Afghanistan: Never Mind The Taliban

Unreported World travels to northern Afghanistan where there is no threat from insurgents and where the post-2001 democratic state is supposed to be safe and flourishing. Yet Clark has to wear a burqa to get through areas where it is too dangerous to travel openly as a foreigner. The team finds a recently burned down school. The culprits, claim local people, aren’t Taliban but local commanders angry with the NATO forces stationed in the province.

The father of a child killed in an attack on NATO Peace-keeping forces says civilians have no-one to turn to – commanders are powerful in the local administration and foreign peace-keepers are seen to be working with them.

The team accompanies a police raid to an area which aid agencies deem too dangerous to visit. Two hundred police loyal to police chiefs who have been accused publicly of serious abuses by the UN have been sent to arrest two rogue commanders. They have started to fight each other in a local vendetta. Later, Clark and Porter manage to interview one of the commanders in custody. He says he was arrested because he’s just a bit player in the drugs’ market. Those controlling the trade, he claims, are senior members of the police force with links going up to the heart of the Kabul government.

Allegations of corruption are rife- a farmer growing opium poppy claims he has to pay 10-20% of the sale price to the local commander – who’s also the district governor. An arms dealer says commanders from the old Northern Alliance are importing weapons, re-arming themselves and selling weapons to their old enemies, the Taliban. The market, he says, is buoyant because of the insurgency in the south and there is serious money to be made.

The team returns to Kabul to try to find answers about the parlous state of the provinces, but the rot appears to be at the heart of the new state. A disgruntled policeman and former foot soldier with the Northern Alliance shows the palaces which commanders and cabinet ministers have built on government land. Another man, who survived a massacre carried out by factional forces during the civil war, warns us not to broadcast his interview on Afghan television. “I’d be killed for talking to you,” he says. The team meets a woman MP in her 20s who almost alone has publicly criticised the warlords. Her bravery has made her a magnet for those wanting to complain about abuses, but has meant she is subject to constant death threats.

To Afghan civilians it looks like the Northern Alliance did well out of the 2001 US invasion. However, one of the old factional leaders said they were unhappy with the level of foreign aid and the way they had been disarmed. He warned they could re-mobilise swiftly and were fully capable of kicking out the foreign forces, as they had kicked out the British and the Soviets.

Interview financial expert: more expensive, less to spend, riots in the streets

You have to figure on riots and rebellions taking place, especially in the big cities. Some countries may see revolutions, the Mediterranean countries in particular. At that point government buildings could be set on fire and government employees attacked. You have to consider these kinds of scenarios. In any crisis situation you're going to have people who revolt. In order to see what can happen in a crisis situation we have only to look at what happened in Argentina. People went from being middle class one day to finding themselves below the poverty line the next.

read more

'Credit crisis caused by fighting wars and short-term vision'

What we now have is stagflation - stagnation versus inflation. And where we'll soon find ourselves is hyperinflation. [...] Keynes' idea was that if you go into debt, you have to pay it off in good time. It was never his intention to say, 'We've gone into debt, and as long as everything's okay we'll go deeper into debt'. [...] This paper money then went into circulation, and the gold was used as backing for the weapons industry, at which point an arms race started first between France and Germany, followed later on by all other Western countries.

read more

The facts behind the fiction of the Lebanon war of 2006

read more

Webster Tarpley in Amsterdam, July 22nd: Historical changes in false flag terrorism

As students of the manipulation of the political and social process by intelligence agencies through false flag terrorism and through other forms of covert operations, we need to be aware that the intelligence agencies are not Johnny one note, but rather change their tactics as the world political and economic situation evolves.

read more

'Buy gold, rent a house and in the end move to a warm country': financial expert

I've already hedged my own capital by putting 10% of it into gold. I've already transferred my pension into raw materials and raw material shares. I sold my house in 2002, and I've been renting since then. As far as pension funds go, we're currently advising that a minumum of 10% of pension assets be put into gold.

read more