Challenges Petraeus’ Media Strategy to Delay Troop Withdrawal
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is challenging American and NATO forces commander General David H. Petraeus’ media strategy to shore up support for the war in Afghanistan. General Petraeus appeared on Sunday news shows and gave lengthy interviews to rally support for the war and to maintain troop levels. Kucinich, the leader of the movement in the Democratic Party to end the war in Afghanistan, who recently forced a debate and vote on ending the war, wrote to fellow Members of Congress urging them to consider America’s longest war as they meet with their constituents during the August District Work Period.
Channel 4 News has obtained rare film of Taliban fighters on the Afghanistan frontline, including footage of their attacks on US forces. Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson looks at what the film tells us about the insurgents and their tactics.
Even if I did want to do it, I would not be allowed to by ITN. Nor would anybody here. But out there in the wide open world of the freelancer, Paul Refsdal did it. He did it brilliantly well.
If he hadn’t slightly overplayed his hand at the last moment, he would have got away with it unscathed and pulled the whole thing off. But even as it is, he has emerged from Afghanistan with footage the like of which has not been seen I will bet, in nine years of war.
Because that’s what it’s like if you want to seek out the Taliban or other insurgent groups across Afghanistan and set up what the west would call an “embed” with them. It’s a helluva risk.
Paul is at least alive to tell the tale and sell his story. Though not without a six day kidnapping under murky circumstances. The Norwegian cameraman insists that no ransom was paid.
Armed fighters
It all starts with the moment when you move beyond the point of return. When the RV finally takes place up some distant mountain track in the east of the country in this case, Kunar Province.
Unsmiling, heavily armed fighters suddenly materialise and then there you are, out there, on your own, with nothing but trust to keep you going. From behind their turban-masked faces they are smirking, saying quietly to each other, “He’s really scared of us, isn’t he?” And so it went on for the whole of the first day as they trekked back up to their command post.
Day two and things had calmed a little. Commander Dawran – who set the whole thing up – made it plain that Refsdal is a guest. And that is that. Under Afghan custom they will now pretty much lay down their arms to protect him. Rather, on this occasion, than shoot or behead him as a suspected spy.
And by the second day the faces are being revealed, they are laughing around and joking: “If I appear in this people are going to say ‘Who’s the country boy?’” His mate laughs and adds: “He’s filming us all to say look here – these are the bad guys.” And things begin to fall into something of a routine.
Though they would eventually kidnap him, the Taliban granted journalist Paul Refsdal unprecedented access. This exclusive documentary shows us a side of the Taliban that we have never seen before.
Junaid: US troops may be able to control Kandahar for a time, but cannot control the countryside
Muhammad Junaid is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute on Management Studies, University of Peshawar in Pakistan. He holds a Masters degree in Business and IT and contributes regularly to blogs. He is currently doing his PHD in entrepreneurship from University of Essex, UK. His particular topic of interests include the identity of Afghan (Pashtun) entrepreneurs. As a Pashtun himself, he communicates the events in Afghanistan and Pakistan by interpreting them with respect to Pashtun culture.
The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels.
America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing.
Lately, I’ve been listening to folks like Rachel Maddow and Richard Holbrooke talk about the situation in Afghanistan. I’ve been hearing that the rate of illiteracy in that country runs in the area of 70 to 80%. The government is having a hard time enforcing the law because in cities like Kandahar, there are only 9 magistrates to hear court cases. I’ve also heard about the government, along with the military forces from NATO, have seemingly stopped cutting down Afghan poppy and marijuana fields so that farmers can stay afloat selling these crops.
The Washington Post reports today that “The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure save passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.”
This is not new, actually. Reports that the Taliban is funded by U.S. money have periodically appeared in the media for a long time. I seem to recall the first of such reports appearing in the fall of 2008. Yet the military has chosen to continue the practice unabated.
At least 45 US-led forces have been killed during an attack by Taliban militants on the US-run Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, the group claims.
A Press TV correspondent quoted a Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid as saying that 45 US-led soldiers including several army generals have been killed during the attack.
Mujahid added that the attack inflicted heavy losses to the airbase.
According to the Taliban spokesman, seven Taliban militants blew themselves up at the main gate of the base, leading to its opening and letting 13 Taliban militants enter the base.
The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication, pitting them against some Afghan officials who are pushing to destroy the harvest.
The Washington Post today introduces us to a controversy over Afghanistan war strategy. The Post reports that operations in Delaram (in the southwest) are “far from a strategic priority for senior officers at the international military headquarters in Kabul. One calls Delaram, a day’s drive from the nearest city, ‘the end of the Earth.’ Another deems the area ‘unrelated to our core mission’ of defeating the Taliban by protecting Afghans in their cities and towns.”
In the wake of 9/11, President Bush vowed not to rest until we find him. But eight years into the most expensive manhunt the world has ever seen, Public Enemy Number One remains at large. How has he continually evaded capture? Did he escape from Tora Bora or did someone let him go? In this controversial documentary, key personnel involved in the search speak out.
On February 13 the United States and NATO led an assault with 15,000 Western and Afghan government troops against Marjah, a town in Helmand province with a population of 75,000. One soldier for every five civilians. The NATO contingent involved in the offensive includes troops from Britain, Canada, Denmark, Estonia and the U.S. Continue reading →
by Gareth Porter
Thursday 11 February 2010
t r u t h o u t
Washington – Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
The evidence contradicts the claims by top officials of the Barack Obama administration that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sep. 11, 2001. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda’s global jihadist aims.
A primary source on the relationship between bin Laden and Mullah Omar before 9/11 is a detailed personal account provided by Egyptian jihadist Abu’l Walid al-Masri published on Arabic-language jihadist websites in 1997.
Dandelion Salad 