A few notes on Afghanistan

[blindpig]

Head of CIA Counter-Terrorism Boasted After 9/11: “When We Are Through With Them, They Will Have Flies Walking Across Their Eyeballs.”
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - January 8, 2024 0


Cofer Black giving press briefing after 9/11 attacks. [Source: 2001-2009.state.gov]

And Sadly, This Ghastly Boast Came True

On September 13, 2001, Cofer Black, the head of CIA counter-terrorism, had a conversation with President George W. Bush in which he boasted: “When we are through with them [referring to Afghans and others supporting terrorism], they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.”

Sadly, Black’s boast essentially came to pass starting three weeks later. On October 7, the U.S. commenced bombing Afghanistan and has been at war in the Middle East ever since, occupying and invading numerous countries while escalating its arming of Israel.

An estimated 387,073 civilians died as a result of America’s post 9/11 Middle East wars and another 3.6-3.7 million died indirectly. At least 70,000 Afghan civilians died from the 20-year U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and an estimated 243,000 civilians were killed in the war.


Man mourning one of thousands of Afghan victims of the U.S.-NATO war. [Source: nytimes.com]
Brad Wolf, a former prosecutor from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has helped to coordinate a tribunal with other peace activists, charging top weapons manufacturers (aka “merchants of death”) with war crimes for producing weapons that have been used to kill civilians in illegal wars undertaken in violation of the Geneva Convention and UN Charter.


[Source: merchantsofdeath.org]

The model for the tribunal is the Nuremberg trials after World War II which tried and convicted the executives of German war industries, notably I.G. Farben, Krupp and Flick, for war crimes.

The first two sessions of the tribunal focused on U.S. war crimes in Gaza, Syria and Somalia, whereas the third session focused on Afghanistan.

The tribunal’s college intern, Norah Tafuri, narrated a short documentary about the Afghan War, which presented a strong case that leading U.S. weapons contractors—notably Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and General Atomics—were culpable in war crimes.


Norah Tafuri [Source: pen.org]

Tafuri quoted Black at the outset to illustrate the malign intent of U.S. foreign policymakers who wanted to spill Arab blood in an attempt to avenge the 9/11 attacks.

The Afghan War was carried out illegally because the Taliban had offered to put Osama bin Laden—the alleged culprit behind the 9/11 attacks—on trial before 9/11 and had made a proposal for a three-nation court that the Bush administration rejected.

Tafuri pointed out that the U.S. first became involved in Afghanistan in 1949 when an American engineering firm, Morrison-Knudsen, built an irrigation system in the mineral-rich Helmand province. Afghanistan at the time was on the front lines of the Cold War and the U.S. was using the country as a tool to counteract Soviet influence in Central Asia.


[Source: indonesiasreallybeautiful.blogspot.com]

After 9/11, the Bush administration authorized American geologists to undertake a survey of Afghanistan which determined that the country had more than $1 trillion in mineral wealth buried beneath the ground. The Khanneshin carbonatite deposit in Helmand alone was valued at $89 billion.

Besides accessing these lucrative resources, the Bush administration coveted the building of an oil pipeline in Afghanistan from the Caspian oil fields to the Indian Ocean.

The pipeline was supposed to be built by UNOCAL, a California company in which Halliburton, the oil servicing company Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of, had interests.


[Source: theroadforthehorizon.org]


Lynne Cheney [Source: wsj.com]

The naked profiteering underlying the Afghan War and Global War on Terror was further apparent in that Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, had been a board member of Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed manufactured F-16 fighters jets and AC-130 gunships with Boeing that carried out much of the bombing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It further made Hellfire missiles and cluster bombs, which are designed to penetrate the flesh and release flechettes inside the body.


Lockheed Hellfire missile being loaded onto a plane for bombing run in Afghanistan. [Source: dod.defense.gov]

Longtime peace activist Kathy Kelly was featured in the documentary recounting her visit to an Afghan hospital where she met young boys who had been blinded and crippled by cluster bombs. One of the boys was so despondent because of his injuries that he refused to even go outside and interact with other kids.

