Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Sword of Allah, Part 4

We continue from Part 3 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

In July 2007, I briefed President Karzai on the drive for a new strategy. He was interested in the new incentives that we were developing, but became sullen and unresponsive when I discussed the need to balance those incentives with new disincentives — including arrests of high-level traffickers and eradication of poppy fields in the wealthier areas of the Pashtun south, where Karzai had his roots and power base.


Karzai himself may or may not be a narcotrafficker.

But, if there is pressure to end narcotics production and trafficking, that will impact immediately and severely on Karzai's powerbase -- and might that spark a new Afghan civil war, a free-for-all as various factions square off to preserve their slices of the heroin pie?

The opiate trade isn't the only pie up for grabs, either.

We also tried to let the public know about the changing dynamics of the trade. Unfortunately, most media outlets clung to the myth that the problem was out of control all over the country, that only desperate farmers grew poppies and that any serious law-enforcement effort would drive them into the hands of the Taliban. The "starving farmer" was a convenient myth. It allowed some European governments to avoid involvement with the antidrug effort. Many of these countries had only one- or two-year legislative mandates to be in Afghanistan, so they wanted to avoid any uptick in violence that would most likely result from an aggressive strategy, even if the strategy would result in long-term success. The myth gave military officers a reason to stay out of the drug war, while prominent Democrats used the myth to attack Bush administration policies. And the Taliban loved it because their propaganda campaign consisted of trotting out farmers whose fields had been eradicated and having them say that they were going to starve.

An odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban were preventing the implementation of an effective counterdrug program. And the rest of us could not turn them around.


Not committed to victory, committed to doing their time and getting out -- doesn't that remind me of another counterinsurgency we fought?

Nonetheless, we stayed hopeful as we worked on what became the U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan. The Defense Department was initially cooperative (as I testified to Congress). We agreed to expand the local meetings and education campaign that worked well in the north. Afghan religious leaders would issue anti-poppy statements, focusing on the anti-Islamic nature of drugs and the increasing addiction rate in Afghanistan. In the area of agricultural incentives, since most farmers already had an alternative crop, we agreed to improve access to markets not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and the wider region. USAid would establish more cold-storage facilities, build roads and establish buying cooperatives that could guarantee prices for legal crops. With the British, we developed an initiative to reward provinces that became poppy-free or reduced their poppy crop by a specified amount. Governors who performed well would get development projects: schools, bridges and hospitals.

But there had to be disincentives too. We agreed to provide security for manual poppy eradication, so that we could show the Afghan people that the more-powerful farmers were vulnerable. We focused on achieving better ground-based eradication, but reintroduced the possibility of aerial eradication. We agreed to increase D.E.A. training of counternarcotics police and establish special investigative units to gather physical and documentary evidence against corrupt Afghan officials. And we developed policies that would increase the Afghan capacity to prosecute traffickers.


We might try some of that in D.C.

Adding to the wave of optimism was the arrival of William Wood as the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. He had been ambassador in Colombia, so he understood drugs and insurgency well. His view was that poppy cultivation was illegal in Afghanistan, so he didn't really care whether the farmers were poor or rich. "We have a lot of poor people in the drug trade in the U.S.A. — people mixing meth in their trailers in rural areas and people selling crack in the inner cities — and we put them in jail," he said.


What an unenlightened viewpoint! (Gasp!)

At first Wood advocated — in an unclassified e-mail message, surprisingly — a massive aerial-eradication program that would wipe out 80,000 hectares of poppies in Helmand Province, delivering a fatal blow to the root of the narcotics problem. "If there is no poppy, there is nothing to traffic," Wood said. The plan looked good on paper, but we knew it would be impossible to sell to Karzai and the Pentagon. Wood eventually agreed to language advocating, at a minimum, force-protected ground-based eradication with the possibility of limited aerial eradication.

Another ally for a more aggressive approach to the problem was David Kilcullen, a blunt counterterrorism expert. He became increasingly concerned about the drug money flowing to the Taliban. He noted that, while Afghans often shift alliances, what remains constant is their respect for strength and consistency. He recommended mobile courts that had the authority to execute drug kingpins in their own provinces. (You could have heard a pin drop when he first made that suggestion at a large meeting of diplomats.) In support of aerial eradication, Kilcullen pointed out that, with manual eradication you have to "fight your way in and fight your way out" of the poppy fields, making it deadly, inefficient and subject to corrupt bargaining. Aerial eradication, by contrast, is quick, fair and efficient. "If we are already bombing Taliban positions, why won't we spray their fields with a harmless herbicide and cut off their money?" Kilcullen asked.


The problem is, it isn't just the Taliban's money that would be cut off. From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: And as you pointed [out], some of this information has been confirmed in the public. I know when you speak about the Iranian informant...

SE: Correct.

SH: ...who warned in April of 2001 -- that was even confirmed by Mueller, the director of the FBI.

SE: Absolutely there was actually an article in the Chicago Tribune in July 2004 saying that even Mueller expressed surprise that during the hearings, the commissioners didn't ask about this. And guess what, nobody reported all these omissions. What would happen if you hit them with 20 cases? And I'm talking about 20 affidavits from experts and veteran agents.

SH: This is all about the question of prior knowledge and who knew what, when before the attack.

SE: And also what happened afterward. I started working three days after Sept. 11 with a lot of documents and wiretaps that I was translating. Some of them dated back to 1997, 1998. Even after Sept. 11, covering up these investigations and not pursuing some of these investigations because the Department of State says, "You know what, you can't pursue this because that may deal with this particular country. If this country that the investigation deals with are not one of the Axis of Evil, we don't want to pursue them." The American people have the right to know this. They are giving this grand illusion that there are some investigations, but there are none. You know, they are coming down on these charities as the finance of al-Qaeda. Well, if you were to talk about the financing of al-Qaeda, a very small percentage comes from these charity foundations. The vast majority of their financing comes from narcotics. Look, we had 4 to 6 percent of the narcotics coming from the East, coming from Pakistan, coming from Afghanistan via the Balkans to the United States. Today, three or four years after Sept. 11, that has reached over 15 percent. How is it getting here? Who are getting the proceedings from those big narcotics?


Who, indeed? It isn't all going back to these farmers, or even to the Taliban, or even to people in some part of Asia.

Once again quoting a key passage from Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.


Eradicate poppies in Afghanistan, and bigwigs in America lose money, elections and power.

Returning to Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

So it appeared that things were moving nicely. We were going to increase incentives to farmers and politicians while also increasing the disincentives with aggressive eradication and arrest of criminal officials and leading traffickers. The Pentagon seemed on board.


Of course, you know that wasn't going to last.

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Sword of Allah, Part 3

We continue from Part 2 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

Around the same time, the United States released photos of industrial-size poppy farms — many owned by pro-government opportunists, others owned by Taliban sympathizers. Most of these narco-farms were near major southern cities. Farmers were digging wells, surveying new land for poppy cultivation, diverting U.S.-built irrigation canals to poppy fields and starting expensive reclamation projects.


They should put a sign in the poppy fields: "Your Tax Dollars At Work!"

