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Category Archives: Caucasus
“We’re Losing This F–cking Thing!” – The Great Myth of Counter-Insurgency – By CONN HALLINAN
As the chopper swung around to land, the Taliban opened up, sending journalists scrambling for cover and Marines into full combat mode. According to Matthew Green of the Financial Times, “The crackle of gunfire lasted about 20 minutes and continued in the background as a state department official gave a presentation to Mr. Holbrooke about U.S. and U.K [United Kingdom] efforts to boost local government and promote agriculture in the town.”
The U.S. officials were then bundled into armored cars and whisked back to the helicopter. As the chopper took off an enormous explosion shook the town’s bazaar.
When it was launched in March, the Marjah operation was billed as a “turning point” in the Afghan War, an acid test for the doctrine of counterinsurgency, or “COIN,” a carefully designed strategy to wrest a strategic area from the Taliban and win the “hearts and minds” of the local people. And in a sense Marjah has indeed defined COIN, just not quite in the way its advocates had hoped for. Continue reading
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The Bogus War on Terrorism: How America and Britain were Defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan? by Mahboob A. Khawaja
Like the failure of the League of the Nations, history tells how the UN has come to be a failed enterprise in global affairs. It affirms the principle of self-interest, that is the wars of European nationalism and superiority over others nations in areas irrelevant to the European-American foremost national interests. The European war mongers and the US Empire lost sense of intellect and strategic direction by invading Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of “war on terrorism.” Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Conspiracy, Empire, Middle East, Pakistan, South Asia
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U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
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Posted in Caucasus, Conspiracy, Empire, Ideaology
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Has Faisal Shahzad Started a War?
The Obama administration is determined to link the Times Square Fizzler, Faisal Shahzad, to the Pakistani Taliban, and isn’t about to let logic, reality, or anything remotely related to the facts get in its way. With the complicity of the Obama-stricken media, they just might get away with it, opening the way for expanded military operations in Pakistan, in “retaliation” for an attack that never even happened. Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Pakistan, South Asia
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At the Geopolitical Crossroads of China and Russia: Kyrgyzstan And The Battle For Central Asia
“It not only borders China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but is only separated from Russia by a single nation, Kazakhstan. To gain an appreciation of Russian and Chinese concerns over hundreds of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops passing through Kyrgyzstan, imagine a comparable amount of Chinese and Russian soldiers regularly passing through Mexico and Guatemala, respectively. For almost nine years and at an accelerating rate.” Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Disclosure, Empire
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“We Have Shot an Astounding Number of People” – Behind the Afghan Fraud By CONN HALLINAN
All frauds have a purpose, mostly to relieve the unwary of their wealth, though occasionally to launch some foreign adventure: the 1965 Tonkin Gulf hoax that escalated the Vietnam War comes to mind.
So what was the design behind “Operation Moshtarak,” or the “battle of Marjuh,” in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, the largest U.S. and NATO military operation in Afghanistan since the 2003 invasion? That Moshtarak was a fraud was obvious from the start, a con job that the U.S. media enthusiastically went along with.
Marjuh was billed as a “fortress,” a “city of 80,000” and the Taliban’s “stronghold,” packed with more than 1,000 “hard core fighters.” But as Gareth Porter of the Inter Press Service revealed, Marjuh is not even a city, but a district of scattered villages. As the days went by—and civilian deaths passed military casualties—the number of “hard core” fighters declined to 750, then 500, and then maybe 100. In the end, it was barely a skirmish. “Hardly a single gun was captured by NATO forces,” tribal elder and former police chief Abdul Rahman Jan told Time. Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Ideaology
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The Cover-Ups That Exploded By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
he Pentagon is reeling after two lethal episodes uncovered by diligent journalism show trigger-happy U.S. Army helicopter pilots and U.S. Special Forces slaughtering civilians, then seeking to cover up their crimes.
The worldwide web was transfixed on Monday when Wikileaks put up on YouTube a 38-minute video, along with a 17-minute edited version, taken from a U.S. Army Apache helicopter, one of two firing on a group of Iraqis in Baghdad at a street corner in July of 2007. Twelve civilians died, including a Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a Reuters driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
At a press conference in Washington, D.C., Wikileaks said it had got the footage from whistle-blowers in the military and had been able to break the encryption code. The Pentagon has confirmed the video is genuine.
Posted in Caucasus, Disclosure, Empire, Redneckia
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Why the U.S. Has Already Lost The Battle for Marjah By DAVE LINDORFF
The problem with such a strategy is that the whole reason American forces have been able to crush resistance, as they did in the lighting invasion of Iraq in 2003, or the overthrow of the Taliban government of Afghanistan in late 2001, has been their callous disregard for civilian lives, which have been coldly labelled “collateral damage.” Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Empire, Ideaology
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The Taliban Isolated Bin Laden By GARETH PORTER
New Evidence Depicts an Uneasy Relationship Between al-Qaeda and the Taliban Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, South Asia
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Master Plan or Screw Up? – Georgia and U.S. Strategy – Mike Whitney
The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending 40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans still believe that the Russian army invaded Georgian territory first. Continue reading
Posted in Caucasus, Empire
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