Afghanistan Wrapup for September 22, 2006

Updated February 8, 2008:

Friday, September 22

Between Jalalabad and the Pakistani border, Nangarhar Province, Early AM: The Taliban attacked a Pakistani convoy of five oil tankers on the road between Jalalabad and Torkham on the Pakistani border, killing 1 driver. All of the oil tankers were destroyed while they were parked at a gas station between the two towns. Afghanistan gets all of its oil and most of its other supplies through Pakistan.

Kandahar Province: The Taliban bombed and then opened fire on a bus full of construction workers, killing 19 and wounding 3 more. The workers were probably commuting to go to work on a Coalition military base, but this was not stated in the article.

Uruzgan Province: Afghan police said they killed 20 Taliban in fighting here. The Taliban denied that report and said that instead, they killed 14 Afghan police.

Ismailkhel, Mandozai District, Khost Province: The Taliban fired two rockets at an Afghan National Army camp but caused no casualties or damage. Ismailkhel is a small town about 10 miles west of Khost City. The Mandozai District is in the central part of the province.

Gulistan, Gulistan District, Farah Province: The police chief of this province reported that the Taliban had seized control of the district headquarters here when 500 Taliban attacked the headquarters and seized control over it. The Taliban said the head of the province and the police chief had surrendered, but that was denied by local officials.

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Herat Province: Fighting was continuing between Afghan forces and the Taliban here.

Women on the street in Herat. Herat is ruled by Ismail Khan, a pro-Iranian Shia warlord. Under his rule, women have had few rights. As you can see, they still wear burkas.

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Thursday, September 21

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Dilaram, Nimroz Province: Afghan forces cleared the Taliban out of this area after they seized control of the main highway linking Herat and Kandahar. Previously, the Taliban had cut the highway here, blocking all traffic. Dilaram is located 80 miles west of Farah City where the Farah, Nimroz and Helmand Provinces all come together. Women Without Borders, a great German group, has been very active here.

Nimroz is a desolate desert province but the Helmand River is still very wide here, making a shocking contrast with the desert. Sand dunes line the banks of this wide river here, making for a strange sight. Most of the water is being taken by neighboring Iran and Nimroz gets almost nothing left.

A treaty was signed with the Afghan king and Iran splitting up the water here, but when the king died, the treaty was null and Iran just grabbed all the water. Across the border in Iran, the fields are lush, but Nimroz almost looks like Saudi Arabia.


Women in Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz Province. These women are with a great group called Women Without Borders who were active there last summer setting up women's schools, which the women took to very enthusiastically. Most of the people here have been living as refugees in Iran for a long time with few to no rights. They are just now returning.

In Zaranj, a city of 85,000, there are exactly 3 women who are driving vehicles. In this large city, there is not one telephone, there is no Internet and the only TV is satellite. This city actually gets lots of electricity for an Afghan city, since it all comes from Iran. But Iran often cuts off the supply for no apparent reason. The temperature in summer is 115 with frequent sandstorms that make it almost impossible to even walk through town.

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Near Miran Shah, North Waziristan, Pakistan: Local Islamist guerrillas executed an Afghan man who they said was spying for the US in Khost Province across the border in Afghanistan and dumped his his bullet-riddled body at a checkpoint near here. A note near the body explained why he had been killed.


Wednesday, September 20

Garmser District, Helmand Province, Early: There was heavy fighting between NATO forces and the Taliban in a mountainous part of Southern Afghanistan, probably in the Garmser District near Garmser. The fighting lasted for 2 hours and 7 Taliban were killed. There were no NATO casualties.

Near Kabul: 1 Italian soldier was killed and 2 more were wounded when their armored vehicle overturned while going up an incline. The troops were on their way to the town of Musay-Tal when the accident occurred.

Zabul Province: Taliban guerrillas tried to set an oil tanker on fire here on the Kandahar-Kabul highway but Afghan police intervened. A battle ensued and 4 Taliban were killed. 1 policeman was injured.

Khost Province: Roadside bomb attack on Afghan soldiers wounded 3 troops.

Arghandab District, Zabul Province: NATO soldiers arrested 4 Taliban as they rode on motorcycles here.

Wardak Province: Dozens of guerrillas using automatic weapons and RPG's attacked police here, killing 1 policeman and wounding 2 more, 1 seriously. It is really disturbing that so many Taliban guerrillas are now attacking in mass formations in this previously fairly stable province. The eastern part of the province is largely Pashtun, however. The Taliban insurgency is increasingly turning into a Pashtun tribal insurgency.


Tuesday, September 19

Kakhtapul, Garmser District, Helmand Province, Early AM: NATO troops and Afghan police killed 7 Taliban and wounded 4 more in fighting here. There were no NATO or police casualties. Three Taliban vehicles were destroyed in the fighting. This town could not be located on a map.

Miankhail, Garmser District, Helmand Province, Early AM: Fighting between the Taliban and Afghan police and NATO troops killed 4 Taliban. Some of the Taliban killed here and in Kakhtapul were Pakistanis. This town also could not be located on a map.

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Lawara Mandi, North Waziristan, Pakistan, AM: Guerrillas attacked US forces in Pipali, Afghanistan. Afterwards, six US helicopters violated Pakistan’s air space here. The guerrillas apparently fled into Pakistan after they attacked US forces.

Lawara Mandi is about 34 miles west of Miran Shah. Locals report "constant" violations of Pakistani airspace in the area due to militant activity. Pakistani forces did not take any action regarding the US helicopters.

Pipali is not the name of a village, but instead is the name of a US/Afghan military base 2 miles inside Afghanistan in Paktika Province. The base is probably located near Bermal and Urgun. See the photos of Bermal below.

Here is an excellent map from the Washington Post of the Pakistani Tribal Agencies. Good maps of these agencies are hard to come by. Click to enlarge the map to see the detail. Pipali and Lawara Mandi are probably due west of Miran Shah on the border - Pipali on the Afghan side and Lawara Mandi on the Pakistani side.

Note the location of North and South Waziristan, which are both totally controlled by Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban right now. This image is used on the basis of fair use policy for educational use. Since we make almost nothing off this blog, I can't see how this is commercial use.

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Giro District, Ghazni: The Taliban ambushed police here and a battle ensued. 2 police and 17 Taliban were wounded. Police said that 13 Taliban were killed in the fighting. The Giro District is 30 miles south of Ghazni City on the border with Paktika Province. It has started to unravel security-wise in recent months.

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Paktika Province: There was fighting here between guerrillas and Afghan troops. 4 guerrillas were killed in the fighting. Ammunition and a mortar were seized.

US forces in Bermal, Paktika, near the Pakistani border, on September 9. This area has been red-hot dangerous for years now.


US forces firing artillery at guerrillas at the US base in Bermal, Paktika Province, on September 9. This area is extremely dangerous and has been crawling with guerrillas for years now with no end in sight.


A view of the terrain near the US base in Bermal, Paktika. Right across the border is North Waziristan, which is now completely controlled by the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda. These guerrillas constantly raid across the border, fire on US forces and then go back to Pakistan.

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Yakhthal, Gereshk District, Helmand Province: The Taliban said that they had executed a Turkish mercenary who was working for a Turkish construction company after the company he worked for ignored an order to leave Afghanistan. Mustafa Asimi was captured Aug. 28 in an ambush.

There is no Gereshk District in Helmand, but there is a province called Nahri Sarraj, in which the largest city is Gereshk. There is also no town called Yakhthal; instead, the town is called Yakhchal (map here) and it is located 7 1/2 miles east of Gereshk. The Nahri Sarraj District borders Kandahar Province to the east.

