We have seen a real propaganda blitz for the last week, furiously attempting to shore up support for the war on Afghanistan. It is notable how many senior ex-military and even serving military senior officers have been before the television cameras to put forward the incredible rationale for killing Afghans in Afghanistan who are defending their farms – that it keeps Britain safer.

This is very dangerous. The military are not supposed to make political arguments, and certainly not to argue for wars. I wear my red poppy and attend remembrance events; I do so on the basis that those who died were serving their country and doing their duty as they saw it. I especially remember those who died to save this country from fascist invasion. If we start to see the army as a political force actively canvassing for aggressive war, in time that near universality of remembrance will fail.

Sky News has been particularly blatant today, with Sky reporters stating in terms that the number who turned out at the cenotaph shows that there is public support for the war in Afghanistan, whatever the polls may say. That is untrue. It shows there is public sorrow at the loss or maiming of young lives. If I were in London, I would be in the crowds in Whitehall as I usually am. It is nothing to do with supporting war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/06/brown-karzai-afghanistan-corruption

In other news:

Brown calls on Taliban to join Methodist Conference

Brown calls on Mugabe to retire

Brown calls on Winehouse to join Temperance League

Brown calls on bears to use inside toilets

The horrible case of Nidal Hasan proves yet again the blindingly obvious. The argument that by invading and occupying other countries we somehow increase security at home is an evil justification for waging aggressive war.

In fact if we invade other countries, we cause people to hate us, and create an additional terrorist threat at home. The truth of that is obvious – but truth is not important to those who profit from war.

A contributor to The Daily Kos, Jerome a Paris, has dismissed as “Conspiracy Theory” the notion that US policy in Afghanistan is in any way motivated by a desire to access Central Asian gas reserves via a trans-Afghanistan pipeline. He starts by referencing a Daily Kos entry about me, which he then seeks to “Debunk”.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/5/800848/-Gahhow-many-times-will-it-be-needed-to-debunk-silly-pipeline-conspiracies

Plainly the infinitely wise Jerome is right, and the whole Trans Afghan Pipeline project is merely a figment of my imagination. Oh, and the imagination of the BBC as well. And the imagination of the Afghan, Pakistani and Turkmen Governments.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2017044.stm

Plainly also I only imagined, as British Ambassador, being briefed on the proposed pipeline as a vital Western strategic interest. Equally plainly, I simply imagined all that stuff about the involvement of George Bush and Enron, for which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html

I am very grateful to the wise Jerome for pointing out that Afghanistan is not the only potential route for transiting Central Asian gas while bypassing Russia. Iran is the most ovbious route, but strangely the US is not keen. The other route is through Georgia and Azerbaijan. But Putin has Azerbaijan locked tight against the pipeline. The father of President Aliev of Azerbaijan was Putin’s old KGB boss, and the two are very close. While the proposed route as it passes through Georgia is now under Russian military occupation. But of course that is just coincidence. To think anything else would be “Conspiracy theory”.

There is a minimum of 15 trillion – yes trillion – dollars of natural gas in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Since 2005, Russian diplomacy has tied up the contracts for Gazprom. Before that the US had more than a foot in the door, and the US knows that what changed once can and will change again. 15 trillion dollars is worth some strategising.

Equally, Jerome’s main argument amounts to only this: as it is not currently economic in practice for anybody to be building the pipeline today, therefore it can’t be a key part of US strategic thinking. It takes only a few seconds real thought to dismiss that for the trite nonsense it is.

Let me say 15 trillion dollars again. Not to mention the fact that I have been officially briefed that it is the US strategic interest in the region. If you think about it, it would be crazy if it were not.

I have almost certainly a great deal more experience than the glib Jerome, of Central Asia, of Afghanistan, of the workings of government, and of gas pipelines. In 1986, when I started my first overseas posting in Lagos, the first file on my desk was marked “West Africa Gas Pipeline”. The WAGP delivered its first gas early this year, 23 years later. A company of which I am Chariman is just commissioning a power station to run off it. The fact little Jerome blogged “Five years ago” that the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline was not a US strategiic interest, and today it is still not built, proves nothing. These are major strategic interests and long term projects.

