24.7.2007 by Lupo.

Afghanistan: Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time

By Craig Murray

Global Research, July 24, 2007
Daily Mail

This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.

The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan – up to ten per cent – led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.

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Killing fields: Farmers in Afghanistan gather an opium crop which will be made into heroin

But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the ‘good’ war, while the war in Iraq is the ‘bad’ war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.

Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq – which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us – was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification.

So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.

Head of the Afghan armed forces: General Abdul Rashid Dostrum

Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Iraq may last for decades.

Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is ‘winnable’.

Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.
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The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through.

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin’s closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.

I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai’s coalition, and to the West’s pretence of a stable, democratic government.

Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east – Dostum’s territory. Again, our Government’s spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there.

That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6405

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24.7.2007 by admin.

CLINTON CAMPAIGN URGES PUBLICATION OF ALL AGENCY BUDGETS

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has put forward an agenda
to increase transparency in government that includes “publishing
budgets for every government agency.”

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/reform/

Geschrieben in Welt News Spezial, Balkan | Keine Kommentare »

24.7.2007 by admin.

Ohne bezahltem Strom im Kosovo kein Auto

Ohne bezahltem Strom kein AutoAPA (epa)

Nur 30 Prozent der Stromkunden im Kosovo begleichen laut offiziellen Angaben ihre Rechnungen. Bei den Haushalten sei dieser Anteil noch geringer. Die Verbundgesellschaft KEK hatte vor zwei Jahren versucht, das Problem zu beheben, indem die Verbraucher in Abhängigkeit von der Bezahlung ihrer Stromrechnungen in drei Gruppen aufgeteilt wurden: Die regelmäßigen Bezahler können seitdem mit kürzeren Stromausfällen rechnen, die acht Jahre nach dem Krieg (1998-99) weiterhin zum Alltag in der UNO-verwalteten Provinz gehören…………..

http://www.vol.at/news/welt/artikel/ohne-bezahltem-strom-im-kosovo-kein-auto/cn/apa-8832426
Warum soll Europa und die UN seit Jahren den Strom für diese Leute bezahlen, welche praktisch Alle Mehrfach Immobilien Besitzer sind und oft Luxus Autos besitzen? Irgendwie kann man ein derartiges Scheitern der Kosovo Administration nur noch mit total Korruption der UN und Europäischen Verantwortlichen erklären und das fängt eben bei Rückers an.

Geschrieben in Economy - Wirtschaft, Balkan | Keine Kommentare »