Yet Afghan officials continued to say that poppy cultivation was the only choice for its poor farmers. My first indication of the insincerity of this position came at a lunch in Brussels in September 2006 attended by Habibullah Qaderi, who was then Afghanistan's minister for counternarcotics. He gave a speech in which he said that poor Afghan farmers have no choice but to grow poppies, and asked for more money. A top European diplomat challenged him, holding up a U.N. map showing the recent trend: poppy growth decreasing in the poorest areas and growing in the wealthier areas. The minister, taken aback, simply reiterated his earlier point that Afghanistan needed more money for its destitute farmers. After the lunch, however, Qaderi approached me and whispered: "I know what you say is right. Poverty is not the main reason people are growing poppy. But this is what the president of Afghanistan tells me to tell others."


From Kabul to Washington, D.C., the battlefield efforts of our troops are being subverted by lies. The result is that people die in an endless "War on Terror", while well-positioned people on both sides make money dealing in everything from arms for fighting the war to heroin that is produced and trafficked taking advantage of the instability and politics.

Recall what Sibel Edmonds said in her May 7, 2004, interview with Jim Hogue, Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.


As I'm writing this post, I am reviewing some of my old material. As familiar as I am with it, it is still quite eye-opening.

Here are some passages from news articles, which I quoted in Bushfire, Part 4:

1. From Taliban rejects Bush's 'second chance' offer October 13, 2001:

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban has rejected President George W. Bush's "second chance" offer to surrender terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, the Afghan embassy in Islamabad said today.

President Bush told a news conference on Thursday that if the Taliban "cough him up and his people today" then the United States will "reconsider what we're doing to your country. You still have a second chance," Bush said. "Just bring him in, and bring his leaders and lieutenants and other thugs and criminals with him."


2. Then, from Bush pledges to get bin Laden, dead or alive December 14, 2001:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush pledged anew Friday that Osama bin Laden will be taken "dead or alive," no matter how long it takes, amid indications that the suspected terrorist may be bottled up in a rugged Afghan canyon. The president, in an Oval Office meeting with Thailand's prime minister, would not predict the timing of bin Laden's capture but said he doesn't care how the suspect is brought to justice. "I don't care, dead or alive -- either way," Bush said. "It doesn't matter to me."


3. Finally, from CNN EVANS, NOVAK, HUNT & SHIELDS: Interview With General Richard Myers April 6, 2002:

HUNT: The Big Question for General Myers: One embarrassment for the U.S. has been that, in almost seven months after 9/11, we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. With the apprehension this week of one of his top lieutenants, have we gotten enough information to be any closer to maybe finally getting bin Laden?

MYERS: Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden. Obviously, that's desirable.


So, was this about getting Osama bin Laden, or wasn't it?

From General Dostum and the Heroin Trade:

The events that have transpired as a result of 9/11 have been of enormous benefit to the South Asian heroin industry -- and I have blogged about this a great deal.

It is interesting in view of all the other evidence -- how a Turkish translator at the FBI was aware of evidence that the blueprints for U.S. skyscrapers had gone to the Middle East prior to the attacks, how the same translator saw papers that show the U.S. knew Al Qaeda was going to attack cities with airplanes... I'm writing about Sibel Edmonds, of course, but there's much, much more.


In another passage from General Dostum and the Heroin Trade, I quote Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time by CRAIG MURRAY, July 21, 2007, then continue with my own comments:

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.


Remember that the Sibel Edmonds case is about U.S. officials, elected and appointed, from both parties, in Congress and the State and Defense Departments, as well as elsewhere, who are on the payroll of organized crime. The organized crime group is connected to the nuclear blackmarket, the arms trade, and narcotics trafficking in Central and Southwest Asia.

Reportedly, these corrupt officials do, while on the U.S. government payroll, favors to help organized crime -- and are rewarded with bribes and promises of a soft, cushy future.


Uh-huh.

It was in No Smoke Without Fire, Part 1 that I first showed this:



And, from Selling Out America, Part 1:

The Turkish Deep State is a modern mafia that includes Turkish government figures (political leaders and military officers), business moguls and cartels that smuggle heroin, sex slaves, weapons and nuclear secrets. Where the interests of these groups converge, might makes right and the purpose of the law is to further business.

Working as a translator in the FBI's Washington Field Office, Sibel Edmonds was assigned to translate a backlog of documents and tapes. Among the information that Edmonds came across was powerful evidence that strategically-placed US officials in Congress and the Executive Branch were on the take, receiving bribes from lobby groups that front for Turkish heroin traffickers.

While these lobby groups do have "legitimate" functions that they perform, and not everyone associated with them knows what they are about, their main purpose is to ensure that US foreign and economic policy gets steered in a way that favors the business interests of the Turkish Deep State. US Congressmen and Senators and officials in the State and Defense Departments perform services, while on the US government payroll, for their foreign masters; protection is provided against prosecution by strategically-placed employees of the FBI, who bury evidence and derail investigations. In return for their services, these people receive bribes, campaign contributions, and a variety of compensation, and are guaranteed a cushy retirement later.

Sibel Edmonds told her story at the FBI and was fired. She then went to the Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General; to the US Senate; and, finally, to the US media. All investigated at least some of her claims, and substantiated what they investigated -- 60 Minutes even did a segment on Edmonds. But, nothing happened, and, ultimately, Sibel Edmonds was gagged by the Bush Administration's Justice Department.

Congressman Henry Waxman, D-CA, was briefed on all of this, and promised in 2006 that should the Democrats win Congress, he would hold public hearings into the Sibel Edmonds case. The Democrats won, but one month after the Democrat-controlled Congress was convened in January of 2007, the Turkish Coalition of America came into existence, a key official of which had been a major player in the American Turkish Council -- the organization most associated in the obstructed FBI investigations with espionage and bribery of US government officials.

Its Congressional Caucus membership list includes Congressman Henry Waxman.



Needless to say, Congressman Waxman has yet to hold those hearings.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) was bought out by the Turkish Coalition of America; he is on the payroll of Turkish organized crime.


Again quoting Sibel Edmonds, this time from State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade -- FBI Whistleblower by Fintan Dunne, June 7, 2004:

"There are certain points..., where you have your drug related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities," Ms. Edmonds told BreakForNews.com.


And, as I quoted in Part 1, from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --


From No Smoke Without Fire, Part 1, where I quote excerpts from Narco aggression, with a comment of my own interspersed.

When Russia backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the post-9/11 scenario, the last thing it expected to happen was that drug trafficking from Afghanistan would assume gargantuan proportions under the U.S. military. Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world's heroin supply.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] forces in the country have not only failed to eliminate the terrorist threat from the Taliban, but also presided over a spectacular rise in opium production. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a "narco state".


Not "becoming" -- it already is a "narco state".

Narco business has emerged as virtually the only economy of Afghanistan and is valued at some $10 billion a year. Opium trade is estimated by the U.N. to be equivalent to 53 per cent of the country's official economy and is helping to finance the Taliban.

"Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit," Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of "sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe." As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

"The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries," says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. "They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking."


Is there any truth to this? The answer I keep coming up with is that there is.