The Nahri Sarraj District is 90% Pashtun, but there are some girls in school in Gereshk. Honor killings of teenage girls still occur here. 75% of the livestock has been killed in the drought. The district is very fertile with irrigation from the Helmand River.
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Khar, Bajour Agency, Pakistan: Roadside bomb attack on an aid vehicle carrying health care workers near the Afghan border wounded 2 female health workers.

The women were working for the Pakistani National Commission for Human Development and were heading for a rural health center at the time. The attack occurred after local fundamentalist cretins told agencies not to hire women as health workers or teachers.
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Monday, September 18

South of Farah, Farah Province, 7:35 AM: Roadside bomb attack here on a convoy of eight Spanish armored vehicles caused no damage and no casualties.

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Kafir Band, Panjwayi District, Kandahar Province, 10 AM: As Canadian troops handed out candy to children here, a diabolical suicide bomber-criminal on a bicycle attacked them, killing 4 Canadian troops and wounding 14 others. 24 children were wounded by the devilish bomber, 4 critically.

The Taliban later announced that the bomber, Mullah Qadratullah, was from Kandahar. 50 to 60 Canadian troops were patrolling in the town at the time. A local villager disputed the account that soldiers were handing out candy to kids at the time of the attack, saying that there were few kids in the village at the time.

Other reports said the attack took place in the Kolf area, near Pashmul, 12 miles west of Kandahar. Neither Kolf nor Kafir Band could be located on a map.
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Hawasha, Gereshk District, Helmand Province: Battles between Afghan police and the Taliban killed 13 Taliban and wounded more. A Taliban leader was killed in the fighting. The bodies of the Taliban fighters were scattered through the orchards in the area.

No town called Hawasha could be located on a map. The town in question is probably Pasaw (map here), located 8 1/2 miles east of Gereshk, near the town of Yakhcha, where the Turkish engineer was kidnapped and then killed (see above).
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Sayadan, Parwan Province: Attackers threw grenades at women having an outdoor wedding celebration in a garden behind walls here about 40 miles north of Kabul, killing five women and wounding 18. Four suspects were arrested.

The motive for the attack was a private feud. Sayadan (map here) is located 5 miles east of the capital of Charikar. Charikar was founded in 329 BC by Alexander the Great as Alexandria of the Caucasus. Bagram Air Base is located in Parwan Province, near Charikar. This is one of the most important, if not the most important, US bases in Afghanistan.
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Herat: Yet another suicide attacker on a bicycle killed at least 10 people and wounded 15 more in Herat. The deputy police chief was amongst those wounded.

A view of Herat from a hill outside the city. As you can see, there is some vegetation here; the area is not a complete desert. Furthermore, it is quite a large city.

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Poli-e-Charki, Kabul: Yet another suicide bomber attacked Afghan police here, killing 3 police. 3 other police and 2 civilians were wounded in the attack, which occurred in a market.

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Herat Province: Spanish, Italian and US troops launched Operation Wyconda Pincher here in response to the massive Taliban offensive that has occurred in this province recently. It seems clear to me that the large Taliban forces here are in part made up forces have fled from Helmand and Kandahar Provinces to the southeast, where major offensives have been underway for some time now.

We will see how this operation works as far as defeating the Taliban in this province. This province is disastrously in need of the most basic reconstruction money.
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Sunday, September 17

Gereshk District, Helmand Province, Early: Roadside bomb attack on Afghan police here killed 2 police and destroyed their vehicle.

3 miles east of Kabul: Yet another in the mad wave of suicide bombers blew himself up next to a U.S. military convoy here, wounding 2 US soldiers and 2 civilians, police said. The bomber was on foot and had explosives strapped to his body. He ran up the US convoy and detonated himself.

West of Kandahar: The mad suicide bomber parade continued as a suicide car bomber attacked a Canadian convoy here, killing 1 civilian and wounding 3 Canadian soldiers. 8 civilians were wounded in the blast.

Ghazni Province: The body of an Afghan engineer who was working for a local aid agency for rural development was found here after he was abducted by the Taliban earlier in the week. His body had been mutilated.

Southern Afghanistan: A top NATO general said that Operation Medusa in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province had been a significant success. Guerrillas had been forced to abandon their positions and reconstruction projects, which have typically been horribly botched by the US reactionaries, are set to begin in the district. Don't expect any miracles.


Saturday, September 16

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Musayi District, Kabul Province: Roadside bomb attack on a vehicle carrying Afghan mercenaries working providing security help for a water project killed 3 mercenaries and wounded 1 more. The Musayi District is located 9 1/2 miles south of Kabul on the southern border of Kabul Province on the border with Logar Province.

Musayi is a majority-Pashtun district with a few Tajiks living there. Once again, we see the Pashtun factor in the Taliban insurgency. Most of the homes were destroyed in the Soviet War. There is no health clinic in the village and pregnant women must travel to Kabul to have their children. A number of them die along the way. Thank you George Bush!

There are no girls in school here, although there are 4 schools functioning. Amazing - 9 miles from Kabul and no clinics and no girls in school.
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Kandahar: A Canadian soldier fired on a vehicle that he felt was driving too close to his convoy here, wounding 2 Afghans, apparently civilians. Looks like Iraq all over again.

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Eastern Afghanistan: Operation Mountain Fury began in five eastern provinces, Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Logar and Ghazni. About 4,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 3,000 Coalition troops kicked off the operation. The goal is not only to attack the Taliban but also to rebuild local infrastructure.

Seeing how catastrophically the Bush conservatives have failed with every reconstruction project they have ever undertaken to date, we will wait with bated breath how this goes. The Bush Administration approaches reconstruction with the mentality that corporations will be given a blank check with no-bid contracts to charge as much as they want for the contract, which results in massive overcharges.

Then there is zero oversight, so the corporation logically does minimal or terrible work while being paid top dollar. Obviously, any corporation in the private sector with such a mindset would be driven out of business by market forces if they did not have a monopoly.

The fact that this is the sort of crooked, 3rd world style crony, organized crime-type capitalism that Bush promotes gives the lie to the notion that these crooks support free market capitalism in any way. Instead, they support rigged markets with crony monopoly capitalism. It is clear that even a principled state agency could do a better job that crony capitalists, who have already been ruining the 3rd World for most of the last century.
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Friday, September 15

Uruzgan Province, Late: Coalition forces spotted guerrillas laying roadside bombs near a Coalition base here and attacked them with gunfire and bombs, killing 17 Taliban.

Khost Province: Guerrillas attacked a US base here, killing 1 US soldier and wounding 1 more.

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Khas Uruzgan, Khas Uruzgan District, Uruzgan Province: 60 Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint near the district headquarters here in an apparent bid to overrun the district headquarters of yet another Afghan district. NATO and Afghan soldiers came to help the police under attack. The Taliban retreated and there were no Coalition casualties.

The Khas Uruzgan District is in the far east of Uruzgan Province, bordering the Day Chopan District of Zabul to the east. This area is mountainous, desolate and wild, with a mixed population of Hazara and Pashtun. The Taliban have long been active in this area. There is, a US base here called Firebase Anaconda. Map of Khas Uruzgan city here.

A woman carries a bushel of some sort of vegetation in the stark beauty near Khas Uruzgan.


Taliban fundamentalist cretins burned this school to the ground, possibly because, being cretins, they are opposed to learning.


