- Former US drone pilot quits, regretting bombing innocents, including children (PressTV, May 20, 2013):
A former US assassination drone pilot says he quit the force after feeling “numb” about seeing a child and other civilians blown away in his remote bombing of targets in Afghanistan and realizing he has unconsciously developed a desire to kill.
Tags: Afghanistan, Assassination, Children, Civilians, Drones, Global News, Government, Military, Politics, Soldiers
Flashback:
- Afghanistan: Opium Cultivation Rose Substantially In 2012 (New York Times)
- Afghan Opium Poppy Farming Increases 20%, Fuelled By High Opium Prices (Guardian)
- CIA Created Afghan Heroin Trade (Veterans Today)
- Afghanistan: Is Creating A ‘Narco-State’ Considered ‘Nation-Building?’ (Veterans Today)
- Brought To You By Poppy Bush, Obama Bin Bush And Al-CIAda: Photos Of U.S. And Afghan Troops Patrolling Poppy Fields June 2012 (Public Intelligence)
- Breaking News: Afghanistan – America’s ‘Total Lie War’ (Veterans Today)
- Afghanistan: Heroin Production Rose Between 2001 And 2011 From Just 185 Tons To A Staggering 5,800 Tons/Year (Daily Mail)
- Afghan Opium Production Increases By 61 Percent, Opium Yield Rises 133 Percent From 2010 (AFP)
- War On Drugs Revealed As Total Hoax: US Military Admits To Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade In Afghanistan (Natural News)
- Afghan Opium Production ‘Rises By 61%’ Compared With 2010 – Per-Hectare Price Of Opium More Than Doubled (BBC News)
- U.S. Kicks Drug-War Habit, Makes Peace With Afghan Poppies (Wired, May 9, 2013):
ZARI, Afghanistan — Because of the poppies, the raw material for most of the world’s heroin, the list of things 1st Lt. Christopher Gackstatter and his 2nd Platoon can’t do in Sartok is far longer than the list of things they can.
Marching into the mud-walled village in this sun-baked district of southern Afghanistan on an April 24 intelligence-gathering mission, the boyish 25-year-old lieutenant and his roughly dozen riflemen and machine gunners are mindful of the many poppy-related prohibitions, developed over 12 painful years of war, that have been passed down to their Bravo Company by the higher unit, 3-41 Infantry, part of the Texas-based 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.
They’re not allowed to actually step foot in Sartok’s many acres of poppy fields or damage the fields in any way.
They can’t even threaten to destroy the fields or send in Afghan troops to burn, plow under or poison the delicate, pastel-colored flowers.
Nor can they discourage poppy farmers, however gently, from growing their illicit crop, which is hardier and commands a higher price than alternatives such as wheat. Poppy cultivation has been illegal in Afghanistan since 2001 but still represents a full quarter of the country’s gross domestic product and a major source of revenue for the Taliban, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Many of the middlemen who buy up raw poppy paste for onward sale to heroin-producers hail from the insurgent group.
The rules are fairly new and reflect a subtle but profound shift in the way the U.S. Army thinks about Afghanistan, its people and culture and conflict. Having furtively experimented with every possible approach to Afghan poppies since 2001 — from blissfully ignoring them to actively destroying them and everything in between — today the ground-combat branch has made peace with poppies, viewing them as a potential good thing for Afghanistan and the Army.
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Drugs, Global News, Government, Heroin, Military, Obama administration, Opium, Politics, U.S., War
- US Boeing 747 crash and burn caught on dashcam in Afghanistan (VIDEO) (RT, April 30, 2013):
Harrowing footage of a US cargo plane in Afghanistan plummeting to the ground immediately after takeoff and erupting in a massive ball of flames has emerged online. All seven passengers onboard were killed.
Video apparently shot from a vehicle dashcam shows the National Airlines Boeing 747 taking off from the Bagram Airfield military base, just north of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul, on Monday.
The plane’s nose pitches up heavily on its ascent, stalls, and then falls from the sky in a matter of seconds. It immediately explodes upon impact, sending a massive, think plume of smoke up into the sky.
