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Posted by admin in Afghanistan, Afghanistan-Pakistan's Shield on February 18th, 2015
KABUL/ISLAMABAD: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif on Tuesday said enemies of Afghanistan are enemies of Pakistan.
He paid a crucial visit to Kabul on Tuesday amid the reports that the terrorists involved in the recent spate of bloodshed in Pakistan had their traces across the border. The day-long visit saw the army chief’s interactions with the top government functionaries and the military commanders from Afghanistan. According to security sources, the visit took place following intelligence reports that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Fazlullah directly masterminded the recent Imambargah attack in Peshawar reportedly from Afghanistan’s Kunar province or its adjoining belt, that left several people dead. “There was credible intel (intelligence) information that it was cross-border activity,” the sources commented on the army chief’s visit, who was accompanied by his military aides.
This was General Raheel’s second visit to Afghanistan since December 17, 2014 when he had rushed to Afghanistan to share information with the Afghan authorities regarding TTP’s involvement in Peshawar school attack, a day after the deadly attack on Army Public School in the provincial capital had left 150 people dead including 134 school children, on December 16. On Tuesday, the TTP also claimed responsibility of yet another deadly attack on security personnel in Lahore that left at least 10 policemen dead. During Tuesday’s visit, Director General Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Lieutenant General Rizwan Akhtar, DG MilitaryOperations( DG MO) Major General Aamir Riaz Rana and other senior officials from the ISI’s Counterterrorism and Counter-intelligence Directorates and the Directorate General of Military Operations reportedly accompanied the COAS. Military Spokesman and DG Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa said the COAS met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “Both appreciated improving relations, pledged to continue operations on respective sides, won’t allow use of soil versus each other,” he said in a tweet. Separately, General Raheel also met Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Abdullah Abdullah. Dr Abdullah, according to Bajwa, acknowledged overall “positive trajectory in bilateral relations, concrete progress in operations, border management and intelligence sharing.” The security officials said Pakistan’s military delegations held low-key meetings with the Afghan military and intelligence authorities led by their army chief General Sher Muhammad Karimi. Last week, DG ISPR told a press briefing that Pakistan demanded of Afghanistan to “either handover Fazlullah to Pakistan or to eliminate him.” He said that the two countries were in contact over tracking down the TTP chief.
Posted by admin in Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, AFGHANISTAN, AFGHANISTAN BASED RAW TRAINED TALIBAN ACTIONS, Afghanistan Hell, Afghanistan-Hell for Western Troops, Afghanistan-Pakistan's Shield, CROSS BORDER KILLINGS BY INDIA, Defense, India Global Exporter of Terrorism, India Sponsored Taliban Terrorism in Pakistan, INDIA SPONSORED TERRORISM IN KARACHI, INDIA STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM IN PAKISTAN, INDIA TRAINED SUICIDE BOMBERS FROM AFGHANISTAN on January 7th, 2015
Ever since India became a strategic partner of the US, Indian leaders have been constantly whispering into the ears of US leaders that Pakistan is abetting and aiding terrorism in Kashmir and that it should be declared a terrorist state and Kashmiri fighters seeking right of self-determination as terrorists. New laws framed on terrorism after 9/11 provided an opportunity to India to paint Kashmiri freedom movement as terrorism and to project Pakistan military/ISI as abettors of cross border terrorism.
Posted by admin in Afghanistan, Pakistan Scape goat For US Afghan Defeat, Pakistan Security, Pakistan's Fights Terrorism on December 2nd, 2014
Fifteen years of US invasion will soon be completed and soon become the stuff of the history of this region. In Afghanistan, ‘lost and gained’ will be assessed later but the insurgency is indeed still in question. Yet another suicide attack in central Logar province killed 12 security personnel and wounded eight others, a sure sign of the dreadful hold of the insurgents. The Taliban still claim to have control of over 40 percent of the areas in Afghanistan, excluding the capital and other major cities in Afghanistan. Territories under the grip of the Taliban are declared as no go areas, leaving the whole world wondering whether the war on terror has achieved victory or a fiasco. Many observers are now vocal as to who will be up next for the ‘graveyard of empires’.
Hamid Karzai declined to sign any security deal with the US and left it to his successor to decide. The newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has signed the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which will allow 9,800 US troops and at least 2,000 NATO troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Generally, mindsets with two opinions have lingered on in Afghanistan: one supported the invasion while the other defied it. In fact, we observe that Afghans failed to get what they expected from the US intervention since 2001. Rather, this invasion put the land in turmoil just like the former Soviet Union did. Our controversial ally, the US, and its war against the former jihadists who were once called ‘soldiers of God’, declared them terrorists following the 9/11 incident. Indeed, the ashes of war brought catastrophe to Pakistan too.
