Nato's Military Vehicles Set on Fire

Sun, 25 Apr 2010

As Reuters reports: "NATO and Afghan forces came under heavy fire while searching a compound in the eastern Afghanistan province of Logar, setting off a gun battle that killed two United States soldiers and five insurgents, NATO and General Mustafa Mosseini, the province's chief of police said Friday. A search of the compound later turned up automatic rifles, material for making roadside bombs and blasting caps. Among the dead was a Taliban commander with ties to the Haqqani group, a Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban faction with close ties to Al Qaeda, according to NATO." One day later Reuters reported: "The French news agency reports hundreds of tribesmen took to the streets shouting anti-U.S. slogans. The news service said the demonstrators insisted that the men killed and detained were civilians. Afghan officials said that residents of Logar then set fire to several military vehicles, protesting the military action (They were all NATO military vehicles)."

Now, why in the world would these Afghans protest the killing of armed and well-known Taliban by NATO? I might understand if they were protesting the killing of civilians, especially if they were being killed recklessly. Is this common, or has it been common all these years for Afghans to protest the killing of extremists like the Taliban? No. These Afghans were not protesting the killing of armed active Taliban like the ones that US and NATO forces routed in Logar. Or, at the very least, their protests were not the ones that ended up with actions like attacking and burning NATO military vehicles. Because a day later, while I was about to post a new article on my website, yet another report was issued:

"KABUL, Afghanistan. Twelve trucks, most of them carrying fuel to a NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, were burned by an angry crowd early Sunday less than 30 miles from Kabul, according to local officials and NATO reports. The attack was thought to be in retribution for two raids by a joint Afghan-American force over the weekend, Afghan officials said." 

This is the first time people of Afghanistan expressed their anger against NATO and Americans at this level. What are the reasons? (1) America's announcement that it would begin pulling the American troops starting July 2011; (2) NATO's announcement to handover the military command to Afghans; and (3) Karzai's recent anti-west comments (Please go to my web site and read my related article: Karzai: Another Suicide Bomber). In that article I analyze Karzai's participation in Kandahar's Meeting of Elders (April 3, 2010), and I conclude that his words in that meeting were extremely provocative. In fact, he as much as incited his own people to create political protests and uprisings. How is that possible? Because the Afghan people saw just how soft America's reaction was in the wake of Karzai's comments both in his parliament speech April first, and in the Kandahar Elders meeting on April third. And so, fearing that the end is very near for the presence of American troops in Afghanistan, the people suddenly realized that they now needed to establish some credit for their future, when the Taliban comes roaring back. In other words, they simply want to save their own throats.

Karzai's CNN Interview

During an interview with CNN's Fared Zakeria in February, 2009, President Karzai was asked about his brother's involvement in the narcotic trade in Afghanistan. Karzai paused and then stated that each time he protests the killing of civilians in Afghanistan by American forces, the next day the American media goes after him with these kinds of allegations to shut him up! Is this how Karzai views American media? Is this the way the American media is? My understanding of the American media is quite the opposite. During the coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse in Iraq, the American media did not go after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki when he protested the abuse in that prison. The American media is not looking for ways to defend US foreign policy. In fact, quite to the contrary, the US media can be criticized for being too critical of US foreign policy.

The point is not that Mr. Karzai's understanding of American media is wrong. The point is that Karzai made this absurd claim as a head of state on an internationally televised interview that the rest of the Islamic world—and many more people who are critical of anything that America does—are tuned in to. Karzai's ridiculous claims only serve to fuel the hatred because they place doubt in the minds of millions of people around the world, or worse, cause them to believe that perhaps Americans knowingly and purposely are killing civilians in Afghanistan. People around the world tend to view Karzai as an American guy, or at least as an insider friendly to America, and they will very likely take him seriously on his accusations of American troops deliberately killing civilians. 

The US General in Afghanistan, in a television interview in September, 2009, said, "Our goal is to win Afghan skeptical minds and hearts." Why then do we not try to win at least Karzai's "skeptical mind and heart?" And each time Karzai claims that our troops are killing innocent Afghan civilians, how many more Afghan hearts and minds become skeptical! Is this the kind of guy we should be spending millions of dollars to install as a leader in Afghanistan? I know with certainty that American troops are ten times more careful than Afghans not to kill civilians.