Tags: Afghanistan, Global News, Government, Military, Politics, Taliban, U.S.
- How the C.I.A. Enriches Warlords, Drug Dealers and the Taliban in Afghanistan (Liberty Blitzkrieg, April 30, 2013):
This article from the New York Times further solidifies the notion that we clearly have no idea what we are doing anywhere, whether it relates to the domestic economy or foreign policy. While the American citizenry remains unemployed and increasingly on food stamps, we are paying tens of millions of dollars to Afghan warlords and drug dealers so that they can build their “dream homes.” My favorite line is: “the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.” Makes sense. We are simply exporting our domestic economic model abroad.
From the New York Times:
KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”
Kind of like Corzine at MF Global!
Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, CIA, Corruption, Drugs, Global News, Government, Hamid Karzai, Mike Krieger, Obama administration, Politics, Taliban, U.S.
Flashback:
- Afghanistan: Opium Cultivation Rose Substantially In 2012 (New York Times)
- Afghan Opium Poppy Farming Increases 20%, Fuelled By High Opium Prices (Guardian)
- CIA Created Afghan Heroin Trade (Veterans Today)
- Afghanistan: Is Creating A ‘Narco-State’ Considered ‘Nation-Building?’ (Veterans Today)
- Brought To You By Poppy Bush, Obama Bin Bush And Al-CIAda: Photos Of U.S. And Afghan Troops Patrolling Poppy Fields June 2012 (Public Intelligence)
- Breaking News: Afghanistan – America’s ‘Total Lie War’ (Veterans Today)
- Afghanistan: Heroin Production Rose Between 2001 And 2011 From Just 185 Tons To A Staggering 5,800 Tons/Year (Daily Mail)
- Afghan Opium Production Increases By 61 Percent, Opium Yield Rises 133 Percent From 2010 (AFP)
- War On Drugs Revealed As Total Hoax: US Military Admits To Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade In Afghanistan (Natural News)
- Afghan Opium Production ‘Rises By 61%’ Compared With 2010 – Per-Hectare Price Of Opium More Than Doubled (BBC News)
Armed MQ-9 Reaper drones, like this one in Afghanistan, will remain in Afghanistan’s skies even after the U.S.’ longest war formally ends in 2014. Photo: U.S. Air Force
- After U.S. Troops Leave, Armed Drones Will Patrol Afghanistan’s Skies (Wired, April 23, 2013):
One of the major elements of Afghanistan’s air war will remain after most U.S. troops have headed home, the U.S. military command confirmed today. Armed drones, operated by the U.S., will remain over Afghanistan after 2014.
“I come back to the remotely piloted aircraft,” Air Force Maj. Gen. H.D. Polumbo, the commander of the U.S./NATO air war over Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon today. “They can collect intelligence, but they also are armed. And they’re armed to be able to provide force protection to our coalition forces and then when our coalition ground force commanders, when they deem it appropriate, they can control that air-delivered munition capability from the RPAs to be put in support of the Afghans.”
The drones will not be the only air support available to the Afghan army after 2014, when most U.S. forces are slated to leave Afghanistan. But only “some fixed wing” manned fighters and bombers will remain on the battlefield, Polumbo said. Navy jets flown off of nearby aircraft carriers and Air Force planes flown from Gulf airbases will supplement them when the Afghans’ small supply of Mi-17 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, and their forthcoming Super Tucano planes, are overwhelmed.
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, CIA, Drones, Global News, Government, Military, Politics
Over 20 Tons of Heroin Seized in Afghanistan
- Over 20 Tons of Heroin Seized in Afghanistan (RIA Novosti, March 12, 2013):
MOSCOW – Almost 21 tons of heroin have been seized in an operation in eastern Afghanistan , the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) said on Tuesday.
“An operation was carried out yesterday in the province of Nangarhar, during which several drug production labs were destroyed and almost 21 tons of heroin seized,” FSKN head Viktor Ivanov said.
He said FSKN officers had taken part in the “unique operation.”
“Twenty-one tons is, in essence, the annual volume of drugs brought into Russia,” Ivanov said.