Pakistan has suffered over $ 107 billion in economic setbacks since the war broke out, leaving a bad impression on the international community. Apart from that, thousands of people have been killed due to the ‘do more’ mantra. Yet, hoping for development for Afghanistan, the Chinese government has pledged 1.5 billion Yuan ($ 245 million) in aid to Afghanistan over the next three years, as well as greater support for Kabul in the struggle against terrorism. Ghani, while bewildering his neighbours, warned all not to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan. This statement was released as soon as this aid was received in Afghanistan.
But what plagues the mind is the fact that the warmongers are still in position. The withdrawal of US and NATO forces will leave the Afghan National Army to its own fate.
Throughout the entire 13 years of war in Afghanistan, corruption and opium production remained a worrying issue. Observers believe that poppy cultivation has become a lucrative business for international dealers, as it was not brought to an end despite the US spending $ 7.6 billion on counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan. The UN’s office on drugs and crime reports: “Afghan farmers grew 209,000 hectares of opium in 2013, surpassing the previous record of 193,000 hectares in 2007.” Poppy production is a major source of revenue in Afghanistan, which produces an estimated 90 percent of the world’s opium. At the start of 2018, it is expected to double.
This is a problem that all the stakeholders avoided discussing throughout the entire Afghan war. The value of poppy cultivation and opium products produced in the country in 2013 was about three billion dollars, a 50 percent increase over the two billion dollars estimated in 2012. Reports now indicate that farmers grew 210,200 hectares of opium in 2014.
Let us pretend Afghans will decide their own fate post-withdrawal but staggering questions of poppy cultivation and the presence of the former soldiers of God are being left unresolved. To date, $ 753.3 billion have been spent on the war in Afghanistan, including $ 89.1 billion in fiscal year 2014. Despite spending billions of dollars and the sacrifices of thousands of US and NATO soldiers, who spewed blood into the water and soil, the results are by no means comforting. The Afghans have now opened their gates for China, which has already stepped up its support to India and Pakistan. The recent Beijing Declaration has been signed between Afghanistan and China, agreeing to start 64 programmes covering issues such as trade, investment, infrastructure, disaster management and education. These projects will help Afghanistan develop and keep the peace without outside assistance. The corridor of South Asia, Afghanistan, is now in the arms of China, so the future of South Asia is now going to be in the hands of China, leading the US out the door in disgrace.
Posted by admin in Afghanistan-Pakistan's Shield, Foreign Policy, THE BATTLE FOR PAKISTAN SERIES on February 21st, 2013
WHAT MILITARY LESSONS HAVE WE LEARNT FROM THE SOVIET AND US DEBACLES
IN AFGHANISTAN?
Afghanistan: the Smell of Defeat
by MIKE WHITNEY
“These two visions, one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty
and life, clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave US and coalition
forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over
and that nation is coming to life again.”
– George W. Bush, The War College Address, 2004
Not so fast, George.
The United States hasn’t liberated Afghanistan. It hasn’t rebuilt
Afghanistan. It hasn’t removed the warlords from power, curtailed
opium production, established strong democratic institutions, or
improved life for ordinary working people. The US hasn’t achieved any
of its strategic objectives. The Taliban are stronger than ever, the
central government is a corrupt farce, and, after 11 years of war, the
country is in a shambles.
This is what defeat looks like. The US military has been defeated by a
poorly-armed militia which has demonstrated a superior grasp of modern
warfare and asymmetric engagement. The Taliban has shown that they are
more adaptable, more motivated, and smarter. That’s why they
prevailed. That’s why they beat the world’s most celebrated army.
Americans don’t like to hear that kind of talk. They’re very proud of
their military and are willing to pay upwards of $1 trillion per year
to keep it outfitted in the most advanced weaponry on earth. But
weapons don’t win wars, neither does propaganda. If they did, the US
would have won long ago, but they don’t. What wins wars is tactics,
operations, and strategy, and that’s where the emphasis must be if one
expects to succeed.. Here’s an excerpt from an article by William S.
Lind explaining why the US mission in Afghanistan failed:
“A general rule of warfare is that a higher level trumps a lower, and
technique is the lowest level of all. Our SEALs, Rangers, Delta, SF,
and all the rest are vastly superior to the Taliban or al-Qaeda at
techniques. But those opponents have sometimes shown themselves able
at tactics, operations, and strategy. We can only defeat them by
making ourselves superior at those higher levels of war. There,
regrettably, Special Operations Forces have nothing to offer. They are
just another lead bullet in an obsolete Second Generation arsenal.”
