Point of VIEW.

A purely analytical perception...

  The Low Rent District

Afghanistan, Our Predictions as of 1-28-04

But first let us set the stage:

Muslims 2, Christians 1

The history of interaction between Muslims and Christians is one of massive contradictions and while on the surface things seem politically correct, the undercurrent boils with Arab Mosques having gone into the business of turning out young men only interested in meeting God sooner rather than later and bringing along a few Christians for the ride.  While the Muslim world openly welcomed disenfranchised Jews during the Diaspora and at literally all other times, the unwelcome visits by Christian proselytizers arriving with both bibles and swords was not only unwelcome but was usually met with significant antipathy. While both the Christians and the Muslims fervently believed that only they offered the truly righteous path, the "Crusades" emphasized the fervor with which the then hapless Europeans were willing to go in their desire to separate the Muslim's from their lands or whatever else was available, their religion and their lives and yet this was accomplished in the name of a then corrupted hierarchy that had thrown the Continent into a state of ignorance, intolerance and disease.  Perhaps in the final analysis, these missions to the Holy Land and environs were undertaken by the Church in order to take the people's minds off of their misery.  

The under-whelming Christians, although extremely lathered up by their fanatically misguided religious leaders; as far as war was concerned always talked the talk and walked the walk but when push came to shove could not find their way to first base with a flashlight at high noon in the middle of the Sahara desert. They sermonized a better game than they were able to practice on the battlefield and were very reminiscent in a futuristic sense of many of the Arab Kingdoms today who are long on threats and weak on delivery.  In spite of the Christians getting roundly trounced numerous times, the Muslim bashing pastime allowed the "Dark Ages" to take on  some minimal historical importance other than for the simple fact that European based education and learning had taken a backseat to abject stupidity. If only to add insult to injury, the ill fated fanatics from Europe regularly had their heads handed to them by the Arabs and at the same time allowed the fabrication of such Muslim All Star's as Saladin who freed Jerusalem from Christian interlopers. What was even worse about these silly armed pilgrimages was the fact that many of them were only created to exploit religious antipathy and turn a tidy profit at the same time for insatiable religious leaders who were on the sidelines cheering their legions forward while selling religious trinkets and poor advice from a safe distance.  

The Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire had its roots in this epoch struggle and it was only in the early stages of the 20th century that Europe once again became, for all practical purposes  a "Christian" continent having been wiped clean of those that they called infidels.  However, while the Jews and the Muslims had gotten along well over the years, the followers of the Koran felt that the "Middle East" was their own territory as long as the Jews were invited guests and knew their place. Moreover, Jews were one thing, Israel was quite another. When Israel was brutally inserted by the United Nations into the "Middle Eastern" mix, it was like suddenly planting a burr into the saddle of a bucking bronco. The Christian Infidels  had once again set foot onto holy territory, but this time they had accomplished it by proxy. Many philosophers have recently commented on the fact that if Belgium and its Christians had been dropped into Palestine instead of the Jews, the result would not have been materially different. We would concur. 

Causing Trouble

Effectively, Saudi Arabia which didn't gain its independence until 1932, was already within the hotbed of Arab extremism in the 1920's.  Their future leader, Ibn Saud, along with his henchmen  was an early visitor and pillager of the mosques in Mecca and Medina in 1925. "Sayd's armed supporters, in a frenzy of iconoclasm, first leveled Jannat al-Baqi, the "heavenly orchard" in Medina, where one of the original associates of Muhammad was buried under the prophet's supervision. Thousands of his early companions were also interred at the site, as were the imams Hassan and Hussein, venerated by Sunni and Shia Muslims. All these graves were wrecked by Saud's minions who then looted the treasure at the prophet's shrine. 

The Saud party went on to demolish the cemetery in Mecca where the prophet's mother, grandfathers and first wife, Khadijah were buried; then to smash many more honored sites; devastating the architectural achievements of Arabia, including mosques and even Muhammad's house. Only the tomb of the prophet was pared, after an outcry from traditional Muslims. The spree of vandalism was accompanied by wholesale massacres of Muslims suspected of rejecting Wahhabism, a fanatical strain of Islam that emerged in Arabia in the 18th century and has periodically disturbed the Muslim world." New York Post, Stephen Schwartz, October 1, 2001. 

Saudi Arabia is a country polluted with controversy. Their beliefs are far more alien to the Western World then we would even believe at first glance. Those in Saudi Arabia are Wahhabists and the original Fundamentalists as well and in spite of the fact that the leaders preach peaceful co-existence, they are able to proselytize by exporting substantial sums of money. However,  they are capitalists when it comes to their creature comforts and for this reason  we are often confused as to where they actually stand. 

Wherever the country may officially be from a governmental standpoint, there are many rich people in this land that have their own ideas about Saudi Arabia's international role. Most of these people believe that their brand of religion should be imposed upon non-believers at any cost. Many of these folks are rich and religiously pro-active and thus, there is no room in the region or in the world for those that don't share these views. While for a time these beliefs appeared localized, more recently however, with people like bin Laden coming more into focus, the picture becomes much easier to paint.  A look under these thinly  veiled disclosures the true faces of this country. In one respect they are part of the world community but in another, their money is supporting extremists throughout the region. They are a much more difficult foe to deal with, they do not get their own hand dirty, they leave that for their conscripts.    

In a major concession to survival, Saudi Arabia allowed  American military men to walk on their hallowed land during the gulf War and beyond. Moreover, this was in spite of the fact that if they hadn't; Iraq with led by the irrepressible, Sadam Hussein would have them for lunch. By this time, without the help of the of the unified force that outed Sadam, he would now probably be summering in Cairo and have palaces sprinkled around the area in such exotic locations as Beirut, Tehran, and Casa Blanca. It seems, that one Arab can torture, maim, and murder another Arab but Allah forbid, a Christian or Jew doing the same thing. There is just too much unpleasant history for any logic whatsoever to prevail in our lifetimes. We will being doing penance for the historical blunders of our forefathers for decades to come. 

However, the Saudi's are continuing to actively teach absolute hatred of the west in their schools for some strange reason. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. These folks that have learned their lessons well in Saudi educational hate factories will one day be the same people that will overthrow the country and send its deceitful leadership to its just reward.

A Touch of History

Afghanistan did not achieve independence as a country until 1919 which was early relative to others in the region such as Pakistan and India. Moreover, until that time the country had served primarily as land route for traders and travelers journeying to and from Asia and Europe. The Muslim Religion spread to Afghanistan during the seventh century when Arab invaders forcibly introduced  it to the country’s more mountainous regions. As the years passed, Afghanistan extended its influence throughout the region reaching as far as the northern part of Indian and the eastern part of Iran. Yet in spite of this dominance over significant territory, from a religious point of view, Afghanistan continued adhere to the precepts of the Islamic caliph located in Baghdad.  

The East Versus the West

The first occasion that the United States had to get involved in the newly reformulated Afghanistan was in 1955 when the U.S. Government was approached by the Afghan  military for aid and training of its army. At the time, the Russians were making rather aggressive overtures in the region and the country, not wanting to become absorbed by the Russian Bear was desirous of being able to protect itself. In spite of the tensions between the U.S. and Russia, then President Eisenhower thought that Afghanistan was a tad too remote logistically for us to do any good and rejected their overture. Extremely interested in staying independent and not wanting to be thwarted entirely Afghanistan left with no other recourse turned northeast for their assistance and found Russia an extremely  willing ally. The Russians obliged with equipment, training and infrastructure development which included the building of some of the first paved roads in the country. The American State Department took notice of what was going on and upped the Russian ante by building a few roads, but by this time the Russians had already made their point.  

Although independent before much more heavily populated Pakistan, Afghanistan in more recent years has become a more or less a supplicant to that country’s bidding. However, at this point, Pakistan was allied with the West being one of the best friends money could buy so the Russians not entirely content with their loose alliance with Afghanistan determined install their own government their in order to offset the West's influence next door. However, Russian intelligence was highly flawed and believing that they would be welcome, they  invaded the country on April 28, 1978, and installed a Communist figurehead as Afghanistan’s leader. 