You can believe that the US is in Afghanistan to search for Osama Bin Laden and to back the “Democratic” Mr Karzai. Or you can believe that this war is about control of resources. The motives of Jerome a Paris are a tiny side issue, but still interesting. Is he just a little fool pre-occupied with his own supposed brilliance? Or is there a sinister reason why he attempts to throw sand in your eyes?

Matthew Hoh has resigned from the US State Department and makes some very important points on the Afghan War here.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?mod=0&pkg=29102009&seg=5

I am personally very pleased to hear another government insider, other than myself, make public that it is the Karzai government who ARE the drug warlords – something the mainstream media are in general still very coy about. There is growing evidence that, as so often in the past, the CIA are mixed up in drugs money to further their schemes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?_r=1

Gordon Brown’s statement on the tragic death of yet five more British soldiers today is a model of pusillanimity. He talks of “Working with the new Afghan government”.

What new Afghan government?

The farce of the Afghan election, and the Western reaction to it, is beyond description. Are Brown and Obama really claiming that Karzai did not know that one third of his votes were fraudulent, that a million false votes were being manufactured? That’s a pretty enormous logistical operation. Yet Karzai is still there, grinning. It’s like catching a man playing poker with seven aces up his sleeve, and then saying “Oh never mind, let’s say you won that hand anyway.”

Democracy is not exactly healthy at home either, where not one of our three main political parties offers a choice to voters – most of them – who want us to pull out of Afghanistan. The argument that fighting in Afghanistan somehow ties down the terrorists who would strike here, when in fact UK terrorists have been mostly home grown as a direct response to our fighting abroad, is still supported by all our faux-patriotic parties.

We should bring the soldiers back – and use them to shoot the politicians.

Today, a national demonstration will assemble in London at 12 noon in Hyde Park for a march to Trafalgar Square. More details here…

The war of invasion in Afghanistan is being sustained on two things: the imbecilic argument that it is preventing terrorism in the UK, and on a feast of cod patriotism. Real deaths on the battlefield are not noble; they involve the smells of blood, sweat, shit and piss, and a lot of fear and tears. But this nation cultivated its Spartan myth for generations, and we mentally convert each terrible waste of young life into a tableau of the death of Nelson.

Or this, one of the most popular paintings of the Victorian era; the Last Stand at Gandamak, showing the sad end of the first British army to foolishly invade Afghanistan.

The ritual of Gordon Brown reading out the names of the latest British soldiers to die, is a key part of the patriotic hokum that sustains this dreadful war. But after MPs came back from their incredibly long holiday, it backfired spectacularly on Brown today as he read the names of the 37 young men who died in the hills of Afghanistan while the MPs spent months swigging Pinot Grigio in the hills of Tuscany.

So now we are sending an extra 500 men. That will finally kill off the fierce historic resistance of the Afghans to foreign occupation, then. How many more body bags are we sending?

“We could drop it on an Afghan village. Just keep the cash.”

I congratulate the Royal Navy on their seizure of 5.5 tones of cocaine off the South American coast. In the long term this drug should be legalised, taxed and regulated. But until then, the organised crime caused by prohibition should be combated, and the Royal Navy did a good job.

What an astonishing contrast to Afghanistan, where the massive coalition forces in the country turn an effective blind eye to the industrial scale production of heroin all around them. Between 85 and 90% of heroin production is controlled by the warlords and gangsters of the hideously corrupt and undemocratic Karzai regime, whose rule our soldiers die to enforce.

