Coney Al Jazeera

Correct me if I`m wrong, but the US bankrolled the mujahideen to get the BAD GUYS out of Afghanistan. They did not pay to have them screw up Pakistan, Kashmir or the West down the line. Was the policy shortsighted? Yes. Was it self-serving? Well, call it in line with `national interest` policy principle. Is the US responsible for the mess? Well, is Jinnah responsible for the MQM and home-bred extremist militants?

Jay, put that hand down, will you!

It would have anyway.

The Soviet Union was last to collapse -- the Eastern Europe -- had nothing to do with Afghanistan -- started crumbling first -- East Germany was the last straw that broke the Bear`s back.

The reason -- over militarization beyond its means -- plus Gorbachev`s ambivalence.



The Afghan war hastened the demise.

Let Communist China militarize and start a war on Taiwan -- and it will meet the same fate.

Does the author know exactly how Bin Laden, specifically, was funded by the US? Where was Bin Laden during the original Afghan conflict? How was he funded by the USA?

Or is the author, like CNN, relying on heresay?

Everything else seems quite accurate. The best thing, historically, that can happen to any country is to lose a war to the USA. Just ask Germany and Japan. Afghanistan will be much better off, after losing this war. Provided the US stays there. Having said that, the US and Russia (why the hell isn`t anyone blaming them, they started the whole thing, and killed over a million Afghans) started the whole thing to begin with. The reconstruction they are doing now, should have been done in 1990.

I have started reading Gore Vidal. Very interesting.

His simple and small book, ``Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace; Why we are so hated`` is a must read.

According to him, even an author of his reputation was unable to get in published in the US, after Sep 11. So he had it published in Italy, where he lives in summer. It became a runaway best-seller, and was translated into twelve languages. It has only recently been published in the USA.

Re: PM

Before the ``blame game`` starts, it would be worth while to remember that the American decision to aid the resistence against the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan, was a political decision. The American decision to leave Afghanistan, after the Soviet withdrawal, was also a political decision.

American intelliegence, specially CIA, is an extra-constitutional organization and like the NSC, was created as an act of Congress. CIA was mandated to aid the political objectives of the American foreign policy at the end of the Second World War and at the begining of the Cold War. The utiliztion of CIA in any operation, which aids in the furtherence of the United States foreign policy objectives, has a political rationale behind it.

A dichotomy has to be articulated here. That is, there is a difference between providing intelligence estimates and reacting to them by making policy decisions. Most intelligence operations undertaken by the Americans are motivated by political considerations; both domestic and international and the life span of an intelligence operation is determined by the proposition of diminishing political returns to its over all utility.

It is not without precedent that most intelligence estimates are over ruled, of a long term consquence, due to a political cost-benefit analysis. The fault is not with the American intelligence, but with the politicans who oversee its operations.

To answer your question, American intelligence operations suffer from a political myopia, which refuses to acknowledge strategic implications of its political decisions. Again, to blame the American intelligence for its failures would be akin to blaming a patient for being sick! A better question would be why do the Americans have such a poor record of intelligence operations, which have ended causing more harm to the United States` strategic interests than in helping it?

The answer can be simply stated by asking the question, ``where does the buck stop?``

Ciao

Good people of Chowkville,

I`m trying to learn more about the Soviet Afghan war...pretty much the full works...like the weapons used by both sides, the tactics employed, recruitment of soldiers, development of some sort of a command and tactical structure amongst the Mujahideen, etc. etc. etc…

...if anyone could recommend any decent literature or any help, I`d be grateful! Ta.

Best Wishes

Umer M

re: Ferozk

``...CIA is an extra-constitutional organization ...``

Really?

The Soviet Union collapsed because of internal economic & political rot, not because of the military defeat in Afghanistan. The Communist/socialist economic model was failing & the Soviets just could`nt keep up with the more efficient Western economies. The mujahadeen played a minor & I feel, incidental role. The best & majority of the Soviet military was in the European theater.

The when the satellite countries started falling, they did so like dominos, in a few weeks or so, without a shot being fired. If there was truly a miracle in the late 20th century, that was it!