The Russians blame the CIA, and that is the only part I question; from the Sibel Edmonds case, it would seem that if the CIA is involved, they are to some extent acting on orders of corrupt Washington insiders.

Of course, the connections between the CIA and heroin trafficking seem to go back decades, and, in particular, the CIA helped set up heroin traffickers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with full and enthusiastic cooperation of Pakistan's ISI. The heroin trafficking was seen as a way of funding the jihad against the Soviet Union during the 1980's, while destroying the Soviet Army and the Soviet people through heroin addiction -- generating money for jihad, money that was out of reach of the American Congress.

And we seem to think corruption in Kabul is the problem? We will never be able to deal with corruption in Kabul if we can't deal with it in Washington.

From An Interview with Sibel Edmonds, Page Three by Chris Deliso, July 1, 2004:

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this ... I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy – this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability -- the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.


Including a Congressman who was fully briefed on the Sibel Edmonds case, who promised to hold hearings if his party gained power in Congress -- and who then joined an organization established by a frontman for Turkish organized Crime, and who has since been conspicuously silent.



Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

The Sword of Allah, Part 2

We pick up where we left off at the end of Part 1 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAid) was also under fire — particularly from Congress — for not providing better alternative crops for farmers. USAid had distributed seed and fertilizer to most of Afghanistan, but more comprehensive agricultural programs were slow to start in parts of the country. The USAid officers in Kabul were competent and committed, but they had already lost several workers to insurgent attacks, and were understandably reluctant to go into Taliban territory to implement their programs.

The Department of Justice had just completed an effort to open the Afghan anti-narcotics court, so capacity to prosecute was initially low. Justice in Afghanistan was administered unevenly by tribes, religious leaders and poorly paid, highly corruptible judges. In the rare cases in which drug traffickers were convicted, they often walked in the front door of a prison, paid a bribe and walked out the back door. We received dozens of reports to this effect.

And then there was the problem of the Afghan National Police. The Pentagon frequently proclaimed that the Afghan National Army (which the Pentagon trained) was performing wonderfully, but that the police (trained mainly by the Germans and the State Department) were not. A respected American general in Afghanistan, however, confided to me that the army was not doing well, either; that the original plan for training the army was flimsy and underfinanced; and that, consequently, they were using police to fill holes in the army mission. Thrust into a military role, unprepared police lost their lives trying to hold territory in dangerous areas.

There was no coherent strategy to resolve these issues among the U.S. agencies and the Afghan government. When I asked career officers at the State Department for the interagency strategy for Afghan counternarcotics, they produced the same charts I used to brief the cabinet in Washington months before. "There is no written strategy," they confessed.


That passage says a lot.

In that kind of a chaotic situation, the only Afghans who are going to thrive are the narcotraffickers -- at least they are both motivated and organized.

As big as these challenges were, there were even bigger ones. A lot of intelligence — much of it unclassified and possible to discuss here — indicated that senior Afghan officials were deeply involved in the narcotics trade. Narco-traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government. The attorney general, Abdul Jabbar Sabit, a fiery Pashtun who had begun a self-described "jihad against corruption," told me and other American officials that he had a list of more than 20 senior Afghan officials who were deeply corrupt — some tied to the narcotics trade. He added that President Karzai — also a Pashtun — had directed him, for political reasons, not to prosecute any of these people. (On July 16 of this year, Karzai dismissed Sabit after Sabit announced his candidacy for president. Karzai's office said Sabit's candidacy violated laws against political activity by officials. Sabit told a press conference that Karzai "has never been able to tolerate rivals.")




An Afghan government official begins "jihad against corruption" and gets trumped by Karzai.

Is this not reminiscent of what Sibel Edmonds said in 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso, August 15, 2005?

SE: In some cases where the FBI stumbles upon evidence of high-level officials being involved in drug-smuggling, they're even prevented from sharing it with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]. The Department of State just comes in and says, "Leave it."

You know, it's funny, after 9/11, the common criticism was that there was "no information-sharing" between the FBI, CIA, and the like, and this is why the terrorists pulled it off -- as if we didn't want to cooperate. No information-sharing? That's the biggest BS I ever heard!




Returning to Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

A nearly equal challenge in 2006 was the lack of resolve in the international community. Although Britain's foreign office strongly backed antinarcotics efforts (with the exception of aerial eradication), the British military were even more hostile to the antidrug mission than the U.S. military. British forces — centered in Helmand — actually issued leaflets and bought radio advertisements telling the local criminals that the British military was not part of the anti-poppy effort. I had to fly to Brussels and show one of these leaflets to the supreme allied commander in Europe, who oversees Afghan operations for NATO, to have this counterproductive information campaign stopped. It was a small victory; the truth was that many of our allies in the International Security Assistance Force were lukewarm on antidrug operations, and most were openly hostile to aerial eradication.

Nonetheless, throughout 2006 and into 2007 there were positive developments (although the Pentagon did not supply the helicopters to the D.E.A. until early 2008). The D.E.A. was training special Afghan narcotics units, while the Pentagon began to train Afghan pilots for drug operations. We put together educational teams that convened effective antidrug meetings in the more stable northern provinces. We used manual eradication to eliminate about 10 percent of the crop. In some provinces with little insurgent activity, the eradication numbers reached the 20 percent threshold — a level that drug experts see as a tipping point in eradication — and poppy cultivation all but disappeared in those areas by 2007. And the Department of Justice got the counternarcotics tribunal to process hundreds of midlevel cases.

By late 2006, however, we had startling new information: despite some successes, poppy cultivation over all would grow by about 17 percent in 2007 and would be increasingly concentrated in the south of the country, where the insurgency was the strongest and the farmers were the wealthiest. The poorest farmers of Afghanistan — those who lived in the north, east and center of the country — were taking advantage of antidrug programs and turning away from poppy cultivation in large numbers. The south was going in the opposite direction, and the Taliban were now financing the insurgency there with drug money — just as Patterson predicted.

In late January 2007, there was an urgent U.S. cabinet meeting to discuss the situation. The attendees agreed that the deputy secretary of state John Negroponte and John Walters, the drug czar, would oversee the development of the first interagency counternarcotics strategy for Afghanistan. They asked me to coordinate the effort, and, after Patterson’s intervention, I was promoted to ambassadorial rank. We began the effort with a briefing for Negroponte, Walters, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and several senior Pentagon officials. We displayed a map showing how poppy cultivation was becoming limited to the south, more associated with the insurgency and disassociated from poverty. The Pentagon chafed at the briefing because it reflected a new reality: narcotics were becoming less a problem of humanitarian assistance and more a problem of insurgency and war.


Negroponte -- doesn't he have a background working in a counterinsurgent/counternarcotics environment?

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was arriving at the same conclusion. Later that year, they issued a report linking the drug trade to the insurgency and made a controversial statement: "Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty — quite the opposite." The office convincingly demonstrated that poor farmers were abandoning the crop and that poppy growth was largely confined to some of the wealthiest parts of Afghanistan. The report recommended that eradication efforts be pursued "more honestly and more vigorously," along with stronger anticorruption measures. Earlier this year, the U.N. published an even more detailed paper titled "Is Poverty Driving the Afghan Opium Boom?" It rejected the idea that farmers would starve without the poppy, concluding that "poverty does not appear to have been the main driving factor in the expansion of opium poppy cultivation in recent years."

