By Eric Margolis | Information Clearing House, Aug 18, 2009
This week’s presidential election in Afghanistan will be an elaborate piece of political theater designed to show increasingly uneasy Western voters that progress is being made in the war-torn nation after seven years of US-led occupation.
Most Afghans already believe they know who will win the vote: the candidate chosen by the United States and its NATO allies.
Voting will mostly be held in urban areas, under the guns of US and NATO troops. The countryside, ruled by Taliban, who are often local farmers moonlighting as fighters, is too dangerous for this electoral charade. Over half of Afghanistan is under Taliban influence by day, 75% at night.
The entire election and vote-counting election commission are financed and run by the US. So are leading candidates. Ten thousand Afghan mercenaries hired by the US will police the polls and intimidate voters. US-financed Afghan media are busy promoting Washington’s candidates.
The Pashtun Taliban, a fiercely anti-Communist, religious movement, is banned from the election. Pashtun tribesmen form over half of Afghanistan’s population but have been largely excluded from power by the Western occupation.
Taliban vows to fight the sham election, which it calls a tool of foreign occupation. Other nationalist and tribal groups battling Western occupation, notably Gulbadin Hekmatyar’s Hisbi Islami and forces of Jalaladin Hakkani, are also excluded from the election.
In fact, all parties are banned; only individuals are allowed to run. This is a favorite tactic of non-democratic regimes, particularly the US-backed dictatorships of the Arab world.
Real power is held by the US-installed Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, whose administration is being undermined by charges of corruption and involvement in drug dealing. Behind him are two powerful warlords: former Communist secret police chief Mohammed Fahim, a Tajik, and the recently returned from exile Uzbek warlord, Rashid Dostam. These two pillars of the old Afghan Communist regime were arch henchmen of the former Soviet occupiers and notorious war criminals.
President Hamid Karzai’s main `rival,’ Abdullah Abdullah, fronts for the Russian and Iranian-backed Tajik Northern Alliance. Technocrat Ashraf Gani is another supposedly leading candidate. Both men are expected to get high positions in any new government formed by Karzai. Their primary role is to give the impression of an electoral contest.
The northern Tajiks and Uzbeks, traditional foes of the majority Pashtun, are in cahoots with Russia, Iran and India, all of whom have designs on Afghanistan. They continue to dominate Karzai’s faltering regime. The majority Pashtun are largely excluded from power.
When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989, they held fairer elections than the US-run votes. Of course, the Soviet’s man, Najibullah, won, but at least dissention was voiced. In Washington’s stage-managed Afghan votes, real opposition is excluded. The US used the same trick in Iraq’s rigged elections.
Ironically, the US and its NATO allies have been blasting Iran for lapses in its recent presidential election while stage-managing far more questionable elections in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The UN, which, in the words of a senior American diplomat, has become `a leading tool of US foreign policy,’ is being used to validate the US-run election. The feeble current UN chief, Ban-Ki moon, was put into his job by Washington.
Meanwhile, the party-line North American media keeps lauding the vote. It has long-term memory loss.
In 1967, the `New York Times,’ a vocal supporter of the war in Afghanistan, wrote of US-supervised elections in war-torn Vietnam, `83% of voters cast ballots…in a remarkably successful election…the keystone of President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of the constitutional process in Vietnam.’
The vote may be close, since so many Afghans dislike Karzai, forcing a runoff. Washington may impose a CIA-World Bank approved `CEO’ on poor Karzai, making him a double figurehead.
Whoever wins, President Barack Obama will end up the real power of Afghanistan.
Ravaged Afghanistan needs genuine, honest elections, and patient national reconciliation, free of foreign manipulation. That’s the only true road to peace.
America has a great deal to teach Afghanistan about how to run clean elections and build the essential institutions of democracy. As I underline in my latest book, `American Raj – American and the Muslim world,’ this is what America should be exporting to the non-democratic world, not B-1 bombers and Predators.