The same school that was burned down by the Taliban fundamentalist idiots has now been rebuilt by US forces from Firebase Anaconda in Khas Uruzgan. At least some US aid money is not being wasted on Bush and his crony capitalist, war profiteering corporate pirates.


Local Afghans get together with US troops for a soccer match at the sports field built by US forces in Khas Uruzgan.


Afghans play soccer at the Sports Stadium in Khas Uruzgan.

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Iraqi Al Qaeda Releaes Video Showing Abuse of US Soldiers' Bodies

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here.

A video has been released by Iraqi Al Qaeda on the Internet that apparently shows the mutilation of the bodies of 2 US soldiers, Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, and Pfc. Thomas Tucker. Both men vanished on June 16 after an attack on a checkpoint in Karagol, near Jurf As Sakhr, south of Baghdad. Their badly mutilated bodies were found in Jurf as Sakhr 3 days later.

A video of their badly mutilated bodies on a bridge over a canal, apparently in Jurf as Sakhr, was released around the time of the incident. Warning: it is pretty nasty stuff.

One man, apparently Tucker, has been beheaded. The head is sitting a ways away from the body is a displayed by Arabs in sandals who walk among the bodies during the videos.

Tucker has also apparently had his genitals removed and most of the internal organs in his chest are missing, apparently as part of an operation to remove his heart. Menchaca's body is much less mutilated, but it appears that maybe his tongue has been removed, and possibly also his nose. The video is shot on a bridge over a canal, apparently in Jurf as Sakhr.

This blog has a thorough write-up of the entire episode in two previous posts - Map of the Triangle of Death and New Details of How Tucker and Menchaca Were Killed. The description in the latter post is one of the most thorough descriptions on the net of the details of the men's killings and the subsequent outrages upon their bodies.

The posts also have some nice photos of the area in question, one of the most detailed maps on the Internet of the Triangle of Death where the whole mess went down and a theory on the exact building in Jurf As Sakhr where I think much of the mutilations took place.

The articles also discuss the widely varying accounts of the attack itself in an attempt to reconcile what really happened.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

The Jews of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Lebanon

Updated January 31, 2008:

The standard Zionist line, repeatedly endlessly by Zionist propagandists to all who will listen, is that there are no Jews in "Arabia", or certainly none in Saudi Arabia.

Clearly, there are still Jews living in Yemen, which is a part of Arabia. In some ways, these very traditional Jews have it better than they have ever had it in Yemen, where traditionally, the life of a Jew was one most of us would consider to be difficult.

As a sign of changing times, although there are only 200 Jews left in Yemen, the ruling party recently nominated a Yemeni Jew to run on its platform as a parliamentarian representing the northern region.

This was a very controversial move in Yemen, and unfortunately ran up against the stumbling block of a regressive law that says that everyone running for office must be a Muslim.

Since one of the religious laws of the Yemeni Jews was that they were not allowed to serve in the army or government of the state (How is that for a dual loyalty problem?), this law meant nothing to the Yemeni Jews, and neither was it an issue under traditional Islamic rule, when non-Muslims were kept out of the military and probably discouraged from government office too anyway.

The fact that a Yemeni Jew considered running for office shows that the remaining Jews are giving up some of their strict, traditional religious rules. Some rules, however, remain. For instance, the Yemeni Jews refuse to eat with non-Jews, and intermarriage is strictly forbidden. The rule about eating was actually a normal practice for all pious European Jews up until about 1800 or so, a little-known fact.

Also, many Yemeni Jews both inside and outside Yemen continue the ancient Jewish practice of prostrating themselves for daily prayer, similar to what Muslims do in a mosque. European Jews generally only do this nowadays, if at all, during portions of certain prayers during the Jewish High Holidays. So, in some ways, the remaining Yemeni Jews are stuck in time.

The Yemeni Jews that remain are presently banned from certain occupations (probably more by traditional Muslim prejudice than by state law), allowed to live only in certain parts of towns, forbidden to serve in the military or government and have little interaction with their Muslim neighbors but unfortunately, it has always been that way in Yemen.

On the ban on serving in government or military, note above how this is possibly changing in the government aspect, and how this was a traditional Yemeni Jewish law for themselves anyway.

See here for a great webpage, Chayas, on the Yemeni Jews. The Yemeni Jews are some of the most religious Jews in the whole world, and have always been deeply religious.

For instance, on the daily prostration for prayer still practiced by Yemeni Jews, see this near-obsessive Chayas webpage, Did You Prostrate to God Today?, that endlessly plumbs all of the possible ins and outs of how to properly prostate oneself, the specific 12 steps required, the history of such prostration, religious debates about prostration, and on and on.

On the Chayas pages, there is a page on the traditional religious laws of the Yemeni Jews. One is stricken by how similar these laws are to those of an Islamic society:

• Men and women may not bathe together.


• Women may not bathe in the sea, even in a woman-only area, if there is a male lifeguard.


• Women may not bring boys older than 3 to the women's bathing beach.


• Women may not bathe in the sea where there are men and women present together.


• One must not look at a picture of a woman.


• A woman may not look into the home of an unmarried man.


• Women and girls over 6 years old may not ride bicycles because parts of their bodies that should be covered get exposed.


• All married women must wear head coverings.


• Married women must wear a head covering, even when alone in their own homes.
  

An excellent overview of the Yemeni Jews can be found here. On this Chayas page, we see some of the traditional difficulties in identity faced by many Yemeni and other Arab Jews. In one article on the page, the author proudly proclaims herself to be an Arab Jew. This is now a controversial position in Israel, where the Arab Jews are now referred to as Mizrachi Jews (actually Mizrachi covers all Jews of the Asian lands).

Sometimes the Mizrachi are subsumed into the category of Sephardic, though Sephardic traditionally refers to the Jews of Spain and Portugal, who later moved to Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Turkey and Latin America, with some moving to North Africa.

Nowadays, it is quite common for militant Israeli Arab Jews to demand to be called Mizrachis and to say that if anyone called them an Arab Jew, they might hit the person. This is clearly an outgrowth of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab Jews were pretty much forced out of their lands by the creation of the state of Israel. Riots erupted across the Arab World and hundreds of Jews were killed amidst a general atmosphere of terror. Many left with little but the shirts on their backs. Many had most of their money confiscated upon leaving and were allowed to take few possessions.

Their homes, properties and money were in many cases confiscated by Arab governments. This is clearly an injustice but the Palestinians experienced a similar injustice, and the Arab Jews at least have the right to go back to their home countries, but almost none of them seem to be interested in doing so.

A few years ago, the son of Muammar Qaddafi, who is being groomed to replace the leader, asked the Libyan Jews to return to Libya. None of them took him up on his offer. This is a typical mindset of the Arab Jews, and this is the crucial difference between the Jewish and Palestinian refugees that lies at the core of the conflict.

The notion of "population transfers" - actually sickening, Nazi-like, super-racist episodes of ethnic cleansing - is frequently brought to the table during Middle East discussions, especially by liberal Zionist Jews. Pakistan and India, Turkey and Greece are mentioned, along with Israel and Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is equated with the largely voluntary flight of the Arab Jews.

The notion is that both populations fled, so the circle is squared and the conflict is over. Yet...the Arab Jews do not wish to go home! And those that do, just pack up and do so, as we shall see later on in this post. But the Palestinians, virtually alone amongst the world's refugees, are not allowed to return to their lands!

This is at the very root and heart of the conflict, and until there is resolution of this issue, I do not think that peace is possible. In a larger sense, it is deeply disturbing that liberal Zionist Jews, the most progressive of Zionists, casually and glibly equate Zionism with some of the worst horrors of the 20th Century, such as the mass slaughters that accompanied the creations of Turkey and Pakistan.