Kelly traveled throughout Afghanistan and met many victims who had lost loved ones or had their homes destroyed from the U.S. air campaign over Afghanistan and were left to wonder why they had been targeted and had to suffer such a cruel fate.


Kathy Kelly in Afghanistan. [Source: markinbookreview.blogspot.com]

Undetonated ordnance still litters the country even after the departure of U.S. troops and can easily be triggered.


Undetonated ordinance in Afghanistan [Source: khaama.com]

Along with Lockheed, General Atomics has a lot of blood on its hands as the manufacturer of weaponized drones that were used extensively in Afghanistan.


General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone. [Source: pinterest.com]

In an all too typical incident on February 21, 2010, 23 civilians were killed when a missile from a drone struck a convoy of vehicles filled with shopkeepers, students and families on a trip to visit their relatives.

Much of the drone targeting was carried out from military command centers in Tampa, Florida where drone operators were far removed from the scene and could not actually know exactly who they were targeting.


U.S. military footage shows an airstrike targeting suspected militants in Kabul that killed 10 Afghan civilians. [Source: wsj.com]

Boeing was another manufacturer of the drones used in Afghanistan along with F-15 and F-18 fighter jets, the AC-130 gunship and B-52 bomber, guidance kits for precision-guided munitions, cluster bombs, and GBU bunker-buster bombs that could penetrate concrete 11-feet thick.


Boeing AC-130 gunship [Source: warisboring.com]


B-52 [Source: af.mil]


[Source: wonderfulengineering.com]

According to British author Jonathan Steele, at least 13,000 Afghan civilians died from U.S. bombing from October 7 to late December 2001 alone, with thousands more having been forced to flee Afghanistan as refugees or becoming internally displaced.

At the time of the U.S. invasion, Afghanistan had been facing a severe drought which was compounded by the terrible humanitarian consequences of the war and led thousands of Afghans to die from malnutrition, disease or exposure.

In October 2015, AC-130 gunships fired 211 shells on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, causing the deaths of at least 42 patients and hospital workers, with some patients burning to death in their beds.


Bombed out Kunduz hospital. [Source: abcnews.go.com]

Dr. Evangeline Cua, a Filipino doctor who worked at the hospital described a hellish scene in the bombed out hospital in which the ceiling crashed down on her and in which people were screaming in terror while asking why the hospital had been targeted.


Dr. Envangeline Cua [Source: msf-azg.be]

Wolf, who narrated a special 30-minute segment on the bombing, noted that the Pentagon attributed the catastrophe to human and technical error, however there was evidence to indicate that the coordinates of the hospital had been given to American pilots by an Afghan commander who wanted members of the Taliban being treated there killed.

Derrick Gregory, an independent journalist, found a redacted version of the official military report to be “profoundly unsatisfactory” with “brutishly heavy handed redactions” that “suppressed transcripts from pilot radio communications.”

According to Wolf, ultimate culpability for the bombing lies not only with the military but also the manufacturers of the AC-130 gunship and its high tech missile systems (Lockheed, Boeing and Raytheon), which should have never been unleashed in an urban area.

Wolf emphasized that the AC-130 gunship was a “weapon of colonial enforcement” that evolved out of the AC-47 gunship, nicknamed “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which had been used extensively in Vietnam as an instrument of terror against the local population.


Puff the Magic Dragon flies over South Vietnam. [Source: pinterest.com.au]

Collectively, the two gunships are responsible for unimaginable human suffering among people who have fought back against repeated foreign invaders, each one as venal as the other.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... -eyeballs/

[blindpig]

Stirlitz is a Mujahideen, Sukhov is a libertine! How Afghans watched Soviet cinema.
February 5, 12:27



Stirlitz is a Mujahideen, Sukhov is a libertine! How Afghans watched Soviet cinema.

While in Afghanistan 2 weeks ago, I conducted a survey among Afghans who were educated in the Soviet Union. Returning home, they “for cultural purposes” tried to introduce their relatives from the provinces to classic Soviet films. The result, as they say, completely exceeded all expectations.