(“What’s so special about Special Ops?”, William S. Lind, The American
Conservative)
The US military’s high-tech gadgetry and pilotless drones merely
disguise the fact that America is still fighting the last war and
hasn’t adapted to the new reality. Here’s more from Lind expanding on
the same theory:
“The greatest intellectual challenge in Fourth Generation war—war
against opponents that are not states—is how to fight it at the
operational level. NATO in Afghanistan, like the Soviets three decades
ago, has been unable to solve that riddle. But the Taliban appears to
have done so….
The Soviet army focused its best talent on operational art. But in
Afghanistan, it failed, just as we have failed. Like the Soviets, we
can take and hold any piece of Afghan ground. And doing so brings us,
like the Soviets, not one step closer to strategic victory. The
Taliban, by contrast, have found an elegant way to connect strategy
and tactics in decentralized modern warfare.
What passes for NATO’s strategy is to train sufficient Afghan forces
to hold off the Taliban once we pull out. The Taliban’s response has
been to have men in Afghan uniform— many of whom actually are Afghan
government soldiers or police—turn their guns on their NATO advisers.
That is a fatal blow against our strategy because it makes the
training mission impossible. Behold operational art in Fourth
Generation war……
The Taliban know this technique is operational, not just tactical.
They can be expected to put all their effort into it. What counter do
we have? Just order our troops to pretend it is not happening—to keep
trusting their Afghan counterparts. That order, if enforced, will put
our soldiers in such an untenable position that morale will collapse.”
(“Unfriendly Fire”, William S. Lind, The American Conservative)
Lind does not underestimate the Taliban or dismiss them as “ignorant
goat herders”. In fact, he appears to admire the way they have
mastered 4-G warfare and routed an enemy that has vastly superior
technology, communications and firepower. It helps to prove his basic
thesis that tactics, operations, and strategy are what matter most.
For more than a decade, the Taliban have been carrying out an
impressive guerrilla war frustrating attempts by the US to establish
security, hold ground or expand the power of the central (Karzai)
government. In the last year, however, the militia’s efforts have paid
off as so-called “green on blue” shootings–where coalition troops have
been killed by Afghan soldiers or policemen–have dashed US plans to
maintain a client regime in Kabul when US combat operations end and
American troops withdraw. The Taliban found the weak-link in the
Pentagon’s strategy and has used it to full advantage. “As American
Security Project Central and South Asia specialist Joshua Foust puts
it, ‘The training mission is the foundation of the current strategy.
Without that mission, the strategy collapses. The war is adrift, and
it’s hard to see how anyone can avoid a complete disaster at this
point.’” (“The Day we lost Afghanistan”, The National Interest)
TIME TO CUT AND RUN?
The persistent green on blue attacks have convinced US and NATO
leaders that the war cannot be won which is why President Barack Obama
has decided to throw in the towel. Here’s a clip from a speech Obama
gave in May at a NATO confab in Chicago:
“I don’t think that there is ever going to be an optimal point where
we say, this is all done, this is perfect, this is just the way we
wanted it and now we can wrap up all our equipment and go home…Our
coalition is committed to this plan to bring our war in Afghanistan to
a responsible end.”
The political class is calling it quits. They’ve decided to cut their
losses and leave. Here’s how the New York Times summed it up:
“After more than a decade of having American blood spilled in
Afghanistan…it is time for United States forces to leave Afghanistan
….. It should not take more than a year. The United States will not
achieve even President Obama’s narrowing goals, and prolonging the war
will only do more harm….
Administration officials say they will not consider a secure
“logistical withdrawal,” but they offer no hope of achieving broad
governance and security goals. And the only final mission we know of,
to provide security for a 2014 Afghan election, seems dubious at best
…
…the idea of fully realizing broader democratic and security aims
simply grows more elusive….More fighting will not consolidate the
modest gains made by this war, and there seems little chance of
guaranteeing that the Taliban do not “come back in..
Post-American Afghanistan is likely to be more presentable than North
Korea, less presentable than Iraq and perhaps about the same as
Vietnam. But it fits the same pattern of damaging stalemate. We need
to exit as soon as we safely can.
America’s global interests suffer when it is mired in unwinnable wars
in distant regions.” (“Time to Pack Up”, New York Times)
Notice how the Times fails to mention the War on Terror, al Qaida, or
Bin Laden, all of which were used to garner support for the war. What
matters now is “America’s global interests”. That’s quite a reversal,
isn’t it?
What happened to the steely resolve to fight the good fight for as
long as it takes; to liberate Afghan women, to spread democracy to
far-flung Central Asia, and to crush the fanatical Taliban once and
for all? Was it all just empty posturing aimed at ginning up the war
machine and swaying public opinion?
And look how easy it is for the Times to do a 180 when just months ago
they were trying to persuade readers that we should hang-in-there to
protect Afghan women. Take a look at this August 2012 editorial titled
“The Women of Afghanistan”:
“Afghanistan can be a hard and cruel land, especially for women and
girls. Many fear they will be even more vulnerable to harsh tribal
customs and the men who impose them after American troops withdraw by
the end of 2014.
