To get the guts of the drug war, please see this site.
"Wealth of Afghan elite sows bitterness amid wide poverty" by Pamela Constable, Washington Post | January 18, 2009
Wearing a burqa and a plastic sheet, a woman begged on a Kabul street. Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries, with high rates of unemployment, illiteracy, and infant mortality. (Pamela Constable/Washington Post)
that is SOME LIBERATION!!!!
More outrage:
".... more and more, people recall the five years of Taliban rule as a time of brutal but honest government, when officials lived modestly and citizens were safe from criminals.... "
KABUL, Afghanistan - Across the street from the Evening in Paris wedding hall, a monument to opulence surrounded by neon-lighted fountains and a five-story replica of the Eiffel Tower, is a little colony of tents where 65 families, mostly returnees from Pakistan, huddle against the winter cold and wish they had never come home.
After Bush encouraged them to?
Similar startling contrasts abound across the Afghan capital. Children beg near the mansions of a tiny elite enriched by foreign aid and official corruption. Hundreds of men gather at dawn outside a new office building to compete for 50-cent jobs hauling construction debris.
"I am a farmer with 11 children. Our crops dried up, so I came to the city to find work, but all day I stand here in the cold and no one hires me," said Abdul Ghani, 47. "All the jobs and money go to those who have relatives in power, and corruption is everywhere. How else could they build these big houses? Nobody cares about the poor," he added bitterly. "They just make fun of us."
All societies sound the same.
Seven years after the fall of the Taliban and the establishment of a civilian-led, internationally backed government, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with rates of unemployment, illiteracy, infant mortality, and malnutrition on a par with the most impoverished nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Most homes lack light, heat, and running water; most babies are born at home and without medical help.
Translation: BUSH FAILED!!! That's 'liberation?"
Now, according to UN figures, the populace is getting even poorer. A combination of drought, soaring food prices, scarce jobs, and meager wages meant that about 5 million Afghans - far more than in any recent year - are slated to receive emergency food aid. Many families spend up to 80 percent of their income on food.
Yet against this grim backdrop, pockets of wealth have mysteriously sprung up in Kabul and other cities. Officials who earn modest salaries on paper have built fantasy mansions, and former militia commanders with no visible means of support roar around the muddy streets in convoys of sport utility vehicles, spattering the burqa-covered widows at intersections with their hands held out.
I give you ONE GUESS where the $$$ comes from; why can't they SHARE the PROFITS, 'eh, readers?
It is difficult to prove, but universally believed here, that much of this new wealth is ill-gotten.
Uh, DUH!! Yeah, and WE KNOW WHERE!
There are endless tales of official corruption, illegal drug trafficking, cargo smuggling, and personal pocketing of international aid funds that have created boom industries in construction, luxury imports, security, and high-tech communications.
Which has really helped the average Afghan a whole pile.
"The entire economy has become criminalized," said Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official who quit his post as Afghan finance minister several years ago and is expected to challenge President Hamid Karzai in elections this year. "There is a crisis of governance. Corruption is way up, and poverty is massive. People are disheartened and confused."
Much of the corruption takes the form of penny-ante bureaucratic palm-greasing, with clerks demanding small bribes to stamp forms or police officers at checkpoints requiring truck drivers to pay to enter cities. But some are more audacious, such as municipal authorities selling government land for luxury housing projects, or security officials colluding with the drug traffickers they are supposed to be catching.
Yeah, thank God that doesn't happen in AmeriKa!
Afghanistan has always been poor. But the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots has increasingly embittered the public, turning it against the Karzai government and its foreign backers.
Everywhere we go!
In dozens of interviews this month, Kabul residents complained that they were struggling to feed their families and heat their rooms on scanty or occasional wages, while access to sources of prosperity such as ministerial sinecures and jobs with international agencies was limited to the lucky few with relatives in high places or the means to pay bribes.
Societies are all the same.
Karzai has publicly acknowledged that corruption plagues all levels of his government, yet critics say he is unable or unwilling to stop it. The new Afghan constitution has numerous provisions requiring officials to disclose their assets and perform their duties with financial transparency and accountability, but they are rarely heeded, according to a recent study by the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan.
The public mood of frustration, desperation, and disgust has played into the hands of Taliban insurgents, who present themselves as an alternative source of justice and carry out swift physical punishments of thieves or other miscreants in rural areas under their control.