The flight of 800,000 Arab Jews from their lands was accomplished in part by Zionist terrorists, who, disguised as Arabs, killed Jews in Iraq with hand grenades and bombs in order to terrorize them into fleeing to Israel. The government of Israel cut a deal with the pro-British government of Iraq to deprive Iraqi Jews of their rights and property, to deprive them of employment and ultimately to confiscate their wealth.

All of this was cleverly done to facilitate the flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel. Upon arrival in Israel, 50% of the Iraqi Jews' money was immediately seized by Israeli authorities and was never given back. Arab Jews experienced pronounced racism from the Ashkenazi ruling class.

In fact, getting the Arab Jews into Israel was a necessity for the newfound Israeli state. 800,000 Arabs had been thrown off the land and there were not enough workers to work the fields and do manual work, despite decades of working class and back-to-the-land propagandizing by socialist Ashkenazi Zionists.

Even the terrible riots that swept the Arab World were complex. In many cases, especially in Iraq, local Arabs fought off Arabs who attacked the Jews and helped to hide the Jews from the mobs. In most cases, the number of Jews killed was in the scores. The usual Zionist transcription of this madness as "Arabs try to do Holocaust 2 on the Arabs" is false, as reality was more nuanced than that.

The Chayas article by Dr. Ella Habiba Shohat, a Professor of Cultural Studies and Women's Studies at CUNY-City University of New York, Reflections of an Arab (Iraqi) Jew is typical of the identity issues that many Arab Jews face.

She says that when her Iraqi Jewish parents came to Israel in the 1950's, they thought that the Ashkenazi European Jews were actually European Christians - this is how alien the Ashkenazi seemed to her Mizrachi parents.

In Israel nowadays, the political delineation, a line drawn with blood and guns, is "Arab versus Jew". For many Arab Jews, this makes no sense, as they see themselves as both. For centuries in the Arab World, despite Ashkenazi Zionist revisionist BS, there had been no such distinction. The only delineation was religious. People were either Jews, Muslims or Christians.

Modern Israel and the Diaspora Jewish community are hostile, to say the least, to the very notion of Arabness or Middle-Easternness outside of their Zionist primordialist nonsense.

This in spite of the fact that Israeli Jews now have adopted many Arabic words into their Hebrew, have added many Arabic dishes to their national cuisine (falafel is a national dish) and have adopted Arabic architecture to their homes and buildings. All while adopting a discourse of hatred for the very Arabs whose lands and homes they stole to make their gangster state.

All of the above is difficult for the Arab Jew. I remember reading a piece by a Yemeni Jew who went to Israel and never felt at home. At one point, he was living in a home in Israel and hired an Arab gardener who told him up front that he had used to own the home that the Yemeni Jew was now living in. The Yemeni Jew was so upset that he moved.

The Yemeni Jews never spoke Yiddish and know nothing of it. The women never wore wigs either, and the Yemeni Jews continue to disdain this common Ashkenazi Orthodox practice as heretical. If you go to their synagogue even now, the music sounds like it is coming from a mosque.

In opposition to what we call the Judeo-Christian tradition, the experience of the Arab Jews can only honestly be described, painful as it is for Zionists, as a Judeo-Muslim tradition.

In Israel, Arab Jewish women dye their hair blond to hide their hated Arabness. The men, suspected of being "Arabs", are arrested and beaten. The profound racism of the past has significantly diminished, but as recently as the 1970's the racism of Ashkenazis towards Mizrachis in Israel was as bald-faced and unselfconscious as one found in the US South in the 1960's.

The history of this naked racism has been systematically hidden from Americans by the Zionist Ashkenazi Jews who have plotted to dominate our media.

Their Gentile colleagues do not dare to run such an article, as they live in terror that the US Zionist (Jewish) Lobby would bombard them with hostile phone calls and letters to the editor, drown them with calls for resignation, stage demonstrations in front of the office, threaten advertiser boycotts and plot media campaigns of character assassination by Zionist fellow travelers.

Wherever their minds are at, media Gentiles know who signs the checks.

This situation of an ethnic lobby dominating a nation's media, then terrorizing the same media into de facto censorship, is profoundly undemocratic and hostile to (so-called) basic American values. Whether or not it is an innate value for US Jews with "zero-sum game" Middle Eastern tribal values of ethnic warfare and hyperethnocentrism is not important.

In the late 1800's, Karl Marx said that in 100 years, he predicted that America will be a Jewish country. And so it has come to be, for better and for worse.

European Jews term their movement from the Diaspora to Israel (in a gratuitous insult to the Palestinian natives) as an aliya or an ascent. For the Arab Jews, it has always been a yerida or descent.

In Shohat's excellent piece, she notes a common Mizrachi complaint - that what they see as their rich, wonderful history has been co-opted and revisionized by Ashkenazi Jews into the party-line Ashkenazi "pogrom and persecution" history of the Jews.

Interestingly, many Mizrachis vociferously object to this and see it as an invalidation of their culture. As Shohat protests:

The Jewish experience in the Muslim world has often been portrayed as an unending nightmare of oppression and humiliation. Although I in no way want to idealize that experience--there were occasional tensions, discriminations, even violence--on the whole, we lived quite comfortably within Muslim societies.

Our history simply cannot be discussed in European Jewish terminology. As Iraqi Jews, while retaining a communal identity, we were generally well integrated and indigenous to the country, forming an inseparable part of its social and cultural life. Thoroughly Arabized, we used Arabic even in hymns and religious ceremonies.

The liberal and secular trends of the 20th-century engendered an even stronger association of Iraqi Jews and Arab culture, which brought Jews into an extremely active arena in public and cultural life. Prominent Jewish writers, poets and scholars played a vital role in Arab culture, distinguishing themselves in Arabic-speaking theater, in music, as singers, composers, and players of traditional instruments.

In Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia, Jews became members of legislatures, of municipal councils, of the judiciary, and even occupied high economic positions. (The finance minister of Iraq in the '40s was Ishak Sasson, and in Egypt, Jamas Sanua--higher positions, ironically, than those our community had generally achieved within the Jewish state until the 1990s.)

Note that Shohat speaks positively of the tremendous achievements Mizrachi Jews made in the 20th Century Arab World before the creation of Israel. In typical Ashkenazi Zionist histories of Arab Jews one finds on the Internet, the entire 20th century histories of the Arab Jews of each Arab land is described only as a litany of woes, crimes, persecutions, killings, and general unpleasantness.

As Shohat notes, there is another proud history there, when in the 20th Century, Arab Jews reached the peak of power and influence in their societies, and more importantly, played profound roles in the modernization of their backward societies.

But I digress. This post was to be about the Jews of Arabia. As I noted above, Zionists love to talk about the fact that "there are no Jews in Saudi Arabia". At times, they also sometimes wallow in primordialism by ranting about how Mohammad supposedly killed and ethnically cleansed all of the Jews of Arabia in the 700's.

The Zionists who talk like this actually say that, as a response to these supposed crimes by Mohammad against the Arabian Jews, Zionists had a right to steal Arab Palestine from Arab Muslims in revenge! I kid you not. Now tell me that Zionism is not a form of insanity.

The fact is that standard history says that there have been no Jews in Arabia proper for centuries. It is true that Mohammad did fight wars against three tribes of Arabian Jews (who apparently had come to Arabia after the destruction of temples by the Romans 500-600 years before).