Womens’ rights have made modest but encouraging gains over the past
decade. But these could disappear without a strong commitment to
preserve and advance them from Afghan leaders, Washington and other
international partners….
…all Afghans should be invested in empowering women. As Mrs. Clinton
has argued, there is plenty of evidence to show that no country can
grow and prosper in today’s world if women are marginalized and
oppressed.” (“The Women of Afghanistan”, New York Times)
Ahh, but lending a hand to “marginalized and oppressed” women doesn’t
really hold a candle to “America’s global interests”, now does it? As
one might expect, the Times most heartfelt feelings are shaped by
political expediency. In any event, the Times tacit admission proves
that the war was never really about liberating women or spreading
democracy or even killing bin Laden. It was about “America’s global
interests”, particularly, pipeline corridors, mineral extraction and
the Great Game, controlling real estate in thriving Eurasia, the
economic center of the next century. That’s why the US invaded
Afghanistan, the rest is propaganda.
There’s one other glaring omission in the Times article that’s worth
noting. The editors tiptoe around the one word that most accurately
summarises the situation: Defeat. The United States is not leaving
Afghanistan voluntarily. It was defeated. The US military was defeated
in the same way that the IDF was defeated by Hezbollah in the summer
of 2006, by underestimating the tenacity, the skill, the ferocity, the
adaptability, and the intelligence of their adversary. That’s why
Israel lost the war in Lebanon. And that’s why the US lost the war in
Afghanistan.
There’s a reason why the media won’t use the term defeat however
applicable it may be. It’s because your average “Joe” understands
defeat, the shame of defeat, the sting of defeat, the anger of defeat.
Defeat is a repudiation of leadership, proof that we are ruled by
fools and scoundrels. Defeat is also a powerful deterrent, the idea
festers in people’s minds and turns them against foreign
interventions, police actions and war. That’s why the Times won’t
utter the word, because defeat is the antidote for aggression, and the
Times doesn’t want that. None of the media do.
But the truth is, the United States was defeated in Afghanistan. If we
can grasp that fact, then maybe can stop the next war before it gets
started.
Posted by admin in Afghanistan-Pakistan's Shield on February 4th, 2013
India is the Trojan Horse, which is already present in Afghanistan. Indian Intelligence Agencies are in cahoots with the occupiers, while appearing to be friends of Afghan people. Indians are Hindus, who have vested interest in destruction of Muslim Afghanistan.
Afghanistan and Pakistan must fight Against The New Middle East Project: Should Afghanistan Be Partitioned? A Trial Balloon from a Think Tank Talking Head. This article is written with an agenda and an intent to destroy Afghanistan’s Integrity. It is an effort to provide a justification for partitioning the Afghan Nation. Long Live Afghanistan. Long Live Afghan People’s Unity. It is written by a NEOCON Zionist. Focus on how this author begins his arguments:-
Regarding the Afghan War, the American people are being deceived; they believe they are fighting a political faction of the Afghan people, but …there is no “Afghan people.” There is no Afghan language.
There is just an amalgam of ethnic groups in a deeply divided land that has been fought over by big powers for centuries.
The Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Hazaris and the Turkmen make up about 50 percent of the country’s population, with the Pashtun, concentrated in the south and east, accounting for about 42 percent. It is this Pashtun population, dominated by the Taliban, that represents the chief resistance to the US-led war effort.
The Pashtun people speak Pashto and live by a code that promotes their unity, especially when confronted by an invader, which often has been the case in the history of this landlocked land that sits along a strategic pathway of mountain passes that connect the West and the East. The Pashtun code, Pashtunwali, promotes defensive ferociousness in battle and incredible hospitality at home.
The modern term “Afghanistan” dates from the late 19thCentury when two British cartographers drew the so-called Durand Line, which had the effect of dividing the Pakistani Pashtuns from the Afghan Pashtuns, with about two-thirds of the Pashtun population falling within what is now Pakistan.
That division created an inherently unstable political situation, with the Afghan Pashtun benefiting from their cultural ties to the Pakistani Pashtun, especially during the anti-Soviet war on the 1980s when the CIA was funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in aid through Pakistan to Afghan rebels fighting the communist government in Kabul and its Soviet backers. The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, delivered nearly all the aid to Pashtun fighters, including many who were Islamic fundamentalists.
After the collapse of the communist government in 1992, a coalition of Afghan warlords took control of Kabul, under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, an Islamist but not a fanatic. A member of the Tajik minority, he was not favored by Pakistan. Infighting among the warlords also continued, while, the ISI trained a new force of Pashtun fighters recruited from refugee camps inside Pakistan, a group which became known as the Taliban.
