Afghanistan

Afghanistan
Location	Asia, Central Asia, Greater Middle East
Type	nation state
Interest of	Lucy Morgan Edwards, Anthony Fitzherbert, Malik Niazi, Barnett Rubin
"The graveyard of empires" - Afghanistan has a reputation for undoing ambitious military ventures and humiliating would-be aggressors. Present belligerents take note.

Afghanistan is a nation state in Central Asia. It was invaded in 2001, after the Taliban outlawed the growing of opium (nominally as a response to the events of 9-11). Following occupation by NATO troops, opium production has surged, meaning Afghanistan is now the source of around 90% of the world's heroin.

Official narrative

The US government's official narrative states that Al Qaeda was responsible for conceiving and carry out the 9/11 attacks, under the leadership of Ossama Bin Laden from a hideout somewhere in Afghanistan. This justifies their invasion and subsequent occupation, an operation which was planned months before September 11th.

Problems

The US led attack on Afghanistan was planned before the September 11th event, so clearly has some ulterior motive(s), of which the most obvious would seem to be the potential for profits from the opium trade and of course the perpetual need of the MICC for war and unrest.

History

Afghanistan was invaded by the USSR in December 1979, and the 1980s Afghan war ensued until a Soviet withdrawal in 1989. This lead the US to arms and train Muslim groups, which later became the "Muslim terrorists" used by Operation Gladio/B.

Opium

Adam Curtis' Bitter Lake tells how the geography of Afghanistan was changed after WWII by international development agencies which built damns that raised the water table. This facilitated opium cultivation.

The opium poppy harvest in Afghanistan for the year 2000 was outstandingly low, after the Taliban banned production of the crop. However, it increased after the US led an invaded the country in 2001 and Afghanistan now produces the vast majority of the world's opium, and has been enjoying record harvests, leading to it being labelled a "narco-state". Sibel Edmonds has stated that a large proportion of this is shipped via US military planes to Turkey for onwards distribution.

Mineral Wealth

Huge mineral deposits are known in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has huge mineral deposits of a wide variety. The New York Times, to the incredulity of Russ Baker claimed that "the vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was [recently] discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists." Baker instead suggests that "other evidence, and logic, point to the fact that everyone but the Western public knew for a long time, and before the 2001 invasion, that Afghanistan was a treasure trove."

Mass surveillance

Wikileaks stated in 2014 that "the National Security Agency has been recording and storing nearly all the domestic (and international) phone calls from two or more target countries as of 2013... WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is Afghanistan."

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Lucy Morgan Edwards	“Asked by Tony Gosling why she thought the US & the UK were so interested in invading Afghanistan, other than the drugs ]: Clearly, it's nothing to do with democracy or women's rights. You'd have to need a lobotomy if you still believed that - despite all the relentless propaganda about free and fair elections and everything. That's complete and utter nonsense. It's just one massive great military base now. I went back there in 2013. I found it really shocking, the military, the militarised presence in Kabul, the watchtowers, the Hesco barriers... It's nothing to do with helping Afghanistan develop, but I think it's all about being a military base for the coming wars on Iran, China, potentially Russia. It's all about where it's located. As we know Lord Curzon said obver a hundred years ago it was the center of the geopolitical chessboard of Asia.”	Lucy Morgan Edwards	March 2018

 

Ambassadors to Afghanistan

Nation state	Start	Description
Ambassador to Afghanistan
France/Ambassador to Afghanistan
UK/Ambassador to Afghanistan	1922
US/Ambassador to Afghanistan	4 May 1935

 

Events

Event	Description
1980s Afghan war
2001 Invasion of Afghanistan	The ongoing war in Afghanistan, instigated within a month of 9/11, supposedly in retaliation, with the claimed justification - for which no evidence has been presented - that the attacks were planned by Ossama bin Laden, and that he was based in Afghanistan.

 

Job here

Event	Appointed	End
Charles Farr	1980	1980

 

Citizens of Afghanistan on Wikispooks

Title	Born	Died	Description
Hamid Karzai	24 December 1957
Ahmad Shah Massoud	2 September 1953	9 September 2001	Ahmad Massoud.jpg

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bandung Conference	1955	1955	Indonesia	Important conference for the global south; participants soon became prime targets for US foreign policy

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Afghanistan 1979-1992	book extract	2003	William Blum
Document:Ed Miliband’s decision to oppose military action against Syria is an action of statesmanship of which Britons will be proud	Article	28 August 2013	Michael Meacher	It is all very well to rush to war in a surge of moral outrage, it is quite another to spell out clearly what are the war objectives and how exactly they are to be achieved.
Document:Pakistan Military version of Border Post Attack	review	1 February 2012	Asif Haroon Raja	Pakistani military review of the NATO attack on two of its border posts on 26 November 2011

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