Jei <jei@ugli.hut.fi> wrote in message
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http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_aug17.html

Canadians in Kabul are not peacekeeepers

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

The Toronto Sun

August 17, 2003

ZURICH -- Two years ago, the idea of sending Canadian troops to remote
Afghanistan would have seemed as laughable as dispatching the Swiss Army
to Bolivia. Yet this is exactly what happened, thanks to the 9/11 attacks
and U.S. President George Bush's ham-handed war on terrorism.

Some 1,900 Canadian troops are joining the NATO-led International
Security Assistance Force (more Orwellian Pentagonspeak) in Afghanistan,
the alliance's first deployment outside Europe, and a mission recalling
the relief of besieged Beijing by European and Japanese troops during
China's 1901 Boxer Rebellion.

These ISAF soldiers are called "peacekeepers" by uninformed media; their
mission is hailed as a humanitarian operation to bring "stability" to
war-ravaged Afghanistan.

We should understand these soldiers are not true peacekeepers, like
Canadian troops in Cyprus, but rather auxiliaries of U.S. occupation
forces in Afghanistan whose strategic mission is to secure control of
Central Asian oil.

The Canadians and other NATO troops garrisoning Kabul are duplicating the
role of U.S. Marines sent to Beirut in 1982. Washington billed the
Marines as "peacekeepers" in Lebanon's bloody civil war. In reality, the
Marines were sent to prop up the Israeli-dominated Christian Phalangist
regime in its war against Syrian-backed Muslim groups. When 240 Marines
were killed by a truck bomb, Americans were outraged their "peacekeepers"
had become a target. Americans -- and the Marines -- simply did not
understand they had been dropped in the middle of a civil war as
full-fledged combatants.

NATO troops are in Kabul not because the alliance wanted to get involved
in Afghanistan's 24-year-old conflict, but because Washington browbeat
Canada and its European allies into helping share the burden of
garrisoning a conquered nation.

Better, figured NATO governments, to placate Washington by sending troops
to lower threat Afghanistan than to dangerous Iraq. Just as the Soviet
Union compelled its Warsaw Pact alliance during the 1980s to send troops
to Angola, so the U.S. has forced its reluctant allies into Afghanistan.

The sole mission of NATO's Kabul garrison is propping up the
U.S.-installed Afghan regime of Mohammed Karzai, an amiable but powerless
figurehead and an old Central Intelligence Agency asset. However, real
power in Kabul is held by the Northern Alliance, which is armed, financed
and largely directed by the Russian security services.

The Northern Alliance's three main components are Panjshiris of the late
Ahmad Shah Massoud, a covert Soviet ally during the 1980s war, the old
Afghan Communist party, now led by former secret police general Mohammed
Fahim, and the Uzbek militia of war criminal, Gen. Rashid Dostam.

South of Kabul, the nation is a patchwork of local tribal warlords, whom
the U.S. heavily bribes to combat the Taliban, al-Qaida and other
nationalist forces.

Some 9,000 U.S. troops are stuck in a low-grade guerrilla war in
Afghanistan costing $500 million US monthly. The security situation in
Afghanistan now ironically resembles late 1982: a Soviet-installed puppet
regime in Kabul, propped up by the Red Army and combat-shy Afghan
government troops, with scattered but growing armed resistance to the
foreign occupation.

Canadians will now join what Afghanistan's own king calls this "stupid
and useless war."

Not only are the U.S. and its allies mired in an intensifying guerrilla
war in a chaotic nation, they now find themselves in league with
world-class drug dealers.

Afghanistan was the world's leading grower and exporter of opium, the
base for morphine and heroin. When the Taliban regime drove the Afghan
Communists from power in 1996, they vowed to eradicate opium, though it
was the dirt-poor nation's only cash crop. By 2001, according to UN drug
agencies, the Taliban had totally eradicated opium production in areas it
controlled. The only production of opium during the Taliban era was done
by its bitter foe, the Northern Alliance. The Bush administration was
giving millions in anti-drug aid to the Taliban until four months before
the 9/11 attacks.

After 9/11, the Taliban was demonized by the Bush administration and U.S.
media for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden without first seeing
evidence of his guilt. The U.S. invasion followed, the Taliban was
overthrown and retreated into the mountains. When the Northern Alliance
seized power in Kabul with help from Russia and the U.S., it revived
opium growing and soon began producing morphine and refined heroin,
processes formerly performed in Pakistan.

Major heroin producer

Today, Afghanistan, a U.S. protectorate, is again the leading producer of
heroin, accounting for 4,000 tons annually, 75% of total world
production.

The head of Russia's anti-drug agency calls the situation in Afghanistan
"catastrophic." Yet it is the Northern Alliance-run regime, and its U.S.,
Russian and NATO supporters, who are responsible for this drug epidemic.

After Indochina and Central America, the U.S. once again finds itself in
bed with major drug dealers. The Bush administration has reportedly
ordered agents from its own Drug Enforcement Agency in Pakistan to turn a
blind eye to the narcotics dealing of its Northern Alliance allies.

Well-meaning but ill-informed Canadians now join the endless Afghan war
as part of the imperial garrison in Kabul. By helping protect Karzai and
the Northern Alliance, Canada, like the U.S., has become an unwitting,
but very real, accessory to the international heroin trade, and the
partner of a criminal regime.

___________________

SEE: US AND BRITAIN ACCUSED OF CREATING HEROIN TRAIL
http://opioids.com/afghanistan/herointrail.html

Britain and US Plan To Stop Heroin Trade By Buying Afghanistan Opium Crop
http://opioids.com/afghanistan/allies.html

____________________

Eric can be reached by e-mail at