The U.N. reports shattered the myth that poppies are grown by destitute farmers who have no other source of income. They demonstrated that approximately 80 percent of the land under poppy cultivation in the south had been planted with it only in the last two years. It was not a matter of "tradition," and these farmers did not need an alternative livelihood. They had abandoned their previous livelihoods — mainly vegetables, cotton and wheat (which was in severely short supply) — to take advantage of the security vacuum to grow a more profitable crop: opium.


The relatively rich farmers began to grow poppies to make more money -- and the business was supporting our enemy.

Heroin -- the sword of Allah!

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as the series continues!

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Sword of Allah, Part 1

I begin this series by beginning a review of Is Afghanistan a Narco-State? by THOMAS SCHWEICH, published July 27, 2008. The NYT article has many links which I did not reproduce.

On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world's heroin. I took to heart Karzai's strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake.

Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade — by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai's Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people's business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs — and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.


I pause with the article for some quotes from Sibel Edmonds. From 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --




Returning now to Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

It wasn't supposed to be like this. When I attended an Afghanistan briefing for Anne Patterson on Dec. 1, 2005, soon after she became assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law-enforcement affairs, she turned to me with her characteristic smile and said, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" We had just learned that in the two previous months Afghan farmers had planted almost 60 percent more poppy than the year before, for a total of 165,000 hectares (637 square miles). The 2006 harvest would be the biggest narco-crop in history. That was the challenge we faced. Patterson — already a three-time ambassador — made me her deputy at the law-enforcement bureau, which has anti-crime programs in dozens of countries.


An image from the UN World Drug Report for 2007 (index of UN WDR's) helps tell the story:



Continuing with Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

At the beginning of 2006, I went to the high-profile London Conference on Afghanistan. It was a grand event mired in deception, at least with respect to the drug situation. Everyone from the Afghan delegation and most in the international community knew that poppy cultivation and heroin production would increase significantly in 2006. But the delegates to the London Conference instead dwelled on the 2005 harvest, which was lower than that of 2004, principally because of poor weather and market manipulation by drug lords like Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, who had been governor of the heroin capital of the world — Helmand Province — and then a member of Afghanistan's Parliament. So the Afghans congratulated themselves on their tremendous success in fighting drugs even as everyone knew the problem was worse than ever.


More images from the UN World Drug Report for 2007:







Continuing with Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

About three months later, after meeting with local officials in Helmand — my helicopter touched down in the middle of a poppy field — I went to the White House to brief Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others on the expanding opium problem. I advocated a policy replicating what had worked in other countries: public education about the evils of heroin and the illegality of cultivating poppies; alternative crops; eradication of poppy fields; interdiction of drug shipments and arrest of traffickers; and improvements to the judicial system.




I emphasized at this and subsequent meetings that crop eradication, although claiming less than a third of the $500 million budgeted for Afghan counternarcotics, was the most controversial part of the program. But because no other crop came even close to the value of poppies, we needed the threat of eradication to force farmers to accept less-lucrative alternatives. (Eradication was an essential component of successful anti-poppy efforts in Guatemala, Southeast Asia and Pakistan.) The most effective method of eradication was the use of herbicides delivered by crop-dusters. But Karzai had long opposed aerial eradication, saying it would be misunderstood as some sort of poison coming from the sky. He claimed to fear that aerial eradication would result in an uprising that would cause him to lose power. We found this argument perplexing because aerial eradication was used in rural areas of other poor countries without a significant popular backlash. The chemical used, glyphosate, was a weed killer used all over the United States, Europe and even Afghanistan. (Drug lords use it in their gardens in Kabul.) There were volumes of evidence demonstrating that it was harmless to humans and became inert when it hit the ground. My assistant at the time was a Georgia farmer, and he told me that his father mixed glyphosate with his hands before applying it to their orchards.

Nonetheless, Karzai opposed it, and we at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs went along. We financed ground-based eradication instead: police using tractors and weed-whackers to destroy the fields of farmers who refused to plant alternative crops. Ground-based eradication was inefficient, costly, dangerous and more subject to corrupt dealings among local officials than aerial eradication. But it was our only option.

Yet I continued to press for aerial eradication and a greater commitment to providing security for eradicators. Rumsfeld was already in political trouble, so when he started to resist my points, Rice quickly and easily shut him down. The briefing at the White House was well received by Rice and the others present. White House staff members also made clear to me that Bush continued to be "a big fan of aerial eradication."

The vice president made only one comment: "You got a tough job."

Even before she got to the bureau of international narcotics, Anne Patterson knew that the Pentagon was hostile to the antidrug mission. A couple of weeks into the job, she got the story firsthand from Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commanded all U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He made it clear: drugs are bad, but his orders were that drugs were not a priority of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Patterson explained to Eikenberry that, when she was ambassador to Colombia, she saw the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) finance their insurgency with profits from the cocaine trade, and she warned Eikenberry that the risk of a narco-insurgency in Afghanistan was very high. Eikenberry was familiar with the Colombian situation, but the Pentagon strategy was "sequencing" — defeat the Taliban, then have someone else clean up the drug business.


"[Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry] made it clear: drugs are bad, but his orders were that drugs were not a priority of the U.S. military in Afghanistan."

Another Sibel Edmonds quote, from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

SE: You know how they always talk about these Islamic charities funding the terrorists, right?

CD: Yes...

SE: Well, and this is not a firm statistic, just a sort of ratio... but these charities are responsible for maybe 10 or 20 percent of al-Qaeda's fundraising. So where is the other 80 or 90 percent coming from? People, it's not so difficult!


Returning to Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

The Drug Enforcement Administration worked the heroin trafficking and interdiction effort with the Afghans. They targeted kingpins and disrupted drug-smuggling networks. The D.E.A. had excellent agents in Afghanistan, but there were not enough of them, and they had seemingly unending difficulties getting Mi-17 helicopters and other equipment that the Pentagon promised for the training of the counternarcotics police of Afghanistan. In addition, the Pentagon had reneged on a deal to allow the D.E.A. the use of precious ramp space at the Kabul airport. Consequently, the effort to interdict drug shipments and arrest traffickers had stalled. Less than 1 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan was being seized there. The effort became even more complicated later in 2006, when Benjamin Freakley, the two-star U.S. general who ran the eastern front, shut down all operations by the D.E.A. and Afghan counternarcotics police in Nangarhar — a key heroin-trafficking province. The general said that antidrug operations were an unnecessary obstacle to his military operations.


Another Sibel Edmonds quote, from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

SE: In some cases where the FBI stumbles upon evidence of high-level officials being involved in drug-smuggling, they're even prevented from sharing it with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]. The Department of State just comes in and says, "Leave it."

You know, it's funny, after 9/11, the common criticism was that there was "no information-sharing" between the FBI, CIA, and the like, and this is why the terrorists pulled it off -- as if we didn't want to cooperate. No information-sharing? That's the biggest BS I ever heard!