Nobody, including & especially the US predicted it would end this way. It caught the Bush Sr administration totally by surprise. In fact it came so abruptly, it almost seemed like the the Comminust Bloc gave up the Cold War without a fight & stole some wind out of the US sails. Which gave rise to sarcastic comments like ``The Cold War is over & Germany & Japan won!``:)

Ferozk #5
Excellent post.

There was an oped piece in the NewYorkTimes archived now
May 14, 2002, Smarter Spying By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

He talked of how the CIA was a bureacracy which hadnot adapted its human intelligence gathering to post Cold-War threats like Al Qaeda. If I remember the details right, he related an anecdote about how a few years ago a CIA operative in a republic bordering Afghanistan (Uzbekistan or Tajikstan) asked the CIA for Dari language interpreters so he could gather information from Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban-NA civil war. He was told he couldn`t have Dari interpreters but he could have a 4-member CIA team visit and lecture on sexual harrassment issues in the workplace!

And there was the goofup about FBI refusing a search warrant for Moussaoui`s computer though there were French intelligence inputs on him?

``To answer your question, American intelligence operations suffer from a political myopia, which refuses to acknowledge strategic implications of its political decisions.``

Political leadership decides budgets and focus on the basis of maximising the benefit to themselves from the short-attention span of media/ public and their own short-term inward-looking political objectives lasting from administration to administration. The media is inward-looking too, for commerical reasons and uninterested in emphasising subtleties of foreign affairs and ringing warning bells until Americans die. A vicious cycle creating a closed system!

What is most surprising is the failure of the career foreign affairs experts like academics and foreign journalists and lack of long term memory/understanding of the many independently funded think tanks. These institutions/people`s livelihood and professional reputations DEPEND on keeping up-to-date knowledge of the regions of their speciality and make their warnings of impending problems heard and and who didnot.

These experts have developed 20/20 hindsight and NOW display expert and detailed knowledge about how the Saudi rulers have been ambivalent about funding armed radicals, how most Muslim countries are dictatorships with sizeable disenfranchised anti-US populations, how some organisations in Europe and US were rallying people and funds for anti-American activism, how there has been for many years a procession of well-to-do Arabs/others through training camps in Afghanistan, how Al Qaeda could have acquired material for a dirty bomb. Why the heck didn`t they say so earlier?

Nice post, Feroze. Well put.

The CIA and State Department professionals warned against letting the Zia govt decide which groups would get US aid since only the most fundamentalist ones would get anything at all then and these groups were as anti-US as they were anti-USSR. However, they were overruled by Casey and Co in the govt.

There`s a fascinating interview with Brezinski (www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html) in which he says that the US aid to the Mujahideen started well before the Soviets invaded. In fact, the aid was designed to specifically provoke the Russians into invading.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, turns out the Soviets might not have been lying completely when they said they invaded Afghanistan to save it!

Rehan Ansari, you`re becoming more and more polished and a better read. I especially liked your ending,``Today, when they are grappling with power plays that are part of the package of globalisation, I wonder what medium, what activity can playfully introduce them to a new century``.

I watched a MASH show where the army is trying to hide the fact that it strafed a village and killed civilians and the doctors are trying to bring the army to the books as it were. In fact the entire MASH show qustioned america`s reasons for fighting a war in korea. You don`t hear much dissent now about WOT, only an occasional murmur. Even then, as you say, there is very little debate about how it was america that is ultimately responsible for all this mayhem. You wonder if the US has become less free as a nation.

Re: shankar #8

You are right in your analysis. The Soviet defence forces had over 4 million in active service, but only reached 115,000 peak in Afghanistan. That statistic deflates two theories (i) military defeat in Afghanistan brought the USSR down, and (ii) the goal of the Soviet advance in Afghanistan was to reach Karachi (had this been the case, would the Soviets not have diverted more men into Afghanistan than the paltry 115,000 that they spared?)

While spin-doctors try to figure out whether the child should have been aborted or prophylactic used-----there is still the uneasy feeling who did what to whom that saturday night.