An interestingly sidelight to the Russian takeover was the fact that the hapless Afghan Government had picked  that very same date to host an international conference on education. Because numerous countries had accepted the Afghan invitation and the fact that there were no hotel rooms available in Kabul to accommodate all of the arriving members of the conference, all foreigners were conveniently ordered out of the country to make room for the arriving conventioneers. The bottom line became the fact that not only were there no foreign observers present to witness the coup but the international conference visitors had not yet arrived. Thus, the invading Soviet hoards from the north were able to dissect the country to their heart's content  under a veil of extreme darkness.

The Big Bear of the North Arrives to an Empty Theater

The delegates never made it in and no one from the outside ever witnessed the Russian carnage that followed. However, the Russian trained military carried out their mission with razor sharp precision and the country’s communication facilities were soon under the domination of the invaders. When the dust had cleared, Noor Mohammed Tureki, a communist party hack had become the very unpopular president of the country. Furthermore, as it turned out, Tureki was not a nice man at all and gradually started a concerted program of eliminating his enemies. With Russian assistance he showed exacting precision in eradicating his potential competitors for power. However, these tactics did not win him much favor with the populace and Tureki became a very detested leader.  

The United States, which up to this point had been left out to dry, tried to make the best of a bad situation and sent Afghanistan a brand spanking new ambassador who  was historically long on making friends and short on knowing what to do with them when he had won them over. It did not take too long before he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The glad-handing, not-to-swift  U.S. Ambassador, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, was kidnapped and held for ransom by a violently  anti-government faction that indicated in no uncertain terms "that unless their relatives were who were residing in local jails weren’t promptly released, sadly but summarily, the American Ambassador would be dispatched to the hereafter".  In spite of the fact that Dubs had become superficially friendly with the new Afghan leadership, the relationship only went so far; the hard nosed Afghan leadership was clearly not particularly interested in negotiating with the kidnappers and local police, finding the location where Dubs was held captive, with their submachine guns. Negotiation was one of those things that had never been deeply ingrained into Afghan culture and just become the lovable Dubs was in the firing line did not create  much concern.

The police opened fire and unloaded clip after clip into the dilapidated hotel. As a matter of fact they did not stop shooting until each member of the police team had totally expended whatever ammunition that they had brought. When the dust had finally cleared, no one was left alive in the hotel; chamber maids, managers, room clerks, kidnappers along with affable Ambassador Dubs had all been eradicated. An unpleasant beginning and end for a man who had only been ambassador to the country for a matter of several months. Moreover, many of Dubs cronies insisted that although the somewhat dim Ambassador had worked long and hard at the task, he had yet to master the spelling of the name of the country.   This action also served as a quick primer for the United States relative to the strange ways of this country and its new leaders. The United States Department of State threatened to retaliate for this outrage with a strong note to the country's president but  decided against it when they were told that he couldn't read.  

Picking and Choosing

Afghanistan during these formative years was something akin to the Wild West. Not more than a year later, Tureki himself was eradicated and Hafizullah Amin a former graduate student from Columbia University in New York assumed the Afghan leadership, once again with a knowing nod from the Russians. Amin, was incapable of handling the reigns of leadership with panache and  immediately started strutting around like a peacock and acting like he owned the country. Once again, the natives were become restive with their enforced leadership as the believe that Amin was becoming a tad overbearing. The villagers started to become edgy and Amin was beginning to receive nasty threats became apprehensive about his longevity and appeal to his Russian friends for support. The ever loyal Russians not only arrived en masse came but they went right to the Royal Palace at Darulemen where Amin was ensconced; however they had their own agenda that did not include that haughty and over bearing fop that they had put into office.

The Russian General  wasted little time and he gravely announced to his men that they should kill anyone that walked out of the palace door. After giving those orders the general went inside where he found Amin being entertained by a nubile Afghanistan woman and he promptly shot the two dead. When he had finished with that he went from room to room in the palace killing everyone else that he saw. After completing what he termed a mercy killing, he walked triumphantly out the palace door where he was shot by his own troops. They told their superiors that they were only obeying orders to shot anyone coming out of the palace, and were later exonerated. This event according to anecdotal folklore was what really started the Afghan War with Russia.  

The Gathering Clouds of War

A Civil war ensued with Russian forces holding sway in the cities and the Afghan hordes controlling the countryside. During the Afghanistan war with Russia, the lines of demarcation were carefully drawn. It was simply a matter of the Free World against Communist expansionism. Moreover, it was at this time that United States bought and paid for Pakistan's support along with its loyalty and for that and other reasons they become highly involved in the struggle on America's side. An excerpt from an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 12, 2001 by Peter Fritsch puts that into perspective:

       "The ties among Pakistani, Kashmiri and Afghan militants trace back to the early 1980s, when Pakistan allowed entry to anyone arriving to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan's ISI intelligence service and a radical Islamic political party called Jamaat-e-Islami organized reception committees, receiving funds from Saudi Arabia to funnel fighters to the Afghan resistance. An estimated 35,000 Muslim fighters from 43 countries arrived under that covert program between 1982 and 1992. Many of their weapons were made in the U.S. 

         ... When the U.S. a decade ago considered branding Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, say military analysts, Pakistan's government moved Kashmir militant groups to eastern Afghanistan. It shifted responsibility for their training to the Jamaat-e-Islami. Then in 1996, when Mr. bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, the terrorist leader established training camps for Kashmir fighters in the Afghan city of Khost. This move say analysts, cemented Pakistan's support for Mr. bin Laden's hosts, the fundamentalist Taliban rulers of most of Afghanistan."  

Pakistan Enters The Picture Stage Left

Effectively, the Pakistani Government had moved their attention from the troublesome Kashmir area to that of Afghanistan and had in large part used the Afghan people living their to act as their proxies. This was not a great stretch because India had fallen under the Russian sphere of influence and the Pakistani's felt that anyone that India was affiliated with was automatically their own enemy. As more or less a repayment for Pakistani help during the freeing of Afghanistan from the Russian's, a grateful bin Laden and the Taliban set up terrorist schools and training camps for those from Kashmir to assist them in their ongoing battle against India.  

The war waxed and waned, but the Russians were eventually defeated and when it was over the various war lords uniformly attempted to concurrently assume control of the  country. Pakistan however watched the insipient  bickering going on for a time and when they had seen enough, pulled the fat from the fire by literally creating the Taliban and installing them as the keepers of the kingdom. The Taliban did not disappoint, as their first act, they banned all arms in the country. This accomplished a number of imperative objectives. It made travel secure for the country's residents for the first time in decades and in spite of the Taliban’s harsh religiously oriented regulations, many people gravitated to their rule because the country was now at least to some degree at peace. Afghan citizens could finally travel almost the length and breadth of the country without going through numerous shakedown check points, paying homage to this war lord or that one. No longer were people being held up on the road by local highwaymen.  However, while the war lords had been temporarily broken, they were hardly unbowed and continued their attempts to take back the country from an ever shrinking base which ultimately consisted of only a small sliver in the northern part of the country. These ill fated warlords  created the so called “Unified Front” or “Northern Alliance”. However, this was at best a misnomer due to the fact that they were never unified or allied and for the most part hated one another. Their military operations were hopeless because these warlords couldn’t even agree on what day of the week it was and let alone handle the logistics of battle against a disciplined foe.   

Bringing the Devil To Diner

There is no question that Pakistan was responsible for installing the Taliban as numero-uno in Afghanistan and for that reason many people believed that the Taliban sprang directly from Pakistan’s womb. This is not entirely correct; in reality, the Taliban descended directly from a branch of the Indian Sunni religion called Deobandism which had its origins in a small town in northern India. From there, the religion gained some popularity and for some obscure reason, schools were created by the religion’s followers in Pakistan.  When those in power determined that it was time to bring law and order to Afghanistan, the students and teachers in those schools were uprooted and told to take over.  It was like giving a pristine religious order their own country. Something that the Taliban found too enticing to resist.

Their entrance upon the landscape was first noted in 1994 when Mullah Mohammed Omar led a faction of Taliban in the hanging of an Afghan militia commander whose soldiers had raped numerous women from the region. This gave the Taliban some immediate cache among the townspeople and Omar was quickly elevated to the role of leader of the religious group. Eventually, with the backing of the Pakistanis, the Saudis and local merchants desiring egress throughout the country, the Taliban were soon on their way to control of the majority of the country.  Little did these folks know what they were letting themselves in for. 