And, another, from Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: I want to get to your appearance on Democracy Now! earlier in the week, referring to officials at the State Department, you used the word "treason." And I wonder whether this is specifically referring to the Sept. 11 attacks and whether you have information that indicates complicity on the part of American elites who are part of these semi-legit organizations that funded Sept. 11, or are we talking seven degrees of Kevin Bacon here?

SE: Again, it's hard to talk about this around the gag order, but this is what I have been saying for the past three years, that's why I refer to the transcript of CBS 60 Minutes. These people who call themselves Americans and these people are using their position, their official position within these agencies -- some of them in the Department of Defense, some of them in the Department of State -- and yet, what they are doing with their position, with their influence is against the United States' national security, it's against the best interests of its people, and that is treason. Be it giving information to those that are either quasi-allies -- and I would underline quasi, who one day will be another al-Qaeda -- and who are already are engaged in activities that are damaging to our country, its security and its interests -- and that is treason. So that's what I was referring to. And what would you call someone who, let's say if they were to go after Douglas Feith, and if they were to establish that Douglas Feith with his access to information, willingly, intentionally used the information he had and gave it to those that would one day use it or maybe right now are using that information against the United States. Would you call that treason?

SH: Well, if it's an overt act to benefit an American enemy then yes, that's treason.

SE: Correct, and I as I said, those lines are so blurry because there are certain countries that we call allies but I wouldn't call them allies, these people are, these countries are, quasi-allies.

SH: Okay, I'm going to go ahead and name some people whom I suspect inside the State Department and the Pentagon, and I suppose you won't be able to answer affirmative or negative on any of these, but I'm very curious when I read about this kind of corruption going on in the State Department, I immediately think of John Bolton and David Wurmser. Do those names mean anything to you?

SE: Well, first of all, I'm not going to answer that question at all, but also you should pay attention to the fact that some of these people have been there for a while, and some of these people had their roots in there even in the mid-1990s.

SH: So more career officials rather than political appointees.

SE: Or maybe a mixture of both.


Perhaps this puts the matter in context. Recall the passage from Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?, above:

Even before she got to the bureau of international narcotics, Anne Patterson knew that the Pentagon was hostile to the antidrug mission. A couple of weeks into the job, she got the story firsthand from Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commanded all U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He made it clear: drugs are bad, but his orders were that drugs were not a priority of the U.S. military in Afghanistan.


Is the military being told by corrupt elements of the Bush Administration to leave heroin alone, even though heroin production is funding our enemy and paying for the attacks that kill American and allied troops?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

"Pride of Lions" Index

Index to links of the series Pride of Lions:


Pride of Lions, Part 1

Pride of Lions, Part 2

Pride of Lions, Part 3

Pride of Lions, Part 4

Pride of Lions, Part 5

Pride of Lions, Part 6

Pride of Lions, Part 7

Pride of Lions, Part 8

Pride of Lions, Part 9

Pride of Lions, Part 10

Pride of Lions, Part 11

Pride of Lions, Part 12

Pride of Lions, Part 13

Pride of Lions, Part 14

Pride of Lions, Part 15


Coming up in future posts: comments by readers, and some input from Gina Khan!

Pride of Lions, Part 15

We continue from Pride of Lions, Part 14, and will conclude this series with this post, as we conclude our review of The Gina Khan Interview - Part Four:

Q: So strong women are the answer?

The empowerment of Muslim women is crucial against this backward male dominated ideology. Any change in the thinking and behaviour of mothers has a strong impact on children and the next generation. Benazir Bhutto is an inspiration, even after her death, Muslim youths in colleges are signing up to join the PPP and Muslim women and men respected her. If she can oppose this ideology, oppose Islamists, why aren't we doing the same in Britain? Isn't this ideology in collision with democracy?

Why are we allowing Islamists to mobilise our minds? Why are we participating in our own oppression?

If my son hadn't been approached by radical Islamists on the streets of Ward End and if I didn't know a British Christian woman from Birmingham whose teenage son as converted by Salafists and then tried to kill her because she refused to convert, I would have been ignorant too of the power of Jihadism embedded in our communities.

Mr Bunglawala doesn't fool me. These men like Bunglawala are exactly the kind of Islamic men than Pakistani women in Pakistan wouldn't trust or give their vote to.

In fact Hazel Blears could be thinking of empowering non Muslim women too. The rate of conversions is alarming. Most converts seem to be indoctrinated with extreme Islam and political Islam. I have met British black and white, Indian, Sikh mothers who have the same fear as I do for our growing children. If the government continues to fail its people and the next generation through lack of knowledge and education then we are in a lose-lose situation. The gulf they want to create will widen.

The MCB don't give a damn about the Muslims or non Muslims. They are using their position to mobilise the masses towards political Islam.

Why? What's wrong with the British law?? It trumps their barbarity. It's about time the voices of British Muslim women and secular and reformers were heard.

Why doesn't the government ask British born Muslim women to advise them?

Women like Samira Malik were on the conveyor belt towards Jihadism but she clearly hadn't read up enough about the rewards for women jihadis, or asked her Islamist male mentors enough questions. I hope the Samira Malik case deters other radical females from dreaming of 'martyrdom'. According to what I have read, women won't enjoy the bounties of heaven as much as the men will. Even in the after life women will be treated as sub human and have to put with all the virgins they will inherit, so say the Islamists.


That's a key point -- life in this world is hell for women under the rule of these guys, but life in the next world is no better.

Women need to up and leave that ideology -- they have nothing to lose.

Q: Where's the platform for you to promulgate your feelings and solutions?

Peaceful mainstream British Muslims are the silent majority. We have no platform where we can oppose the Jihadists' propaganda.

There are millions of Muslims in this country that are proud to be British, that abhor honour killings, forced marriages, polygamy, the veil, abhor the Islamists, abhor the suicide human bombs that Jihadism has created. There are thousands of British Muslims who respect the Jewish people, accept Israel as the one of the best democratic countries in the Middle East and would never abuse let alone behead a Jew or apostle.

Contrary to interpretations, mainstream Muslims respect people of other religions and the importance of a pluralist modern reformed Islam. We live and let live. There are millions who supported a woman leader Benazir Bhutto as she was the only beacon of light who could have instilled democracy in Pakistan. The last thing modern Pakistanis want is an Islamist party running the country. It's Islamists who discriminate or assassinate women in power as they have with Benazir.

People like my mother respected the British education, wanted their rights and freedoms, wanted their full humanity back. I hope Pakistanis make the right choice.

Q: And you, Gina. What lies ahead for you?

I plan to carry on writing and doing interviews, I plan to work as an anti Jihad activist. I plan to challenge in any way I can the status that Islamists have enslaved us into. I will repeat over and over that I don't believe for one moment that the God who created me wanted me to walk out of my front door using only half the IQ he gave me. Nor is my brain deficient and nor are we any less human to the Muslim male.

I live in a democracy. I am lucky. I will exercise my freedom of speech and champion democracy, oppose Jihadism and empower women to stand up for their natural rights and full humanity. And I won't stop until the government of this country hears the voices of women/men like me who know they are living in one of the best democracies in the world.

