losing in afghanistan:
What is the reason that the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan is markedly less than in Iraq when in one country the intervention has lasted since 2001 and in the other since 2003? Well, in the first country the occupying force is much smaller and practically confined to urban centres. The presence in rural areas is so scarce that right now the various forces that make up the Afghan resistance control 75% of the country.
(...) It is mistaken to identify the whole spectrum of Afghan anti-occuoation forces as Taliban. It is true that the Taliban have re-organized and that they make up the greater part of the resistance, but apart from them there are other components like the Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (whose fiefdom is the northern province of Kunduz), nationalist resistance led by Jalalladin Hakkani, Al Qaeda militants, opium traffickers and all kinds of local fighters sick of Western arrogance and above all of the civilian casualties the occupiers have caused. Mor and more villages and towns are abandoning Karzai's puppet regime and going over to the insurrection. One should not forget that the collaborators' “star” program is the fight against opium production and that leads them to destroy all kinds of crops without taking into account that the great majority of the lands belong to impoverished rural families with no other means of support. That is just as true in the case of mercenaries belonging to Dyncorp (the US corporation that is supposed to do the same work in Colombia) as it is of occupation forces directed by Great Britain and of collaborationist troops. These last have an impressive record of robbery, rape, extortion, torture and murder, all with impunity. Repressing anti-occupation demonstrations is the order of the day. The collaborationist army is made up mostly of people of Tajik ethnic background, which makes the reaction of the Pathans (or Pashtuns, if one uses Anglo-Saxon etymology) completely normal. The Tajik militias were the main support of the US in its overthrow of the Taliban who are Pathans, the most numerous ethnic group in Afghanistan.
(...) Just as in Iraq, there are no figures for the number of civilians killed by the occupation. Marc W. Herold, an economist in the University of New Hampshire has carried out a study showing 4643 dead civilians from September 2001 to October 2006. As is logical, this figure has increased considerably because since then NATO has increase bombing of civilian areas. The UN talks timidly of 1000 deaths between January 1st and August 1st of this year (6) covering itself by saying “in many cases security considerations limiting the Mission's access to combat zones and the fact that one is dealing with a delicate political situation render difficult the collection of sufficient data to draw up a full report of incidents.” So one should hardly be surprised therefore that the growth of nationalist, anti US and anti-Western sentiment in general is swelling the ranks of the anti-occupation forces. The anti-occupation forces, generically identified as Taliban (so the term interiorizes itself in the collective sub-conscious as a synonym for uncivilized, while foreign troops are bringing progress) are accused of hiding among the civilian population, as if in an asymmetrical guerrilla war the guerrillas might say “Yoo-hoo! Here I am! – Come and bomb me out here in the open....!” But what is happening in Afghanistan is more and more a guerrilla war, perhaps even a most advanced phase. a war of movement.
(...) The UNODC reckoned that 165,000 hectares were dedicated to opium production in 2006, mostly in areas controlled by Karzai's semi-colonial government and in areas with occupied military presence. So the opium is in the hands of the pro-Western elite and forms part of the counterinsurgency campaign. With the territorial expansion of the guerrillas and the control they have in these areas, opium is turning into an almost essential part of the anti-occupation war.