“Gosha is a bad Muslim”

“I came to Herat and decided to “civilize” my dad and mom,” says Muhammad Yusef, who studied in 1984-1990. In Volgograd. - Well, I think I’ll show “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears”: it’s a nice melodrama. She won an Oscar. And my “ancestors” are rural, they were born in a village. They look - not a single smile, not laughing, both are gloomy. I was worried: maybe I’m not translating well? Mom asks: “Why wasn’t this dog Rodion stoned?” He seduced the girl and left her with the child. Where was the Sharia court looking anyway?“ I explain that there are no Sharia courts in the Soviet Union. Then dad intervened and supported: “Where is Katya’s father?” If they had done this to my daughter, I would have stabbed this devil myself and spat in his dead eyes.” They were very condemned that Katya did not get married until she was forty: “A woman needs a husband, otherwise she will not be righteous in the eyes of Allah.”

The mechanic Gosha from the train was not particularly approved of: “He is a bad Muslim, he drinks alcohol thoughtlessly.” Oleg Tabakov similarly caused an explosion of indignation: “He is married and dating another woman!” “Mom, aren’t there such things in Afghanistan?” - “Yes!” However, here it’s so open, in front of everyone, it’s a shame!“ But it can’t be said that I didn’t like the movie at all. They were pleased that in 1958, vigilantes did not allow couples to hug in a public place: “This is pious, otherwise it’s not far from sin.” When Gosha dealt with the hooligans, the parents clapped their hands. After the end of the film, they pronounced a verdict: “Such a culture cannot be propagated, and as a result, the Soviet Union collapsed.”

Vereshchagin would become a “martyr”

“I adore the film “White Sun of the Desert,” I watched it many times,” admits Nuraddin Kemal, who graduated from Moscow State University in 1992. — Recently in Kabul I decided to organize a general family viewing: I found a version in Tajik (25% of the population of Afghanistan are Tajiks who speak the local dialect of this language: Dari - Author). Grandparents and other relatives came. Turned it on, let's see. After some time, real screams of anger begin among the spectators, especially when the Red Army soldier Sukhov shoots bunches of bandits. I ask what's the matter. They: how can this be filmed, shuravi easily “wets” a crowd of true believers, a cruel “butcher”.

Everyone was angry at the seizure of Abdullah’s harem, despite the fact that Sukhov did not touch a single woman there: his relatives spat and called the Red Army soldier a “debaucher.” They sympathized with Abdullah and shouted to him: “Brother, hold on!” The grandmother began to wail: “What did he do wrong?” He lived peacefully with his wives, and then the Shuravi came and took everything away from him.” I’m surprised: “Grandma, you always spoke well of the shuravi!” - “You’re right, the Russians have done a lot of good things, but look at the world through Abdullah’s eyes!” The women of the harem were condemned: they should, it turns out, have stabbed Sukhov in his sleep and not be altruistic. Those who liked it were Petrukha and Vereshchagin. As soon as Petrukha was killed, my aunt began to cry, and my grandmother began to console her: “Everything will be fine with him now, he is a warrior and has gone to heaven.” Vereshchagin aroused real admiration: “He was a kind man and died well, beautifully; in our country he would be considered a martyr, a martyr for the faith.” But what black caviar is and why the customs officer could no longer eat it, I had to explain for quite some time.”

“Goebbels: “Salaam alaikum, Hitler!””

The director of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Kabul, Vyacheslav Nekrasov, who has worked as an adviser in Afghanistan since 1982 and experienced 70 (!) long business trips to this difficult country, remembers well the love of Afghans for Soviet cinema. “We traveled with a group, showed films in provincial villages. It was a difficult time. One day an old man came to me and bowed: “Amir sahib, are you going to show a movie here today?” I answer: “It seems that it was from your village that they shot at us.”

- “No, no, I swear by Allah, we will not shoot, please come.” Well, let's set up a cinema hall. People appear, all overgrown with beards: you can’t tell whether they are for dushmans or for people’s power. We turn on the film, they react very emotionally.

