Afghanistan Prime Minister say :-

“There’s no reason that any of our neighbours should support the Taliban,” Mr Karzai said. “We don’t have any such evidence so far...”

War - What are we fighting for ?

In a rare piece of candour a member of the Afghanistan parliament put her finger on the truth .
In describing the Afghan Parliament , she said:-

"A stable or a zoo is better, at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk. This parliament is worse than a stable or a zoo."

Ms Joya, a fervent advocate of women's rights, has angered male MPs with her criticisms. Some have thrown water bottles at her while she spoke in debates and others have threatened her with rape. She has also survived assassination attempts and has to regularly change her address after receiving death threats from Islamist groups ( the highest-ranking official dealing with female empowerment, Safia Amajan was murdered) . Earlier this year Joya opposed legislation granting an amnesty for the Afghani war-lords against charges of war crimes committed by them during Afghanistan's last 25 years of conflict.

Ms Joya said:-

"Talking about women's rights in Afghanistan is a joke. There really have not been any fundamental changes, the Taliban were driven off by the Americans and the British but then they were allowed to be replaced by warlords who also simply cannot see women as equals...Those of us who speak up are targets. My friends and colleagues have been assassinated. They have tried to kill me four times, the last attack was in Kabul which is the capital of this country which is supposed to be secure and democratic. And then if you try to speak up in parliament their first reaction is to try to gag you."

Democracy , Afghan style , as brought to you by Bush , Blair and the NATO military .

Lest We Forget

The US/UK alliance continually use smoke and mirrors to spin the motives for the Iraqi war , but this article from Z-Net focusses us once more on the true reason for the war . It is also a reminder that the architect of the war was not necessary Bush and the Neo-cons , but has been an integral part of American and British foreign policy regardless of what administration is in charge . From simple domestic tinkering such as U.S. officials' secretly writing tax laws in the 1950s (so the Saudi royal family could collect more money from the sale of its oil and American companies could write off the added payments on their tax returns) to the overthrow of Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah in the 50s

In 1977 the CIA sounded an alarm on the Soviets' faltering energy prospects in a secret 14-page memo titled "The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis." The agency concluded that the Soviet Union, which had been self-sufficient in oil, was running out and would soon become a major importer. "During the next decade," the report said, "the U.S.S.R. may well find itself not only unable to supply oil to Eastern Europe and the West on the present scale, but also having to compete for OPEC oil for its own use." Two years later, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. President Jimmy Carter, concluding that the Soviet army was passing through Afghanistan to seize the Middle East oil fields .

When President Carter issued this edict, "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." quickly dubbed the Carter Doctrine, the United States did not actually possess any forces capable of performing this role in the Gulf. To fill this gap, Carter created a new entity, the Rapid Deplyment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), an ad hoc assortment of U.S-based forces designated for possible employment in the Middle East.

When Ronald Reagan replaced Carter in the White House a year later, he turned up the heat. Administration officials insisted that the Soviet Union's interest in Afghanistan was a prelude to a communist takeover of the Middle East oil fields. The CIA report on the Soviets' running out of oil gave the Reagan Administration the ammunition to secure more money from Congress to arm Afghan insurgents and establish a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf. Soon after Reagan took office, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger announced that it was essential for the U.S. to establish bases in the Persian Gulf region "to act as a deterrent to any Soviet hopes of seizing the oil fields."

In 1983, President Reagan transformed the RDJTF into the Central Command (Centcom), the name it bears today. Centcom exercises command authority over all U.S. combat forces deployed in the greater Persian Gulf area including Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. At present, Centcom is largely preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it has never given up its original role of guarding the oil flow from the Persian Gulf in accordance with the Carter Doctrine.

It is easy to blame individuals and personalities when the true culprit is the Capitalist system .

The report that Russia was running out of oil was very much a "failure of intelligence" , more so than the pretend intelligence failures to determine in Iraq possessed WMDs or not . Soviet oil production was trailing off. But the Soviets were not running out of oil. Nor would they become dependent on imports. Rather, they were using primitive technology and needed to improve infrastructure . Russia ships 3 million bbl. a day to other countries, including the U.S. make investments in their infrastructure. In fact, Russia today is the world's second largest oil producer .