Meanwhile,like elsewhere and everywhere, conquest of the hearts continues....and the colonial-clones & Dollar-Dollies are scrambling for an ever higher dosage of intoxicants!........May they drown in their own vomit.

__________________________________________________

June 22, 2002, 10:27PM

Islam taking root in southern Mexico

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS

Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico -- In recent years, Agustin Gomez Mendez and other Maya Indians in far southern Mexico have taken yet one more sharp turn in a long quest for redemption, deciding that Jesus Christ isn`t their personal savior after all.

``There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger,`` says Gomez Mendez, a poor farmer and father of six who converted his family to Islam in 1996 under the tutelage of Spanish missionaries.

Over the past few years, about 300 evangelical Christian Maya have converted to Islam in southernmost Chiapas state, which has been riven by spiritual struggles for centuries.

The conversions have left the Muslim Maya`s neighbors and academics mystified. But their missionary guides hope the new Muslims will prove the first in a wave of converts in Mexico.

The missionaries themselves are but the latest in a long line of religious teachers who have tried to mold the Maya soul. Dominican monks arrived in these chilly highlands with Spanish conquerors nearly 500 years ago. They were followed by Presbyterians, Pentecostals, evangelical preachers, left-wing Roman Catholic priests and Mormons.

But the Islamic Spaniards are the first of their kind here.

And they have forged a small but devoted following among the Maya.

``I was looking for God,`` says Gomez Mendez, ``I made the decision to become a slave of God.``

A missionary leader, Esteban Lopez, 52, says the Maya of Chiapas had been abandoned by Mexican society and are ripe for the Islamic group`s message of another path.

``They have lost their culture, everything,`` he says. ``Islam allows them to return to their roots.``

Most of the new Muslims once belonged to Chiapas` vibrant community of evangelical Christian Maya, which has been gaining thousands of converts since the first U.S. missionaries arrived 45 years ago.

The evangelicals rejected the traditional faith of their home communities, which mixes ancient Maya beliefs with 16th-century Roman Catholic tenets.

They refused to participate in or pay for festivals they considered pagan. They also gave up the heavy alcohol intake that often defines village life.

The evangelicals` defiance of the status quo and a critical shortage of farmland led to their expulsion in recent decades from San Juan Chamula, a tradition-bound cluster of villages a few miles north of San Cristobal.

Since the early 1970s, Gomez Mendez and thousands of evangelicals have crowded onto the steep mountain slopes on San Cristobal`s north side. Competition for the faithful has long been fierce among the dozens of churches that dot the neighborhoods. And many Chamulan evangelicals have switched congregations frequently, going where the message is stronger and benefits better, experts say.

``They change religions like they change socks,`` says Abdias Tovilla, a non-Indian who heads a coalition of Protestant churches in San Cristobal. ``As long as a church is helping them, they are happy.``

But Tovilla and other experts say some Maya evangelicals, though fervently religious, never fully embraced their new faith. Shorn from the centuries-old traditions of their community, they keep searching for a path to God.

Lorenzo Gomez, 67, was among the spiritual wanderers.

``I didn`t feel secure in the religion,`` says the convert now known by his Muslim name, Muhammed Ali. ``I have always had in my mind that I am not good, not safe. I should know more about what is in the world, how to be right with our lord.``

The Spanish Islamic missionaries arrived in 1995, amid turmoil caused by rebellion a year earlier by the mostly Maya Zapatista National Liberation Army. Starting slowly, the Spaniards began speaking about Islam to any Maya who would listen and wooing evangelical leaders.

In 1996, the Muslims offered to help the evangelicals establish a new market in San Cristobal, attracting many to the planning meetings.

Among those attending was Agustin Gomez Mendez, who then belonged to a Church of God congregation. Many people left when the talk at the meetings turned to Islam, but he stayed.

``I went to listen about the market but started to listen to the message,`` he says.

Like other Muslim converts here, Gomez Mendez says he was largely untroubled by abandoning the central article of Christian faith: that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

``I realized that God is only he who created everything,`` he says. ``The creator cannot have children. Jesus wasn`t God. He was a prophet.``

The 300 Muslims in Chiapas join several hundred others sprinkled throughout this largely Catholic nation of 100 million, according to Omar Weston, director-general of the Muslim Center in Mexico City. That number pales in comparison to the estimated 1 million in Brazil and 300,000 in Argentina.