Who's For Diner

A few years later, a gangly fellow by the name of bin Laden showed up in Afghanistan 1996 with a lot of bucks along with a brand spanking new concept for his friends in the Taliban controlled Afghanistan military. He postulated that the Taliban military, instead of riding around the country on mostly  highly irritable, cantankerous camels while carrying rifles that went out of style during the Russian Revolution,  they should arrive in battle driving highly mobile and well armed jeeps and light trucks, brandishing highly polished brand new weaponry. This would add both panache and fear to their efforts to control the country.

This single strategy allowed the Taliban to continually outflank their usually immobile opposition. By the time their enemy realized that he was being attacked from the front, the Taliban were usually behind them as well, not only taking large chunks of land in the process but also capturing large numbers of  soldiers and military equipment. The soldiers were usually given a choice of becoming Taliban converts or were hastily sent to their makers and their equipment was used to garner even more territory. This methodology obviously created many serious religious believers in short order. The Taliban later boasted that they had been able to convert  a higher percentage of infidels into their religion than any single sect in history and they were most probably right.   

However, while this scenario worked well in the conquering of most of Afghanistan for the Taliban military, it would also become their Achilles heel upon a concerted attack by the “United Front” along with American bombers. Those that are converted by the sword are often not the most loyal of followers and there is little question that these “freedom fighters” of both sides would sell out to either the highest bidder or whoever looks to be the eventual victor. But then again, this is Afghanistan, a strange place where rules are made to be broken and the only real religion is cold cash. 

Money is the Root of all Evil

Thus, with the beginning of efforts by the United States to remove the Taliban forcibly or otherwise, the first thing that the Americans did was to cut-off of all funds of any kind the could possibly reach the area. With Afghan and terrorist funds out of reach for the duration, an  ever increasing number of play for pay fighters began deserting what suddenly appeared to be a sinking ship.  The Taliban were not only aware that their own military was about as porous as a sponge but they also realized that volunteers to aid in their defense were not going to be easy to come by, at least voluntarily. Thus, they began to  take hostage senior family members in exchange for getting the requisite number of  volunteers needed for their military. While this creates a great deal of cannon fodder in the early stages of a campaign, these lightly trained warriors were not going to be major supporters of the Taliban cause and naturally they were the first to desert when the opportunity presented itself. 

The Taliban caved in and the country was taken back by the warlords. In a moment in time, the country slipped backward 200-years and was literally reclaimed by those from which it had been taken. The United States and their allies had overextended themselves and we in a similar position to where the Russians had found themselves not too long before. The coalition forces controlled the cities and the warlords controlled the country.  Once again there was a hefty fee charged by the keepers of the roads for getting from here to there.  

Life Under The Taliban

Tough Guys and Little Boys 

One of the problems with life in Taliban-less Afghanistan without the governess of the Taliban is the fact that it is still a totally male dominated society with few alternatives for courtship, dating and other means of sexually horsing around. Men are not only scarce because of the years of consistent warfare that has taken a severe toll with soldiers in the field but more importantly  the fact that there are no particular rest and relaxation facilities available in these parts. Making matters even worse is the fact that the Afghanistan women are for the most part nondescript and even if there was a raving beauty among this mixed bag, hiding under the shawls, masks, scarves and body coverings, you could really never tell. The guys here-abouts consider being macho a way of life and you can’t tell anyone’s testosterone level without a scorecard. Talk is big around the campfires at night and their sexual conquests becoming ever more significant with each telling. But the truth is that in these parts, guys don’t really hang out with gals very much, in reality they really hang out with guys and fawning all over a woman is considered creepy, after all, they are inferior aren't they? Thus, with everything going in that direction, over the decades this has become a society that lends itself to high percentages of extreme male homosexuality.  

However, under Muslim law and spite of the fact that homosexuality is religiously frowned upon, it is accepted here as a necessary part of daily life and not so strangely, in most cases it is easier for men to date each other than it is for them to go out with women. While the Taliban overtly attempted to wipe out this quirky Afghan custom, they failed miserably because they simultaneously took away the alternatives. Thus, in a place where there was little enough to do to begin with, after the Taliban got finished there was no way to engender normal heterosexual dating relationships as the veiled woman had to be escorted everywhere by her family. Moreover, as though adding insult to injury, during their regime the Taliban leaders created something called the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which took a very hard line on homosexual activity.

However, as its name would indicate it was mandated to carefully look into what we would consider normal relationships as well and this agency with a name that  became more than a mouthful to say without taking a breath soon was playing havoc with heterosexual relationships as well. These folks were known to be against anything that was worth doing between a man and a woman.  

This ministry which must have been populated by a cadre of hormone free eunuchs who not having anything else to do with their time but practice an insidious form of sadism, more often than not, condemned those that were caught in the act of “doing” with it their homosexual partners. These mean spirited folks seemed to take great delight in sitting around and thinking up new ways to punish anyone that broke any one of the thousands of new rules these folks were constantly thinking up. One of the great crowd pleasers that they created was to push enormous walls unto the offending parties until they were dead. Of course, as time went by, everyone became an offending party. If you didn’t have sex you were a latent homosexual, if you were a woman and attempted to have a relationship with a man, you would be punished by the sex patrol. If the affair was between married parties but not with their own mates, this was a severe crime punishable by death or worse. So, the Taliban had covered all bases and there was nothing left that was either fun legal.  

However, with the American occupation, the sexual police have gone the way of all flesh along with their creators, the Taliban. However, no new movie theaters or dance halls have been erected to replace the ones that were destroyed in the fighting or those destroyed by the sexual police. Most women still walk the streets covered head to foot with some sort of sexless garb and for the most part when they venture outdoors, they are obligatorily escorted by a close relative.  “Back in the 19^th century, ethnic Pashtuns fighting in Britain’s colonial army sang odes talking of their longing for young boys…Homosexuality, cloaked in the tradition of strong masculine bonds that are a hallmark of Islamic culture and are even more pronounced in southern Afghanistan’s strict, sexually segregated society." With so much sexual strangeness in their history, it is no wonder that this has been a difficult land to bring the order out of the chaos.

Cultivating Friends and Folks of Other Varieties

As far as the Taliban were concerned, drugs were merely a means to an end. Although, these were theoretically very virtuous and god-fearing people, when they wanted to make a point they could do some very strange things. Few of us realize that in spite of the fact the Taliban controlled over 90% of the country, they were only recognized by a few countries and were never allowed representation in the United Nations. This annoyed their leadership no end and they embarked on a multifaceted plan of action to make their point.  

The country was poor but geographically well placed and the merchant caravans had historically crossed Afghanistan when moving goods from Europe to Asia and back. The Taliban came to the conclusion that they were in a most favorable spot from a geographical point of view to cultivate the plants that produce heroin; poppies. While historically some heroin had been produced in mountain border regions close to Pakistan, this was only a minor regional preoccupation but far from a national project. By turning the entire country into a gigantic poppy field it would make this desolate country, from a botanical sense at least look like the Garden of Eden. Not only would it provide subsistence for starving farmers but it would create a tax base from which the Taliban could more effectively operate the government. Most important of all, the Taliban leadership believed that it would cause the world to look up and take notice when Afghanistan became by far the largest producer of this drug in the world. They would become the biggest at least at something was the rallying cry.  

The Taliban were right on every count, the country became by far,  the global leader in the production of illicit drugs, farmers prospered, tax collections increased substantially and the world indeed took notice of what was going on. As a matter of fact, there was even some money left over from the sale of drugs for Osama bin Laden to continue his good works. Do gooders from all over the globe complained bitterly that the cheap heroin being produced in Afghanistan was hooking a good part of Europe and wasn’t creating a lot of good will for Afghanistan with countries in the Middle East such as Iran whose population was rapidly getting hooked. But the Taliban believed in equal opportunity sharing of the wealth. The mass production of heroine in Afghanistan was destabilizing the world market for this drug and other countries that were dependent on its production and sale started to yell foul to everyone that wanted to listen. Dealers complained that their livelihoods were being undermined.

