Have Canadians been killing and dying for Kandahar's Al Capone?
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November 2, 2009 With October 2009 marking the bloodiest month of eight years of the latest Afghan War, new revelations suggest that opponents of this war have not only been proven right, but that we have been understating the case against this military occupation. Nowhere is this truer than with Canada’s 'mission’ in Kandahar, where the true nature of this western intervention has been laid bare. Last week, the New York Times reported on its front page that Ahmed Wali Karzai -- the President’s younger brother and the most powerful man in Kandahar Province -- has in recent years regularly received payments from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). To date well over 100 Canadian soldiers have died in this southeastern corner of Afghanistan; one can only conclude that their lives have been sacrificed to the cause of protecting a toxic brew of nepotism, opium trafficking and graft -- all of it personified by this 'Al Capone of Kandahar,' Ahmed Wali Karzai. The revelation of CIA payouts was just one of a number of bombshells that the world’s most influential newspaper saw fit to print; and, it’s worth pondering just how much anonymous top U.S. government officials saw fit to leak. Not only do more sources corroborate allegations of Karzai’s role as a drug kingpin, they even reveal that U.S. taxpayers’ money has been paying him rent for their Special Forces to use Mullah Omar’s old compound outside Kandahar City. Part landlord, part puppet -- Canada and the United States’ man in Kandahar. *** As it happens, I was in New York last week with leading Afghan dissident, women’s rights leader and suspended parliamentarian Malalai Joya for the launch of A Woman Among Warlords, a timely book I had the honour to co-write with her over the past two years. On our way to one of her media appearances, we discussed the Times article. "This is a very important revelation," I earnestly offered. "But this is not news for the Afghan people, everyone knows this man as a drug lord and a puppet," Joya responded. She looked at the photo of Karzai, put the newspaper aside and then looked away, out the window. After a few minutes, she spoke again, softly, "You know, I am not happy how much [events] have proven me right about this occupation." She talked about the various massacres reported in recent days -- in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Sometimes I wish that what I have been saying had been proven wrong, and that somehow things would have improved. I would have had to apologize for my mistake, but at least the situation would not be this disaster." *** While Afghanistan has burned, too many of the progressive forces in the West have fiddled. It’s no secret that the anti-war movement, especially in the United States, has thus far failed to mobilize adequately around the issue, with much of it either balkanizing to the point of irrelevance or folding up shop in deference to (or due to hypnosis by?) the new Obama administration. But maybe even those of us who have been actively engaged in opposing the Afghan War throughout have failed to fully articulate the scandal of this intervention, which has been put forward in such clear terms by people like Joya. When she said years ago, for instance, that the Karzai regime was the "most corrupt government in the world," this wasn’t hyperbole. When she warned that the West had "turned Afghanistan back into the centre of the opium trade," we were slow to fully articulate just how much our countries’ soldiers and governments were propping up a narco-state. After a blatantly fraudulent 'election’ and now mainstream media exposure of the Karzais’ nepotism and corruption, the work of the anti-war movement should in a sense now be easier, if also more urgent than ever. |
4 comments:
This is sick, simply sick. You know, whenever I read an article like this, there are people who say that it's just bollocks, and someone's just trying to spread paranoia, but here you go - no one really wants this to be true, but it is. But who's going to stop this? War's a profit, and if our government is willing to exchange human lives for money... there's something rotten in this country.
Jay
No one wants to listen. Very few do. Earlier today in the fresh foods section of the local grocer's while I was picking apples, there were three young guys in uniform in very high spirits choosing stuff for a salad. They were in goofball mode and pretty funny. Nice boys, handsome lads. Not a care in the world.
Almost all I thought of was how that carefree attitude would change once they were deployed to Afghanistan. To fight, as you say, a war for drugs for the bloody effing Luciferian worshiping SMALL R rothschilds. It angers me to also think of the men who set these things in action 40 years ago and sit back and get aroused by watching the wars THEY began as if it were all a game of Chess which, actually some of them have said.
I have read these men have been called over the centuries but by this time, there it is impossible to find enough to significantly do the job. Meanwhile, the boys and girls keep dying for a war no one wants, no one understands, but then, we are just chopped liver anyhow. They don't care. Hell cattle are made to die just dumb beasts.
They won't change until they have nothing left to change.
Jay: Knowing the truth about the sickness that controls our planet is a start.
The next step is to take that truth information and pass it around to others.
The steps that follow are up to the people, but only if they love this planet enough to stand up against tyranny!
I have personally witnessed a friend who is in the military get shipped off recently to Afghanistan. I pray that he survives and does not come back as a morally broken and beaten man! Many Canadian soldiers have already suffered that fate from finding out the truth about Afghanistan for themselves.
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