In one of these battles, the battle against the Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayza at the Battle of Kaybar, he executed hundreds of Jews after they surrendered, stole their lands and possessions and enslaved their women. In another war against the Banu Qaynuqa, Mohammad took their possessions and banished the tribe.

In the Battle of Kaybar, Mohammad took a Jewish slave woman, Safiyya bint Huyayy, as a bride. One Muslim tradition has it that a Banu Nadir woman, angry at what he did to her tribe, slowly poisoned Mohammad, from which he apparently died. This hadith is not very well-attested but is a favorite of Muslim anti-Semites.

The truth, as usual, is so much more complicated. It turns out that there were nine separate Jewish tribes in Arabia. Mohammad only had conflicts with three of these nine tribes. With the other six, the Banu Auf, Banu Harif, Banu Jusham, Banu Najjar, Banu Shutayba, Banu Sa'ida, Mohammad made peace and signed the Constitution of Medina with them, in which they were allowed to retain their Jewish religion.

Clearly, the ultranationalist Zionist notion that Mohammad killed all the Arabian Jewish men, enslaved all their women, stole all their stuff and ethnically cleansed them, is simply false.

After the recordings in the Koran, the trail of the Arabian Jews grows dim. We find one clue in the controversy over the apparently false hadith, in which Mohammad supposedly said on his deathbed, "There shall no other religion in Arabia".

This fake hadith is used by the Saudi ultrareactionaries to disallow the open practice of any non-Muslim religion in Arabia, to forbid the building of non-Muslim houses of worship, to mandate that all Saudi citizens must be Muslims, and to allow only Muslims to visit Mecca.

The hadith, probably written long after Mohammad died, is dubious for several reasons. For one, history tells us that Christians, and possibly Jews, lived in Arabia for at least 200 years after Mohammad. If Mohammad actually said this, why were non-Muslims allowed to reside in Arabia for 200 years after his death?

Furthermore, are we to believe that non-Muslims lived in Arabia the whole time during Mohammad's rule with his permission, yet Mohammad suddenly changed his mind on his deathbed and decided they had to leave, yet this was not enforced until 200 years later?

What we do know is that 200 years later, under the influence of this dubious hadith, apparently all Christians, and possibly any remaining Jews, were thrown out of Arabia.

Yet the history of Arabian Jews is more mysterious than even this poorly-attested history.

Saudi society is virulently anti-Semitic these days for various reasons. An example of this nasty anti-Semitism is a a fad in Saudi society to accuse various Saudis one does not like, especially members of the Saudi royal family whose commitment to Islam is suspect, of having Jewish ancestors.

Saudi history (mostly oral) is insistent that a number of Saudi tribes supposedly have Jewish origins. They all apparently converted long ago. Therefore, at the very least, a fair number of the ultra-Muslims of Saudi Arabia are actually converted Jews, as hard as it may be for either group to accept.

Now we find a shocking obscure gem of a web page on the Jews of Iraq from August 2001 that suggests that thousands of Saudi crypto-Jews exist to this very day. From the page:

Wow! What a fantastically historical site you have!! My name is Joseph ElHadef, and I live in NY. I am Greek, Hungarian, Egyptian, and Iraqui. In the article from Montefiore Hall the lecturer mentions that Mr. Dangoor spoke to a crypto Jew in Saudia Arabia, tell me more about this incident? I had two Kuwaiti friends at Hofstra University in NY and they both told me that there are STILL Jews in Kuwait? As well as Bahrain? Tell me more about the Saudi Jews!

Joseph ElHadef

Scribe:

A crypto Jewish couple from Saudi Arabia with their twelve children came to London a few years ago and visited the offices of the Exilarch’s Foundation, asking for help to obtain a visa to enable them to emigrate to Israel. However, the Israel Embassy in London turned down their application and they decided to travel to Jordan and move over to Israel clandestinely.

According to their evidence there are thousands of crypto Jews in Saudi Arabia who lead a separate existence from the main population. To our knowledge, there are no Jews living in Kuwait, but a number of Jewish families still live in Bahrain, mainly of Iraqi origin.

It looks like the Zionists who love to rave about "no Jews in Saudi Arabia" may need to reform those frothing rants in light of this suggestive new evidence that there at least 2,000 crypto-Jews still living in Saudi Arabia! At the least, I think these possible crypto-Jews of Saudi Arabia ought to be investigated by an intrepid, discreet reporter.

One more Zionist lie about Saudi Arabia ought to be disposed of, while we are at it. Zionists love to rail about how, supposedly, no Jews are allowed in Saudi Arabia. Along the same lines, some acknowledge that Jews and Christians are allowed in Saudi Arabia, but are not allowed to practice their religion, according to such august sources as the New York Times. These falsifications really need to be dealt with.

Without defending the fundamentalist cretins in the House of Saud, the fact is that there are quite a few Christians and even some Jews living in Saudi Arabia. None are citizens. All are immigrants working there for foreign companies. Prior to March 1, 2005, the Saudi Tourist Office website had a notice that Jews were not allowed to enter Saudi Arabia. Never mind that many did anyway.

On March 1 of last year, that notice was removed along with a statement apologizing for any inconvenience it may have caused. And, as the nice Crossroads Arabia blog (written by a Western expat living in the Kingdom) notes, there are both observant Jews and observant Christians amongst the expat community, and both are permitted to practice their religions. They are not permitted to proselytize or hold public religious services.

However, foreign business and government offices have facilities that they use to hold religious services for their non-Muslim workers. Furthermore, many of these organizations have what are called "dual-use" employees - workers who also serve to lead these non-Muslim services.

As you can see in the comments on the Crossroads Arabia blog, a favorite Zionist line is that there are virtually no Jews left in the Arab World, while there was an 800,000 strong community before a certain s-tty little country came into existence. That the emergence of this stolen state had something to do with the loss of the Arab Jewish presence is not acknowledged.

The loss of the Arab Jews is used by Zionist super-racists to continuously bash the Arab World over the head. What is truly disturbing about this line, though, is the way in which many of these Jews left the Arab World. For instance, in Operation Magic Carpet in the early 1950's, virtually the entire 40,000-strong Yemeni Jewish community was airlifted out of Yemen.

Many of the Yemeni Jews claim that they were taken out virtually against their wills, that children were separated from parents, that they were rudely sprayed with disinfectant as soon as they landed in Israel and that they have been treated like crap in Israel ever since.

This has been a pattern. In the late 1980's, a Jewish community, the Chabani Jews, was discovered in the mountains on the disputed border of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Although they were actually living in Saudi Arabia (I thought there were no Jews in Arabia!?), they were not citizens.

In contrast to the stereotype of the Jew as "rootless cosmopolitan", these Jews were living the life of the noble savage. They went barefoot in the desert and the men all carried long guns on their backs at all times to defend themselves in this dangerous, tribal region.

Upon learning of the existence of these Saudi Jews, Israel immediately went crazy and demanded that this small group of Jews had to go to Israel "for safety" right now.

Never mind that they had been running around in the desert without significant incident, living lives as normal as anyone else in the region lived, for as long as anyone could remember. They were promptly airlifted out to Israel, where I seriously doubt that they are all sitting on the boards of major Israeli corporations by now.

By 1990, towards the end of the Afghan-Soviet War, it was discovered that there were still a few Jews left in that forlorn land, mostly in Kabul, but a few in Herat. This was for the most part a community of Iranian Jews that moved to Afghanistan long ago and developed its own customs. They had weathered the war about as well as anyone, and apparently did not want to leave.