Once, when a film about the war was shown, the audience opened fire, the entire screen was full of holes: they were trying to help the good heroes defeat their enemies. Before another session, I had to ask to hand over the weapons and store them separately. At joint screenings between our citizens and Afghans, funny things happened. I remember they showed the film “Father of a Soldier” by Rezo Chkheidze translated into Dari. The film is strong, sad, tragic. The Afghans are watching, there are tears in their eyes. And ours can barely contain their laughter. The Afghans are indignant: nothing is sacred to you, infidels, how can you even behave like this! Yes, that’s the point... They show how Goebbels comes into Hitler’s office, raises his right hand, and says: “Salaam alaikum!” And he: “Wa-alaikum salam!” No, but how else? Heil Hitler!” translate? Our people laughed at that moment, and the Afghans were surprised.”

“Did the Standartenführer eat pork?”

By the way, it was films about the Great Patriotic War that always aroused great interest in Afghanistan.
“I lived for 20 years in the Soviet Union and Russia: in 2004, after the overthrow of the Taliban, I returned to Kabul,” recalls Masoud Ibrahim Khaled, who studied to be a surgeon in Leningrad. — Since I am in love with your country, I also wanted to explain to my father and mother what a difficult history the Russian people have, what you had to endure, how many people you lost in the battles with Hitler. Here in Afghanistan little is known about this. He showed “They Fought for the Motherland” - it was absolutely wonderful, the father and mother cried. “Only old men go into battle” is also a great reaction. But at “17 Moments of Spring,” the parents were stunned: they couldn’t understand Stirlitz’s behavior. Father says: “How was he among the infidels (dad immediately nicknamed Stirlitz a Mujahideen, a warrior for the faith, they say, he believed in communism) and did not try to kill the devil Hitler?”

I defend Stirlitz: “Dad, this is a scout!” Father objects. : “No, you should have killed Hitler and become a suicide bomber!” Then he asks: “Did Stirlitz ever eat pork?” I say: “Of course, everyone eats it in Germany, and in Russia too.” Dad became confused and subsequently issued a verdict: “This is bad, but if you are on foreign soil during jihad, you are allowed to eat pork. And the case of Stirlitz is the jihad of the Soviet Union against Germany. But he simply had to kill Hitler, otherwise why would he sneak into the lair of the infidels at all?”

Nowadays, Indian cinema is mostly popular in Afghanistan, but in the street markets of Kabul, Soviet films on cassette (many Afghans still use old VHS video recorders) are still in great demand. “It was a human, truly soulful movie,” sighed Said, who lived in a boarding school in Tashkent with other Afghan orphans during the Soviet era. “They don’t do that now.”

(c) Zotov

https://t.me/darkzotovland/494 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8940563.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Give us Bagram
September 21, 11:33



Give us Bagram

1. Trump continues to demand that the Taliban hand over the Bagram Air Base to the US, including on the grounds that "the Americans built it." In reality, it was built back in the 1950s with Soviet support. The US simply used and operated an airbase that had already been built long ago.

2. The Taliban has already officially told Trump to go away with his outrageous demands. The same applies to his demands for the return of $8.5 billion worth of military equipment to the US, which was once supplied to Afghanistan to arm six army corps of the puppet government of Afghanistan. Trump, in response, has already openly threatened the Taliban that if he does not hand over the airbase, Afghanistan will suffer.

3. The Taliban have no need for the US on their soil at all right now, especially since the US helped ISIS fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Plus, there's immense hatred of the Americans in the country after 20 years of occupation, and any concessions to the US could seriously damage the current government, which came to power under the slogans of completely expelling foreign occupiers from Afghanistan and preventing the presence of foreign troops and bases on Afghan soil.

4. Furthermore, Russia, Iran, and China are not at all eager to see a renewed US military presence in Afghanistan, which would threaten to exacerbate regional problems. The Taliban is partially heeding the wishes of those countries from which it is primarily interested in gaining international recognition and legitimacy. Furthermore, Afghanistan has expressed interest in joining BRICS and the SCO.