Enter The United Nations Stage Right

There was no question that this now became a matter to be dealt with by the United Nations. “What would it take for you to stop making heroine?” the people at the UN naively asked the Taliban? “Well, you people don’t think enough of us to even admit we exist let alone give us representation in your august body, so why should we care about what you think about what we do the replied?”

However, the cleaver folks at the UN had a pre-scripted ready retort.  “What if we recognize the Taliban as the rightful leaders of Afghanistan and take the UN seat away from those other guys that really are all living somewhere else anyway?” Naturally, the Taliban leadership responding that this was something that indeed sounded like a good deal and believing that they had made a pact with the good folks at the United Nations, proceeded to order their farmers to destroy the poppy crop. And there was more to come. The UN had added, “Moreover, if you destroy the poppy crop in really short-order, the United Nations will see to it that you will get all the aid money can even think of using”. This was indeed too good to be true as far as the Taliban leadership was concerned.  

We Destroy Images of God Because They Are There

However, in order to celebrate the deal that had been carefully carved out with what they believed was the highly honor-bound United Nations, the Taliban decided to celebrate this momentous transaction by outlawing any images of human beings. They called on the international community to help them celebrate by announcing that they would be having a forth of July in March and as part of the national celebration they would be blowing up the two largest statues of Buddha in the world on international television. Shockingly for them this announcement was was not well received by the international community. Moreover, this represented the last straw to many and for the most part, no one sought to provide any additional aid to this really bizarre collection of misogynists anymore. However, in spite of this insular thinking, the offer of UN membership seemed to survive and the poppy fields for the most part were destroyed. The United Nations declared victory over the Taliban and proceeded to stiff them out of every single part of the agreement.     

Well, you can certainly understand that this action by the Taliban caused a lot of grumping among the farmers but in the end, all of those cultivators that wouldn’t go along were strung up by their short hairs and that can really smart.  It wasn’t long before national starvation returned in earnest, but the drug purveyors had indeed seen the light. Afghanistan had amazingly gone full circle from a place that harvested literally  no poppies to a country flooded with them and back in the space of just a few years. This had been a literally  amazing national performance from a horticultural point of view. Moreover, in an economic sense, the country had gone from being an economic cripple to a state of near-health and back again in a flash. But the then strange leaders of Afghanistan thought that the process was worth it because they could now join the UN and take their place within the society of nations. They turned out to be both insane and naive.  

The Poppies Are Gone, Now Give Us Our Prize

Afghanistan religious zealots picked up the phone and called the United Nations to inform them that they had been good little boys and as they had promised, had eradicated the notorious crop that strangely had seemed to be bothersome to everyone. They went on to tell the people at the UN that the nation was now once again agriculturally bankrupt and economically poverty-stricken. They would appreciate under the circumstances to have the United Nations’ promises fulfilled, both the membership they had promised along with the now critical economic aid.

The national economic situation had become critical while twisting into a pretzel for the folks at the United Nations. Unemployment had skyrocketed and starvation was running rampant throughout the country. Fighting was still going on in the north, religious crackdowns were occurring all over the country, women were being persecuted and their rights taken away and most important, civil rights had vanished. The United Nations asked for some time and after theoretically making a thorough investigation of the fact that the Taliban controlled country was indeed, now a very solid candidate for membership from the standpoint of keeping their word, the New York based organization determined otherwise. They were informed that the Taliban leadership would have to hang on for awhile in order for the United Nations to determine if they had really changed their evil ways for good. However, by this time, it no longer mattered anyway because with the American bombing of Kabul, Taliban leaders were now forced to address a much different agenda.  

Meanwhile Back At The Ranch

As were know, the Taliban were defeated in short order and the country resumed normalcy with the now ebullient War Lords once again retaking lands that they said historically belonged to them. Moreover, many of the people that tilled the land that produced the poppies had become deeply in debt to the prolific Afghanistan money lenders who kept them alive from crop to crop. When the Taliban had halted production based on the UN commitment, the poppy growers not being able to repay their loans quickly became the equivalent of indentured slaves. Having nothing to gain by sticking around, when the fighting started they left town for neighboring Pakistan with their families, their livestock and their poppy seeds in tow before becoming fodder for the locals.  Moreover, this group of land holding nomads returned when the fighting ended these were among the first to return and naturally the first thing they did upon moving back in was plant their precious seeds. This pleased the money lenders no end.  However, everyone else became concerned but today, the Americans, interested in economic stability in the country have turned their checks to what has become massive production of heroine.   

However, it wasn’t only the replanting of poppies that would restore Afghanistan to its former ignominious glory. The officials announced that the people would be once again allowed to go to the movies which was a rather hallow commitment because all of the theaters had been converted to mosques and the projection equipment destroyed.  They were told that they could also go to local dances with women who would not have to wear coverings on their faces. However there was a small problem,  there were no bands to play music, there were no halls to hold a dance and no women that were not afraid to leave their houses without being covered.

They announced with great fanfare that the children could go back to school. However, there were no longer any school buildings standing and anyone that was capable of teaching had long ago left this forsaken country.  It turns out that in spite of the fact that the people could now do pretty much what they wanted, there was no one to do it with r any place to do it in. Moreover, the Warlords had once again established their system of national tolls and it now became impossible to get from here to there without being shaken down. If you didn’t have the money, you were either robbed for what little else you carried, sold into slavery or murdered if got very lucky. So if there had been a place to have a good time, you couldn’t have had one anyway because you couldn’t have afforded to get there. American declared victory and there was a celebration for a time.  Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group had this to say about it:

       "...warlords and regional militia pose an immediate threat. Some originally were financed and allied with US forces in the fight against al Qaeda after 9/11. A few have appeared willing to identify their futures with a new national Afghan government; but must have claimed land, resouces and property and used their armed miltias to maintain those claims. They also have sued those forces to intimidate, threaten and pursue their own stake in the porcess leading up to the constitutional Loya Jirga."

Under the asupices of the United States governance things have not imporved relative to the heroine trade. According to Antoinio Maria Costa who is the executive director of the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Afghanistan poppy crop brought in $1.2 billion to farmers and traders in 2002 which was twice the yearly budget of the entire Afghan Government. Moreover, it was equal to the amount spent by outsiders on recontstruction. "This means that there is an enormous amount of meoney available to corrupt the political process. More than 3,600 metric tons of opium poppies were produced last year, and it is estimated that the yield will rise to 3,800 tons in 2004. Drugs also threaten efforts to produce a functioning judicial system." To add insult to injury, Mr. Costa added that the terrorist in Afghanistan were financing their attacks through drug trafficking and worse, they were literally holding the local farmers hostage and forcing them to grow the poppies. United Nations statistics once again showed that Afghanistan was leading world production of the crop and that in 2003, it would have upped production once again. However, what are you going to grow when ceral crops bring in only one-tenth of the amount of money that the illicit crops do? After all, they have to feed their families and we have not offered them an alternative that works. 

The Warlords Get Paid Back In Spades

The United States was caught between a rock and a hard place in Afghanistan due to the fact that there really weren't any good guys involved on either side. The Warlords were thrown out by the Taliban not because of the fact that they were superior in a military sense, they were able to win because in the people's minds the Afghani's had come to the conclusion that they were only the lessor of two evils. When the time came that it became international clear that the Taliban had overplayed their hand and were about to be sent packing; the U.S. was badly in need of foot soldiers that were capable of doing the war's dirtywork. The only way to get these men was to make a deal with the Northern Alliance or the Warlords.

When the war had been successfully concluded, the Americans kept their word and annointed the senior warlord from each sector to what became known as Provincial Governors. However, once they were ensconsed in power the warlords immediately went back to their old ways and they started literally taxing their "subjects" for breathing. Worse yet, all of the relief donations from charitble groups and other nations had to go through that pipeline and by the time, the funds had been cleansed, nothing much was left for the intended projects.

Because the Warlords have been left in place, infrastructure development has slowed to a crawl and the appears to little progress will be made going forward unless there are changes made in the system. However, the situation in Afghanistan is fragile to say the least and numerous attempts have been made on the life of Pakistan's leader by terrorists. Adding to the problem is the fact that Karzai, Afghanistan's president has not taken a decissive role as a leader and because of that fact, the warlords have taken liberities that they would not have dared to take under other circumstances. The New York Times in an article entitled Afghanistan's Future, Lost in the Shuffle by Sarah Chayes stated: "The proble is, no matter what they say, these warlords aren't going to behave. They are not reformable, because it is not in their interest to reform. The warlords' livelihood depends on extremism and lawlessness. That's how they draw their pay; that's what allows them to rule by the gun in an unofficial martial law, looting villages under the pretext of mopping-up operations, extracting taxes and bribes, crushing opponents."