Israel immediately had an international conniption fit and demanded that all of these Jews had to leave Afghanistan and go to Israel right now. An airlift was organized and most of the baffled Jews took the bait and left. Only one Jew, Zebulon Simontev, remains.

It is important to note that when Israel "rescues" these communities that are usually not even in danger, they bribe them to come to Israel. They are often offered large cash payments, a free house, a free income for 5 years or more, etc. It is not surprising that many take the bait. In this manner the entire remaining Afghan Jewish community was decimated - by Israel!

Even after the Taliban took over, there were still 2 Jews remaining in Kabul, Zebulon Simontev and Isaac Levy. They had stayed to take care of the crumbling synagogue and the scrolls. What was interesting was that the Taliban, who we are continuously told are "Islamofascists" dedicated to exterminating all the Jews on Earth, did not even bother to kill these 2 Jews, although it would have been a trivial exercise.

In fact, they were allowed to live freely with no restrictions. They did get into problems with the Taliban because they were into fortune telling, which was illegal under the Taliban. Both of these Jews was jailed for a few weeks for this offense. These two Jews got on great with the Muslim neighbors, who were truly fond of them.

Wait! I thought all Afghans were "Islamofascist" exterminationists? Tragicomically, these two Jews, though the last remaining of their community, utterly despised each other, and spent most of their time fighting each other in various ways. Their constant fighting seems to have landed them a couple of Taliban jail terms too.

My point here is that whenever a Jewish community turns up in the Arab or Muslim World, Israel immediately races to "rescue" them with an airlift and massive bribes. In this manner have many of these Jewish communities been decimated in recent years.

Then, at the same time, Zionists have the most outrageous chutzpah to say, "There are no Jews left in the region!", and blame the poor Muslims and Arabs, when Israel is, nowadays anyway, one of the major reasons for that dearth.

Now, on to the Jews of Lebanon. I recently found a fascinating blog called The Jews of Lebanon! That was a very nice find. One very interesting article there says that 250 Jews had just returned from the Diaspora to Beirut on July 6, 2006, as they felt that the atmosphere was finally safe enough for them to return. Hooray!

It fascinating to note that only six days later, Israel launched a massive invasion of Lebanon that pretty much destroyed Lebanon. Although it seems insane to suggest such a thing, it is perfectly possible that one reason for the Israeli invasion was the return of the 250 Jews to Beirut. I realize that sounds crazy, but Israel is a very crazy country. Bear with me.

Israel is completely hostile to the notion that Jews can live peacefully anywhere in the Arab World and has engaged in repeated provocative behaviors seemingly intended to frighten Jews into leaving Arab lands. See my notes above about the murderous Israeli attacks on the Jews of Iraq and see below for a reference to the Israeli attacks on the Beirut synagogue during 1982.

Soon after Israel attacked Lebanon in July, the Jews of Lebanon blog posted a statement strongly condemning the attack. For this, apparently, they were attacked by a violent swarm of Zionist Jews ferociously assaulting them for being "traitors". The authors of the blog were so shocked by this assault that they made a post called Enough is Enough, telling the Zionist furies to buzz off.

The standard history of the Jews of Lebanon goes beyond the scope of this post and can be found here on the US-Israel site, among other places. The history on that webpage strangely starts at 1948, but I am sure that Jews have been in Lebanon for long before that.

Mitchell Bard's history on the US-Israel Zionist site, as you can see, is the standard Ashkenazi "pogrom and persecution" history of the Jews, grafted onto the experience of the Mizrachi Jews, in this case the Jews of Lebanon.

Note that, idiotically, on the US-Israel site, the webpage "Jews of Lebanon" is linked under the larger category, "Anti-Semitism", as if anti-Semitism was only salient fact of the Lebanese Jews' existence!

A close glance at The Jews of Lebanon blog shows that many of them probably reject this Ashkenazi mangling of their history. According to Bard's history, the population dropped from 12,000 in 1948 to less than 100 in 2004.

We also learn of some sad and awful cases where Hezbollah, in the insanity of the Lebanese Civil War, killed some Lebanese Jews simply for being Jewish. It is also interesting to note that during that war, Israel seems to have deliberately bombed one of the main synagogues in Beirut, apparently in order to help push the Lebanese Jews into fleeing, hopefully to Israel.

This is in line with standard Zionist practice.

Zionism assumes, adopting the dishonest line from the Jewish religious Haggadah, "Every generation, they rise up to kill us..." that no Jew in the Diaspora is ever safe, that Gentiles (even the most Judeophilic) are permanently afflicted with anti-Semitism, that anti-Semitism is not understandable by humans except as some sort of bizarre infection of pure evil or utter insanity, and that the only safe place for any Jew is Israel.

Therefore, all Jews in the Diaspora must move to Israel as soon as possible. This is a bizarre formulation for a couple of reasons.

First of all, Zionism is possibly a stupid way to go about protecting the Jews. Is it really intelligent, if the Jews are always in danger of imminent extermination, to gather such a huge percentage of them into one tiny country, where they can be wiped out all the easier?

Second of all, Israel is now probably one of the most dangerous places on Earth to be a Jew.

If we take extreme liberties with the truth and refer to every attack on Israelis as a murderous or at least violent "anti-Semitic assault", there are probably about 13 violent anti-Semitic attempted homicides in and around Israel every single day at the moment. A number of them end up killing and hurting Jews or at least damaging or destroying their property.

Comparing this to the latest out-of-breath report by the ADL about anti-Semitic incidents in America is an exercise in comedy. If one Jew is killed in an anti-Semitic assault in the US in a given year, that is notable.

Anyway, back to Lebanon. On The Jews of Lebanon blog, there is a linked article from the super-Zionist hard rightwing Israeli Ynet website called, Beirut's Last Jews. This is a typical Israeli "pogrom and persecution" Zionist crapola sob story.

However, the article makes some interesting points, probably inadvertently. It notes that prior the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, during the 1950's and 1960's, the Lebanese Jews had good relations with the other sects in Lebanon (to the extent any ethnic group has good relations with others in such a fractious and sick land).

What is particularly interesting are claims by Lebanese Jews that they had superb relations in particular with the Shiites of Lebanon.

As Israel bombarded and invaded Lebanon repeatedly through the 1970's and finally invaded en masse in 1982, all of that ended, the Shia radicalized, and Hezbollah was born. All of which portended ill for the Jews of Lebanon. The lesson here is clear. The more Israel attacked Lebanon, the worse things got for the Lebanese Jews.

And the despicable lie that pounds our ears night and day these days, with Iran and Lebanon richoceting off the news, that the Shia Muslims have always harbored, continue to harbor, and will always harbor genocidal hatred for Jews, based on the immutable texts of the Islamic religion, is exposed as the hate speech that it truly is.

See the execrable but interesting and erudite Andrew Bostom's Muhammad's Willing Executioners on Robert Spencer's disgusting and bigoted Jihad Watch site and Hezbollah's Creed: Jihadism and Jew Hatred on the disturbing Atlas Shrugs blog of a young, beautiful, bright, articulate New York neoconservative Jewish publisher named Pamela with clear dual loyalty issues, for two recent examples.

The hyperventilating, but well-done and well-written, blog Villagers With Torches by "neoconservative liberal" Jew and former civil rights activist Epaminondas is one continuous inciteful rant against Hezbollah and Iran, among other anti-Semitic entities real and fantasized, and a nonstop, in your face advertisement for the War With Iran that the dual loyalty crowd (Israeli Lobby) - vividly personified by Epaminondas - is currently shoving America headfirst into.