Taliban Leaders Arrested in Pakistan

March-15-2010

For several months, President Karzai has been bragging about making peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and through all of this time, secret negotiations were going on between parties. Suddenly, starting in February 2010, the Pakistani secret service started arresting some key Taliban leaders. The naive American media quickly got very excited - was this a bold new shift in Pakistani policy? But then as Pakistan made even more arrests of key Taliban members, the news broke that in fact these Taliban were the ones participating in those secret peace talks with the CIA or the Afghan government.

All those years, when these murderers were fighting in Afghanistan and were sending suicide bombers to target allied troops and innocent Afghans, they were living freely in Pakistan, and nobody was arresting them. Why now? Quite simply, the Pakistan government realized that the peace talks with Afghan government were inevitable, and that they might very well lead to a stabilized government in Afghanistan that would threaten their opium trade. So they came up with a diabolical plan. On the one hand they started arresting those Taliban leaders who were engaged in those secret talks with the Afghan government to prevent any American or Afghan intervention, and on the other hand they hand-picked their own representative to participate in those so-called peace talks. That person was Gulbuddin Hykmatyar! ISI has 30 years of experience with Hykmatyar. He was responsible for shelling Kabul in 1992 for several months to help ISI gain the control of Afghanistan. He was the one that, when ISI asked him to leave all of his arsenal and fighters to the Taliban, he obeyed and did so.

So, after all of these years that Hykmatyar and his guerrillas were busy targeting American and allied forces, as ISI wanted, when ISI needed someone to engage in those so-called peace talks (I would suggest that they needed someone to disrupt those peace talks), Hykmatyar was picked to trick the allied forces. ISI's calculation, perhaps accurate, was that the Americans by that time were tired of being in Afghanistan, and desperately were trying to create some kind of new unified government in Afghanistan so that they could leave, just like Gorbachev had done in the late 1980s. In other words, they wanted to exploit growing American sentiment against continued involvement in Afghanistan. Furthermore, at about the same time, Bin Laden boasted that he would spend 30 billion dollars to modernize the Afghan army.

Naturally, ISI would want to have their agents already in place within the Afghan government, so that as soon as the Americans leave, the Afghan army would simply fall into their hands, and then of course ISI would reap the benefits of this huge arm deal. That is the multi-billion dollar dream of ISI. As an expert, I can categorically state that these peace talks will not in any way help Afghanistan or bring peace to the region, nor will they help American and European long term interests.

Muhammad Ali and Major Nidal Hassan

Muhammad Ali and Major Malik Nidal Hassan are both Muslims who refused to serve in a war that they objected to. Unlike Major Nidal, Ali did not say, "I am a Muslim and I reject to be deployed to an Islamic country" (although he also did not say, "Send me to Israel to see what kind of soldier I am"). This is what Ali said: "I will not disgrace my religion, my people, or myself by becoming a tool to enslave people who are fighting for their own justice and equality." Also unlike Major Nidal, Ali did not pick up a gun and randomly shoot at his comrades. He did not kill or wound dozens of people.


At the time that Ali refused to serve in the Vietnam War (1969), I was only a child in Afghanistan, perhaps a second-grader. But Ali's rejection to be deployed was such big news even in my little town of Kabul that, to this day, I remember it like it was yesterday. Even at that young age, and thousands of miles away, I remember feeling like I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Ali in America, or even as if I was suddenly becoming his follower. I was even more proud when, even as he was stripped of his championship title and lost his boxing license, Ali still stood his ground firmly without wavering an inch. Isn't this what an excellent and compassionate human being is all about? I know Ali became a boxing champion in the ring, but Ali as a legend, Ali as an icon—that was born outside the ring. Even now, decades later, as a Muslim, as an Afghan, as an Afghan American, as a human being, I am deeply proud of Ali. I share this pride with millions of people across the world. Despite race or color, blacks, whites, Chinese, Russians, Japanese and all other races share this human pride with Ali. As a human being that moment is one of the highlights of the better side of our human history. As an American, what Ali did was and remains one of the brightest highlights of our proud American history.

Quite to the contrary, as a Muslim, as an Afghan, as an Afghan American, and as a human being, I am ashamed of Major Nidal. Not only am I ashamed but I am outraged for what he did and as an American. I am still bleeding from his terrible deeds. The only people that support Major Nidal are people like Bin Laden, the Taliban, ISI, and other extremists.