Promising to restore order, the Taliban seized power in 1996, driving Massoud and other non-Pashtun warlords to the north and imposing a rigid form of Islam in Kabul and across much of the country. The Taliban also hosted Saudi Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization, giving them safe haven from which to plot attacks against the West. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Why Afghanistan Really Fell Apart.”]
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and deny al-Qaeda its Afghan sanctuary. Though the invasion succeeded in removing the Taliban from power and driving most of al-Qaeda out of the country, Bush soon shifted his attention to an invasion of Iraq, leaving the US-led occupation of Afghanistan to make do with limited resources and enabling a Taliban comeback in the Pashtun region.
That was the predicament that President Barack Obama inherited in 2009, a growing Taliban threat to the security of the US-backed government in Kabul. Though Obama expressed interest in seeking a gradual exit strategy, he left in place key Bush holdovers, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, who maneuvered Obama into accepting their plan for an escalation of the war and a new concentration on counterinsurgency.
In effect, the strategy amounted to an unrealistic plan in which a foreign military would make “good citizens” out of the Pashtun. I understand the motivation, since an individual Pashtun – or even a group or a village – can demonstrate Pashtun generosity and kindness. However, their cultural resistance to outside domination is such that it justifies truly awful human rights violations.
Although Pashtunwali as a governing lifestyle exists mainly in rural areas, its precepts are learned by almost every Pashtun, both the generous and cruel impulses. When there are so-called “green-on-blue” attacks in which Afghan government soldiers kill their US or European military advisers, it’s a safe bet that the perpetrators are Pashtun. Yet, when military or political officials publicly talk about “inside threats,” they never mention the ethnic dimension.
ANOTHER ZIONIST FOR PARTITION OF AFGHANISTAN
Obama Can Win Afghanistan With Soft Partition & the “Reverse McCrystal Strategy”
by Webster Brooks
Today, the Center for New Politics and Policy (CNPP) released its recommendations to abate the Taliban insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan with a new strategy paper called “Obama Can Win Afghanistan with Soft Partition & the Reverse McCrystal Strategy” (RMS). The RMS report highlights recommendations to halt the Taliban’s momentum, reconfigure US/NATO force structure on the ground with 20,000 additional troops, stabilize Afghanistan’s post-election government and maximize vital reconstruction efforts to unleash Afghanistan’s state building efforts. The Reverse McCrystal Strategy provides a framework for President Obama’s efforts over the next 18 months to achieve his central goal of preventing a Taliban takeover and denying al Queda a platform in Afghanistan to launch attacks against the United States. The report was drafted by Senior Fellow Webster Brooks, Director of Brooks Foreign Policy Review; the international affairs arm of the Center for New Politics and Policy. The following summary of the Reverse McCrystal Strategy was released on October 19, 2009 in Washington, D.C.
Summary
The critical moment for President Obama to announce a decision on America’s strategy to win the war in Afghanistan is fast approaching. In the ongoing series of White House war councils, debate continues on General Stanley McCrystal’s August report that stated “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12-18 months)….risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” Over the next 18 months President Obama faces four critical questions: 1) Developing a response to stem the Taliban’s growing influence and putting the insurgency on the defensive, 2) Redeploying U.S./NATO/ANA forces to tilt the battlefield in their favor, 3) Brokering an agreement to form a power-sharing post-election government and 4) Reorganizing state building and reconstruction efforts to create the foundation needed to sustain Afghanistan. The Reverse McCrystal Strategy (RMS) represents the best and most realistic strategy to achieve these objectives in the next 18 months and prepare for the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops over the long run (3-4 years).
The centerpiece of the Reverse McCrystal Strategy calls for redeploying U.S./NATO military and economic power to consolidate Northern, Central and Western Afghanistan into a “maximum safety zone.” Securing these three regions now where 65% of all Afghans live, and linking them to vital reconstruction efforts is the most effective way to diminish the Taliban’s momentum and solidify critical mass around the central government. Supported by 20,000 additional American troops, U.S./NATO operations would shift from conducting “clear, hold and build missions” inside the Taliban dominated Pashtun belt to providing maximum security to Kabul and the 23 identified “median and low-risk” provinces where the Taliban’s presence is minimal but spreading (see map). Recent Taliban advances outside the Pashtun belt suggest that U.S. forces engaging their adversaries from Kunduz in Northeastern Afghanistan to the southern province of Helmand are overstretched and under resourced. General McCrystal’s request for 40,000 to 80,000 troops to pursue the elusive Taliban plays directly into the Taliban’s hit and run strategy. Meanwhile, the Taliban continues to maneuver and expand the battlefield, launching surprise offensives in new areas. What is most important now for President Obama and the faltering Afghan government is reversing the Taliban’s momentum by consolidating order, safety and stability over a significant section of Afghanistan. Demonstrating real progress and a model of a viable state is of the utmost urgency. Securing Northern, Central and Western Afghanistan would not only demonstrate tangible success, it would decisively impact the balance of power on the ground.
