change the minister

We have formed a committee to protect free expression. The aim is campaigning to change the current minister of information and culture, Kareem Khoram. I was told that some people in the government want us to calm down in the endeavor because the president is planning to replace the minister. Some sources close to Hewadmal, karzai’s advisor on cultural affairs, told a friend of mine that Khoram will be removed soon.

I have also heard from sources in the parliament that he will be replaced by Ismail Yoon, this is indeed going to be catastrophic. Ismail Yoon has lately been promoted by Karzai, he played a major role in the peace jirga as the secretary of Afghan executive committee. Ismail is very dangerous; he is an obvious fascist with anti minority beliefs. His formal arrival in afghan political scene would mean the final departure of any democratic value.

Even if he is going to replace Khoram, the current minister of information and culture, i think journalists shouldn’t quit efforts for the sake of saving the less evil.

 

First of all because, that is exactly how puppet regimes discourages informed citizens from playing an active political role.

Secondly, I believe journalists and civil society is based on fallibility, the civil society constantly battles the government to consider other options. Government tends to make decisions and claims to do the right thing. Since the right thing is behind any human reach and especially in Afghanistan we have never done the right things, for decades governments have only made mistakes. I think the current government or any other government is bias in doing the right thing, the right thing only serves their power purpose. The idea of doing the right thing in Afghanistan is distorted. Civil society need to constantly provide a coherent view of affairs; we need to constantly affect the government view. If Ismail Yoon is appointed to be the minister we should still campaign. i was told today that no matter what media is never going to be happy with any government official, I do think that is right. a supporter of former minister for information and culture, Raheen, told me that media was also critical of the liberal minister. I think that is ok. That is what we do, it’s a process and that is what democracy is it’s never about a result.  

 

US launches war on iran

The Bush administration has leaped toward war with Iran by, in essence, declaring war with the main branch of Iran's military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which it plans to brand as a terrorist organization.

A logical evolution of US President George W Bush's ill-defined, boundless "war on terror", the White House's move is dangerous to the core, opening the way for open confrontation with Iran. This may begin in Iraq, where the IRGC is reportedly most active and, ironically, where the US and Iran have their largest common denominators.

A New York Times editorial has dismissed this move as "amateurish" and a mere "theatric" on the part of the lame-duck president, while at the same time admitting that it represents a concession to "conflict-obsessed administration hawks who are lobbying for military strikes". The political analysts who argue that the main impact of this initiative is "political" are plain wrong. It is a giant step toward war with Iran, irrespective of how well, or poorly, it is thought of, particularly in terms of its immediate and long-term implications, let alone the timing of it.

Coinciding with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's highly publicized trip to Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, the news received front-page coverage in the New York Times, next to a photograph of Ahmadinejad and his Afghan host, President Hamid Karzai, as if intended to spoil Ahmadinejad's moment by denigrating the Iranian regime. Just two weeks ago, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice implicitly put Iran on a par with the Soviet Union by invoking comparisons to the Cold War, and in essence compared it to al-Qaeda.

Thus if an unintended side-effect of the Cold War terminology was to enhance Iran's global image, the "terrorist" label for the IRGC aims to deliver a psychological blow to Iran by de-legitimizing the country.

Also, it serves the United States' purpose at the United Nations Security Council, where a British-prepared draft of a new round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program has been floating around for a while and will likely be acted on this autumn. The draft calls for tightening the screws on Iran by broadening the list of blacklisted Iranian companies and even may lead to the interdiction of Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf. This is indeed a dangerous move that could easily trigger open confrontation.

With the window of opportunity for Bush to use the "military option" closing because of the US presidential elections next year, the administration's hawks - "it is now or never" - have received a huge boost by the move to label the IRGC as terrorists. It paves the way for potential US strikes at the IRGC's installations inside Iran, perhaps as a prelude to broader attacks on the country's nuclear facilities. At least that is how it is being interpreted in Iran, whose national-security concerns have skyrocketed as a result of the labeling.

"The US double-speak with Iran, talking security cooperation on the one hand and on the other ratcheting up the war rhetoric, does not make sense and gives the impression that the supporters of dialogue have lost in Washington," a prominent Tehran University political scientist who wished to remain anonymous told Asia Times Online.

