TheRealNews: Did a 2007 report of massive mineral deposits in Afghanistan affect President Obama’s 2009 decision to widen the scope of the Afghan war?
Afghanistan claims mineral wealth is worth $3 trillion
By Ben Farmer, The Telegraph, June 17, 2010
The Afghan government claims its untapped mineral wealth could be worth £2 trillion and is launching a drive to drum up interest from international mining firms.
The Afghan minister of mines said the potential was three times an American government estimate reported earlier this week.
United States officials hope the Afghan economy could gain much needed income and become a world centre for mining.
Wahidullah Shahrani spoke after he invited 200 companies to an investment road show in London next week as the government sought to attract global interest.
India and China are expected to be particularly interested in exploiting the country’s deposits of copper, iron, lithium, gold, niobium, mercury, cobalt and other minerals.
Mr Shahrani said a number of Indian firms had already expressed interest and said the American estimate of $1 trillion (£680 billion) of minerals on offer was conservative.
He said: “Our estimation is more than that … the idea is it could be up to three trillion dollars.”
Surveys have also found five new oil and gas blocks in Afghanistan, with the biggest in the Afghan-Tajik basin in the unstable province of Kunduz, he said.
In a bold new offensive, US and NATO forces are turning to Afghan militias for help. More feared than the Taliban, and wearing the weapons and impunity of the US army – have they created a monster?
AlJazeeraEnglish — May 13, 2010 — Almost 50,000 US military personnel are stationed in Japan, more than half on the island of Okinawa. But their presence has often been controversial. The Okinawa base is vital to the US in protecting its interests in Asia. But protests against the base are increasing. On this edition of 101 East, we look at the future of US military bases in Japan.
New Colonialism: Pentagon Carves Africa Into Military Zones
By Rick Rozoff, Global Research, May 5, 2010
Last year the commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), General William Ward, said the Pentagon had military partnerships with 35 of the continent’s 53 nations, “representing U.S. relationships that span the continent.” [1]
That number has increased in the interim.
As the first overseas regional military command set up by Washington in this century, the first since the end of the Cold War, and the first in 25 years, the activation of AFRICOM, initially under the wing of U.S. European Command on October 1, 2007, then as an independent entity a year later, emphasizes the geostrategic importance of Africa in U.S. international military, political and economic planning.
Africa Command’s area of responsibility includes more nations – 53, all African states except Egypt, which remains in U.S. Central Command, and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara), which is a member of the African Union but which the U.S. and its NATO allies recognize as part of Morocco, which conquered it in 1975 – than any of the Pentagon’s other Unified Combatant Commands: European Command, Central Command, Pacific Command, Southern Command and Northern Command (founded in 2002).
The U.S. is alone in maintaining regional multi-service military commands in all parts of the world, a process initiated after World War Two as America pursued its self-appointed 20th century manifest destiny as history’s first worldwide military superpower.
U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Robert B. Brown, with Combat Camera Unit, Regimental Combat Team 6, watches over the civilian firefighters at the burn pit as smoke and flames rise into the night sky behind him in Camp Fallujah, Iraq, May 25, 2007. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Samuel D. Corum.
The American military is creating an environmental disaster in Afghanistan
By Matthew Nasuti, Global Research, April 27, 2010
The American military presence in Afghanistan consists of fleets of aircraft, helicopters, armored vehicles, weapons, equipment, troops and facilities. Since 2001, they have generated millions of kilograms of hazardous, toxic and radioactive wastes. The Kabul Press asks the simple question:
“What have the Americans done with all that waste?”
The answer is chilling in that virtually all of it appears to have been buried, burned or secretly disposed of into the air, soil, groundwater and surface waters of Afghanistan. While the Americans may begin to withdraw next year, the toxic chemicals they leave behind will continue to pollute for centuries. Any abandoned radioactive waste may stain the Afghan countryside for thousands of years. Afghanistan has been described in the past as the graveyard of foreign armies. Today, Afghanistan has a different title:
“Afghanistan is the toxic dumping ground for foreign armies.”