By rejecting deployment in Afghanistan, Major Nidal did nothing at all to help the poor Afghan people. By refusing to go there, his actions only served to support the opium growers, the drug dealers, and people like Bin Laden and the Taliban—those who are responsible for killing close to one million innocent Afghans, all of them Muslims. According to witnesses, as Major Nidal was shooting at his comrades, killing and wounding them, he was shouting "Allahu Akbar." (God is Great). This is what Muslims are supposed to shout when they kill a non–Muslim—that is, when we believe that such an act is part of our holy duty (Jihad). But that is not limited to the killing of non-Muslims, because once one allows himself to take another human being's life, then one can find reasons to take other people's lives, too.

This is what has been happening in our Islamic world for the last 1400 years. Of course for misguided, sick people like Major Nidal who live in Muslim countries, killing Muslims is always easier because they tend not to be protected by their local and state governments. What I mean by that is, fortunately Major Nidal 's rampage was stopped quickly, but in Afghanistan it has been for 30 years that people like Major Nidal have been on one rampage after another, and for those 30 years the non-stop killing has taken the lives of close to 2 million innocent people.

Why do I hate it when I hear of murderers shouting "Allahu Akbar?" Because for the last 30 years, when people like Major Nidal killed innocent Afghans (all Muslims) they shouted "Allahu Akbar." In 1992 when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (the most notorious Mujahedeen leader) was shelling Kabul with hundreds of missiles a day, every day (for months), each time his thugs fired a missile, they shouted "Allahu Akbar." Deplorably, I think we Muslims are the only people on the face of the Earth who continually kill people in the name of God. Please don't tell me that Major Nidal's killing spree has nothing to do with Islam.

I have recently published, in English, my book of 600 pages all about Islam. What Major Nidal did has everything to do with Islam. It is certainly not the version that Muhammad Ali learned, but sadly, it is the version that Bin Laden, the Taliban, and hundreds of thousands of other Muslims have apparently learned, are learning, and are teaching. Major Nidal was a sick psychiatrist who was infected with a deadly germ that I call IEG (the Islamic Extremism Germ). This disease can be treated in its early stages, and the best thing we can do is to vaccinate young Muslims and prevent their minds from being infected. The best and most inexpensive way to deal with this disease of the mind is to give IEG more importance than global warming. I am outraged that the US government has spent over one trillion dollars in eight years to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan without a significant result, but it did not spend one hundred million a year to vaccinate millions of people in the Islamic world, specifically in Afghanistan, to prevent this disease.

Mistake After 9/11

Probably the biggest mistake we ever made in Afghanistan after 9/11 is that we continued to listen to Pakistan. Pakistan was perhaps the first country to send its condolences to the US after the attacks on 9/11. And just as quickly, they sent their envoy to the Taliban and asked them to surrender Osama Bin Laden! This is the same Pakistan that was responsible for creating the Taliban, secretly transporting Bin Laden into Afghanistan, and helping Al Qaeda build military training camps there. Pakistan, which never paid any serious attention to our interests previously, and in fact totally ignored US interests in the region, was now consoling us and was pretending to be the hero that was coming to our rescue after that tragic day. Imagine if it had been Iran that had aided Afghanistan's Taliban and Al Qaeda, in which case we probably would have bombed them immediately after 9/11.


Instead, we attacked Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. Pakistan was in large part responsible for 9/11, but we allowed ourselves to be misled by their feigned shedding of tears for our losses and their deceptiveness in acting as if they wanted to bring the people responsible to justice. We fell for it, and as soon as they saw our guards down, they began to deceive us even further. They began to tell us:


(1) Please don't attack the Taliban because there are lots of Moderate Taliban and we can work with them;


(2) Don't allow the Northern Alliance forces to come to Kabul and attack the Taliban, because the Taliban are Pushtoons, and therefore all of the other Pushtoons will join the Taliban; and


(3) Don't attack the Taliban because they are having a clerics meeting to discuss the possible surrender of Bin Laden.


And further, Pakistan, being the great "educator" that they are, told us that Afghanistan is made of tribes that are often enemies of each other. Taliban belong to the Pushtoon tribe, and their opposition belong to the Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek tribes. As I stated earlier, Pakistan told us not to use Northern Alliance (United Front) forces to pursue the Taliban because then all Pushtoons would join forces with the Taliban. We bought that argument hook, line, and sinker, and we backed off pursuing the Taliban. That was probably our biggest mistake of all, because we had tens of thousands of Afghan forces ready to go after the Taliban, and we lost the initial momentum that we could have used.

Contrary to what Musharraf and Pakistan told us, Afghanistan is one country and one people. And in fact, even prior to the US joining the fight after 9/11, there were tens of thousands of Pushtoons fighting alongside Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek against the Taliban. We did not use them, and the results were tragic. Because instead, we listened to our so-called friends in Pakistan and we played right into the hands of both the Taliban and the ISI. We gave them billions of dollars in aid that they continue to use against us, because they use that money to acquire weapons and to continue to recruit extremists. We need to turn our back on Pakistan and its deceptions once and for all.

