More US Troops To Afghanistan in 2009?

The opium/heroin market continues to expand on the production side. Demand is stable overall but increases have occured in important areas.
Overall, global cultivation remains just below 1998 levels.
The total area under illicit opium poppy cultivation increased by 17% in 2007 fuelled by increases in both Afghanistan and Myanmar. The cultivation increase in Afghanistan continued a six year trend and that of Myanmar reversed a six year trend. Both are cause for concern.
The opium/heroin market continues to be dominated by the large levels of cultivation and production in Afghanistan. While the very positive contraction in the number of opium producing provinces continued in 2007, market trends are not yielding much good news.
In fact, the trends appear to indicate two negative developments including, first, some adaptation in trafficking routes to the concentration of cultivation in the South of Afghanistan and second, an increase in opiate consumption in and around Afghanistan.

Why is Obama expanding the war in Afghanistan?
Written by www.daily.pk
Sunday, 22 February 2009 19:09

On February 15, 1989, General Boris Gromov led his 40th Soviet Army out of Afghanistan, marking the end of Moscow’s bloody and disastrous occupation. In the process, some 1.5mn Afghans died at the hands of the Red Army and Afghan Communists.

The new Soviet chairman, Mikhail Gorbachev, determined the Afghan war, begun by his dim predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, and a cabal of party and KGB hardliners, could not be won.

Fortunately for the world, Gorbachev, proved a leader of profound humanity, decency, and intellect. Gorbachev, courageously accepted defeat and brought his soldiers home. Soon after, the Soviet Union, a bankrupt empire held together by fear and repression, began to crumble. To his eternal credit, Gorbachev refused to employ force to hold the Soviet Empire together.

The new president of the bankrupt American imperium should heed Gorbachev’s wisdom. Barack Obama’s inauguration offered a perfect opportunity to pause the US-led Afghan War, and open talks with Afghan groups resisting foreign occupation (both the Soviets and US branded them `terrorists’). Instead, Obama vowed to intensify the eight-year war which has so far cost the $62bn.

President Obama declared he will send 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan on top of the 6,000 troops dispatched by George Bush. Another 13,000 will follow in the spring. These reinforcements are supposed to come from the US Iraq garrison. But Pentagon hardliners and their Republican allies are trying to delay or thwart the troop drawdown from Iraq.

So, it’s welcome to President Obama’s War. Obama just defined his goals in Afghanistan as: “preventing it from being used as a launching pad for attacks on North America”; and “defeating Al Qaeda”. He also allowed that some sort of negotiations to split Taliban might be attempted.

Both stated goals are patently false. September 11 was organised in Germany and Spain, allegedly by a group of Saudis and Pakistanis. Attacks on New York, Washington, London, Madrid and Mumbai were plotted in apartments and houses, not the mountains of Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda never had more than 300 men and is today reduced to a handful of fugitives hiding in Pakistan’s tribal territories and Baluchistan.
The movement’s primary function, as my new book explains, was as a guest house and data base for foreign mujahedin fighting the Soviets and Afghan Communists. It was not and is not a “world-wide terrorist organisation”.

By expanding the Afghan war, Obama fuels the growing threat of a major explosion in Pakistan. Today, US warplanes and CIA killer drones operate from three secret Pakistani air bases.

Washington has rented 120,000 Pakistani troops for $100mn monthly (plus equally large, secret CIA payments) to support the US occupation of Afghanistan.

In an unprecedented act, Pakistan’s government is being paid by Washington to attack its own people, and to allow US forces to do the same.

Pakistan is bankrupt. The previous US-backed Musharraf regime made off with whatever money there was. Yet at some point, Pakistan’s rent-an-army of modern-day sepoys may rebel and turn against the government that orders it to kill fellow Muslims while letting India expand its influence in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, high expectations for Obama are fading. To the anguish of America’s anti-war movement, his administration seems set on continuing many of the illegal, repressive policies of the disgraced Bush White House that it had vowed to end: torture, kidnapping, wiretapping, assassinations, Constitutional infringements, denial of due process.

What happened to the Obama who was supposed to bring change? Leftover hardliners from the Bush days appear to be driving Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Pentagon warns that a defeat of Nato in Afghanistan will destroy the alliance – the foundation of US hegemony over Europe. After Iraq, another defeat cannot be tolerated.

Soviet veterans of Afghanistan warn the US and its allies face defeat there. The Obama White House cannot even articulate a coherent political strategy for Afghanistan. Its latest big idea is to kick out the hapless Hamid Karzai and install a new “asset”.

Washington hopes US troop reinforcements will finally bludgeon the Afghan national resistance into accepting American domination. Then the long-planned pipeline from the Caspian Basin across Afghanistan to Pakistan can finally be built.
Don’t count on it anytime soon.

Al Qaeda never had more than 300 men and is today reduced to a handful of fugitives hiding in Pakistan’s tribal territories and Baluchistan

The Silence of the Liberals
As Obama launches "war on terrorism" II
by Justin Raimondo
I see that the Pentagon has reversed its old policy of refusing to allow photographs of those flag-draped coffins as our dead soldiers return from the battlefield. One wonders, however, how much interest there will be in taking and publishing such photos now that President Barack Obama is in office. One also wonders how long it will take the media to acknowledge the new quagmire we're sinking into if and when the numbers of casualties start increasing – as they are sure to do.