The Reverse McCrystal Strategy also calls on U.S./NATO forces to scale back forward operations for one year in the Pashtun belt where the Taliban enjoys real support, superior battlefield knowledge and strategic depth with supporting rear-guard bases in Pakistan. The tactical pullback in the Pashtun belt would be done in conjunction with the mass redeployment to Northern, Central and Western Afghanistan. A “demilitarized zone” and safe transit corridors to-and-from the Pushtun-belt provinces would be established for commercial purposes and safe passage. In addition, US/NATO forces would continue the “limited use” of Drone attacks and Special Forces operations on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border to interdict arms shipments and infiltrating al Queda elements. Redoubled efforts in cooperation with Pakistan’s government to destroy critical Taliban support networks in Baluchistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is of critical importance. Concurrent with these changes, Afghanistan’s government would open discussions with Pashtun tribal leaders, parliamentary officials and “willing” Taliban elements over a potential framework for regional autonomy and other national reforms.
While the RMS embraces General McCrystal’s call for a shift from defeating the Taliban by force of arms to creating safe havens, it reverses the battlefield deployment and political focus by winning the hearts and minds of two-thirds of Afghanistan’s provinces first. It optimizes opportunities to contain and undermine the Taliban by negating the most compelling factor powering its surge; the prevailing state of chaos across Afghanistan led by an incompetent and corrupt Karzai government and criminal warlords.
By increasing troop levels, resetting US/NATO/ forces and tactically pulling back in the Pashtun Belt, President Obama will gain valuable breathing room to bring America’s allies on side, settle the post-election political governmental crisis and train additional Afghan National Army troops. Whether there is a run-off election or not between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, it is critical that both men participate in a new coalition government. The effort to stabilize Northern, Central and Western Afghanistan will require significant compromise between Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras and Turkmen who were the core of the Northern Alliance that helped topple the Taliban in 2001. Many of these forces also supported Abdullah Abdullah in the first round of the presidential elections. For better or worse, as a Pashtun, Hamid Karzai can still be a valuable asset in talks with provincial leaders on instituting various forms of autonomy in Pashtun communities. While the character of the Taliban’s insurgency is Islamic-based, the Taliban has remained a predominately ethnic-Pashtun movement. Increased autonomy may create new vehicles and greater choice to incorporate Pashtun cultural, religious and traditional practices into provincial governance structures, thereby dispelling notions that only the Taliban can fulfill these aspirations. The essential point of autonomy in the Pashtun belt is that increased empowerment at the provincial level will afford Pashtun more choices and resources to exert independence from the Taliban.
Critics of the Reverse McCrystal Strategy will undoubtedly claim that any pullback-temporary or otherwise- from taking the fight to the Taliban is tantamount to capitulation or surrender. But there is no purely military solution to end the war in Afghanistan. The consensus view is that sufficient damage must be inflicted on extremists Taliban elements to create conditions that will compel moderate and wavering Taliban elements to align themselves with the central government. By creating a safe and viable Afghanistan state in Northern, Central and Western Afghanistan supported by a majority of the Afghan people, the Taliban’s rationale that they are the only force that can restore order will be severely undermined. Containing the Taliban’s advances by a soft partition of the Pashtun belt will halt their expansion and reverse their momentum. Increased efforts with Pakistan to neutralize their rear-guard support bases will bottle the Taliban up in a confined space. Offers of greater autonomy and redefining their relationship to the Afghan government will stimulate more debate among the Pashtun people about where their future interests lie and further undercut support for the Taliban. The Reverse McCrystal Strategy in its initial phase will significantly weaken the Taliban militarily and drain its political support among the Pashtun people. Moreover, RMS can accomplish all these achievements with the lowest possible U.S./NATO casualty rates. With public opinion weakening in America and Europe for the war, tangible success in stabilizing 65% of Afghanistan today combined with minimum casualties is the formula to sustain support for the cause in Afghanistan. If and when US/NATO forces have to move decisively to fully re-engage militarily in the Pashtun belt they would confront a far less formidable adversary.
Prosecuting unpopular wars against insurgencies that cannot be won militarily is sometimes the burden of policing empire. There are no easy options for President Obama in Afghanistan. What is required now is an imaginative approach that breaks with conventional thinking. The Reverse McCrystal Strategy offers both.
I heard one US senator ask the commanding general of all NATO forces in Afghanistan about the ethnic tensions within the Afghan National Army.He replied to the question, but did so without ever mentioning “ethnic,” “Pashtun” or “Tajik.”