Today, the Chiapas Muslims are headquartered in a handful of houses and low-slung buildings along a two-lane beltway that skirts San Cristobal, a colonial city of 100,000.

Partly with financing from abroad, the Chiapas Muslims began creating businesses to employ the new faithful.

The four dozen children at their madrassa, or school, spend 90 minutes a day studying the Quran and Islamic teachings in Arabic, says Lopez, the missionary. Classes also include mathematics, geography, Spanish and other lessons. But the greater mission, Lopez says, is to forge a pure Islamic society.

Lopez and the other Spaniards are members of the Murabitun, a largely European group of converts to the mystical Sufi strain of Islam. The group hopes to return to the fundamental Islam lived by the prophet Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion, and his early followers.

``We are going to the origins of when Islam first came to earth,`` Lopez says, ``trying to purify it. There isn`t a pure Islamic government in the world. That`s what we hope to create. An authentic answer.``

The group`s spiritual leader, Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, a Scotsman, has sharply condemned democracy and global capitalism. But he also recently spoke out against the terrorism of Sept. 11, arguing that the terrorists` real aim was to discredit and destroy Islam.

Active in South Africa, Chechnya, England, Spain and elsewhere, the Murabitun have been accused of being anti-Semitic. They have also been dismissed by many mainstream Muslims as a quasi-Islamic cult.

Arriving as they have on the heels of the Zapatistas` uprising, the Muslims have spurred unease, if not outright hostility, among many in Chiapas. State and federal officials have investigated the group`s finances and motives. Coverage in the local press has been largely negative.

Many academics who study the Maya view the group with a blend of suspicion and bemusement. Most Christians hold them at arms length.

In fact, some who originally flocked to the Spanish-led Muslims abandoned them with equal fervor.

``I did it for just a while,`` says Mateo Gomez Collazo, 42, who briefly sojourned with the Muslims four years ago. ``It`s difficult to leave my Christ behind.``

But while they`ve deserted the Murabitun, the dissidents seem resolute in their new faith.

Agustin Gomez Mendez and a handful of neighbors have built their own Islamic center a few miles from the main Muslim compound.

Gomez Mendez prays toward Mecca five times a day. The Quran, in Spanish and Arabic, anchors Islamic texts on a small bookshelf in his house.

He intends to teach his children, who go by Arabic names, to live in submission to Allah.

``I am happy being Muslim,`` he says.

To the Kummees(serfs) even the incoherent speech and the flailing gestures of the Chowdhrie reflect his intelligence & style.

To the colonial-clones & Dollar-Dollies the exhaust air of their massas is the sweet smell of success.....in Vietnam,in Cuba,in Korea,in Angola,in Somalia & many more.

There are only a handful of such Westiotic idologues around now and like those Japanese soldiers still believe that the war is not over.

Those uncorrupted by unclish `culture`& who have lived with the thugs in the Thug-territory have discovered something very revealing--------Thugs,too,bleed! __________________________________________________

Their Master`s Voice

Copyright: http://www.iviews.com

Published Saturday June 22, 2002

By Uri Avnery

When the furious mob was about to storm the sultan`s palace, the wazir`s agents spread the rumor that wheat was being distributed for nothing at the town gate. The mob forgot the palace and ran to the gate.

Suddenly the wazir jumped up and started to run. ``Where are you going?`` the sultan cried, ``You know that there is no wheat!``

``Who knows?`` retorted the wazir, ``Maybe there is?``

I was reminded of this story by the recent turn of events in America. After long months of sheepish silence, since September 11, during which all the US media marched in lockstep behind the President (much like the Israeli media behind Sharon), critical voices started to be heard. Where had the intelligence agency been? Could they have known in advance what was about to happen? Are they guilty of a monumental failure? Who is responsible? Only the agencies, or the President, too?