No one owns Islam and the Islamists can't pressurise Muslims or non Muslims any longer. We must break our silence. British people are the nicest, the most tolerant and the most humane people on earth. I learnt more about kindness, forgiveness and humanity from the English, Welsh, Jamaican, Indian, Irish, Gays and Atheists, that no script on earth could have taught me.

We need to stop putting the country down and playing into the hands of Islamist. There's a dangerous ideology out there that is doing everything to cause a clash within this humane civilization. I hope to God that one day we can all as British people oppose this ideology from the mainstream without fear - as that is all it takes - or the future is bleak.

Staying silent just isn't an option anymore. What will we say to the next generation, our children, their children? That we had no backbone?

Mahatma Gandhi has quoted "I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills". That says it all for me.


----------



England's Royal Coat of Arms features three lions and, indeed, when Hitler tried to invade the British Isles, the peoples of the British Isles (more than just English) resisted fiercely, so much so that Hitler's forces got their noses bloodied during Britain's Finest Hour. It was as if Hitler had stuck his head into a lion's den.

Today a similar situation may be playing out in the United Kingdom, which faces an invasion.

To be sure, most of the Muslims who live in the UK, mostly either recent immigrants or born in the UK of immigrant parents, are not violent; however, Islam is a foreign ideology, and it certainly has violent aspects to it, at least in the eyes of some of its extremist adherents.

These violent, extremist Muslims seek nothing less than the subjugation of the people of the British Isles -- or, rather, their "submission" -- much like Hitler once did. Fierce, violent and determined, radical Islam -- or, perhaps, "Islamism" -- is rampaging, like a pride of lions on the hunt.

The question that remains to be answered, not just for the United Kingdom, but for many countries in Western Europe, including some we have looked at in this series, is how that rampage will be answered.

Will the peoples of the British Isles (and of other European locations) react like lions whose den has been invaded, and repulse this violent ideological invasion, which seeks to enslave them as the Nazis tried to do?

Or, will the voices of the Gina Khans of the world be drowned out, until the various European countries are enslaved by fierce holy warriors, ideologues and terrorists bent on conquest, leaving France and the United Kingdom -- two nuclear-armed permanent members of the UN Security Council -- under Islamist rule?

Difficult it is to recognize the historical significance of events as they are unfolding.

Is this the beginning of World War III?

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Pride of Lions, Part 14

We continue from Part 13 reviewing The Gina Khan Interview - Part Four. I backtrack just a little to the last question Gina was asked:

Q: So British mainstream politicians are missing the point here?

They have missed the point for the last 40 years.

Mr Brown, Mr Cameron should pay close attention next time they want to visit a Muslim community like mine. They could start counting the mosques springing up like mushrooms and the lack of resources for the youth in the community, especially for Muslim girls. They should introduce a law prohibiting total square metres of one religion's buildings exceeding a certain amount in a given area per capita. Next time when they are up here they could visit bookshops and run-down Islamic schools. They have abandoned these communities.

Polygamy is more common than the British realize. Young teenage forced marriages and honour killings have escalated. So why was our plight ignored and why the Islamists appeased? I could take them to some really nice mainstream English, Irish, Indian, Jamaican, Sikh and 'Modern' Muslims who sense and fear this rise of Islamism but because Britain is a civilised, tolerant society they remain silent. Most fear being called Islamophobic or racist. The public needs educating. As one decent Indian family told me, Islamists were trying to buy a pub in Hodge Hill to turn into yet another Islamic centre.

There are not many Muslims in Hodge Hill but this is how the Islamists operate. People in Hodge Hill are going to either get angry and move out or worry about their young becoming converted.

Muslims and non Muslims at grassroots level know something isn't right. They should talk to people, not just representatives or leaders. I am not scaremongering.

If you integrate you get to hear all sides like I have. Anyway I was in the minority who was standing up to radicals 20 years ago, no-one would listen to me then either. I feel the tide is turning - the Islamists have gone too far too soon. Britain is waking up and will show the world how to deal with these people.

Britain's political leaders have ignored the plight of Muslim women, although every day now the media is reporting honour killings, forced marriages and even the BBC Asian network debated polygamy recently. The silent taboos are being broken.

The forced marriage unit run by the foreign office will tell you that (although our hero is a British Sikh woman Jaswinder Sanghera, who had raised the issues of honour killing and forced marriages) they established the crimes against Muslim women are amongst the highest in the Pakistani communities in Britain. Take a look at Britain's most wanted list and a shocking amount of those wanted are Muslims. Young British Asian girls are still taken out of school and taken back to South Asia, denied a British Education and freedom of choice.

My God, it was the British themselves who passed the Marriage Act setting the minimum age to 14 for girls and 18 for boys in 1872 during the British Raj. They were themselves shocked at the practice of child bride marriages then. Over a century and half later and regardless of the abolition of slavery we didn't get very far did we?

Thank God for Jaswinder Sanghera and other activists like Dr Shazia Sovaisi.

Q: And meanwhile unelected groups are setting the local agenda?

A union member, a British Muslim mother, emailed me the 'manifesto for schools' that the MCB printed. She, as well as her Muslim female students, were stunned and opposed the manifesto. Others echo the same concern. They should read the emails I get.

I went to school in Britain too, my parents were Muslims and desired no special treatment for me at school - thank God. My faith was my business, between me and God, that if I wanted to fast, I didn't expect every one else to put up with my whims, we never asked for special treatments above everyone else. But the Islamicization of this country is headed by men like the MCB and their focus is on women's status as they perceive it and British Muslim children's education as they want it.

They have been manipulating government bodies and want to influence foreign policies. Hello?? Are we all living in the same country or not? Gender apartheid printed on an MCB letterhead isn't going to stop the young from falling in love or marrying non Muslims. Human beings are human beings. Teenagers will be teenagers. I'm sick of these ringleaders of Islam forcing their backward anti-Jewish, anti- gay, anti- women, anti- ex Muslims ideologies down our throats. Who gave them- these unelected nobodies - the right?

They are not Gods ambassadors, God doesn't need any. They have no right whatsoever to tell Muslims how to live in Britain.

They have to stop forcing the hand of God on us all and reject the writings of Maududi and Syed Qutb. They need to stop inflicting one brand of Islam on us all. They politicized young Muslims the wrong way. The Middle East are not what every Muslim worries about. The situation in Britain has to be addressed.


They're not forcing the hand of God on anyone -- they are forcing their own domination, attempting to manipulate and enslave others in the name of Allah.

Q: You say the MCB and the other self-elected Islamist groupings are affecting your human rights?

The declaration of Human rights in 1948 is now being used by Jihadists. We never got a look in as abused Asian Muslim women. The defenders of freedom are letting the people of this country down. There are 52 Muslim countries around the world. If you don't like the West and their liberal way of life no one is stopping an Islamist from leaving the country on a one way ticket.


Leaving the infidel countries isn't what it is all about -- converting, subjugating and enslaving the infidel countries is what the game is about. They don't want to go back to the hellholes they are from; they want to make the UK a hellhole.