After all, Obama's war is going to be taking place on a much larger, more difficult canvas than that of his predecessor's, which was confined in large part to Iraq. All of Afghanistan will soon be teeming with newly-arrived US soldiers, sent there – direct from Iraq – to fulfill the President's pledge to start fighting the "right war" in the right way, a "smart" way. Oh, these guys (and gals) are the Best and the Brightest, aren't they?


The smarty-pants tone and style of this administration is already beginning to grate on my nerves, as they pander to their base on the symbolic issues – like the coffin question – in hopes no one will notice as they backtrack on more important matters. So far, it doesn't seem to be working out all that well.


Glenn Greenwald isn't cutting them any slack on the torture brouhaha – he's already pointed out that they'll still be torturing people, albeit not with their own hands in some instances, and that if Guantanamo is closed, Bagram – where similar activities are known to take place – is going to be open for "business."


Most of the Obama-zoids are happy, however, because, after all, Keith Olbermann assures them we've entered the new millennium, the Dear Leader is in the White House, and all's right with the world. But is it?


Not by a long shot. Has anyone noticed Obama's vaunted 16-month withdrawal-from-Iraq plan has already stretched into 19 months – and the "residual force" he kept talking about during the campaign, as if it were a mere afterthought, turns out to be 50,000 strong?


Originally, none of those "residuals" were supposed to be combat troops – yet now we are told "some would still be serving in combat as they conducted counterterrorism missions." You have to go all the way to the very end of this New York Times report before you discover that, according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, "A limited number of those that remain will conduct combat operations against terrorists, assisting Iraqi security forces."

In short: we aren't leaving.

I don't care what the status of forces agreement says: that document has more loopholes than the bank bailout bill's provisions for paying back the American taxpayers. Those 50,000 "residual" occupiers will simply pull back into their permanent bases, which are even now being constructed throughout Iraq, to be called on when our sock-puppets find themselves unable to tamp down the growing spirit of rebellion.

What kind of a "withdrawal" is this? It is one so burdened with contingencies, conditional footnotes, and amendatory clauses, that it falls beneath its own weight and collapses into a fair approximation of the status quo.

Antiwar voters who cast their ballots for Obama have succeeded in rolling the stone all the way up a rather steep hill, only to see it fall down the other side – and we are right back where we started. The next hill is called Afghanistan, and beyond that is yet another: Pakistan.

Not even Bush tried to fight a two-front war: Obama, however, is leaping into Afghanistan with alarming speed. Sending those 17,000 troops was one of the first acts of his administration, announced well before any of the economic measures. The economy may be crumbling, but the empire cannot be allowed to go the same way – that's the lunatic mentality of our rulers, whose priorities reflect a Washington mindset still stuck in the glory days of American hegemony.

Under Obama, the military budget will rise by 4 percent, and this isn't counting the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. As Cato Institute research fellow Benjamin H. Friedman puts it: "Many Americans believe that Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress will lower defense spending and restrain the militaristic foreign policy it underwrites. The coming years should destroy that myth."

Yes, but myths die hard. It will take a couple of shiploads of flag-draped coffins – and perhaps a couple of alarming incidents in Afghanistan and environs – to wake up Obama's liberal supporters to what they're presently enabling with their silent complicity. In the meantime, the creaking wheels of empire are turning as we gather our forces for another even more perilous mission that will take us straight into the fabled graveyard of would-be world-conquerors otherwise known as Afghanistan. Why? How? To what purpose? A thousand questions raise themselves up, like the first crocuses of spring – but the Obama administration isn't answering, because no one of any importance is asking. Just little old me – and, maybe you. And maybe Rachel Maddow, now and then: and that's pretty much it. Surely the alleged "antiwar movement" isn't interested – they're too busy hailing Obama's election.


The President's budget requests for Iraq and Afghanistan total $75 billion through the fall, and $130 billion for next year. That means we'll be spending nearly $11 billion per month for at least the next year and a half.

This bothers exactly no one in Washington, and especially not in the White House or the Democratic caucus chamber: after all, these people believe that government spending – any sort of spending – is what will fix our ailing economy right now. So why not increase the mis-named "defense" budget, anyway – don't you want an economic recovery, or are you, like Rush Limbaugh, hoping the President will fail?

Yes, you know we've entered a new era when I start citing Limbaugh favorably, and yet that's the sad part about all this: it is now left to Limbaugh and his talk radio confreres to point out the backsliding and howling hypocrisy in this administration's policies, both foreign and domestic, because the liberals – with a few exceptions – have been struck dumb by their "victory."

March 26, 2009
In addition to the 17,000 troops President Obama has already committed to add to the war effort in Afghanistan, his new “comprehensive strategy” will include another 4,000 troops and hundreds of “civilian advisers,” bringing the US military presence in Afghanistan to nearly 60,000.

Defending the escalation, Obama declared that the Taliban “must be stopped,” and that Americans must also accept that Pakistan “needs our help.”

The Obama administration is planning billions in new assistance to Pakistan, yet the record of previous U.S. military and development aid to the strife-torn Muslim country has been marred by a lack of accountability and transparency, according to government reports.
President Obama said Friday that he backs a plan to triple non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year for five years and make military aid contingent on Pakistan's efforts to cut government ties to insurgents.

More US Troops To Afghanistan in 2009?

<snore>
Ummm.... thanks for posting the news from last summer:

Camp Bastion is the main British military base in Afghanistan. It is situated northwest of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province.