The Americans would have little trouble getting rid of these nasty people, however with what is going on in Iraq has stretched the military very thin. The warlords still control their own militia and at times, they are needed to put down terrorism. While the warlords cannot be counted on to do much more than feather their own nests, it is still in their interests to play ball with the United States. Thus, it appears as though the status quo will be with us for some time to come. No one can afford to take the first steps toward reform and it is the people who will be paying the price. An interesting statement was made by Mark L. Schneider, Sr. Vice Presdident of the International Crisis Group at a heariing of the House International Relations Committee Hearing on Afghanistan on November 19, 2003.

           The US military and its allies brought a speedy end to Talibaan and al Qaeda control over the   state apparatus in November 2001; but plans for postwar Afghanistan stalled as Taliban forces and significant elements of al Qaeda escaped to Pakistan. Although Pakistan law enforcement has acted against al Qaeda, the Pakistan miltary government - whose security service have long and deep ties to the Taliban remains passive or negligent when it comes to the Taliban. There is virtual consesnsus among diplomats, press and others that the Pakistan government of President Pervez Musharraf maintains an "insurance" policy of sorts with the Taliban in theevent the west were to abandon the country as it did a decade ago, and a radical Taliban government were to return to power."

A Free Country Once Again, Thanks To The American Way

Indeed Afghanistan was once again a free country with all of the benefits that freedom has to offer. People could go to the church of their choice if was still standing and the  women no longer had to wear veils which disguised them as used clothing stores. Moreover, women could openly date and keep company with those of the other sex. However, many of the men had been killed in the two-decades old strife that had torn apart the country and those that were left had developed some rather strange habits to say the least. In spite of their newfound freedom, there was not much for anyone to do here but kind of hang out. But wait, there was one thing that everyone could get involved in that would help the country out of its doldrums. They could go back to growing poppies.  

But these benifits are offset by numerous problems that continue to plague the country. For example; it has been estimated by Unicef that 67 percent of the women that live in rural areas have developed goiters because of iodine deficiency. This affliction can cause mental and phsical retardation, miscarriages, defness and problems with breathing. The further from the cities that you travel, the worse the situation seems to get and among the most prevailant problems is the fact that the salt in Afghanistan is not iodized and there is not enough profit or money avaiable to create the process that would eliminate the problem. Fistuma Assefa of Unicef stated that, "Just one hour from Kabul you find retarded people, both phiscially and mentally. There's a lot of abortion and stillbirths. You see it in animals too, you see placentas from aborted fetuses in all the mountain areas in February and March. It was a shock to see so many goiters and nothing happening to remedy it." Unicef is trying to help but salt continues to be sold by Pakistan salt purveryors with a note saying that it is ionized when it is not. 

The United Nations Has Only Class Folks As Members

They godless folks now running the country already had United Nations recognition anyway so they didn’t have to be good little folks anymore. As a matter of fact, they pointed out with some pride that most of the United Nation’s membership was not comprised of what you would call good little folks.  After all the people pointed out, there was the evil empire, Russia, they were members in good standing, there was Iraq who had recently attempted to destroy their own civilians as well as most of their neighbors, they were certainly still members and in good standing. And the Syrians, the country that had invaded Lebanon and turned it into a vassal state, who invaded Jordan, started three wars with the Israelis and wiped out a substantial part of their own population, they had even been promoted to a seat on the Security Council for their efforts.

Then there was North Korea which starved 2-million of its own people to death and created slave labor camps, Cambodia, where Pol Pot and his merry band had surgically murdered over ten-percent of the population and created an agricultural state where there had once been industry. It seemed true indeed that if you were already a member of the UN you did not have to be good anymore and Afghanistan had long ago achieved that exalted status. The new Afghanistan was already a card carrying member of the UN, they could go back to raising and selling drugs and in this case no one would even bother them about it.  As a matter of fact, they would be less of a burden that way everyone determined.

Most countries were not to happy about the fact that they would have to supply Afghanistan with aid to get back on their feet anyway. If as a member of the United Nations they could sell drugs with impunity, they could become a legitimate card carrying country again. Look at the standing of Columbia and Mexico, each time they ran into trouble the United States bailed them both out in spite of the fact that they were both transshipping drugs into that country. “Wow, does anyone here have any poppy seeds left over from the Taliban?” they asked. Luckily several of the more astute had indeed stored the precious seeds possibly thinking about this very day, when the country would once again join their fellow countries and resume their place in the world community.  

“So long as the drug trade flourishes, law-enforcement officials said. It will fuel political rivalries, foster corruption and undermine the authority of the central government. But because opium farming remains one of the few viable economic activities, officials added, any intense eradication effort could imperil the stability of the government and thus hamper the military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.” [1] 

The statistics are staggering, “…Afghanistan’s production of raw opium fell from a world-record peak of more than a million pounds in 1999 to a mere 40,600 pounds this year, a 96 percent decline, according to the United Nations Drug Control Program. …In late April, the children will (once again) slit the flowers’ fat bulbs and scrape the ooze into a sack. Buyers will pay the farmers $100 or more per pound, at least one hundred times what fruits and vegetables will bring. Then thousands of tons of opium will be hauled by trucks, taxis and mules over the mountains to Pakistan. Refiners will turn it into hundreds of thousands of pounds of heroin worth billions of dollars to millions of addicts all over the world “[2]  

And when the poppy crop is cultivated, scraped, sacked, trucked, refined and sold to a waiting market it will not be a day to soon for many. Forget about the number of people in Afghanistan that will be able to feed their families again, we are talking about all of those addicts around the world that went into mourning when the Taliban was trying to cozy up to the powers that be at the United Nations in exchange for a seat. Just the mere statement by the Afghanistan people that they were going back into poppy raising caused the international price of opium to drop precipitously. Inevitable addicts how had great concerns  that soon the price of heroine would soar, supplies would drop and their live’s would become a living hell could now breath a sigh of relief. Addicts are now satisfied that with Afghanistan’s rulers safely back in power and their seat at the UN assured, their supply of heroine will continue to arrive at a timely basis and at a good price.   

“This time last year, the Taliban stopped Gul Haider from growing his traditional opium-poppy crop. But now that the Taliban have been ousted from Nangahar province, Mr. Haider is back in business. “I just planted today,” the stooped 70-year old tells a visitor, showing off the two and a half acres he has freshly sown with the plant that produces heroin. “This is my land” What Mr. Haidar sees as a cash crop, the U.S. and its allies see as one more headache to deal with while trying to help build a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Despite international efforts to curb Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation, Mr. Haidar says every farmer in this region of eastern Afghanistan also plated opium last week; three other farmers readily confirmed doing so.” 

“…Shah Rasul, 45 years old from Kus Saidan village, says he sold four kilos Wednesday for 45,000 Pakistani rupees apiece: That’s about $750 a kilo, more than seven times the going price of two years ago. Mr. Rasul says he and his family of 30 people had to live off savings for the past two years. He sold his stock to Afghans of the Shinwari tribe, who cross mountain paths into Pakistan, whence the opium proceeds by various routes west to market. The same day, Mr. Rasul says, he planted 10 jeribs with opium seeds – in effect betting that the new government won’t restrict poppy cultivation or destroy fields already planted. “There is no government yet,” he says. “We don’t know what the new policy will be.”[3] 

The Cultivation

However, in this arid environment with little money available for fertilizer, poppies require almost no water and they grew in poor soil with little or no nutrients. They produce substantially more income than does wheat and other alternatives crops so you can readily understand the gravitation of the local farmers to this disingenuous crop. Everyone is literally in on the game and while it is no longer openly flaunted, many senior government officials of the new regime also need to feed their families and they too are involved in this deadly occupation. While little evidence may exist of the buying and selling of the product as it did in the old days, there is no secret that this is once again the country’s primary cash crop. “Just about everyone in this district is tied into the poppy crop. The deputy mayor, a military commander, has an opium shop. The director of education owns two acres of poppy fields. The elders who run the local decision-making council grow poppies too. With the stores closed, they said they would hide their stockpiles and arrange liaisons with buyers in the vast desert or nearby mountains.  