We know very well where the primary loyalties of Jews like Epaminondas lie, and it is not with the America of their birth. Instead, it lies with their tribal links to a vicious little vile racist state in the Levant.

For more, just listen to or read the nonstop incitement by imperialism and Zionism for an apocalyptic war of aggression against Shia Muslim Iran emanating from your TV or the weekly news magazines.>

Afghanistan Wrapup for September 16, 2006

Thursday, September 14

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Bakwa, Farah Province, 3 AM: 200 Taliban in dozens of pickup trucks invaded this town, firing RPG's at the police headquarters. They took over the compound for an hour until police reinforcements drove them off into the dark desert. 2 Taliban were killed and 2 more were wounded.

Bakwa is 59 1/2 miles east of Farah city, the capital of the province. It is 12 1/2 miles north of the border with Nimroz Province. Nimroz has not been very hostile since 2001. However, Bakwa is also 41 1/2 miles from the western border of Helmand Province, where much fighting is taking place.

It is possible that guerrillas fleeing the very heavy fighting in Helmand are fleeing west to Farah. On the other hand, the population of Bakwa is 100% Pashtun, so this may just be a case of local Pashtuns joining the Taliban insurgency, which is basically a Pashtun insurgency at its core. There are no girls' schools in Bakwa and there are no health facilities.

NATO is worried that Farah may turn into a new Taliban stronghold and may become a serious new front in the war unless something is done quickly to stamp it out.

Typical desert terrain in Farah Province.

A typical dwelling in barren Farah Province.

Farah city, with desolate, beautiful mountains in the background.

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Sarkani District, Kunar Province: US and Afghan forces arrested 3 guerrillas with a bomb in this district south of Asadabad. The Sarkani District extends south of Asadabad to the Pakistani border. This is probably a very unstable area.

This district is 100% Pashtun. There are a fair number of girls in school, but there are zero female teachers. There is only one health clinic in the entire district. 80% of the homes were destroyed in the Russian War.

Sori District, Zabul Province: Roadside bomb attack on an Afghan military vehicle here wounded 2 Afghan soldiers. A Taliban commander claimed responsibility. There is no district in Zabul called the Sori District, so I do not know what area they are talking about.


Wednesday, September 13

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Balabaluk District, Farah Province, 4 PM: Dozens of Taliban attacked a police convoy here, setting off a large battle that killed 4 policemen and 4 Taliban. 11 more policemen were wounded. Balabaluk has seen a number of sporadic serious incidents in the past year or so. It is 32 miles northeast of Farah city, the capital.

The Balabuluk District has a population that is 95% Pashtun. There are no girls' schools in Balabaluk and there are only 2 poorly-equipped health facilities in the district, which in general are not accessible by women.

NATO is starting to get very worried about Farah Province and the possibility that it may soon become a major battlefield. It is a majority-Pashtun province, but is has not been extremely unstable until recent weeks.

It is possible that Taliban forces have fled here from Helmand and Kandahar to the south. At any rate, the spread of this mess to Farah is not positive at all is merely another chapter in the ever-expanding insurgency and the worst violence since the US invaded in 2001.

The desolate terrain surrounding the landing area on the approach to the Farah City airport.

Boy tending his herd animals in an irrigated field in Farah Province. With irrigation, the desert can indeed bloom. These are apparently goats. Goats are probably the most popular herd animal in Farah.

Boys and a man working an irrigation ditch in Farah Province. Irrigation is necessary in this desert province.

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Ali Bag, Akund Khel and Ali Qala, Andar District, Ghazni Province: US and Afghan forces continued their raids here in this Taliban-controlled district and fought battles in 3 separate towns - Ali Bag, Akund Khel and Ali Qala. Ali Bag, Akund Khel and Ali Qala (which is actually called Qala Ali) are all located from 7 1/2 to 12 miles northwest of Miri, the capital of the district.

Ali Bag (map here) is 7 1/2 miles northwest, Qala Ali (map here) is 9 miles northwest and Akund Khel (map here) is 12 miles northwest of Miri. Each town has a population of about 3,500. 30 Taliban were killed in the fighting and Coalition forces did not suffer any casualties. 4 of the fighters killed were foreigners, probably Pakistanis from the Waziristans.

Noted Afghan War researcher Marc Herold has complained about this report in his comment on this site here. According to his website, at least 3 civilians were killed in these battles. He also calls into question the "30 Taliban" killed. Unfortunately, as Herold notes on his site, in many cases, civilian casualties are lumped in with Taliban casualties, so civilian deaths are reported as Taliban.

In this case in Andar, Herold notes that there is no independent verification that "30 Taliban" were killed in these battles. Herold's criticism is noted. I am a fan of Herold's work. On the other hand, I do support this Afghan War although I have many criticisms of the way it is being carried out.

The latest surveys that I am aware of show that 73% of Afghans support the Coalition presence in their country. Karzai's government also apparently has majority support. If anyone has more recent surveys, feel free to comment at the bottom or email me.

Pulling out of Afghanistan now and letting the Taliban possibly take over again and turn Afghanistan into a Hell and another Al Qaeda sanctuary cannot be allowed to occur. Recall that bin Laden planned the 9-11 attacks at his training camps in Afghanistan.
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Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province: 2 rockets were fired here 2 hours before a visit by President Karzai to inaugurate a new cross-border road with Pakistan, probably extending over the Khyber Pass, which is not far away. 1 rocket landed near the airport compound and the other hit a home, but there were no casualties.

Kunar Province: Roadside bomb attack on an Afghan army van killed 4 troops, including 2 officers. A Taliban commander claimed responsibility.

Kandahar: A suicide bomber blew himself up in an empty mosque here. It was possible that this was an attack that went awry. No one other than the bomber was hurt. The intended target and the reason for the attack were not known.

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Panjwayi District, Kandahar Province: NATO forces continued to advance here as part of Operation Medusa, which seems to be winding down. Forces were searching for weapons, roadside bombs and booby traps.

After the operation is finished, "reconstruction" can supposedly commence, but considering how disastrously the free market fundamentalists in the reactionary imperialist Bush Administration have completely botched the reconstruction project so far, I do not have high hopes.

To give you an example of the insane values of the free market ideologues in the US government, the US government spent a large sum of reconstruction money ($17.7 million) on a private university for wealthy Kabul residents. The university will only admit those rich enough to afford it, which means maybe 1% of the population.

In a nation where vast numbers have no access to regular food or health care, where refugees outside Kandahar starve to death as I write, where 25% of Afghan children die before they get to age 5, this private university, paid with US taxpayer money, is emblematic of the serious failure of the Bush mission in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are now moving through Afghanistan, advancing an interesting argument. We may have been cold and brutal, they say, but we were not corrupt, and you got enough to eat when we were in.

It is true, the Taliban were much less corrupt than Bush's crony capitalist buddies in the Afghan government, and sadly, the Taliban barbarians did a better job of feeding their people than the President From Unocal, Hamid Karzai, or his allies in the US government.

Locals say that the Taliban did a better job of building roads than the Bush crony criminal-capitalists. That is truly a devastating assessment - that the super-reactionary Taliban cavemen were less corrupt, better at feeding their people and better road-builders than the US government is an appalling statement. Of all the people to be shown up by! How humiliating for America!
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Tuesday, September 12

Boka, Balkh Province, 11:40 AM: 15-30 fighters representing unknown forces attacked Finnish and Swedish troops here. The reason for the attack was not known. Attackers used mines, RPG's and handguns. Fighting continued until 1 PM. No ISAF forces were hurt in the incident. This town of about 8,000 is located about 5 miles west of the Balkh, the capital of the province.