Detainees tell of ‘electrocution, beating, whipping, stress positions’
By CBC News, April 21, 2010
Afghan detainees handed over by British troops to Afghan secret police were regularly beaten with weapons, hung from the ceiling and electrocuted, according to detailed allegations made public in a London courtroom on Tuesday.
The allegations of abuse, similar to Canada’s detainee torture affair, came in the opening argument from Maya Evans, an anti-war activist seeking a judicial review of Britain’s detainee transfer policy in Afghanistan. The statement was submitted Monday but released only Tuesday in full.
According to documents submitted to the court, a number of detainees outlined allegations of systematic abuse at the hands of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan secret service
Two soldiers who were in the same company as the culprits featured in the infamous Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video, which showed troops in Apache helicopters slaughtering Reuters cameramen and children while laughing about it, have apologized for the massacre while stating that the footage only begins to depict the suffering inflicted upon innocent Iraqis as a consequence of the occupation.
The Wikileaks video provoked an international firestorm earlier this month after it showed U.S. troops slaughtering over a dozen innocent people, including two Reuters employees and the father of two children who were trapped in a rescue vehicle that also came under fire.
Veterans publish “Letter of Reconciliation” to Iraqis injured in helicopter attack
Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the July 2007 attack (documented by Wikileaks) in which U.S. forces wounded two Iraqi children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees, have published “an open letter of reconciliation and responsibility to the Iraqi people.” Here is what they wrote:
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military
Peace be with you.
To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:
We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.
We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.
There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.
We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of “god and country”. The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn’t have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation’s leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won’t lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation’s importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation’s leaders, and to extend our hands to you.
With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.
Solemnly and Sincerely,
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army
94 Percent of Kandaharis Support Negotiations With the Taliban
- Kandahar Campaign Doomed Before It Begins?
By Gareth Porter, Counterpunch, April 19, 2010
An opinion survey of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as “our Afghan brothers”.
The survey, conducted by a private U.S. contractor last December, covered Kandahar City and other districts in the province into which Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is planning to introduce more troops in the biggest operation of the entire war. Those districts include Arghandab, Zhari, rural Kandahar and Panjwayi.
Afghan interviewers conducted the survey only in areas which were not under Taliban control.
The decisive rejection of the use of foreign troops against the Taliban by the population in Kandahar casts further doubt on the fundamental premise of the Kandahar campaign, scheduled to begin in June, that the population and tribal elders in those districts would welcome a U.S.-NATO troop presence to expel the Taliban.
That assumption was dealt a serious blow at a meeting on Apr. 4 at which tribal elders from all over Kandahar told President Hamid Karzai they were not happy with the planned military operation.
Leaked Document Discloses CIA Plans to Target European Public Opinion over Afghan War
By Antifascist Calling, March 28, 2010
Since their 2007 launch, the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks have been the subject of “hostile acts” by state and private security services for spilling the beans on crime, corruption and violence perpetrated by the capitalist deep state.
But rather than being deterred by government threats or overt acts of violence, including the murder of two human rights attorneys in Nairobi last March, who provided the whistleblowers with reports on extrajudicial killings by Kenyan police, WikiLeaks have turned the tables on the CIA.
On March 26, the group published a remarkable document that lays out the Agency’s strategy to manipulate European public opinion over waning support for the Afghanistan war.
House of pain: Canada’s connection with Kandahar’s ruthless palace guard
By Graeme Smith, Globe and Mail, April 10, 2010
To the Canadian soldiers who worked with them on a daily basis, the members of Brigade 888 were trusted allies, protecting not only the governor of Kandahar but a Canadian outpost located in his palace.
They and the man they served, Asadullah Khalid, have been gone for almost two years, but the city has yet to forget them. Kandahar is a tough place, but Mr. Khalid and his bodyguards are remembered as particularly brutal. The Canadians who knew them say they witnessed no abuses by the guards, but Brigade 888 was notorious among the locals.
People still speak in hushed tones about its torture chambers – the sleep deprivation and electric shocks.
A former palace official says he witnessed a prisoner hanging from the ceiling of a guardroom “trussed like a chicken.” A man who was among those detained says he endured weeks of beatings supervised by the governor himself.