Stephen Farrell is coming in for a lot of criticism. But let us start by remembering what he was doing. He was investigating a bombing by the United States, in co-operation with Germany, which killed at least seventy Afghans, over fifty of them non-combatants. The government would love all journalists to be “embedded” with the military, giving out messages like the pure state propaganda on BBC News today from a female reporter who concluded that the British troops were making excellent progress in winning hearts and minds, but needed many more years in Afghanistan to do so.

If any truth is ever to break through, it needs brave men and women like Farrell to go out and get the truth. He should not be condemned.

Today it is credibly reported that the military hostage rescue was not in fact necessary as the Afghans were close to a negotiated release. That may be true. However I understand from FCO sources which I trust that the military option was taken in genuine good faith. It was thought there was one last moment to rescue Farrell before he might be taken beyond reach.

It is not possible now to tell what would have been the outcome otherwise. But I do not believe the military option was taken from nefarious motives.

There remains the moral dilemma of whether rescuing Farrell was worth the British soldier, Afghan interpreter and Afghan civilians who were shot. It seems likely that all the Afghan casualties, including the interpreter and woman, were killed by the British soldiers. Whether the British soldier also died from “Friendly fire” remains to be seen.

I am tempted to say that the solution to the ethical dilemma is for journalists entering dangerous areas to inform their governments that they do not wish to be rescued militarily if anything goes wrong. But that is not so simple. What is a dangerous area? One thing this incident underlines yet again is that neither the Karzai regime nor NATO has any control on the ground over vast swathes of Afghanistan – indeed probably in 80% of the land area “Government” writ does not run.

But it is our responsibility as part of the coalition. We chose to be an occupying power. That gives us responsibility to maintain law and order in the land we occupied. Those in Afghanistan – Afghan or foreign – have every right to expect the occupying powers to fulfil their duty. If we don’t want to, we should leave.

If we have bit off more than we can chew, that is not Stephen Farrell’s fault, He is only trying to report the fact.

In Afghanistan, the last week has seen the passing of the symbolic 200th British fatality and desperate preparations for the looming elections.

Casualty Monitor provides a striking graphical picture of the upsurge in British casualties and looks at the historical context of British military failure in Afghanistan.

There is an execellent interview with former head of the Pakistani intelligence service, General Hamid Gul, here. He makes some very strong points. It is undoubtedly true that it is warlords in the US-backed Karzai government who control 90% of the world heroin trade, and that the trade has expanded to its highest ever levels under coalition control. It is undoubtedly true that US foreign policy in the region is dictated by the desire to access Central Asian oil and gas. It is also undoubtedly true that the US works closely with Mossad and with India in Central Asia, and that many of its attacks appear calculated to stir up rather than ease conflict.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/08/12/ex-isi-chief-says-purpose-of-new-afghan-intelligence-agency-rama-is-%E2%80%98to-destabilize-pakistan%E2%80%99/

Turning the focus of our discussion to the Afghan drug problem, I noted that the U.S. mainstream corporate media routinely suggest that the Taliban is in control of the opium trade. However, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Anti-Government Elements (or AGEs), which include but are not limited to the Taliban, account for a relatively small percentage of the profits from the drug trade. Two of the U.S.’s own intelligence agencies, the CIA and the DIA, estimate that the Taliban receives about $70 million a year from the drugs trade. That may seem at first glance like a significant amount of money, but it’s only about two percent of the total estimated profits from the drug trade, a figure placed at $3.4 billion by the UNODC last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has just announced its new strategy for combating the drug problem: placing drug traffickers with ties to insurgents ?”and only drug lords with ties to insurgents ?” on a list to be eliminated. The vast majority of drug lords, in other words, are explicitly excluded as targets under the new strategy. Or, to put it yet another way, the U.S. will be assisting to eliminate the competition for drug lords allied with occupying forces or the Afghan government and helping them to further corner the market.

