Aram Roston’s article How the US Funds the Taliban for The Nation illustrates how the millions of dollars the US is spending in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through is ending up in the pockets of the Taliban.

The US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.

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The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? “The American soldier in me is repulsed by it,” he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. “But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”

As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, “We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics.”
In a statement to The Nation, Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief public affairs officer for the international forces in Afghanistan, said that military officials are “aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring.” He added that, despite oversight, “the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent.”

In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that–as with so much in Afghanistan–the United States doesn’t seem to know how to fix it. Aram Roston, The Nation.

So just to labour the point – on the one hand the Taliban are receiving money not to shoot US supply trucks and on the other the Taliban they are killing US soldiers – what on earth is the benefit of our occupation of Afghanistan we are doing nothing more than inflaming the situation – if our troops weren’t there than we wouldn’t need to pay the Taliban vast sums to supply them – We won’t get anywhere if we continue this bizarre state of affairs. And what does Warlord, Taliban or Mujahedeen leader protection money say about how democracy works – badly. Why are we surprised that President Hamid Karzai’s government is corrupt.

Why Afghans Have No Hope in This Week’s Vote by Malalai Joya

Like millions of Afghans, I have no hope in the results of this week’s election. In a country ruled by warlords, occupation forces, Taliban insurgency, drug money and guns, no one can expect a legitimate or fair vote.

Among the people on the street, a common sentiment is, ‘Everything has already been decided by the U.S. and NATO, and the real winner has already been picked by the White House and Pentagon.’ Although there are a total of 41 candidates running for president, the vast majority of them are well known faces responsible for the current disastrous situation in Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai has cemented alliances with brutal warlords and fundamentalists in order to maintain his position. Although our Constitution forbids war criminals from running for office, he has named two notorious militia commanders as his vice-presidential running mates – Qasim Fahim, who was, at the time of the 2001 invasion, the warlord who headed up the Northern Alliance, and Karim Khalili. The election commission did not reject them or a number of others accused of many crimes, and so the list of candidates also includes former Russian puppets and a former Taliban commander.

Karzai has also continued to absolutely betray the women of Afghanistan. Even after massive international outcry and brave protesters taking to the streets of Kabul, Karzai has implemented the infamous law targeting Shia women. He had initially promised to review the most egregious clauses, but in the end it was passed with few amendments, leaving the barbaric anti-women statements untouched. As Human Rights Watch recently said, “Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election.”

Deals have been made with countless fundamentalists in Karzai’s manoeuvring to stay in power. For example, pro-Iranian extremist Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, who has been accused of war crimes, has been promised five cabinet positions for his party, and so he has told the media he’s backing Karzai. A deal has even been done with the dreaded warlord Rashid Dostum – who has returned from exile in Turkey to campaign for Karzai – and many other such terrorists. Rather than democracy, what we have in Afghanistan today are back room deals amongst discredited warlords.

The two main contenders to Karzai’s continued rule, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah Abdullah, do not offer any change; both are former cabinet ministers in this discredited regime and neither has a real, broad footing amongst the people. Abdullah has run a high profile campaign, in part due to the backing and financial support he receives from Iran’s fundamentalist regime. Abdullah and some of the Northern Alliance commanders supporting him have threatened unrest if he loses the vote, raising fears of a return to the rampant violence and killing that marked the civil war years of 1992 to 1996. All of the major candidates’ speeches and policies are very similar. They make the same sweet-sounding promises, but we are not fooled. Afghans remember how Karzai abandoned his campaign pledges after winning the 2004 vote.

We Afghans know that this election will change nothing and it is only part of a show of democracy put on by and for the West, to legitimize its future puppet in Afghanistan. It seems we are doomed to see the continuation of this failed, mafia-like corrupt government for another term.

The people of Afghanistan are fed up with the rampant corruption of Karzai’s “narco-state” government – his own brother, Wali Karzai, has been linked to drug trafficking in Kandahar Province – and the escalating war waged by NATO. In May of this year, U.S. air strikes killed approximately 150 civilians in my native province, Farah. More than ever, Afghans are faced with powerful internal enemies – fundamentalist warlords and their Taliban brothers-in-creed – and the external enemies occupying the country.

Democracy will never come to Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun, or from the cluster bombs dropped by foreign forces. The struggle will be long and difficult, but the values of real democracy, human rights and women’s rights will only be won by the Afghan people themselves.

So do not be fooled by this façade of democracy. Your governments in the West that claim to be bringing democracy to Afghanistan ignore public opinion in their own countries, where growing numbers are against the war. President Obama in particular needs to understand that the change Afghans believe in does not include more troops and a ramped up war.

If the populations of Afghanistan and the NATO countries were able to vote on this military occupation it could not continue indefinitely, and peace would finally be within reach.

Malalai Joya was the youngest Member of the Afghan Parliament elected in the 2005 elections. Her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords (Scribner), will be published this October in the US and has been published in the UK as Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out. CommonDreams.org.

Its high time governments in the West changed the way they operate. Time and again they’ve reasoned it’s better to support the devil they know rather than risk the alternative – trouble is in the end they get something they definitely didn’t want– Iran, The Shah and Islamic Republic being an all too pertinent example.

Hat Tip: Ten Percent.

Raising My Voice by Malalai Joya

Malalai Joya has survived five assassination attempts, she taught in secret girls schools under the noses of the Taliban, risking life and limb daily, she ran Hamoon Health Centre opening in 2003 even as a governor’s representative told her ‘Open your clinic, but we will not guarantee your security’. However at the opening ceremony many Afghans attended, telling Malalai ‘The people will guarantee your security’, this is a recurring theme in her book, the resilience of Afghan society against the Taliban, the warlords and the occupiers. The US/NATO forces did not try to establish democracy they turned to those with existing networks of power- warlords (power maintained like the invaders through overwhelming violence, perhaps this is why they see them as legitimate partners, it should also be noted these are all overwhelmingly male institutions trading power). They swapped one tyranny for another. It’s hardly a cause worth our troops dying for and as Joya lays out in the course of her book the other purported reasons- to stop terrorist attacks in the West by destroying safe havens in the region or to free the women of Afghanistan from murderous oppression- are little more than cover for a very old game of power, geopolitics and resources. What began as a furious lashing out by the US in response to 9/11 has become a toehold to remake the entire region into something more to Washington and international capital’s liking (and yes that does include the hundreds of billions from narcotics). Even if the stated aims were sincere the means to achieve them are shown to be thoroughly counter productive, as she writes: The Afghan people are not terrorists we are the victims of terrorism… what we really need is an invasion of hospitals, clinics and schools for boys and girls. Ricky B, Ten Percent.

Afghanistan’s not the only place in need of such an invasion.