Let me see if I have this right. US money goes to the Taliban, keeping them robust, so that Obama can go on television next Tuesday and tell us that they will kill us in our beds, if we don't send more troops to kill them. And, as always, the arms manufacturers and other corporations end up the winners.
Actually, the paragraph above is pretty close to the picture drawn by Aram Rostom, in the Nation magazine.
The puppet president, Hamid Karzai has a pair of cousins, named Ahmad Ratep Popal and Rashid Popal. Ahmed was convicted in New York for conspiring to import heroin, and was imprisoned from 1988 to 1997. Rashid pled guilty in Brooklyn to heroin charges. The brothers are back in Afghanistan, running a consortium called the Watan Group. Watan Risk Management provides security for trucks carrying supplies to the Americans. It does this by means of an alliance with the warlord controlling the road known as Highway 1, the road to Kandahar. Watan is just one of the suspected insurgent fronts being paid to provide security for American. supplies.
Hamed Wardak, the American son of Afghanistan's defense minister owns NCL Holdings, another security company. Valedictorian at Georgetown University, he made friends with many prominent foreign policy conservatives while in the US, including Jeane Kirkpatrick..
NCL's contract to protect American supplies suddenly grew by 600% this summer. The total spent on trucking jumped to $2.2 billion this summer, nearly ten percent of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product.. A document defended the increase, by saying "service members will not get food, water, equipment, and ammunition they require," if the increase is not granted.
So how does this money guarantee the safety of the shipments? "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them." said one American "It is Department of Defense money." Mike Hanna of a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services said "You are paying the people in the local areas--some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force--to move your trucks through. We're basically being extorted. Where you don't pay, you're going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to. If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially."
The Afghani security companies fill part of the role played by Blackwater in Iraq.
A Pashto said "Most escorting is done by the Taliban.Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."
One American trucking company has refused to pay the warlords, and is reported to be attacked on almost every run, suffering horrendous casualties.
A woman whio owned a trucking company said she paid the Taliban to escort her trucks. "Two Taliban is enough, one in the front and one in the back.You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible."
So, next Tuesday, Obama will announce a troop increase of between 35,000 and 40,000 troops. The story above is part of the reason we are told that the war will cost one million dollars per year per American troop. On that same day, the people will pour into the streets of 100 cities across the nation. This includes a strong coalition of groups across Texas. The people will fill the streets and demand that this insanity be ended.
More information will be forthcoming.
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