5. The US, however, has still not returned to the Taliban the assets of the former puppet government of Ashraf Ghani, which are held in the US. The US also still hasn't delisted the Taliban from the list of "terrorist organizations" (their last attacks were in 2021 against American proxies). Overall, they're acting hostile and even issuing ultimatums. But the Taliban aren't US satellites in Europe, and they won't bend to Trump's wishes.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10082749.html

Google Translator

******

Taliban calls US return to Afghanistan 'impossible'

Washington has been looking for ways to return to Afghanistan in order to 'surveil China' and 'gain access to rare earth elements'

News Desk

SEP 19, 2025


(Photo Credit: Reuters)

Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Zakir Jalal on 19 September said that US President Donald Trump's claims of planning to “get back” control of Bagram Air Base are “impossible.”

“The Afghan people have never accepted a foreign military presence, and this issue was included in the Doha agreement,” Jalal told Sputnik, stressing that US military presence in Afghanistan “has become impossible.”

“Afghanistan and the United States can maintain political and economic relations based on mutual respect and shared interests without the need for a US military base in Afghanistan,” the Afghan official added.

Earlier this week, Trump told reporters at the White House that his government has been working to get back control of Bagram Air Base, which lies an hour north of Kabul.

“We’re trying to get it back,” Trump said. “We gave it to [the Taliban] for nothing,” he complained, adding that Bagram is “exactly one hour away from where China makes its nuclear missiles.”

According to informed sources who spoke with CNN, talks about a US return to Afghanistan “date back at least to March,” as officials believe control of the air base is crucial to “surveil China” and to “gain access to rare earth elements and mining in Afghanistan; establish a counterterrorism node to target ISIS; and possibly reopen a diplomatic facility.”

During his first presidential term, Trump stuck with the Taliban for a complete withdrawal of US troops from the country.

Former US president Joe Biden completed the withdrawal in August 2021, just days after the US-trained Afghan army collapsed in the face of advancing Taliban forces, who regained control of the country after 20 years of occupation.

Afghan Army Chief of Staff Fasihuddin Fitrat has previously stated that Taliban authorities would not negotiate with any country regarding Bagram Air Base.

He stated that even a single foreign soldier on Afghan soil is “unacceptable to the Islamic Emirate,” and that Kabul will not sign any agreement with the US or any other country regarding the air base.

https://thecradle.co/articles/taliban-c ... impossible

Trump warns of ‘bad things’ if Afghanistan keeps Bagram airfield

The US president is pushing to reclaim the base, located just an hour from China’s nuclear facilities

News Desk

SEP 21, 2025


(Photo credit: CNN)

US President Trump demanded on 21 September that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan "give back" control of the Bagram air base to the US military, which withdrew from the base in 2021 following a 20-year occupation of the country.

"If Afghanistan doesn't give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN," Trump said in a Truth Social post.

He told reporters on Friday that he was in talks with Afghan officials to reclaim the base, strategically located near Chinese nuclear facilities.

"We're trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back," Trump stated during the joint press conference in the UK. "But one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it's an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons."

Also known as Bagram Airfield, the base was built in the 1950s with assistance from the Soviet Union amid Moscow’s efforts to strengthen Afghanistan’s military infrastructure during the Cold War.

US forces occupied Bagram in 2001 after invading Afghanistan, allegedly in response to the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York.

US forces quickly toppled the ruling Taliban government and reestablished the heroin trade, but chaotically withdrew from the country in 2021 following a two-decade-long insurgency.

A 2022 Department of Defense report stated that the US military left behind 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and more than 300,000 weapons.

Afghan officials have rejected Trump's demand the US retake control of Bagram.

"Afghanistan and the United States need to engage with one another ... without the United States maintaining any military presence in any part of Afghanistan," stated Zakir Jalal, an Afghan foreign ministry official.

Washington declared plans to reassert its Afghan influence in February. This effort intensified after the US president announced plans to retake Bagram Airbase a short time later.

Trump said his plans to establish a "small force" at Bagram were not aimed at Afghanistan, but rather, at curbing China's operational control of the base – a charge the Taliban has vehemently denied.

The group's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told local media in March that Trump's allegations about China controlling the airbase were "an emotional statement based on unsubstantiated information."

"Bagram is controlled by the Islamic Emirate [Taliban regime], not China. Chinese troops are not present here, nor do we have any such pact with any country," Mujahid added.

https://thecradle.co/articles/trump-thr ... agram-base