Tags: Afghanistan, Drugs, Global News, Government, Heroin, Politics
Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the presidential palace in Kabul on March 4, 2013.
- US fights for Afghan underground resources: Afghan president (PressTV, March 12, 2013):
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the US fights in Afghanistan with the intention of gaining access to the country’s underground resources, adding that Washington’s so-called war on terror is not real, Press TV reports.
“Americans have asked Afghans to give them Afghanistan’s mining contracts, and I said ‘Bring your contracts’… Lots of mines are hidden in Helmand and from the start they have been doing their investigations and finishing their photography. But now they understand that we know about them,” Hamid Karzai said in a Tuesday speech during an official visit to southern Helmand province.
The president went on to say that the US-led foreign forces’ so-called anti-terror war in Afghanistan is not a real one and that the Americans fight for their own interests in the country.
Karzai once again slammed US double standards for holding secret talks with Taliban militants in certain Persian Gulf states and Europe.
“Both Taliban and Americans drink tea and eat chocolate together, but they come and attack civilians in Afghanistan,” Karzai noted.
Karzai had earlier accused Washington of holding unilateral talks with the Taliban militant group, saying that there are “ongoing daily talks between Taliban, American and foreigners in Europe and in the (Persian) Gulf states.”
Referring to two Taliban bombings in Kabul and Khost on March 9, the Afghan president said on Sunday, “Those bombs … were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come.”
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Global News, Government, Hamid Karzai, Military, Obama administration, Politics, Taliban, Terrorism, U.S., War on Terror
- AF removes RPA airstrike number from summary (Air Force Times, March 8, 2013):
As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of airstrikes launched from RPAs in Afghanistan and quietly scrubbed those statistics from previous releases kept on their website.
Last October, Air Force Central Command started tallying weapons releases from RPAs, broken down into monthly updates. At the time, AFCENT spokeswoman Capt. Kim Bender said the numbers would be put out every month as part of a service effort to “provide more detailed information on RPA ops in Afghanistan.”
The Air Force maintained that policy for the statistics reports for November, December and January. But the February numbers, released March 7, contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been.
Additionally, monthly reports hosted on the Air Force website have had the RPA data removed — and recently.
Tags: Afghanistan, Air Force, Barack Obama, Drones, Global News, Government, Military, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.
- Military Decides You Shouldn’t See Key Data on Afghan Insurgency (Wired, March 6, 2013):
One of the major metrics for the decade-long Afghanistan war is seriously flawed. Rather than fix the problem, the U.S.-NATO military command in Kabul has decided that you simply shouldn’t see the data.
Late last month, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) conceded that it misreported the 2012 statistics on Taliban attacks. Its explanation was that a data-entry error had discounted attacks reported by Afghan forces — so much so that a statistically insignificant change in the level of so-called “enemy initiated attacks” became a 7 percent decline from 2011 levels.
ISAF’s response, the Associated Press recounts, is to end public reporting on enemy-initiated attacks. It’ll still record attack levels, according to spokesman Jamie Graybeal, but it won’t publish any of the data it collects — all because it’s losing confidence in the veracity of its information. As Afghan forces take increasing control of the war, ISAF will cede control of overseeing the attack data collection. “We have determined that our databases will become increasingly inaccurate in reflecting the entirety of enemy initiated attacks,” Graybeal told the Associated Press’ Bob Burns, who broke the story.
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Global News, Government, ISAF, Military, NATO, Obama administration, Politics, Taliban, U.S.
- U.S. drone strikes up sharply in Afghanistan (Los Angeles Times, Feb 21, 2013):
Their use rose 72% last year compared with 2011, and the trend is likely to continue as troops withdraw. But while the aircraft reduce risks to U.S. forces, mistakes are deadly for civilians.
KABUL, Afghanistan — One morning recently, a teenager named Bacha Zarina was collecting firewood on her family’s small farm in eastern Afghanistan. About 30 yards away, as family members recall, two Taliban commanders stood outside a house.
A missile screamed down from the sky, killing the two men instantly. Two chunks of shrapnel flew at Bacha Zarina and lodged in her left side.
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Global News, Government, Military, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.
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