So, it’s obvious that the United States has a mess in Afghanistan that was not improved by the Gates-Petraeus-originated “surge” of US combat forces. The counterinsurgency strategy has been largely a failure amid continuing loss of life.
It seems timely to get out – which is the direction that President Obama is now favoring, especially after the removal from office of both Gates and Petraeus. But I think there are still ways to leave behind a more stable Afghanistan.
In recruitment of officers for the Afghan National Army, the US target numbers have been between 40 to 45 percent Pashtun and 30 to 35 percent Tajik. Yet, I fear that in trying to achieve some ethnic parity in the ANA, the United States could instead achieve military dominance by a combined force of Pashtun in the ANA and the Pashtun in the Taliban.
Why would they come together? Simply put, the power of Pashtunwali and ethnicity. In my view, a more sensible US strategy would be to accept a division of Afghanistan along the existing ethnic boundaries, with a separate state in the Afghan north made up of Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Turkmen – and a withdrawal of US and NATO forces from the Pashtun strongholds in the east and south.
The Taliban increasingly controls the east and the south anyway, despite several years of escalated activity by the US-led International Security Assistance Forces. But separation could accomplish two major goals: 1) the proposed northern state would have defensible borders and 2) it could facilitate the end of the reign of terror against non-Pashtuns by Pashtuns.
It also is fair to say that President Obama – by letting himself be manipulated by Bush holdovers in 2009 – is responsible for the failed counterinsurgency strategy that has achieved little at great expense in blood and treasure. After all, he is commander-in-chief.
Obama’s three-pronged goal was to defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and neutralize its key leadership in Pakistan; create a functioning bureaucracy in Kabul and the Afghan countryside; and end Pakistan’s pernicious and lethal influence in Afghanistan. He succeeded in the first goal, most notably with the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, but failed miserably in the second and third.
His stated goal now is to have all combat troops out of Afghanistan by 2014. However, he intends to extend the presence of non-combat personnel, civilian contractors and some Special Forces until 2024. Yet, the size of that force is unknown, and the mission is unclear beyond what is called “counter-terror.”
[The New York Times reported on Thursday that Gen. John R. Allen, senior US commander in Afghanistan, has suggested three options for troop levels, ranging from 6,000 to 20,000, after 2014. Allen says the smaller the force the greater the likelihood of failure, the Times wrote, citing unnamed defense officials.]
To avert a possible bloodbath against some Pashtun who have been resisting the Taliban in Pashtun enclaves in the east and south, US airpower and reaction teams of Special Operations may be needed to protect those anti-Taliban Pashtun or they could be relocated to the north if the threat from the Taliban is too formidable.
While similarities exist between what I’m suggesting and Obama’s plan – after all both foresee a continued US military role beyond 2014 – my emphasis would be on creating a state that would be a safe haven for the northern tribesmen and protect some southern enclaves against Taliban attacks. I think we owe both the American people and the Afghan people something tangible for their 11 years of sacrifice and dying.
Yet, to salvage something, there needs to be a separation of the non-Pashtun tribes from the Pashtun with the reasons clearly explained to the American people. After this separation has allowed passions to cool down, the United States could approach the Pashtun again with the goal of achieving a relationship of mutual respect.
Bruce P. Cameron has served as a Washington lobbyist for various governments over the past several decades, including Nicaragua, Mozambique, Portugal and East Timor. He is one of four people who caused the collapse of South Vietnam, one of the authors of the Central American Peace Plan, and currently the author of a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan. He wrote My Life in the Time of the Contras.
Comment: Afghanistan’s partition can only be envisioned by its enemies. Long Live Afghanistan, a nation of great people. Now, we know why the US, Britain, allied nations, and India came to Afghanistan, to divide and conquer. They failed in Pakistan, so their Plan B is to destroy Afghan Unity, Integrity, and Sovereignty. Pakistanis will NOT allow it and we will defend Afghanistan’s Integrity, as we did during the Soviet occupation. Your knowledge of Afghanistan is as much of those adventurers, who talked US in going into Vietnam. So, stop smoking psilocybin mushrooms, or whatever, you are smoking. Bruce Cameron’s orgasmic Zionist dream will NOT happen, so get a life. Aim is to destroy Afghanistan and then start working on Pakistan, it is the original Hindu Zionists and NEOCON Plan, a la Col.Peters, A Jewish activist, who served in the US Army.Plans for Redrawing the Middle East-The Project
for a “New Middle East”
———————–
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zionist Chessmaster
Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”
The following path-breaking analysis was first published by Global Research in November of 2006
“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”
This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the “New Middle East,” was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a “New Middle East” was being launched from Lebanon.
This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli “military roadmap” in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.
The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.” This “constructive chaos” –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.
