.
Paying the price with more innocent lives …
(BBC News) – Six foreign UN employees have been killed and nine wounded in an attack in Kabul, the deadliest on the UN in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s fall.
Three militants attacked a guesthouse used by the UN. They were later shot dead. Two Afghan security personnel and a civilian also died. The Taliban said they carried out the attack, which comes 10 days before the second round of presidential elections.
Later, rockets were fired at the city’s five-star Serena Hotel. One or two rockets were said to have landed in the grounds of the hotel, which is used by diplomats and other foreigners. No-one has been reported injured there, but about 100 people inside at the time were taken to secure rooms as smoke filled the lobby.
Afghan president’s sibling is suspected player in nation’s illegal opium trade
KABUL, Afghanistan – Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.
During Clinton’s visit to Pakistan …
(ABC News/AP) – As America’s top diplomat, Clinton arranged her three-day visit to get maximum public exposure. She planned to meet with students, business leaders, opposition figures and other elements of Pakistani society, pressing the case that the U.S. wants an enduring partnership with Pakistan.
“It is fair to say there have been a lot of misconceptions about what the United States intends for our relationship with Pakistan,” Clinton told reporters on her overnight flight, adding, “It is unfortunate there are those who question our motives. I want to clear the air.”
Visit coincides with deadly blast in Peshawar
ISLAMABAD (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked off talks in Pakistan, as a car bomb ripped through a crowded market in the northwest city of Peshawar killing at least four people.
Clinton, promising new investments while fending off bitter criticism of Washington’s policies from within the anti-terror ally, arrived just hours before the blast that also wounded at least 35.
“It was a huge bomb blast, heard in almost all the city,” police official Anwar Shah told AFP by telephone.
A huge blaze erupted after the explosion
that hit a busy market in Peshawar (AlJazeera)
The A-Times has a lot of interesting stuf fon Afghanistan:
1. Taliban take over Afghan province
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ29Df04.html
2. Britain’s Afghan role in question
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ29Df05.html
3. Helicopter rumors refuse to die
Helicopter rumors refuse to die
Missing link for the helicopter story:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ29Df01.html
.
(McClatchy) – US ambassador Karl Eikenberry said he’d heard rumors and read articles that the U.S. was secretly helping Afghanistan’s enemy with weapons and helicopters. He denounced those reports “as outrageous and baseless. We would never aid the terrorists that attacked us on September 11, that are killing our soldiers, your soldiers, and innocent Afghan civilians every day.”
A Karzai campaign team member said Karzai never meant to imply that the helicopters were American.
“We believe what the American ambassador has said, and that the helicopters don’t belong to America,” said Moen Marastyal, an Afghan parliament member who’s worked on the Karzai re-election campaign.
Afghan MI-17 helicopters…
Marastyal said that Karzai has been told he has two options: Either agree to form a coalition government or be forced into a runoff election as the final tally tosses out fraudulent votes.
In contrast, Marastyal said that Karzai is under pressure from his own supporters not to forge a coalition government. “We would have divisions in the government, and there would not be a good result.”
Analysis by US task force in 2003 when Bush/Cheney were the deciders …
… of course the Neocon administration wanted to please the Israeli Likud government of Sharon to “settle” the ME conflict once and for all by declaring the Palestinian drive for independenc as terrorism.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Afghanistan, which lies in the midst of one of the world’s richest deposits of raw materials, is of central strategic importance for both the US and the European powers. This was why, in the 1980s, these powers financed the resistance against the regime in Kabul, allied with the Soviet Union in a war that ravaged the entire country. At that time, among the allies of the US were Al Qaeda, as well as many of the drug barons and warlords, who now possess considerable power and influence.
In the meantime the conflict in Afghanistan is assuming all the characteristics typical of the colonial wars fought in Algeria, Vietnam and many other countries. This is clear from the growth of resistance to the US-led invasion of the country. While the Western media invariably describe this resistance as the “Taliban”, it is evident that the opposition is increasingly being drawn from diverse sectors of the local population.
The reason for such a development is not difficult to understand. On the one hand, the Afghan population is confronted with the brutality of the occupation troops, whose bombardments have repeatedly claimed the lives of numerous civilians; on the other hand, they are faced with the country’s new ruling powers, the drug barons and warlords, promoted by the US and NATO. President Hamid Karzai, once hailed as a beacon of progress and reason in the region, has become so synonymous with filthy corruption and nepotism that some Western governments feel compelled to distance themselves from his rule–above all because he cannot deliver them what he had promised.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."