They knew drugs were bad, but so was hunger. ‘It is against Islam, it is against human beings, it is against international law, it is against everything, but it is something we have to do,’ Haffi Abibullah, the watchman at Mr. Sattar’s[4] office and a district police chief, said of his own poppy fields.”[5] 

“American officials have quietly abandoned their hopes to reduce Afghanistan’s opium production substantially this year and are now bracing for a harvest large enough to inundate the world’s heroin and opium markets with cheap drugs.”[6] 

The bottom line is that the one that will really get rich here will be the tribal leaders recently installed by the American Government. These are the people that the United States has to work with in order to bring order out of the chaos that is called Afghanistan. In order to properly court these folks, there is going to have to be a certain amount of looking the other way, and for the moment, that is the way things are going to be, like it or not. Protestations to the contrary, even the most conservative projects forecast that enough raw heroin will be produced in Afghanistan this year to supply the world’s needs for the next 2 ½ years. Even if next year’s crop is still born, the country will be back in the saddle again as the world’s premium supplier of this drug. What indeed have we wrought? And yet, the world has not even consumed what remained in the warehouses after the Taliban banned opium production. That in itself is going to last another year at least.  

I Am Reviewing The Situation

Several ideas were floated in attempt to prevent the flood of opium about to hit the market and both were rejected. The first was to buy the entire crop at whatever the going price would be from the farmers directly. Cooler heads figured out that this would only encourage the poppy growers to increase their production next year. The other idea in retrospect appears equally as foolish. Send emissaries to the farms armed with cash who would watch as the farmers would plow up the poppies and destroy them. This had all of the worthless elements of the first idea as the following years crop would only be larger and addition problems as well. But most important of all, there were not any people that anyone was aware of that could walk around Afghanistan without an army backing them up forget about walking up to a local farmer and striking up a conversation with him relative to his cash crop. The inspector would probably have been dead the second he crossed the property line. Second of all, once anyone got wind of the fact that there was that much cash being disbursed, the poor soul doling out them money would soon become plant fertilizer. So much for bureaucratic thought.  

The Germans finally came up with a plan that would work. They would train a police force that would have expertise in this field of poppy destruction and payoffs while creating a force large enough to back up whatever plan that would be determined best by the United Nations. While everyone was applauding the ever-inventive Hessians, it was pointed out that the plan would take five-years before it could go into effect. At current rates of production, that would allow the creative Afghan farmers the time to store enough poppies to supply the world’s needs, whatever that may mean, for the next decade or so. Maybe a better plan would be to forget about any plan at all.  

 Losing Track of Time and Souls, The Marastoons

In Afghanistan, in the old days there were few beggars. It is not necessarily the fact that things were so much better than they are today but more logically because in those days, the populous of the country had substantial pride and did not want foreign visitors seeing their indigent population begging for alms on the streets. It was determined that these people would be picked up by local police and placed in what was called “marastoons” which when literally interpreted means “place of aid.” And indeed that was exactly what they were. Inmates would be sheltered, feed and provided the necessities of life until the beggars could get on their feet once again and find work. Interestingly enough the marastoons were self-sufficient, having certain sources of income financially dedicated only to them so that they would not become a local budgetary item and run the risk of being closed down when the government tax collections went dry. Moreover, some marastoons such as the one in Kandahar owned property from which they derived substantial income.  

The system worked well in that the marastoons provided for a literally unlimited number of homeless people and to the outsider at least, it appeared the Afghanistan Government did not have any hopelessly poor people. Moreover, in theory the marastoons were only temporary quarters for the indigent as they could leave whenever someone would guarantee to care for them. However, this was the rub. Many of these folks didn’t have families or next of kin. They were street people poor and simply and not so strangely, no one ever seemed to want to come to take these folks away. Those that were not called for seemed to stay forever locked into a state of benevolent despotism, being caught in a strange vortex of bureaucracy and literally locked up forever.  

The marastoons were first established by the Afghanistan Government in 1930 and in the early 1960s, management of them was passed to the Red Crescent Society an affiliate of the International Red Cross. Although these organizations did not devote substantial resources to these institutions, for the most part they ran them in an equitable fashion using whatever resources were at hand. However, the situation began to change for the worse in the late 1970s when the country went to war with Russia and the already difficult economic conditions in Afghanistan became much more bleak. From that point on, things went rapidly downhill and by the time the Taliban were removed from government positions, the marastoons had been literally forgotten about and their sources of income had dried up.  

Too Many People And Too Little Time

While the Red Crescent stayed in charge, they were consistently operating these establishments from behind the eight ball, as the Afghanistan Government could no long afford to step in and replace the sources of funds that had been used to support these organizations. Moreover, after the Taliban took power, the Red Crescent had been placed on a short leash as this group of religious fanatics were really not interested in independent organizations operating freely within their closed circle. By the time the marastoons were over-run by the Northern Alliance in late 2001, these facilities had deteriorated dramatically. However, in Afghanistan, that was the rule and not the exception so that for a time these places did not particularly stand out as being overly rundown. The fact that the people living in these now forlorn places were no longer taken care of in the larger sense was not a lot dissimilar than what was happening all over the country as the social systems here had totally broken down. “The six inmates at the Kandahar marastoon say that the Red Cross used to bring them blankets but that no one has come for years. “I’m cold, I’m cold,” Mr. Saba (One of the inmates) said on a recent day, trembling either from the chill or palsy. “Bring me some more blankets please.”[7] 

Moreover, years earlier, meat had been eliminated from marastoon inmate’s diets and for the most part they were served a vegetable gruel, which occasionally would be hot. Blankets were in short supply and clothes were unavailable. Reading material was unavailable and recreational facilities were non-existent. Living conditions plummeted to substantially less than subsistence levels when the war ended. Moreover, when these places were liberated it was found that some of the inmates had been ensconced within these buildings for decades and that many were incarcerated not because of being indigent but because of the fact that they were guilty of political crimes such as complaining about how the Afghan Government was run.  

A Person Left Behind

Upon further examination it turned out that should anyone be picked up for espousing a cause deemed irreverent by authorities, they would be summarily locked up in a marastoon. Moreover, if they were unlucky enough not to have any family that knew where they were, they would stay for eternity or whenever Hell froze over, whichever occurred first. Moreover, these folks that disagreed with the government were considered to be dangerous and were chained to their cells.  Mr. Saba who we referred to above was a particularly shocking case. It seems that he was one of those “political prisoners” and had been secreted here some 35-years ago. He was an educated man when he was incarcerated, a rarity in this country and a high school teacher to boot. When he was found it soon became apparent that he could read and write at least three languages while his keepers were totally illiterate. They did not even know he was literate because they were not.  

However, he had not had anything to read in decades, he had not had meat to eat probably for years, his clothes were in taters and he spent his days chilled to the bone. No one seemed to know why he was in the marastoon but then again no one particularly cared. Strangely, the Red Cross had gone about their business of caring for him as best they could with the resources they had available, but never raised a cry relative to the fact that this gentle soul had been chained in his cell for literally decades. 

There is not much question that as time goes on here a number of Mr. Saba’s will be uncovered as international personnel delineate the ravages that occurred in this place. Most of those that would have been Mr. Saba’s contemporaries have long ago died of malnutrition, the cold or possible even of acute boredom. He is just one of a long line of victims of governments that have other agendas, relief agencies that were overburdened and understaffed and an unforgiving land that could not produce enough to give care to the homeless or politically estranged.   

BOOK TWO, FLASHING BACK TO ANOTHER TIME

Dealing Drugs

In spite of the fact that the Taliban control most of the country, there are any number of anomalies that continue to exist within Afghanistan. Most of the country’s trade is conducted by those holding onto the remaining sliver of territory due to the fact that they also control many of the passages in and out of the country. In addition, surprisingly enough, Afghanistan’s local currency is printed in Moscow and the Russians aren’t exactly what you would call friendly to the Taliban. In the meantime, the main source of revenue enjoyed by the Taliban has been substantially cut back when they ordered the destruction of their poppy fields and a halt to the export of heroin. 