Bush did not like it at all. When his people realized that this was going to come to a head, the agencies discovered a horrible new conspiracy: the cruel enemy was planning to explode radioactive bombs in the US. They even discovered the frightful bomber: a little street-punk of Hispanic origin, who was about, at any moment, to commit this truly sophisticated outrage.

The nation was seized by hysteria, the media and the Congress again stood to attention. Perhaps there was even some truth in the story. As the wazir said: Who knows? Maybe there is?

In the meantime, the failures of the intelligence agencies were put in the freezer again. But one cannot suppress the fact for long. The US isn`t Israel; the media there are not used to goose-stepping and to licking the posterior of the people in power.

So what did the CIA and the FBI know? If they already had in their possession a multitude of suspicious facts, why did they not draw the obvious conclusions? Why did they not warn, take preventive steps, inform the leadership?

It reminded me of another episode, one that was quite different – and yet astonishingly similar.

After the 1973 Yom-Kippur war, the Chief-of-Staff, General David (``Dado``) Elazar, was relieved of his office. A Commission of Inquiry declared that he bore the main responsibility for the failure to mobilize the reserves and to move the troops to the front in time, a failure that enabled the Egyptians and Syrians to take the initiative and make significant advances at the beginning of the war.

Some months later Dado invited me to his home. He was suffering from severe mental stress, convinced that a terrible injustice had been done to him. How could he be held responsible for the failure, if the army intelligence department (known by its Hebrew acronym, AMAN) had hidden from him, before the war, all the information that had accumulated in its files?

What information? Sitting next to him, I listened with growing amazement when he enumerated some of the items that had come to the knowledge of AMAN at the time. For example: that an Egyptian army Mufti (Muslim chaplain) instructed the soldiers of his unit that from the next morning the Ramadan fast must be broken. Since the Ramadan fast is one of the five cardinal commandments of Islam, this by itself should have lit a giant red light in AMAN.

The intelligence department had a lot of such items. An Egyptian submarine at sea was ordered to observe absolute radio silence from a certain hour on. An Egyptian soldier used the wireless to take leave of his brother in another unit with the Muslim blessing reserved for believers who are facing death. And so on…

What had happened to all these items of information? Nothing. They were buried in the files. Why? Because the chief of AMAN, Elie Za`ira, was absolutely sure that the Egyptians would not dare to attack the mighty IDF. He believed that their movements were a big bluff, designed to exert pressure on the Israeli government. All the pieces of information received fell into the black hole of this preconceived idea (called in Hebrew ``Conceptsia``, a word that became famous at the time.) They were not brought to the knowledge of the Chief-of-Staff, and therefore did not reach the Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, or the Prime Minister, Golda Meir.

(Only Little Me had warned Golda in a Knesset speech, some months before that, that the Egyptians would attack, even if they were convinced that they would be beaten. Golda`s absolute refusal to respond to Sadat`s peace signals had caused a complete political freeze. The Egyptian were certain that a military attack, even a failed one, would break the ice.)

The Yom Kippur failure smashed the myth of Israeli invincibility and changed the situation in the Middle East. But it was not a unique occurrence. Far from it. Much the same thing happened to the Russians on the eve of the Nazi invasion (``Operation Barbarossa``), when Soviet intelligence had received in time exact details of the impending attack, including date and hour. Nearly the same thing happened to the Americans at Pearl Harbor. The list is long. Why did this happen to them? Where (as you say in Hebrew) is the dog buried?

I have pondered about our 1973 failure for years. What had caused an intelligent officer like Za`ira (no pun intended, I don`t think that ``army intelligence`` is necessarily an oxymoron) to stick to his ``conceptsia``, even when before his very eyes the Egyptian offensive was unfolding? Was it only intellectual arrogance, as some believed?

In Israel, the chief of AMAN has immense power. He is the only person to submit to the political leadership the ``national situation evaluation, which to a large extent dictates government policies. In theory, he is an a-political soldier, and his evaluations are supposed to be totally professional.

But is this really so? In every country and under every regime, the chief of intelligence knows that his career depends on the political bosses. Consciously or unconsciously, he adapts himself to the concepts of the leader – be he a ruthless dictator or a democratic Prime Minister.