And this is the way it must be -- as long as there is freedom somewhere in the world, people will dream of escaping to that freedom. The only way this version of Islam can survive is by destroying the light of freedom anywhere it can be found, until there is nowhere to escape to -- then people will be more controllable in the hellholes.

The likes of Dr Bari - the MCB leader - should be more concerned about his own people and their tragedies in Bangladesh than whether the British should adapt to arranged marriages. He's really getting peoples backs up. He has no right to put down the western woman or compare her to the pious Muslim woman, there is no such thing as the perfect religion or perfect human being. And they have no right to dominate and stress our status in British Islam. Islam is not as rigid as they would want it to be because it is still down to Muslims making their own choices, we are free agents. There's real inadequacy shining through these men in their actions and their ideology.

Another big Islamist myth is that arranged marriages rarely end in divorce. Today every other British Muslim woman I have come across is divorced or a lone mother. The lone mother isn't in the Islamic conscience but she is in the conscience of this great country. Sharia law defines the family structure but is silent on the status of the lone mother. Islam nor can God protect women from the raw power of male hierarchy exercised in Muslim communities. Arranged marriages are the norm. What isn't normal is being forced into or being manipulated into marriage for the sake of honour or extended family. They pretend to be in denial about the real issues Muslim women endure in the name of honour or because of the status they wish to keep us confined in.


Pointing out the hardships women face because of their backwards sharia is racist and xenophobic!

They have done nothing for the emancipation of Muslim women, in fact they advocate the opposite. They emphasize our duties not rights. Just like Maududi, who was not a scholar - he was a journalist who engaged with Syed Qutb in the mid 19th century. Men, who wanted Muslims to control the sexuality of women, advocated the burkha and a revival of 7th century Islam. They welcomed extreme Islamists from the Middle East. In so doing they fouled up. They do not represent the majority of mainstream Muslims.

We have to protect ourselves through learning to be independent, through education, skills, employment, housing, money for food, clothes and shelter. Where else in the world is the lone mother protected so that she can live with dignity? Most move out of Muslim communities that have turned into ghettos. It's no place for a lone mother.

Islam's ambassadors and spokesmen don't protect you here just because you're a Muslim woman. Ask the Muslim teenager who was ganged raped in a Muslim area by Muslim men. Was Islam's ringleaders or Sharia law there to protect her or give justice? No - only the British law and the services in place to support her protected her. These men have no idea what they are talking about except when it comes to reinforcing the burstable bubble that is political Islam.


A Muslim woman gangraped by Muslim men? The rape victim will be lucky if she isn't targeted for honor-killing to remedy the problem.

Q: You believe that these organisations serve Muslim women no purpose?

Absolutely no purpose. Community leaders are in denial about the real issues manifesting in Muslim communities besides Jihadism. Rape, sexual harassment, forced marriages, honour killings, polygamy, forced conversions, domestic violence, depression, drugs, gang culture and paedophiles all exist on our streets too, in our communities. And we remain shamefully silent. There is no such thing as a pious, true Muslim country or community. Not in Pakistan or in 'the great republic of Iran', where religious police force the subjugation.


Or in Saudi Arabia.

No wonder Muslim women feel they need to wear the veil in Muslim communities. We get harassed in Muslim areas. But I'm not afraid to speak the truth now.


What do you have to lose? Live like a slave, or risk your life to be free.

And that's what this is all about.

Public harassment is on the rise in such areas. Ask the local women. That's what happens when communities go backwards and not forward. That is the consequence when women are denied leadership in mosques or not given the space to have dialogue with the government. OUR VOICES ARE DROWNED OUT BY THE ISLAMISTS.

I hope Hazel Blears succeeds in this idea to empower Muslim women against extremists. What did Bunglawala have to say this time in response? Instead of welcoming the idea he said the government is asking women to be spies. With this obfuscation you can see that he is actually at war. The thought of Muslim women being empowered and standing up to their ideology threatens them.


Well, yeah.

Women are supposed to be sex objects, not equals.

I'd like to tell Bunglawala, I know who I would want outside my house protecting me and my children against harassment, extremism or Jihadism. Not the likes of him, who are part of the problem not the solution. If they're not blaming the police, they're blaming the Americans or the Zionists or they latch onto foreign policies. They never look within. They take on the mindless rhetoric that we Muslims have lost our true path and must return to 7th century Islam. Millions of Muslims want to live and let live and that's why we have to break our silence.


And this is my point -- what if what those guys teach really is the true path of Islam?

What if those who want to live peacefully, and not force Islam on the infidel world, really have strayed from Islam?

Stay tuned for Part 15, where Pride of Lions concludes as we finish reviewing The Gina Khan Interview - Part Four.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Sideshow

We review Al-Qaeda's got a brand new bag by Pepe Escobar, July 24, 2008:

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda is back - with a vengeance of sorts. Listen to Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed - a senior al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, in a very rare interview with Pakistan's Geo TV, shot in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan.

"At this stage this is our understanding - that there is no difference between the American people and the American government itself. If we see this through sharia [Islamic] law, American people and the government itself are infidels and are fighting against Islam. We have to rely on suicide attacks which are absolutely correct according to Islamic law. We have adopted this way of war because there is a huge difference between our material resources and our enemy's, and this is the only option to attack our enemy."


No surprise there?

When George Washington was faced with an enemy that had greater material resources than his own, he did not resort to suicide attacks on civilians.

That is the difference between a hero and a thug, between a warrior and a criminal.

The interview is not only about defensive jihad. Yazeed delves into classic al-Qaeda strategy - inciting a cross-border Taliban jihad against the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces and blasting a state, in this case the government of Pakistan. According to him, "Sadly, it is the government of Pakistan which has most damaged our cause. President [Pervez] Musharraf violated the trust of Muslims and contributed to the destruction of the Islamic government of Afghanistan ... Musharraf and his government have made big mistakes, there is no such example in other Islamic states."


Al Qaeda also receives a great deal of help from strategically-placed Pakistanis.

Yazeed also said al-Qaeda was responsible for the suicide car bombing on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad in early June, when six people were killed.

So why is al-Qaeda feeling so emboldened to have one of its top commanders on camera - and on a foreign TV network to boot, not as-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media arm?

I want my emirate

Jihadis now assess that the new Afghan jihad - against the "infidel" US and NATO troops combined - is more important at the moment than Iraq. So in this sense, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has got it right - Afghanistan, and not Iraq, is "the central front in the war on terror".


They try to convince everyone that this is a war on Islam.

It is in fact a war by certain Muslims on infidels and on any Muslims who do not agree with them -- and that is the basic point of this guy's message.

By trying to convince people that the infidels are attacking Islam, Al Qaeda hopes to get some help.

It is the basic reaction of a dog barking at something it is afraid of -- dogs move in packs, they attack when they feel strong, and they bark when they need help. These dogs are barking, trying to call more dogs to help them out.

(And, as a sibling of apes and pigs, I know.)