However, that has not made a substantial dent in the warehouses and farms in the territory controlled by the United Front who quietly continue to supply a very high percentage of the world’s drug needs. This aspect of those Afghans allied with the United States will be carefully played down by the current administration in Washington as well they should. However, bin Laden did hire a number of folks with advanced chemical degrees from all of the best schools in an attempt to improve the potency of Afghan heroin so that he could send special shipments of this refined cocktail to the United States. It was his feeling that this would turn the Americans into brain warped maniacs wandering the American streets in perpetuity looking only for their next fix.   

However, cut-backs aside, there is little question that bin Laden and his cohorts in the Taliban were getting a substantial over-ride on opium production and shipments. In particular, bin Laden’s network was providing protection for both the smugglers that carry the purified drugs into Pakistan and Iran and the Afghanistan plants that turn opium in heroin. No less an authority than Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson admitted not only the fact that he had heard of the plot but also testified at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources  that drug trafficking was an important revenue stream for the Taliban.  

A United Nations report was more candid which stated that the Taliban used the money from the illicit drug trade to fund “the training of terrorists and support the operation of extremists in neighboring countries and beyond.”   Whatever was going on, there is little question that the Taliban were breaking every rule of the Muslim religion by continuing to deal in drugs while they made a big to-do about the fact that had seen the light and were giving it up. Hardly, the Taliban a socked enough heroin away in factories along their border with Pakistan to supply the world for the next decade and although, many of their farms no long produced poppies, it was not because of any religious oriented retrenchment on their part.  

What's Sauce For The Goose

When people get involved in wars they do many strange things. Those in the Northern Alliance thought  that the Taliban had come up with a really good idea and assigned the farmers in the areas that they controlled to the task of growing the flowers as well. When questioned as to why they had gotten into such a terrible business, they were told that the money that they made from dealing in the drugs would be used to fight the Taliban.  That would seem like as good a retort as any that we can think of at the moment.  

However if  anyone thinks that the heroin traffic from the Taliban held territories has stopped, all they have to do is take a gander a couple of paragraphs of this story written by Jason Burke on September 9^th, 2001 for the Observer. Jason went on a ride with the with the 53^rd commando anti-narcotics company in Iran who act to interdict shipments of drugs coming from Afghanistan’s Taliban controlled areas. The story speaks for itself: 

“In a huge neon-lit basement under a gray office block in central Tehran is the Iranian Drug control Directorate’s pound. Outside exhaust fumes has stained the concrete a hundred shades of gray The walls are the color of a cancerous lung. Inside is the world’s biggest single pile of drugs. Stacked on shelves, or on the concrete floor, in hundreds of f\blue and black plastic barrels, in scores of rice and wheat sacks, in eviscerated pomegranates, in lovingly resealed coconuts, in boxes and pouches and satchels and rucksacks, is a ton of refined heroin, eight tones of morphine, 90 tons of opium, five tons of hashish and two tons of cannabis. It’s about half of what the Iranian anti-narcotics forces have seized in the past eight months.  

Start with just the heroin. It is stacked in small packages roughly the size of a small packet of frozen peas. I am looking at a million grams of smack. Take a deep breath and smell the o0piium. Suck its earthy, musky scent deep into the lungs. Then try to comprehend the amount that is stacked here: the barrels, each neatly tagged and labeled with the location and date of the seizure, stand hip high and two feet across. There are 480 of them. You need 10 kilos of opium to make a kilo of heroin. So the compound holds, more less, enough opium to make nine tons – or nine million grams of smack. That’s half a billion pounds’ worth. In one corner is a stack of 20 4r5 kg fertilizer bags. When a guard takes out a Stanley knife and slits the plastic of one,. A light-green herb spurts out. The weight of the stacked sacks above it has crushed the cannabis and it is now so fine it trickles and piles and pools like sand as it runs to the ground.  

You can hardly see the warehouse floor. There are some patches of bare concrete dully reflecting the fluorescent light, but it is mostly obscured by piled lumps of chestnut-brown opium, heaps of lemon-colored morphine spilled from bags, bright-green cannabis and hundreds and hundreds of scattered broken chunks (some the size of a cigarette packet, others as big as an airport paperback) of warm, moist, black hash. Altogether, properly refined and distributed, the drugs I am looking at have a street value of around a billion pounds. Then I tell the men who guard it – paid pounds 50 a month – how much the drugs are worth in the West, they think I’m joking.   

Every year, the stock is cleared out. The heroin and the hash is burned on  a huge and well-publicized pyre, and the opium is sold to pharmaceutical companies to be turned into painkillers. The size of the seizures makes Western drugs-enforcement officials’ eyes water. An average of 16 tons each month were seized between July and December last year. But in Afghanistan, a decent harvest of opium totals 4,000 tons. 

A Conundrum

As we entered upon a new reality, the United States was faced with problems that are unique in their history. Believing that we have been the world's good guys and offering a protection and opportunity to the globe's homeless we are having trouble understanding that we are indeed, still the "Ugly American's." In spite of billions in aid and a strong belief that we are doing right, suddenly we find that all of our efforts can fit in a small cocked hat. After the Second World War ended we were able to buy ourselves the hearts and souls of those in the west with our money. We are facing an enemy who may not able to be bought and who is not going to go away. 

We are indeed  facing a bit of the old physics conundrum of what happens when an irresistible force comes into contact with an immovable force. Any movement by either side to palliate the situation will appear as weakness and therefore cannot be tolerated. Bin Laden was spread all over Afghanistan with nearly 60-bases and 13,000 men under his aegis according to a memo filed with the United Nations in 1999 by the Russians. Heavily represented in this group from the top down were senior Pakistan military personnel. The Russian report goes on to add that In addition to the Pakistan support staff, there are training instructors from countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya

The Players, A Scorecard

In the meantime, while Afghanistan was at this time over 90% controlled by the Taliban, there are any number of other players in the region who make up a loose confederation known as the "Northern Alliance." Far from being an alliance at all, this group of fighters probably would take on each other if the price was right or if they got bored. Their bickering among each other is seemingly endless and even if the "Alliance"  was able to rid the country of the hated Taliban,  any peace among them would probably at best be short lived as they would undoubtedly turn upon each other in due course. Fighting is regular sport in Afghanistan and is treated more as a game that everyone in the country plays.  Those that lose the game often pay a mortally high price and because of this and other factors, the residents of the country have a minimal longevity to look forward to.

In order to bring order from the chaos, only one very interesting possibility existed and that is to bring Muhammad Zahir Shah out of retirement and put him back on the Afghan thrown. This was a position that he had left both hurriedly and unceremoniously in 1973.  Young Muhammad had assumed control of the nation in 1933 at the age of 19 and ruled the country primarily by proxy for 40-years; assigning day-to-day management to a group of conniving relatives that gave the word incompetency a new meaning. While the king, "Aala Hazrat" {Highest Lord} was in receipt of a medical overhaul out of the country, he was forced to give up his royal position by one of his more inadequate cousins, Muhammad Daud. It was none other than Daud  who after having hopelessly screwed up the job of prime minister  was bound and  determined to try his hand at running the whole ball of wax. Daud firmly believed that although he was admittedly horrendous at handling the insignificant matters effecting the country was convinced that he could more than contend with the more serious of the nation's matters. Soon thereafter and  under Daud's pathetic leadership the entire country predictably unraveled and started its slide into its present literally anarchistic state. 

Do I Really Want To Work For A Living?

Moreover, it may well be that the former king who is happily ensconced in a sumptuous villa in the best neighborhood in Rome, no long wants to be king and at 86 years of age would like to spend his remaining days in peace and quiet and away from the guns of war that rage in Afghanistan. The king has not been any closer to Afghanistan than his Roman villa in over 28 years and would be going back to a place that is a mere shell of its former self. This is the one spot on earth where instead of the old adage that time has stood still, the country if anything has gone backwards in high gear. However, there is more to the story than meets the eye, the ex-king in spite of his splendid lifestyle is hopelessly indigent and is being supported in his declining years by an unknown benefactor country that has been footing his bills. If the king receives a message that his allowance would be cut off unless he report back to Afghanistan, although somewhat infirmed, he would be forced to take the job, However, the converse might be true as well, the benefactor could announce that good King Shah would be cut off forever if he ever really seriously considered the offer. 

