Interviewed before the London summit of babblers, Kharzai welcomes even more aid and men with guns.
The henchmen of Hakmatyr ...see following... are waiting for the UK troops to undertake there as yet unstated mission in the South of Afghanistan. K says poppy plantingsd are down 21 % this year, a curiously accurate figure. 21% are you sure thats not 22% K ? Evidently his agrarian sleuths are far more effective than tyhe EU bureaucrats who manage to miss millions of hectares of Greek and Italian Olive Trees.
Here is a prophetic piece which is worth re-reading
http://www.williambowles.info/asia/hekmatyar.html
22/12/04 “Official” Terrorist lights fires of resistance in Afghanistan by Edward Teague
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar leads the Mujahideen faction, of fundamentalist Sunni Muslim Pashtuns, the Hezb-e-Islami, which was one of the groups that ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His forces were a main beneficiary of the 7 mujahideen groups recognised by Pakistan and US intelligence agencies for the channelling of money and arms during the 1979-89 war. Among those arms were Stinger surface-to-air missiles. (The first Stinger was fired by a Hezb-e-Islami soldier near Jalalabad on September 25, 1986. The Stingers traced back to the Afghan Mujahedin have since been located in Chechyna, Tajikistan and the Philippines.)
Mullah Omar supported him during this period.Hezb-e-Islami clashed with other groups but refused to share power with Burhan-ud-Din Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Masood of the Northern Alliance for control of the capital, Kabul. As a result the The Hezb-e-Islami ( who with General Dostum) was blamed for the violence and destruction of that period, and Hekmatyr was called the butcher of the Muslims.
Many Afghan observers accuse Hekmatyar of killing more Mujahideen members than Communists. After losing support from the Pakistan ISI and the Saudis he was forced to flee Kabul when support shifted to the Taliban.Hekmatyr ended up being given refuge in Tehran where the Iranians saw him as a useful Pashtun bargain counter. However his very vocal opposition to the US and their man Kharzai , became an embarassment and he was expelled and his offices closed on Feb 26th 2002.Late in 2002 it was reported that Hekmatyar was giving full support to Karzai administration, although the warlord’s whereabouts were unknown. Soon after Afghan administration arrested 160 people in Kabul in a suspected anti-government plot who were said to be members of Hezb-e-Islami.Another report claimed the CIA reportedly spotted him in the Shegal Gorge, near Kabul, and tried (unsuccessfully) to kill him with a modified anti-tank missile from a Predator unmanned spy plane.
The US still had him in their sights and were said to be behind the arrest in Islamabad in October of his son, Ghairat Baheer.On February 19, 2003 American tolerance snapped and the US DOS designated Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as a Terrorist.All has been quiet so far this year, whilst the poppy harvest have been rolling in and the pipeline of drugs packed in bales of cotton shipped by Karimov’s daughter, to the West through Uzbekistan keeps rolling on. Now the warlords see an opportunity to remove the puppet US administration in Kabul, whilst an increasingly desperate Kharzai is asking his US protectors to set up bases in Kabul and elsewhere.
There are reports that five parties met last week near Mazar-e-Sharif (N Afghanistan) and agreed to support the mass mobilisation of people against the US presence.and to turn it into a political movement. Among those present was former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ittahad-i-Islami Afghanistan, a representative of two local Tajik groups and a group from neighbouring Uzbekistan.Whilst Western Press reports have been anxious to suggest that the Afghan rioting last week was directly related to the Newsweek report of Koranic toilet douching ( a widely read weekly in Kabul ?) The Taliban radio and prayer leaders at local mosques, were asking Afghans to rise up against the American presence in the country. A prayer leader at a local mosque in Kabul, Maulvi Habibullah Shariati, was arrested when he told those who had gathered for the prayers to kick out the American forces from the country.The Hizb-i-islami Afghanistan, a Taliban movement led by Maulvi Younus Khalis, as well as Gulbadin Hikmatyar’s Hezb -e- Islami were the most active segments within the Pashtun-dominated cities of Kabul, Jalalabad, Khost, Asadabad and Kandahar, that were asking for a massive mobilisation against the US presence in Afghanistan.
Diplomatic sources in Kabul see a strong spring offensive (That is 2005 remeber and was on the button) that the Taliban fighters have launched, with a much wider and popular a wider political movement against the US.UK / NATO military observers were seen in the region last week considering a call from the White House (Condi / Rummy et. al. as the ordure hits the aircon) to plunge UK troops into this bloody cauldron.
Watch this space for an announcement about troop movements from the Scotsman John Reid AKA Minister of Defence – augmenting NATO forces (now approx 500) – beefing up the response – sharing the burden – spreading the load – part of a widening response in the War on Terror – blah blah … pulling US chestnuts out of the fire – re-run history reel .. Terrorist aided by US bites the hand that feeds … Osama ? Hekmatyar ?Get yer placards out.
Meanwhile reports about the Apache Longbow, talk of hefty maintenance, lack of spoares, unreliability...remember we opened a production line in the UK to make them.. thought the UK could teach the US to make engineering equipment ?
Probably the lost curious aspect of the Reid announcement on salisbury Plain was that nobody pointed out that the Plain , Norfolk and Otterburn are somewhat flatter than the borders of South Afghanistan... but hey he got to wear a natty Cammo jacket.