The US has "unfettered" itself for a strike on Iran by targeting the IRGC, and that translates into heightened security concerns. "The United States never branded the KGB [Russian secret service] or the Soviet army as terrorist, and that shows the limits of the Cold War comparison," the Tehran political scientist said. His only optimism: there are "two US governments" speaking with divergent voices, ie, "deterrence diplomacy and preemptive action", and "that usually, historically speaking, spells policy paralysis".

However, no one in Iran can possibly place too much faith on that kind of optimism. Rather, the net effect of this labeling, following the recent "shoot to kill" order of Bush with regard to Iranian operatives in Iraq accused of aiding the anti-occupation insurgents, is to elevate fears of a US "preemptory" strike on Iran. Particularly concerned are many top government officials, lawmakers and present or former civil and military functionaries who are or were at some point affiliated with the IRGC.

There is also a legal implication. Under international law, the United States' move could be challenged as illegal, and untenable, by isolating a branch of the Iranian government for selective targeting. This is contrary to the 1981 Algiers Accord's pledge of non-interference in Iran's internal affairs by the US government. [1]

Should the terror label on the IRGC be in place soon, US customs and homeland-security officials could, theoretically, arrest members of Ahmadinejad's delegation due to travel to the UN headquarters in New York next month because of suspected ties to the IRGC. Even Ahmadinejad, with his past as a commander of the Basij Corps, a paramilitary arm of the IRGC, risks arrest.

The US has opened a Pandora's box with a hasty decision that may have unintended consequences far beyond its planned

coercive diplomacy toward Iran. The first casualty could be the US-Iran dialogue on Iraq's security, although this would simultaneously appease Israeli hawks who dread dialogue and any hints of Cold War-style detente between Tehran and Washington.

It would also become more difficult for Syria to collaborate with Iran with respect to Lebanon's Hezbollah, who owe much to the IRGC since their inception in the early 1980s. The consensus in Iran is that chaos in Iraq is in Israel's interests, but not that of the US, and that the United States' Middle East policy is being held hostage by pro-Israel lobbyists who have painted an enemy image of the dreaded IRGC that is neither accurate nor in tune with the history of US-IRGC interaction.

The US and the IRGC

The current noise masks a hidden history of cooperation between the US military and the IRGC - in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan and, more and more likely, Iraq.

In Bosnia, the US military and intelligence interacted with the IRGC, which had trained Bosnian Muslims, and fought alongside it against their Serbian enemies. They also funneled arms to the IRGC, mainly through Croatia, with the tacit consent of the US government.

In Afghanistan, US military commanders have had similar interaction with commanders of the IRGC, including the elite Quds division of the IRGC, which supported anti-Taliban forces and helped those forces take over Kabul in 2001 with relative ease.

In Iraq, the IRGC has supported various Shi'ite militias as well as the Iraqi military and intelligence and, unofficially, it can credit for the relative stability of the eight Shi'ite provinces, including those in the south. The new US diplomatic engagement of Iran over Iraq is having direct and immediate effects on Iran's behavior inside Iraq, promising further results by the joint expert committees set up as a result of the latest round in the dialogue.

Yet true to the United States' traditional Janus-faced approach toward Iran, just as Iranian and US military and intelligence officials are about to embark on systematic discussions over Iraq and regional security, they will in effect be prevented from doing so by the labeling of the IRGC as terrorist.

Coming 'war of attrition'?

The idea of an all-out military confrontation between the US and Iran, triggered by a US attack on the IRGC, has its watered-down version in a "war of attrition" whereby instead of inter-state warfare, we would witness medium-to-low-intensity clashes.

The question, then, is whether or not the US superpower, addicted to its military doctrine of "superior and overwhelming response", will tolerate occasional bruises at the hands of the Iranians. The answer is highly unlikely given the myriad prestige issues involved and, in turn, this raises the advisability of the labeling initiative with such huge implications nested in it.

No matter, the stage is now set for direct physical clashes between Iran and the US, which has blamed the death of hundreds of its soldiers on Iranian-made roadside bombs. One plausible scenario is the United States' "hot pursuit" of the IRGC inside Iranian territory, initially through "hit and run" commando operations, soliciting an Iranian response, direct or indirect, potentially spiraling out of control.