I pointed out to the former ISI chief that Afghan opium finds its way into Europe via Pakistan, via Iran and Turkey, and via the former Soviet republics. According to the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, convoys under General Rashid Dostum ?” who was reappointed last month to his government position as Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army by President Hamid Karzai ?” would truck the drugs over the border. And President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been accused of being a major drug lord. So I asked General Gul who was really responsible for the Afghan drug trade.

“Now, let me give you the history of the drug trade in Afghanistan,” his answer began. “Before the Taliban stepped into it, in 1994 ?” in fact, before they captured Kabul in September 1996 ?” the drugs, the opium production volume was 4,500 tons a year. Then gradually the Taliban came down hard upon the poppy growing. It was reduced to around 50 tons in the last year of the Taliban. That was the year 2001. Nearly 50 tons of opium produced. 50. Five-zero tons. Now last year the volume was at 6,200 tons. That means it has really gone one and a half times more than it used to be before the Taliban era.” He pointed out, correctly, that the U.S. had actually awarded the Taliban for its effective reduction of the drug trade. On top of $125 million the U.S. gave to the Taliban ostensibly as humanitarian aid, the State Department awarded the Taliban $43 million for its anti-drug efforts. “Of course, they made their mistakes,” General Gul continued. “But on the whole, they were doing fairly good. If they had been engaged in meaningful, fruitful, constructive talks, I think it would have been very good for Afghanistan.”

Referring to the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, General Gul told me in a later conversation that Taliban leader “Mullah Omar was all the time telling that, look, I am prepared to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country for a trial under Shariah. Now that is where ?” he said [it] twice ?” and they rejected this. Because the Taliban ambassador here in Islamabad, he came to me, and I asked him, ‘Why don’t you study this issue, because America is threatening to attack you. So you should do something.’ He said, ‘We have done everything possible.’ He said, ‘I was summoned by the American ambassador in Islamabad’ ?” I think Milam was the ambassador at that time ?” and he told me that ‘I said, “Look, produce the evidence.” But he did not show me anything other than cuttings from the newspapers.’ He said, ‘Look, we can’t accept this as evidence, because it has to stand in a court of law. You are prepared to put him on trial. You can try him in the United Nations compound in Kabul, but it has to be a Shariah court because he’s a citizen under Shariah law. Therefore, we will not accept that he should be immediately handed over to America, because George Bush has already said that he wants him “dead or alive”, so he’s passed the punishment, literally, against him.” Referring to the U.S. rejection of the Taliban offer to try bin Laden in Afghanistan or hand him over to a third country, General Gul added, “I think this is a great opportunity that they missed.”

Returning to the drug trade, General Gul named the brother of President Karzai, Abdul Wali Karzai. “Abdul Wali Karzai is the biggest drug baron of Afghanistan,” he stated bluntly. He added that the drug lords are also involved in arms trafficking, which is “a flourishing trade” in Afghanistan. “But what is most disturbing from my point of view is that the military aircraft, American military aircraft are also being used. You said very rightly that the drug routes are northward through the Central Asia republics and through some of the Russian territory, and then into Europe and beyond. But some of it is going directly. That is by the military aircraft. I have so many times in my interviews said, ‘Please listen to this information, because I am an aware person.’ We have Afghans still in Pakistan, and they sometimes contact and pass on the stories to me. And some of them are very authentic. I can judge that. So they are saying that the American military aircraft are being used for this purpose. So, if that is true, it is very, very disturbing indeed.”

The full interview ranges more widely and is well worth reading. I was unaware that Gul had been banned from the UK and US. But I am unsurprised. I can tell you from direct inside knowledge that the UK/US view is that the ISI is riven with Al-Qaida sympathisers. This suspicion is directed at Pakistanis who are in fact not in any way Al-Qaida sympathisers, but simply ask sceptical and critical questions about the “War on Terror”.

The demonisation of such people again tends to create the very conflict and anti-Western feeling which is pretended to be the concern. In fact conflict, which the US sees itself as in a position ultimately to win militarily, tends to be the aim. General Gul evidently feels that destabilisation of Pakistan is a US strategic goal. That is certainly increasingly the result of US policy, but I doubt it is acknowledged, even internally, as an aim.