But it's much more complicated than that. The central front is actually in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda basically wants a pan-Islamic caliphate. The neo-Taliban, based in Pakistan, are not that ambitious. They already have their Islamic Emirate - it is in the Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. What they want most of all is to expand it. They also know they would never stand a chance of taking over the whole of Pakistan. A Pakistani expert on the tribal areas, currently in Washington, describes it as "a class struggle - almost like an evolving peasant revolution. Baitullah Mehsud [the neo-Pakistani Taliban leader] is but a peasant from a poor family."


The central front in the War on Terror is Pakistan.

And, Saudi Arabia is another key location.

By attacking Iraq, what we ultimately did was give the terrorists a target -- our armed forces -- in an area that was not strategically important to Al Qaeda, and where the battles against our armed forces could be outsourced to local Iraqis, who otherwise would not be fighting us.

Bush goofed up, big time.

What is startling is that the neo-Taliban are now practically in control of North-West Frontier Province on the border with Afghanistan - whose capital is fabled Peshawar. They already control several Peshawar suburbs.


It's called "Talibanistan".

The Pakistani state has virtually no power in these areas. The Taliban enforce strict sharia law. If local security people refuse to obey, they are simply killed. No wonder the neo-Taliban now have subdued scores of middle- and low-ranking Pakistani officials. They even issued a deadline to the new secular and relatively progressive regional government to release all Taliban prisoners - or else. As for the government, the only thing it can do is to organize some sort of neighborhood watch to prevent total Taliban supremacy. This state of affairs also reveals how the Pakistani army seems to be powerless - or unwilling - to fight the Taliban.


And, the local Pakistani officials know that they cannot count on help from Islamabad; at the national level, the Pakistani government and especially the Pakistani military is riddled with those who support these holy warriors, and has been riddled with them since Pakistan was born.

Across the border, in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control almost all security checkpoints. No wonder Yazeed - speaking for al-Qaeda, envisions a war without borders. He said, in his Geo TV interview, "Yes, we cannot separate the tribal area people from Afghanistan which are part of Pakistan and the Pakistani people. Yes, we are getting support from tribal people in Pakistan, and in fact it is obligatory for them to render this help and it is a responsibility that is imposed by religion. It is not only obligatory for residents of the tribal regions but all of Pakistan."


A "war without borders" -- imagine that!

Benazir Bhutto had stated that she intended to defeat these militants with Pakistani forces, but that she would accept help from the United States if needed; her goal, though, was victory, and look what happened to her -- in a town that is basically the Pakistani military's and especially Pakistani military intelligence's hometown.

In a recent high-profile al-Qaeda meeting in Miramshah in North Waziristan, the al-Qaeda leadership made it clear it not only expects - it wants the new Afghan war/jihad to spill over to the tribal areas in Pakistan.


Pakistanis -- like it or not, you are on the front lines of this war.

You can thank your politicians who have supported terrorism against India for several decades now -- the chickens are coming home to roost.

And this is what al-Qaeda will get - according to what Obama told CBS News' Lara Logan, "... what I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value al-Qaeda targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, then we should."

The Pentagon for its part is preparing the battlefield - it has already sent Predator drones, repeatedly, over the tribal areas. An air war is in the works - not to mention scores of Pentagon covert special ops.

Al-Qaeda's strategy is to suck in the US military - this is classic Osama bin Laden ideology, according to which the US should be dragged to fight in Muslim lands. Al-Qaeda is reasoning that an attack on the tribal areas, in fact a real third front in the "war on terror" (so dreaded by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen) will have Pakistani public opinion so outraged that the Pakistani army would be powerless to follow the US track. And al-Qaeda, in the end, would be left with an even freer hand.


"Al-Qaeda's strategy is to suck in the US military - this is classic Osama bin Laden ideology, according to which the US should be dragged to fight in Muslim lands."

And Bush is more than happy to oblige.

Don't get me wrong: I am in favor of taking the war to the enemy, and of leaving the enemy no safe havens.

But, this must be done intelligently, on our terms, and Bush has taken his eye off the ball.

And don't expect either McCain or Obama to do any better.

Obama and Osama

How does that fabled phantom, bin Laden, fit into this strategy? Is he alive or just ... a phantom? Hassan Ibrahim from al-Jazeera television recently told independent journalist Kristina Borjesson "bin Laden is alive. The kidney failure and dialysis machine stories are nonsense, CIA rumors. In 2002 one of his wives was interviewed for a Saudi magazine and she categorically denied the dialysis story. After Tora Bora [in Afghanistan when the US invaded in 2001], his fourth wife asked for a divorce. He took on a new wife in April 2005, with whom he now has a son. Her father is a powerful Saudi businessman from Hejaz who announced in his mosque that his daughter had married bin Laden."


So, while the holy warriors are fighting and dying, Sheikh bin Laden's own "sacrifices" have been of a, uh, different nature -- exactly as I have said all along.

There's also chatter in the jihadi underground related to an ongoing theological debate with direct participation by bin Laden.

Obama for his part still cannot have grasped the full, complex, picture of what is going on the tribal areas - in his current world tour he's only been to Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, and only for a few hours. But he's on a learning curve - although, for the moment, he seems to be playing to the US military establishment galleries, pledging to add 10,000 US combat troops to the Afghan theater of war. Al-Qaeda will be delighted.


Senator Obama is a puppet, a pretty face for powerful behind-the-scenes interests.

What Obama has certainly accomplished for now is a certified three-pointer - turning George W Bush administration and neo-conservative rhetoric about the "war on terror" in Iraq upside down and applying it to Afghanistan. Obama has been emphasizing the "growing consensus at home that we need more resources in Afghanistan".


We had the bad guys on the run in 2002, but instead of following up, Bush was diverting troops to a war in Iraq, which already was far more inevitable than what we were being told.

In his press conference in Jordan, Obama also emphasized his decision to make Afghanistan the first stop on his world tour because it's the "central front in the war on terror," the place "where 9/11 was planned" and where "terrorists" are "plotting new attacks against the United States".

And here's the clincher - straight out of the neo-con playbook, "We have to succeed in taking the fight to the terrorists." But that's not all. Obama's political jiu-jitsu has mixed this hardcore rhetoric with a global, multilateral vision - not to mention forcing Republicans to accept his own take on the "war on terror". As for the tribal areas, he projects the impression he is allowing himself time to fully understand their complexity.

So what's left to self-described national security expert and Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain? Well, he did manage to tell ABC's Diane Sawyer the new al-Qaeda and Taliban configuration is "a very hard struggle, particularly giving the situation in the Iraq-Pakistan border".


The blind leading the blind... on both sides of the aisle.

How many of you Democrats really want Senator Obama, and how many of you are just thinking he's the lesser of two evils?

Republicans, the same -- how many of you really want Senator McCain, and how many of you are merely aghast at the thought of a neo-lib President?

I put it to you, Americans on both sides of the aisle, that you have more in common with each other than you do with your Washington elites.

And, I put it to you that Iraq has been nothing but a sideshow -- a very bloody one, a very costly one, a very profitable one for the right people -- a sideshow from which our military needs to take a rest, a sideshow from which our military needs to disengage so we can go after the real enemy.