.
always tough to reach this number of fatalities.
Especially when the end goal is ever so far away …
(The Guardian) – The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has unilaterally taken control of the country’s top electoral watchdog, provoking outrage from western diplomats, the Guardian has learnt.
The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which forced Karzai into a runoff election after it disqualified nearly 1m fraudulent votes in last year’s presidential election, previously included three foreign experts named by the UN.
However, according to a new presidential decree published today, Karzai will have the exclusive power to appoint all five panel members. His decision to “Afghanise” the ECC came while parliament was in recess.
It provoked a shocked reaction from western diplomats, who fear parliamentary elections – due to take place in six months – will be fatally undermined by a repeat of last year’s electoral fraud.
He said the Afghan president was using his power to make laws while parliament was not sitting in order to get rid of the three UN-appointed foreigners who had dominated the five-member ECC.
The commission’s Canadian chairman Grant Kippen and his two non-Afghan colleagues were instrumental in demanding an investigation into widespread fraud during the election last summer.
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(The Guardian) – The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 led to a war that brought much suffering to Afghans and no benefit to Russians.
In 1978, a curious cabal of idealist poets, would-be intellectuals, officers and KGB spies launched a coup, bringing down President Mohammed Daoud Khan‘s reign in the course of an afternoon. Victory was easily won but the communists had trouble winning the peace. Their violence was not only directed against the mujahideen, but also against rival leftist groups, the pro-Chinese Maoists, and members of the ethnically Tajik communist party, the Parchamis. The violence culminated in the murder of KGB-agent-turned-leader-of-the-Afghan-communist-party-turned president, Nur Muhammad Taraki, in September 1979.
Taraki had forged a personal relationship with Brezhnev (such intimate couplings include Mullah Omar and Bin Laden, Bush and Karzai). According to some Russian historians, Taraki’s murder at the hands of his fellow communist party member Hafizullah Amin deeply upset Brezhnev and, feeling personally affected, he decided to invade Afghanistan to avenge Taraki’s murder. The result was a 10-year war of little benefit to the Russians and much suffering to the Afghans.
During Soviet Era 100,000+ fatalities and over 1 million disabled and maimed Afghans
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
My son’s neighbor is arriving home from Afghanistan tomorrow, but his wife and kid won’t be able to give him hugs of welcome.
Will someone please tell us again, “For what noble cause?”
Enduring Freedom is a ridiculous name even as an overt propaganda tag.
Enduring occupation would be more apt
Yeah, well, and then there was “Iraqi Freedom”, soon to become “New Dawn”. Whom exactly do they think they are fooling with this rubbish?
They are fooling themsleves and a lot of the people back home I would guess
Oh plus say “operation neo-nazi jackboot with added child deaths” doesnt look so good on the front page of the NY Times propaganda sheet.
Yeah, neither does Operation Bomb them Back to the Stone Age, then Take Over Their Country, but it’s a whole lot closer to reality.
That is probably a littel too accurate 😉