After the Six-Day War Golda and Dayan led a nation intoxicated by victory. They did not dream of giving up any of the conquered territories. For this purpose, they spread contempt for the Arabs, the feeling that Arabs were vastly inferior, that one could safely ignore them. ``There is no such thing as a Palestinian people,`` Golda pronounced, and Dayan made jokes about the Arab armies. The army intelligence chief just adapted himself and turned this into the Conceptsia.

Stalin was not ready to admit that his agreement with Hitler was a historic mistake. Therefore, he threatened to send to Siberia any intelligence officer who brought him reports about the impending Nazi attack. The Americans made fun of the ``little yellow fellows`` and Franklin Roosevelt thought that he could provoke them with impunity.

Intelligence people hear their masters` voices and deliver the goods. Always. Much as the present Israeli intelligence chief supplies Sharon with the evaluations proving that Arafat is a villain and also quite irrelevant. These are leaked almost daily to the media.

Before September 11, 2001, the chiefs of the CIA and the FBI knew that the new president had no head for international affairs, that he wanted to concentrate his capabilities (such as they are) on domestic matters. Bush did not want to deal with the Middle East and quarrel with the mighty Jewish and Fundamentalist-Christian lobbies. So why tell him that in the Middle East an immense fury against America was building up, mainly because of its support for the Israeli occupation? That there was a concrete danger that Muslims were about to commit spectacular revenge actions? (And anyway, what could those miserable Arabs do?)

Therefore, no special importance was attached to the items of information coming in, which should have lit a big red ligh,t in time. They were not sent up, did not cause the quarreling agencies to pool information, and, of course, were not brought to the attention of the President and his crew in the White House.

Will an inquiry into this failure do any good? I wonder. Because, before the next disaster in the US, Israel or anywhere else, intelligence people will again deliver to their leaders exactly what they want to hear –all in the framework of a thoroughly ``professional`` Conceptsia.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, peace-activist, and former member of the Knesset.

Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims, principally the victims of U.S. fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms-military, strategic, and economic-is the greatest source of terrorism on Earth.... People are neither still nor stupid. They see their independence compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children taken away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism. But how patient the oppressed have been. Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalized places have at last come home.``

John Pilger, author - Hidden Agendas

Of course the kanjars are cheering for those who are anti-muslim & anti-Islam.It is just that they do not have the courage or moral rectitude to abandon munafiquat.A lot of `connections` and `convictions` are at loggerheads here.

__________________________________________________

Of course it`s a war on Islam

Bush and Blair call it a fight against terrorism, but many British Muslims see it as an assault on freedom

Faisal Bodi

The Guardian

It doesn`t seem so very long ago that another US president called Bush appeared before the American people to inform them that Operation Desert Storm had got under way. This was not a war against the Iraqi people, he assured them. It was a war to oust their despotic ruler from neighbouring Kuwait and usher in a new world order.

Ten years on and more than 500,000 ``excess`` child deaths later (according to Unicef`s figures), Saddam Hussein is still in power in a country reduced from a bread basket to a begging bowl by his iron-fist rule and US-led sanctions. Palestinians have not seen their rights restored. And the Kashmiris are still fighting for independence.

With these gaping holes still festering, Bush junior has inflicted another wound on the bleeding body of the Muslim ummah, or nation, in the name of a war against international terrorism. Added to the list of injuries now comes Afghanistan, already weakened by two decades of internationally-assisted internecine warfare.

Of course, that`s not how Bush and Blair want the world to see their new double-act. Indeed the prime minister has gone on a charm offensive, turning itinerant imam in his quest to woo Muslim opinion. None of it washes except with the stooges who dutifully march down to Downing Street every time Mr Blair wants to suggest that since British Muslims are on side this cannot be a war against Islam. Since September 11 my imam has extended Friday prayers with a special supplication reserved for times of affliction, imploring God to annihilate Islam`s enemies, to ``rock the ground underneath their feet``.

.....

·Faisal Bodi is a writer on Muslim affairs and editor of ummahnews.com