Who are the Taliban, anyway?
"Something of a catchall term for loosely affiliated insurgents without a singular command structure. Often, the Afghan government favors the phrase 'enemies of the state' (New York Times July 24, 2007)."
"The Taliban is growing and creating new alliances not because its sectarian religious practices have become popular, but because it is the only available umbrella for national liberation," says Pakistani historian and political commentator Tariq Ali. "As the British and the Soviets discovered to their cost in the preceding two centuries, Afghans never like being occupied."
Also see: Afghanistan's Other Government
And today, readers?
"More and more, people here look back to the era of harsh Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, describing it as a time of security and peace."
Oh, oh, oh!!!! I'm so offended by the AmeriKan MSM and its bullshit!
Oh, one more thing:
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
Most Afghans do not favor a return of the Taliban, especially in cities where their extreme version of Islam clashed with the lifestyles of the country's educated classes.
Translation: the ELITE won't like them!
Yeah, I am tired of the deceptions and spin!
But more and more, people recall the five years of Taliban rule as a time of brutal but honest government, when officials lived modestly and citizens were safe from criminals.
"Nobody loved the Taliban, but what we see now is outrageous. The leaders are not rebuilding Afghanistan, they are only lining their pockets," said Abdul
--more--"
Not the OCCUPIERS, that's for sure!
"2 US service members die in separate attacks in Afghanistan; German military was the target, militants say" by Jason Straziuso, Associated Press | January 18, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomb attack yesterday on a heavily guarded road between a American military base and the German Embassy in the Afghan capital killed one US service member and four Afghan civilians, officials said.
Here we go again; how many CIVILIANS did the COALITION KILL YESTERDAY?
Separately, a US service member died when militants fired at a CH-47 transport helicopter and it made a "hard landing" in eastern Kunar province, the US military said. Colonel Greg Julian, a military spokesman, said it wasn't immediately clear whether the incoming fire brought down the helicopter.
Translation; They shot a chopper down.
The attacks come at a time of increasing attention on Afghanistan as President-elect Barack Obama is set to take office. Obama has promised to increase America's focus on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan while decreasing troop levels in Iraq....
And this just about guarantees it: Peace President Plans to Annihilate Afghanistan
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bomb attack in Kabul and said German military personnel were the targets....
If you say so, lying Zionist MSM!
Colonel Jerry O'Hara, a US military spokesman, said one US service member died from wounds received in the 9:45 a.m. attack on a busy Kabul street. The blast also wounded six American military personnel and a US civilian, he said.... Four Afghan civilians died in the blast, and at least 19 wounded were being treated at two hospitals, the interior minister said. Two other wounded civilians were at other hospitals, said General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman.
The German embassy shares a small, two-lane road with Camp Eggers, a US base that serves as the headquarters for soldiers who train Afghan police and army personnel. Dozens of armed Afghan security personnel guard the street, and blast walls of concrete and sand-filled mesh-wire boxes line the road.
Oh, something is a STINKIN', readers!
The blast did not breach the wall of the base, military officials said. They could not say whether the base was also a target of the attack. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said a Taliban suicide bomber named Shumse Rehman carried out the attack in a
"The Germans have forces in the north of Afghanistan and they are involved in the killing of innocent Afghans. The Taliban will target all those countries who have forces in Afghanistan," he said. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned "this cowardly act of barbarity."
"Germany stands by its commitment in Afghanistan," Steinmeier said. "We will not let terror deter us from continuing our aid to the Afghan people."
Yeah, yeah.
What you call "terror" is their right to resist foreign occupation -- all built on that INSIDE JOB LIE of 9/11!
Germany has 3,200 troops in Afghanistan, mainly in the country's north. That region is considerably more peaceful than the country's east or south, but German troops are still the target of occasional bomb attacks.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, also condemned the attack and offered condolences to the victims' families. "These kind of un-Islamic and inhumane acts will only increase people's hatred for the terrorists," Karzai said.
Just like U.S. MASS-MURDER from the air does the same!
In a third attack yesterday, a suicide bomber in a minivan charged a convoy of NATO troops and Afghan police in eastern Nangarhar province. The explosion in Chaparhar district killed one civilian and wounded three others, said Ghafor Khan, a spokesman for the provincial police chief. He said three police were also wounded. Mujahid said the bombing was aimed at the foreign military forces in the convoy.
--more--"