New Middle East Map
Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that “[w]hat we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one.”1 Secretary Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering of an entire nation, which was being bombed indiscriminately by the Israeli Air Force.
The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech on the “New Middle East” had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon –which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London– have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor Mark Levine the “neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives, and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to create their new world orders,” and that “creative destruction [in] the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, ‘an awesome revolutionary force’ for (…) creative destruction…”2
Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)
Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as “Russia’s Southern Tier” or the Russian “Near Abroad.”
Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia (“Russia’s Southern Tier”) to be the vulnerable and “soft under-belly” of the Russian Federation.3
It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The Map of the “New Middle East”
A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”
MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.
This map of the “New Middle East” seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.
The map of the “New Middle East” was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.5
It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.
It has been written that Ralph Peters’ “four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles,” but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?
The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a “humanitarian” and “righteous” arrangement that would benefit the people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According to Ralph Peter’s:
International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.
The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.
While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam, but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.
Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.
Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.
Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected. 6
(emphasis added)
“Necessary Pain”
Besides believing that there is “cultural stagnation” in the Middle East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions are “draconian” in nature, but he insists that they are necessary pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s belief that the devastation of Lebanon by the Israeli military was a necessary pain or “birth pang” in order to create the “New Middle East” that Washington, London, and Tel Aviv envision.
Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.7
The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false, and fictitious. The advocates of a “New Middle East” and redrawn boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.
Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of “divide and conquer.” Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.
Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually been deliberately obstructing. Western-style “Democracy” has been a requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform to Washington’s political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with because they are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.
Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953 (where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.
The Turkish Protest at NATO’s Military College in Rome
Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters’ map of the “New Middle East” has sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases on September 15, 2006 the map of the “New Middle East” was displayed in NATO’s Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation of a portioned and segmented Turkey.8 The map received some form of approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled in front of NATO officers in Rome.
The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.9 Furthermore the Pentagon has gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.
Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Eurasian Balkans” and the “New Middle East” Project?
The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives. Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the “Eurasian Balkans,” located on its southern tier, are “potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization],” and that, “If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable.”10
It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House’s own admissions; there is a belief that “creative destruction and chaos” in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the “New Middle East,” and furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:
In Europe, the Word “Balkans” conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its “Balkans,” but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogenous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.
The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region’s [meaning the Middle East’s] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation “Eurasian Balkans.”
The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.
The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.
Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.
(…)
The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.
The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile. 11
(emphasis added)
Redrawing the Middle East
The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.
The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.
Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the U.S. Congress, who examined U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of the United States had in fact also planned U.S. involvement in a war, which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.
The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd’s interview with G. Edward Griffin;
We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?
Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States], than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows [wars] in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.
And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.
At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out.
(emphasis added)
The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.
The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.
NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a “civil war” characterised by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.
Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a “divide and conquer strategy” which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is in an independent writer based in Ottawa specializing in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
1 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice (Press Conference, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006).
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69331.htm
2 Professor Mark LeVine, The New Creative Destruction, Asia Times, August 22, 2006.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH22Ak01.html
3 Professor Andrej Kreutz, The Geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East, Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ) (Washington, D.C.: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, January 2002).
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_1_24/ai_93458168/pg_1
4 The Caucasus or Caucasia can be considered as part of the Middle East or as a separate region
5 Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Ralph Peters, Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look, Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006.
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
6 Ibid.
7 Crispian Balmer, French MPs back Armenia genocide bill, Turkey angry, Reuters, October 12, 2006.
James McConalogue, French against Turks: Talking about Armenian Genocide, The Brussels Journal, October 10, 2006.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1585
8 Suleyman Kurt, Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts U.S. Apology, Zaman (Turkey), September 29, 2006.
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=36919
9 Ibid.
10 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives (New York City: Basic Books, 1997).
http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465027261
11 Ibid.
Related Global Research articles on the March to War in the Middle East
US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War? 2006-10-24
“Cold War Shivers:” War Preparations in the Middle East and Central Asia 2006-10-06
The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean 2006-10-01
The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks 2006-09-21
The Next Phase of the Middle East War 2006-09-04
Baluchistan and the Coming Iran War 2006-09-01
British Troops Mobilizing on the Iranian Border 2006-08-30
Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats 2006-08-24
Beating the Drums of War: US Troop Build-up: Army & Marines authorize “Involuntary Conscription” 2006-08-23
Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War? 2006-08-21
Triple Alliance:” The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon 2006-08-06
The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil 2006-07-26
Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust? 2006-02-22
The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War 2006-02-17
Nuclear War against Iran 2006-01-03
Israeli Bombings could lead to Escalation of Middle East War 2006-07-15
Iran: Next Target of US Military Aggression 2005-05-01
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran 2005-05-01
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