A Ten Thousand Toilets Shrine for Osama

The fate and the future of America's war against terrorism depends on who will build Osama's grave monument and turn it into a shrine. Who will it be: the extremists, who would build a ten thousand stars shrine, or Americans, who would build a ten thousand toilets shrine. The more the US and the west insists on emphasizing Osama's 9/11 crimes, the more we unite Muslims around Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the ISI, and the more we help them to build that ten thousand stars shrine. It is human nature—if we were to see a silverback Gorilla fighting with a little monkey, deep inside we all sympathize with the monkey—especially if that monkey shows some courage and fights back.

To the Islamic world, Osama and Al Qaeda are a lot like that little monkey, and unfortunately the US and the west are, to many Muslims, seen to be just like that silverback Gorilla. And because we are supposedly the silverback bully, Osama and Al Qaeda are our little monkey. And Muslims will not sympathize with Americans, as much as they cry about 9/11. Deep inside they even push us toward praising Osama. But if we in the US and the west stop talking about and dwelling on 9/11, at least for a while, and if we instead start talking about the crimes that are Osama, his gang of Al Qaeda, his accomplices (the Taliban) and his bosses (the ISI) have all committed against Muslims, we will be able to turn the tide. Because then Osama becomes that silverback, against the poor, helpless, Afghan people. He and his accomplices are responsible for killing tens of thousands of poor Muslims in Afghanistan alone. What for? For drug money! That is what the war in Afghanistan is really about.

Afghanistan was turned into opium farms by Pakistan, as soon as the Russians left Afghanistan, and especially when their puppet regime fell apart (1992). Since then Osama and his resources were all used for that purpose. Yes, and when the Muslims realize this, then they will look at that face of Osama and Al Qaeda and Taliban and ISI, and they will not sympathize with him, or them, anymore. They will stand up against all of them. Isn't that what we want? Yes, and then the Muslims themselves will build a ten thousand toilets shrine for Osama, and they will bury Al Qaeda and the Taliban and the ISI in that same grave.

  Read my book Afghan Hearts and Minds. Go to my web site Afghan-expert.com. This is now at least 25 years that I am reciting this. Can some of you hear me finally?  

Just Like France, Should the US Ban the Burqa?

A poor, God-loving Muslim woman living in France apparently no longer has the right to cover herself the way she thinks is proper, this despite all of these other women who routinely wear very revealing and highly provocative clothing or scanty bikinis in public, where strip clubs abound, and yet their rights are preserved!

What did the French people see in the burqa that, despite all the personal freedoms that people enjoy in Europe in general, and in France in particular, that moved them to ban the burqa?

Here in America, any such move to ban the burqa would immediately be condemned by many as a violation of a woman's freedom of speech. It would also be a violation of the freedom of religion, and these are the two most fundamental rights we have in America. Or would it be?

In order to have a better indication of what is going on here, we need to look at whether these Muslim women are truly wearing the burqa voluntarily and of their own free will, or is someone or some organization forcing these women to wear it. Over thirty years ago, I was a student at Kabul University, where at the time there were at least a couple of thousand women studying at that university. Kabul University was and still is the biggest university in Afghanistan, and that is why young women from all over Afghanistan go there to study, including many from the most remote villages in Afghanistan, which usually have a very conservative Islamic mindset. Yet, I can barely recall one single girl at that University who actually wore even the smallest covering—the little Chader, or scarf—let alone a full scale Chadery or burqa (veil). Today by contrast, thirty years later, if you go back to that same university, I bet you will not find one girl who is without a fully covering veil.

Now let’s go back to Iran before Khomeini, which again is about thirty years ago. Back then you could barely ever find a girl who was wearing that long burqa, or veil. Iran was even more modern socially than Afghanistan or Pakistan. But go pay a visit today, and you will not find even a single girl or lady that is not wearing one of those long, fully covering burqas! So why is it that in both Afghanistan and Iran, thirty years ago, when women had the freedom to wear the burqa or not, no one wanted to wear it, and yet today they all “willingly” hide themselves under that burqa! I hope you still remember those gruesome scenes of members of the Taliban beating women on street corners in Kabul. Those women were wearing their burqas as they were required to—the heaviest one that covers the most, called the Chadery—but even that was not enough for the fanatics, because one of the women had a couple of small holes in her old stockings, and thus the fact that a nickel-size patch of her skin was visible, that was enough for the Taliban to beat her in front of the eyes of hundreds of onlookers!