Running phony elections is unworthy of the United States and demeans its values and traditions. The way to real peace and stability in Afghanistan can only be through a national consensus and negotiated settlement that includes Taliban and its allies.
But President Obama is desperate for some sort of victory, though he cannot even properly define the term. Senior US generals warn of defeat in Afghanistan if the US garrison is not doubled. The conflict continues to spread into neighboring Pakistan. Americans are being prepared for a widening of the war `to defend Afghan democracy.’
The US and NATO watch in horror as their casualties sharply mount and they have nothing to show voters for the latest Afghan imperial misadventure but body bags and tantalizing mirages of Central Asia’s fabled oil and gas.
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and Dawn. www.ericmargolis.com
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Xu Zhiyong is a co-founder of Gongmeng, a legal group which has dealt with some high-profile human rights cases. Photograph: Greg Baker/AP
CIA hired Blackwater for assassin program
August 20, 2009Blackwater changes its name to Xe after Iraq murders
Republicans ‘deeply concerned’ as US Attorney General poised to look into abuses by CIA interrogators.
WASHINGTON – The CIA hired the security firm Blackwater in 2004 as part of its secret program to find and kill suspected terrorists, US media said Thursday, citing current and former intelligence officials.
The program, on which the Central Intelligence Agency spent several million dollars, was cut before launching any missions and the hiring of an outside company was a major reason that CIA director Leon Panetta moved to cancel it, the New York Times said.
Shortly after learning about the effort in June, Panetta pulled the plug and briefed lawmakers on details of the program, of which they had not been informed since 2001.
Citing government officials, the Times said the CIA had separate agreements with top Blackwater executives for the outsourcing, as opposed to a formal contract with the whole firm.
The State Department cut ties with Blackwater following ongoing allegations of abuse in Iraq. The North Carolina-based company renamed itself Xe after the Iraq government banned it in January over killing civilians in Baghdad’s Nisur Square on September 16, 2007.
It had been given “operational responsibility” for the targeting program, according to the Washington Post, which noted the covert effort was canceled before any missions were conducted.
Before the program was cut, however, the private security firm had already been awarded “millions of dollars for training and weaponry,” according to the Post.
“Outsourcing gave the agency more protection in case something went wrong,” said an unnamed intelligence official close to program, quoted by daily.
Republicans denounce possible CIA interrogator probe
A group of Republican US senators sharply warned Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday against launching a formal probe into alleged abuses by CIA interrogators of suspected terrorists.
“Such an investigation could have a number of serious consequences, not just for the honorable members of the intelligence community, but also for the security of all Americans,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Holder.
Republican Senators Jon Kyl, the party’s number two in the Senate; Kit Bond, co-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Jeff Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee were among the nine signers.
The lawmakers said they were “deeply concerned” by media reports that Holder was poised to name a special prosecutor to look into alleged abuses by CIA interrogators of suspected terrorists.
“There is little doubt that further investigations and potential prosecutions of CIA officials would chill future intelligence activities,” the senators warned.
“The intelligence community will be left to wonder whether actions taken today in the interest of national security will be subject to legal recriminations when the political winds shift,” the senators said.
Holder may be close to announcing a probe focused on whether interrogators went beyond torture – authorized by former president George W. Bush’s administration, according to news accounts.
Bush’s Republican allies and some Democrats have argued that rank-and-file interrogators acted in good faith and followed directives from higher ups in using techniques, like “waterboarding” suspects, and obtained valuable information.
Some former intelligence officials have challenged that claim, saying that harsh tactics elicited no better information than traditional approaches.
And human rights groups have called for formal investigations into charges of torture, which violates US law.
So far, US President Barack Obama has resisted calls from some congressional Democrats to establish a “truth and reconciliation” panel to look into alleged abuses.
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Tags: assassin program, Attorney General Eric Holder, Blackwater/Xe, CIA Director Leon Panetta, CIA interrogators, Republican Senators, secret program, US President Barack Obama
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