The Kerry Chronicles: Kicking Around Afghan Women

It's good for propaganda purposes! 

"John Kerry praises progress of Afghan women; Puts spotlight on fragile gains" by Anne Gearan |  Washington Post, March 27, 2013

KABUL — Accepting a challenge from the captain of the Afghan women’s soccer team, Secretary of State John F. Kerry playfully hit a header Tuesday while hearing the success stories of a handful of female Afghan entrepreneurs.

‘‘Hey,’’ Kerry called when he hit his shot and directed the ball to Zahra Mahmoodi, a founding member of the women’s team in 2006. She told him that girls were not allowed to play soccer during the rule of the Taliban, the radical Islamist movement that held power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001. Now they play regular matches, but only before select crowds, mostly of family members, because women playing sports outdoors is still taboo in much of the country.

So it wasn't just the Taliban, huh? 

Also, keep all this in mind for later highlighting.

Kerry bought a soccer ball hand-stitched by Afghan women and praised the group of businesswomen for their courage and drive. The event was part of Kerry’s first trip to Afghanistan as secretary of state and a reminder of the fragile advances made by women after nearly 12 years of US-sponsored government here.

That's if you don't count the dead ones due to drone strikes and such, or the still living who have had their men and children killed and villages smashed.  But don't let that get in the way of this pos WaPo promo.

The Obama administration has set a hard deadline for the withdrawal of combat forces next year, but Kerry repeatedly pledged continuing US support for Afghanistan’s economic and political stability, and for women.

Hassina Syed, founder of a trucking and catering conglomerate, told Kerry that there are opportunities for women, but that she worries about security and the future....

Ah, forget those! Mission accomplished! 

A resurgent Taliban has burned girls’ schools and threatened women in several areas of this deeply conservative country, despite the swift embrace of women’s education and the government’s oft-stated commitment to improving health care and opportunities for women.

And all this time I was told we were winning. 

Related: Sunday Globe Special: Taliban Agree to Truce 

Say what?

The Taliban might regain some effective political control after US forces leave or might strike a deal with the Kabul government.

Related: 

AmeriKa Has Lost Afghanistan
Taliban I Told You So 

Looks like they already are running the place to me. 

Also see: The President Who Lost Afghanistan

The Obama administration has said those are matters for Afghanistan to decide, but the kind of large-scale foreign help that Afghanistan will need is likely to be partly contingent on safeguarding gains for women.

Translation: They are going to WAVE WOMEN and CHILDREN AT YOU as the reason for CONTINUING OCCUPATION!

In two days of talks, Kerry urged President Hamid Karzai to help ensure a fair election for his replacement next year, something Karzai said is essential to Afghanistan’s future. Kerry met Tuesday with Afghan lawmakers, rights activists and the country’s chief elections officer.

The United States is pushing Karzai’s loyalists and opponents to avoid a repeat of badly flawed and corrupt voting in 2009.

‘‘You are engaged in a remarkable effort, and the whole world is watching,’’ Kerry told the lawmakers and others in brief remarks before reporters were sent out of the room.

Many of the businesswomen Kerry met earlier had specific requests: better access to credit, government contracting set-asides for women-owned businesses, and, from Mahmoodi, more soccer pitches for women.

At least one they formerly used has been appropriated as a helicopter landing zone, she said.

Are YOU F***ING S***TING ME!! 

Time to take you back to the top of this post and the horse s*** the WaPo was shoveling!!!  

So the SOCCER FIELD has been turned into a HELICOPTER LANDING PAD for Kerry and the U.S. military?!?!  

Oh, what RANK, RANCID and FETID FECES -- and they called it AmeriKan journalism!

Mahmoodi told Kerry she hopes to take her team to the Olympics.

‘‘The males don’t want the females to go outside, but we can’t just do that,’’ she said.

Not true. Just want them to wear a burqa.

--more--"

Do I really need to comment anymore, dear readers of the world? It is now obvious that this concerned American citizen is being fed rank propaganda by his regional flagshit.

"Bomb in Afghanistan claims rising US diplomat; Embassy worker was taking books to village" by Graham Bowley and Monica Davey  |  New York Times, April 10, 2013

She was an unassuming young diplomat, only 25, who greeted journalists at the heavily fortified US Embassy gates in Kabul, escorting them to interviews and impressing them with her organization and her studied wish to build bridges between Afghan and American cultures.

So that was her non-official cover, huh?

Anne Smedinghoff arrived in Afghanistan in the middle of the summer heat last July. Tentative, even nervous about her relative inexperience in the war, she was nevertheless ambitious and eager to impress as a public diplomacy officer during her long hours fielding inquiries from journalists, chatting at parties around the city, and in trips to regions beyond Kabul.

One of her first breaks was to be selected from hundreds to be the on-the-ground control officer for the visit of Secretary of State John Kerry last month, arranging logistics and publicity. The feeling at the embassy was that she had handled herself well, and was on her way.

But Saturday, as she traveled in Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan on a day trip to deliver books to schoolchildren, Smedinghoff’s promise was cut short by a Taliban car bomb. She was killed along with three US soldiers, a Department of Defense civilian employee, and several Afghans. Others in her group were injured.

The bomb exploded as the group walked from a small air base to a school in Qalat, the provincial capital. The walk would normally take just a few minutes, but the visitors were wearing helmets and other protective gear, and had a military escort, officials in Kabul said.

Her death has deeply shaken her colleagues, a diplomatic corps already kept in pressure-cooker conditions in Kabul.... 

Then leave. 

And if Kabul is a pressure cooker the country has to be in s*** shape. 

After serving in Venezuela for nearly two years as a consular official, Smedinghoff arrived in Kabul in July.

Oh, she was a destabilizer in Chavez's Venezuela, 'eh?

She dove straight into the ‘‘bull pen’’ — the communications center deep in the embassy, serving as one of four officers answering calls from Afghan and international journalists sometimes 14 hours a day, six days a week. She immediately impressed, and her selection as the go-to person for Kerry’s visit reflected her ability, colleagues said.

‘‘When you are selected for the job, it tells you it is someone who is full of potential,’’ said embassy spokesman John Rhatigan.

In her downtime, she would go running in the embassy gym or pursue her passion for soccer. She organized the visit to Kabul of a former Olympic soccer player, Lorrie Fair, and played right forward for the embassy women’s team, using the rough grass field in the international military coalition’s compound in the summer, or in its gym during colder weather. 

It wasn't commandeered for a helicopter landing pad?

She was helping to organize the annual Kabul marathon this month. And last month, she and four friends went on a week’s cycling tour in Jordan.

She really got around, huh?

On her official trip to Zabul last weekend, she was accompanying Afghan journalists to present a set of translated books to local children, meant especially for girls. Advancing Afghan women’s rights was one of her passions, journalists said.

At a service for her in Kabul on Monday, Ambassador James B. Cunningham said....

I'm tired of kicking around the Boston Globe.

--more--"

Related: Kerry visits family of slain US diplomat 

Know he is kicking around a corpse!

"CIA officers serving overseas often use the State Department as their official “cover’’ to avoid revealing the true nature of their work" 

Related: A Diplomatic CIA

Of course, it is all at the bottom of service to the planet.

Also see: Suicide attack on Afghan police headquarters kills 5

"With a self-imposed deadline of December 2014 for American combat forces to leave, the two nations are trying to sort out difficult issues that often pit US goals for the security of its forces and American interests against Karzai’s keen sense of national sovereignty. It is unclear whether the US mechanism of ‘‘administrative detention,’’ under which some detainees remain in custody without trial, would be continued under Afghan control." 

You want our young men to die for what, Senator?