I have been explaining that US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and particularly bombings of civilian areas by drones, is causing a strengthening of fundamentalism in Pakistan.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/hillary_and_pak.html

There has been authoritative confirmation of this from an unlikely source. US General Petraeus has been giving evidence in support of Obama’s fight against the American Civil Liberties Union, to suppress further photos and videos of torture of prisoners, apparently including rape.

Petraeus’ evidence says that to release the torture material would further inflame opinion against the United States, when it is already inflamed by bombings and civilian casualties and anti-Americanism can be measured as increasing:

Public support for the U.S. is declining in Pakistan because of military strikes there that the U.S. conducts from Afghanistan, according to the top American commander in the Middle East.

“Most polling data reflects” an increase in anti-U.S. sentiment, General David Petraeus said, without identifying the source of the polling.

Pakistanis are angered by “cross-border operations and reported drone strikes” that they believe “cause unacceptable civilian casualties,” Petraeus wrote in court papers supporting President Barack Obama’s decision not to release photographs showing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaf2CmgTek4Q&refer=home

The big question is, why does the US continue with a military strategy which they acknowledge is counterproductive and destabilising Pakistan?

Interestingly, apart from the Bloomberg report, there was almost no mainstream media coverage of this aspect of Petraeus’ evidence. His statement that to release the torture visual material would endanger US troops was widely reported, but almost nobody reported his views on the effect of US bombing on public opinion in Pakistan.

Petraeus has since been on Fox News and rather stunned them by arguing strongly for the closure of Guantanamo and respect for the rule of law – including the international law of armed conflict (he referenced the Geneva Conventions).

I watched Obama’s speech about national security live today. There were parts which were much better than anything I ever expected to hear from any American Presiident. Like this:

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts ?” they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

And this:

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law ?” a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

So the record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That is why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign. And that is why I ordered it closed within one year.

All of which was simply great, and what a huge improvement! At last there seems to be some intelligence and common sense applied.

But from the rest of his speech, it appeared military tribunals will resume, detainees will not in fact have access to normal judicial institutions, and some will continue to be detained without trial.

Most of all, how can he understand that torture and Guantanamo recruit for terrorism, but not understand that bombings of civilian areas in Southern Afghanistan recruit for terrorism?

It is something of a conundrum, whether Obama is a good man hemmed in, or whether he is simply a better salesman for US military dominance than the last one. Having watched him today, I am inclined to give him some further credit.

Headline news is that four gullible black men have been arrested in New York by the FBI, after an agent provocateur operation presuaded them to try and blow up a synagogue and “Shoot down military aircraft”.

The FBI say they are a “homegrown” cell of four with no outside links to terror organisations. The FBI agent provocateur helpfully suggested targets to them and offered to provide them with weapons and equipment. There can never have been a more blatant example of a “Terror threat” generated by the authorities.

Obama of course desperately needed a terror threat to justify his stunning U turns. He is keeping Guantanamo open, continuing fake “trial” military tribunals there, continuing to bar detainees there from UK courts as “non-persons”, continuing the use of evidence from waterboarding and other torture, continuing spying on his own people under the Patriot Act, continuing extraordinary rendition, and refusing to release the photographic evidence of the torture.

Hard to justify all that, given the limited evidence of a real terror threat. But, Hey! Now we have the “Groom a Terrorist” programme. Find four angry and frustrated black men, tell them they can blow things up and offer to give them the means.

Instant terrorists.

The FBI spokesman said the “Leader” of the group (strikes me the leader was the agent provocateur) was motivated by “Anger at the deaths in Afghanistan caused by the US military.” There could not be a more complete rebuttal of the nonesense uttered by both Brown and Obama, that we have to fight in Afghanistan to keep us safe at home.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/hillary_and_pak.html