Afghanistan

Afghanistan
Location	Asia, Central Asia, Greater Middle East
Type	nation state
Interest of	CENTCOM, Charles Cogan, Lucy Morgan Edwards, Anthony Fitzherbert, Anatol Lieven, Malik Niazi, Barnett Rubin, Danish Siddiqui
Member of	International Criminal Court, UN
Subpage	•Afghanistan/2001 Invasion •Afghanistan/2021 withdrawal •Afghanistan/Ambassador •Afghanistan/Chief of Government's Media Department •Afghanistan/President •Afghanistan/Prime Minister
"The graveyard of empires" - Afghanistan has a reputation for undoing ambitious military ventures and humiliating would-be aggressors.

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.

Full article: Afghanistan/2001 Invasion

US-led NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021.

Full article: Afghanistan/2021 withdraw

Full article: Evacuation from Afghanistan

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."

US/NATO exit from Afghanistan 2021

Full article: Afghanistan/2021 withdrawal

On 14th April 2021, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the start of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by May 1st. The withdrawal appears to be uncoordinated at times, and while the Afghan Army tries to fight the takeover, there are reported instances where equipment, vehicles and bases are captured with little resistance. A delegation of the Taliban visiting China in late July 2021 was told that China expects the Taliban to play important role in ending Afghanistan's war and rebuilding the country.

 

An event carried out

Event	Location	Description
Evacuation from Afghanistan	Afghanistan	The evacuation of foreigners from Afghanistan, one of the largest airlifts in history

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2010 United States diplomatic cables leak/Middle East	“You know better than I that we cannot deal with these people (the Guantanamo detainees). I can't detain them. If I take their passports, they will sue to get them back. I can talk to you into next week about building a rehabilitation center, but it won't happen. We are not Saudi Arabia; we cannot isolate these people in desert camps or somewhere on an island. We cannot compel them to stay. If they are rotten, they are rotten and the best thing to do is get rid of them. You picked them up in Afghanistan; you should drop them off in Afghanistan, in the middle of the war zone.”	Wikileaks Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah	2010
Charles Cogan	“In Afghanistan, the CIA had “funded the worst fellows right from the start, long before the Iranian revolution and long before the Soviet invasion.””	Charles Cogan
George Curzon	“Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia. To many, these words breathe only a sense of utter remoteness, or a memory of strange vicissitudes or moribund romance. To me, I confess, they are pieces on a chessboard, upon which is being played out a game for the domination of the world”	George Curzon	1898
Lucy Morgan Edwards	“[When 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

 

Events

Event	Description
1980s Afghan war	Another episode of the Soviet Union and US imploding a third world country from inside by fuelling a civil war with weapon smuggling. Afghanistan has yet to recover.
2021 Kabul Airport attacks	Suicide bombings in the middle of the Afghanistan/2021 withdraw
Afghanistan/2001 Invasion	The 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.
Afghanistan/2021 withdrawal	The end of the US–led NATO occupation of Afghanistan
Evacuation from Afghanistan	The evacuation of foreigners from Afghanistan, one of the largest airlifts in history
Kunduz hospital airstrike	On 3 October 2015, an United States Air Force AC-130U gunship machine-gunned a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. At least 42 people were killed and over 30 were injured in the hour-long deliberate attack.
Operation Cyclone	The first time the CIA officially met Osama Bin Laden, they deemed him part of the hero movement to protect the world against Soviet influence. In Operation Cyclone, the CIA funded him and allowed entire cities to become death traps with the narrative of giving Soviets their own Vietnam.
Operation MIAS	A CIA run "arms-reduction project which reportedly bough back Stinger missiles given to the Mujahideen to fight the USSR in Afghanistan
The Massacre at Mazar	2001 massacre when maybe 7,500 Taliban prisoners of war were shot and/or suffocated to death in metal shipping containers. Degree of US participation disputed.

 

Job here

Event	Appointed	End
Charles Farr	1980	1980

 

Citizens of Afghanistan on Wikispooks

Title	Born	Died	Description
Hafizullah Amin	1 August 1929	27 December 1979	Assassinated as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council (Afghanistan) in 1979
Said Tayeb Jawad	22 February 1958		Afghan diplomat; posted in Russia, UK and USA
Hamid Karzai	24 December 1957		President of Afghanistan 2004-2014
Ahmad Shah Massoud	2 September 1953	9 September 2001	Ahmad Massoud.jpg
Ahmad Wali Massoud
Dawa Khan Menapal		6 August 2021	Afghanistan's top media official, who was assassinated in August 2021.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
1980s Afghan war	24 December 1979	15 February 1989	Afghanistan	Another episode of the Soviet Union and US imploding a third world country from inside by fuelling a civil war with weapon smuggling. Afghanistan has yet to recover.
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:A warring nation, united against us	Letter	19 August 2021	Craig Murray	Craig Murray's letter to The Herald from prison in Edinburgh: "As with the previous three times when UK invasions were defeated in Afghanistan, we have united a warring nation in hatred of us."
Document:Afghanistan is not about you	Article	19 August 2021	Ella Whelan	Neocon MPs are concerned about the Afghanistan/2021 withdraw. The only problem is that they only care about themselves, and thereby show us the narcissism of Western intervention.
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
Document:The 20-year war on Afghanistan was a mistake	Speech	18 August 2021	Zarah Sultana	Speaking outside Parliament on 18 August 2021, prior to the Afghanistan emergency debate, Zarah Sultana joined colleagues including Jeremy Corbyn to say: "The war on Afghanistan shows – once and for all – that the West cannot deliver liberal democracy at the barrel of a gun. This war – the first 'War on Terror' – must be Britain's last war of aggression."

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.