In the meantime, the French always the first to make their international feelings known, voted the King the most likely Afghan choice vote and this was upheld by a vote of their congress in a close 381-0 ballot . The French say that the King is a Pashtun and as such represents the largest number of Afghanistan people. It is especially convenient that he is a member of Durrani sub-clan, something semi-elite within a country where elitism does not exist. Rumblings have it that the king would not at all like to be anointed by the West. 

There has been a lot of hard feelings expressed here over the years against other countries and if the United States, NATO, china or Russia  had anything to do with his reassuming office, it would be better than an even chance that he would not live out his first year in office. However, the talk is that if he gets the nod, he would call a loyal jirgah which in English means, a meeting of the other Afghan leaders and it would be they who would determine who and what kind of government the country would have. If however, they determined that he should be the Monarch, good King Shah would probably accept the challenge. The former King's 37-year old grandson is his spokesman and he put the entire matter into perspective: "Afghans are sick of war and the culture of the Kalashnikov. They will welcome an American attack if it means the end of the Taliban."

Moreover,  the feeling out process went on and in a telling poll that was conducted by American authorities, almost 50-percent the people of Afghanistan thought that the ex-king was the best solution to their problems. However, Mullah Omar only was able to round up slightly under 10-percent of those polled illustrating the total unhappiness of the people with the Fundamentalist regime. In the meantime, the feeling out process continues and the king has enjoyed a notoriety of late,  unseen since he was accosted ten-years ago by a man claiming to be a Portuguese newspaperman who pulled a knife on him and attempted to eviscerate him on the spot.  Whatever finally unravels itself from this situation, the various groups allied against the Taliban should be careful that they do not revert back to a monarchy. Essentially, this could be like going from the frying pan into the fire and Afghanistan seems to have suffered quite enough, thank you. 

The Scenario At The Time Was ---

Should Afghanistan leaders not back down and turn over bin Laden, the scenario we will follow is really rather simple in spite of the fact that our government has not addressed it in detail. Before we discuss our short synopsis of what is going to happen we would like to point out that we believe that the United States has no particular interest in working out anything at all with the recalcitrant Taliban. Their prodigious and their ideas are archaic and not consistent with a globally inter-related social system and economy. We believe that by harboring bin Laden they themselves have provided the fodder for the world to rid itself of a thorn in everyone’s side once and for all. Trust me, this is war is not going to be the big deal that the administration is making it out that it is. At best we are talking about a police action with few American casualties and let me tell you why.  

There is no question that the United States is facing a substantial amount of antipathy from the Muslim world and we wouldn’t want to put all of our cards on the table too early in the game. Before this entire affair is over, it will be more far reaching than any one can imagine at the moment but for now, the United States is going to deal only with the Taliban and bin Laden along with related terrorist groups under his command. Thus, it must be a Muslim group that leads the charge in this matter and as luck would have it they are readily available. We are talking about the group that was formerly headed by Ahmed Shah Massoud who as we have pointed out earlier was murdered recently in typical Taliban style, by  suicide squad. Those underlings who willing to give up their lives in the name of Allay and their Taliban leaders. Because of the way Ahmed was murdered, his  followers are more than chomping at the bit to get even and they represent an effective force more than capable of dealing with the Taliban under select circumstances. All of this hogwash about large numbers of American casualties are utter hogwash.  

Russian Logistics Were Not Relevant

While the Russian's had an extremely hard time in Afghanistan, there were two sets of reasons for their problems. The first is something that the United States can probably overcome without too much trouble. While the American Army is composed only of volunteers, the Russian military was a conscript force that really didn't want to be there in the first place. Not only didn't they want to be there, no one really was able to give them a logical reason why they were there. Worse yet, they were under-equipped,   over vodka-ed and lacked competent leadership. They had the wrong weapons, the wrong clothes and the wrong attitude. In addition, they were supporting a morally  corrupt unsupportable regime that was being backed only because of the fact it was communist. The troops had no rallying point and when they were hit by disease caused by weather conditions and putrefied food and drinking water, they crumbled. The Russians were essentially done in by themselves, not the Afghan fighters. In the end, Russian loses caused by the war itself as opposed to disease and other non-military causes were surprisingly only about the same as were caused by the terrorists on September 11, 2001, in Washington and New York. 

However, the Americans will be facing some of those problems, but they will hardly be facing the Russians which was the situation in 1989. Fundamentally, you had to highly technical powers showering incomprehensible weapons of destruction into the hands of illiterate peasants that for the most part could barely tell which end of the piece held the munitions. Russia lost the war because the Americans supplied their forces with stingers which neutralized Russian technology. The Taliban has no technology and the American air support will become of the "stinger" of the coming battle. The Northern Alliance will be re-supplied by Russia, The United States, NATO and China among others. They will have more weaponry available than the country will be able to utilize in the next 100-years. This would be a different kind of war, indeed. 

Well, Not Exactly

However, there is little question that this place is no walk in the park. As Valery Guskov a Russian army major said in an article that appeared in the New York Daily News by Fred Weir, "'Don't go there, you cannot win, Everything you think you know about war turns out to be different in Afghanistan. Any peaceful peasant or shepherd by day can creep into your camp and slit your throat at night. They are all fanatics, everyone of them. The only tactic that ever worked for us was to make sure no potential enemy was left alive, but there were always more of them.' 

"As threatening as the enemy are disease and extreme weather conditions. Guskov described how, in the desert heat, Soviet machinery broke down, tires melted and tank engines exploded. The bitter mountain cold froze weapons, paralyzed vehicles and sidelined more men with frostbite than the Afghan fighters ever managed to kill. A powerful wind that Soviet troops called the afghanets overwhelmed military operation and left a fine residue of red dust that scrambled radio equipment, ruined food supplies and destroyed vehicle transmissions. When the Afghan fighters took refuge in high mountain bases, the air was too thin for Soviet helicopters to chase them, and fighter-bombers had difficulty maneuvering among rugged mountain peaks."

The circumstances which we refer to consist only of a couple of really minor additions to what those forces already have at their disposal. If that group could get substantive air support, they could run through the Taliban lines like a hot knife cutting butter. They might be a tad under armed but by buying substantial numbers of additional heavily armed transcripts will not represent a major problem at all. Once the program begins and the people in the countryside see the progress that is being made by the invaders in securing additional territories, it would be expected that these people will begin to join the civil war on the side of the dissidents. Historically the Taliban were only a minor faction created by Pakistan only fairly recently, once that support is taken away, that crutch will disappear. Contrary to popular opinion, the Taliban leadership represents only a small fraction of the people in Afghanistan and it is only the fact that they are ruling a police state in which people are not allowed out of their houses after 6:00 PM that they continue to control the population. These people cannot do worse and they are well aware of it. 

Our Prediction Was--

So, as we see it, step one requires literally no American ground support and should result in only limited loss of life and minimal additional anti-American sentiment because it will be the Muslim’s that are going to be fighting other Muslim’s; we will only be providing support. In addition, this is not going to be a long war; on the contrary, it will be amazingly short. Taliban can only put together 35,000 military men, many of which will switch sides when given the opportunity and as the tide of battle begins to turn. In addition, much of the Taliban army is going to be stuck on guarding the Pakistan border due to their newfound problems in that arena. For all intents and purposes, this war will be over in three-weeks or less.  No one in the region has any particular sympathy for these people and when they cease to exist, few tears will be shed.  

Our very limited land actions will consist of the Special Forces, The Delta Force, the Seals and other elite units being dropped both into the base camps that trained the terrorists and as well as other places where bin Laden and his associates were believed to have had headquarters. There aren’t going to be any people in those camps other than the peasants that live in the region. This will be more of a forensic exercise in which leads will be sought-out to connect inter-related terrorist organizations and to hopefully get a list of their members names and cells It is possible that this mission will have some success and it might well be that some of these elite forces will be attached to our allied forces  to provide sophisticated training, advanced weapons systems and air–ground coordination. Don’t hold your breath, if war comes, it isn’t going to take a long time; you can count on it.  

Another County Heard From

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