The hallucination of a protracted "small warfare with Iran" that would somehow insulate both sides from an unwanted big "clash of titans" is just that, a fantasy born and bred in the minds of war-obsessed hawks in Washington and Israel.

Kaveh Afrasiabi,  

international assistance or conspiracy

Usman Haqrab, chief editor of satirical magazine – zanbil gham, is a good friend of mine. His last name means Scorpion because of his reputation for stinging political and social satirical articles.

Usman believes the issue of drug would never be resolved until foreigners leave Afghanistan. “the total world drug trade equals US$ 315 billion and only uS$3.2 Billion comes to Afghanistan, while we are the biggest drug producer of the world” said Usman “why is no body asking where the rest of the money goes, it funds western civilizations” he added. Usman believes foreign troops in Afghanistan uses military power for commercial reasons. Usman is claiming that he has evidence that foreign troops use their air transport to smuggle out afghan artifacts and drug.

 

All Afghan airports are controlled by foreign troops with no interference from Afghan government.  It would be a long time and hard work to prove that foreign military is involved in drug trafficking but it’s not strange for Afghans, soviet troops, two decade before western countries were in Afghanistan and it goes without saying that they were very much involved in the drug market and it is among one of the major reasons of their failure.  

NATO troops are sent here with the same mission as soviets, Nato and Americans are in Afghanistan to outwit the Taliban by infiltrate remote areas of Afghanistan, before seizing their targets and effecting their escape.

Italians came with this mission to Afghanistan, so said the UN, NATO and the world, but it turns out that actually they were wrong and Usman theory is shaping as a truth. six Italian officers are facing a court martial after investigators discovered that their targets were Afghan rugs and that they had been using troops and military helicopters to smuggle them out of the Herat area and back to Italy.

Hundreds of carpets are believed to have ended up in the homes of officers and their friends, while others were sold in carpet shops or markets.
A spokesman at the Military Tribunal of Rome said six men - three captains, two lieutenant colonels and a warrant officer - from the 1st Aves-Antares regiment were under investigation for misusing an armed escort.

"The investigation centres on troops being used to guard Afghan carpets which were then flown to Italy via other countries and their transport was not reported through the proper channels,'' the spokesman said. To avoid checks by Italian military police, the carpets and other trinkets were flown to Viterbo by complicated routes through other European Nato countries.

Prosecutors had intended to investigate cigarette smuggling but changed track when tipped off about the carpets.
The six face court martial under Italian military law for breaching rules on bringing back unauthorised material from a war zone and for the misuse of an armed escort. The regiment has been in Afghanistan for two years and has three CH47 helicopters which are meant to be used for emergency evacuation and transportation.

 

The Nederlands has over 2000 troops in southern Afghan province of Urozgan. Urozgan is among the four provinces in southern Afghanistan which are the considered Taliban home. Tirin Kot is the capital of Urozgan with a small air strip controlled by dutch military.  Urozgan is the home town of Mullah Omar the supreme commander of Taliban, obviously the dutch military is not welcomed there. Among the very few people who are happy about there presence of NATO is mostly children. Children come to the airstrip and sell drugs to dutch soldier from behind the fences and barb wire.   

Taliban phoning UK soldiers' families

TALIBAN are reportedly phoning the families of troops fighting in Afghanistan and telling them their loved ones are dead.

Afghan insurgents have been using mobile phone-hacking technology to extract phone numbers to target the families of British troops, The Sun newspaper reported today.

According to The Sun, a Taliban fanatic called the wife of an Royal Air Force officer and told her: “You’ll never see your husband alive again – we have just killed him.” After calling the RAF, she was told that her husband was safe and well.

As a result of opposition forces using advanced technology to monitor calls made on mobile phones, British servicemen have been banned from using their phones.
“We assume these days that every conversation over mobile phones is being heard by our enemies,” a senior officer said.

“They have some pretty powerful friends and allies, who are giving them some very sophisticated help. They will use that information in any way they can to damage us, whether it is physically or mentally.” The Ministry of Defence said families of troops in Iraq had also suffered from “nuisance calls” in the past year