No, I think it is safe to say that wearing the burqa is most often not the choice that a woman would actually make for herself, and so in most cases these women are not wearing it voluntarily of their own free will. They are in fact being forced to put it on. Whenever these women see an opportunity, either politically or socially, to stop wearing the burqa or to stop being forced to wear it, they immediately throw it away, just like they did in Afghanistan and Iran 30 years ago. The sad fact is that they wear it only under duress, in other words, when they are forced by others to put it on. Sometimes they are under that pressure for so long and so much that these women will actually argue for wearing it, and that fact can confuse others, particularly non-Muslims, into believing that they are not being forced, or that they wear it because they really do want to.

Viewed in this way, if America was to ban the wearing of the burqa, it would really not be violating a woman's right to dress the way she wants to, because it’s established that women do not want to wear it at all. Instead, banning the burqa would amount to prohibiting a man (or an organization) from forcing a woman to hide in the burqa—from forcing her to wear it against her will. Some might argue that banning the burqa would be disrespectful of Islam and a slap in the face to Muslims. No, it will not be. For example, Islam actually allows men to have four wives and hundreds of sex slaves (Kaneez) all at the same time. Do we allow men to practice that here in America? Of course not! And is that viewed as disrespecting Islam? Not at all—it is only a matter of respect for American laws in America.

But one might wonder why the French are creating so much hassle over this issue at this particular moment, when it seems like there are so many other pressing issues that are much more important to resolve, from wars to the serious worldwide economic recession. So then, why did the French people go through so much trouble, and withstand so much international criticism, just to ban the burqa?

I seriously doubt that banning the burqa in France had anything whatsoever to do with women's rights, or even with the idea to prevent possible abuse by Muslim men. Let me tell you exactly why they did it. They noticed that wherever there was a woman wearing one of those long, fully covered burqas, there was usually a man nearby with the characteristic long beard of the extremist. When followed secretly by plain-clothes security officials, these men invariably ended up in a Mosque full of the most extreme Muslims. Thus French counterterrorism police realized that behind this burqa and behind that telltale beard there was most often an extreme Islamic mindset, a mindset which was fed by extremism, and a mindset that was feeding back that extremism, or passing it on to others. They realized that in most cases, these radicals were the ones who were pushing other peace-loving Muslims against the west, their religions, their lifestyle.


In this way the extremists were using those same civil rights—which were designed to protect the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech—against the hosting countries. French counterterrorism experts further realized that these women in the burqa and men in the beards who always shadowed the women were in fact the ones who were raising their kids in isolation, through strict home schooling, for example, and instilling in those children a deep hatred for the western countries in which they lived, waiting to carry out their terrorist plots. And unfortunately, it is likely that these kids will become the softest targets for the extremists who are working invisibly, from behind the scenes at many local mosques. But the saddest thing is that some of these kids, after being brainwashed and turned against the west, will then be pushed to the next level of joining extreme anti-America and anti-west organizations. From there, they will be pushed to the next level of taking trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and some other places, where they will be introduced to some Sheiks. Then they will be moved to the next and most extreme level of participating in military-style exercises and training. And the worst extremists among them will be the most likely to become the future members of "sleeper cells" here in America and Europe, where they will plot terror attacks against both military and civilian targets. Particularly these days, it seems that they are bent on hitting civilian targets the most.

But the more important, and the most despicable thing about these extremists, who live among us in our communities, while trying to hide behind the burqa and the beard, is that they are not only forcing their own children to become radicalized, they are also doing it to other kids, whether at their own mosques or within the community at large. Through their own kids and their women they will push other kids and families to follow their terrible example. Islamic societies like the Pakistani, Afghani, Iraqi, Irani and so many others are closely connected. Some of these societies—even if they want to—do not have the resolve or the means to disconnect from the extremists who are around or among them, because they are afraid of becoming isolated. That fear makes them even more vulnerable to being manipulated and victimized by these extremists.

In order to win the war against terrorism, we need to take extremism very seriously. While we have spent over one trillion dollars in the last 10 years in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, and we did everything militarily that we possibly could, by contrast we did nothing, or close to nothing, to fight extremism. We will never succeed to win the war against terrorism without fighting and eradicating extremism. We need to concentrate on attacking the cause of the sickness—the disease, the germs—instead of attacking the sick.