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Balabuluk District, Farah Province, Late: Taliban fighters attacked a vehicle carrying a UN driver and an Afghan government official and another passenger. The Afghan driver was working for UN-HABITAT, or the UN Human Settlements Program. He was shot dead. The government official, who worked for the Ministry of Rural Development, and another passenger, fled.

A meeting in Farah city on Women's Day in July 2004. Farah has elected one of the only women present in the Afghan government, Malalai Joya. These women represent the possible future of Afghanistan. Another possible future is the Islamofascist nightmare of both the Taliban and the US-supported warlords in the Afghan government.

Malalai Joya working in her home in Farah city. This year, she has started getting threats from both the Taliban and the warlords in the US-supported Karzai government. Joya is an example of what the future of Afghanistan could be.

A "service station" in Farah Province. I kid you not!

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Outside Garmser, Helmand Province: There was a large battle here between the remains of the Taliban force that captured the town the week before. On Monday, a force retook the town. NATO and Afghan forces pursued the fleeing Taliban to a mountainous area outside of Garmser, where a large battle ensued and 16 Taliban were killed. 6 of those killed were Pakistanis. 1 Afghan policeman was wounded.

The battle continued into early Wednesday. 2 Taliban were arrested, including an area commander. The remaining Taliban fled deeper into the mountains. There has been a 150% increase in the opium crop in Helmand this year. Afghanistan is now producing more heroin than all the world's addicts can possibly consume.

It is a good bet that the increase in drug production, which has been encouraged by the puritanical Taliban for purely instrumental reasons, has led to a large increase in the Taliban's war chest. 4,500 British troops are in Helmand in an operation that is coming under increasing criticism at home in Britain.

Helmand is one of the Taliban's main redoubts in Afghanistan. Parts of Helmand, especially the Now Zad District, were hotbeds of Taliban and Al Qaeda support when the Taliban was in power. In Sangin, the locals admitted when they first met with the British, that they were also attending meetings with the Taliban.

The locals are convinced that British troops are there to eradicate the poppy crop, from which they derive their livelihood. It's not true, although US forces are taking an aggressive stance on opium eradication. Development of alternative crops that will support farmers has been completely lacking.

The US government has taken a rightwing dogmatic line regarding opium production that has radically increased support for the Taliban. An alternative would be to license opium production for legal drugs, which is an opium that the rightwing radicals in the US government will not hear of. As farmers livelihoods are destroyed, they join the Taliban in anger.

It is reasonable that Helmand Province is a hotbed of support for the Taliban. In most districts, there are no girls in school at all and there are few, if any, medical clinics, and those that exist typically are have few or no female medical workers. Many of the locals and their leaders openly say that they are opposed to girls going to school.

This is actually in contrast to most of the rest of Afghanistan, including other Pashtun areas, where there are usually at least some girls in school and some access for women to health centers. Other than that, in Helmand, women have virtually zero rights in any way.

In such an extremely conservative district, it is easy to see how the Taliban could thrive. It has hard to see what the Coalition could offer such deeply conservative people, but aid would surely be helpful. An article detailing the nightmarish situation in Helmand from a British POV is here.
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Andar District, Ghazni Province: US and Afghan forces attacked Taliban holed up here, killing 16 of them. 2 police and 1 Afghan soldier were wounded. This district is pretty much controlled by the Taliban. An article detailing the mess in Ghazni Province is here. Basically, the government has neglected the area, particularly in terms of security.

The Taliban now run regular checkpoints on the new Kabul-Kandahar Highway in the province. Anyone found with any evidence of working for the government is detained and some of those detained are killed. The government police in the province are woefully undermanned, underpaid and underarmed. They are no match for the Taliban, who are better armed, have larger forces and are paying much higher salaries.

A number of locals are fighting for the Taliban because the Taliban is offering high salaries (about $120/month) to fight for them. No one really knows where they are getting the money, but some suspect that they are getting it from Islamist groups in Pakistan. They are also probably getting money from the Gulf, especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

There are only a tiny number of government soldiers here, much fewer than is needed to secure the province, in a repeat of a similar situation over the summer with Uruzgan Province. The 2 girls' schools in Andar have been closed by Taliban threats. The locals feel helpless and feel that the government cannot protect them.

It is urgent that the Karzai regime provide much more soldiers and police to Ghazni, arm them much better and pay them as much as the Taliban is paying their troops. They can always get the money from US deep pockets. It is insane that the US has not provided funds to the Karzai regime to pay for such necessities.

Many of the fighters here (up to 40%) are coming straight over the border from the Waziristans, where the Pakistani Taliban is now in full control. I really do not know what to do about that hopeless situation, but the problems in Ghazni could be easily remedied with cash and weapons.
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Panjwayi District, Kandahar Province: Canadian forces continued to advance through this district as part of Operation Medusa and for the third straight day met no resistance. Apparently Taliban forces are either fleeing or laying low.

Heavy fighting last week here killed 4 Canadian troops and 1 US soldier and wounded 12 others. Canadian troops are pushing south in Panjwayi, towards where the settled area melt into sparsely-inhabited and inhospitable desert.
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Monday, September 11

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Panjwayi District, Kandahar Province: Canadian troops pushed several hundred yards deeper into the Panjwayi District, advancing about the distance of one football field. They found blood trails leading away from fortified compounds.

NATO said they killed another 92 Taliban in this Operation Medusa, pushing the total killed in this operation to over 500. Considering that the US said there were 200 Taliban in all of Panjwayi a few months ago, then killed 200, and have now killed another 500, I guess that is progress, or something...1 Canadian soldier was wounded while destroying a compound.

In addition, 7 Taliban were arrested here. The mission was an attempt to disrupt Taliban supply lines in the desert south of Pashmul (which cannot be located on a map) and routes extending from Baram Cha (this town also could not be located on any maps) across to the Helmand River Valley in Helmand Province.

A Google Earth photo of the agricultural area along the Helmand River Valley in Helmand Province. As you can see, it is just a narrow band along the river. Not far away from the river is barren desert.

It appears that the Canadian involvement in Afghanistan was something of a scam. The new Prime Minister, a follower of super-reactionary US President George Bush, lied his country into war, as conservatives always do, always have, and always will, since lying is an essential aspect of conservatism (honest conservatives should think about that).

The mission was sold to the gullible Canadians as a reconstruction mission. But there has been no reconstruction, and if the Bushies have their way, there will be little or none in the future. Instead, the Canadians are turning out to lead Operation Medusa.

Almost no reconstruction has been done in southern Afghanistan, most reconstruction money has been wasted for salaries or overpriced US experts, bribes to corrupt Afghan officials, mandates to purchase US products, and the usual Bush ultra-corrupt no-bid contracts, endless cost overruns, etc.

For instance, the job to rebuild the Kandahar-Kabul Highway was given to a corrupt, criminal US gangster-corporation with ties to George Bush.

They got the job at 3 times the price of another outfit, then subcontracted the job out to a local criminal-run business, who botched the job, while everyone involved laughed all the way to bank. Bottom line is the job cost 3 times what it should have and the highway is falling apart already.

We need to seriously consider whether the Bush Administration is capable of engaging in any decent and responsible rebuilding or reconstruction projects anywhere on Earth, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the US - they have failed abjectly, and deliberately, everywhere they have tried.

Even hardline Communist governments like Cuba's have shown that they are able to construct projects far cheaper and far better than Bush's US gangster-corporate pals.

If that is not an abject failure of at least that crony aspect of Bush fascist-style corporate-government marriage, I do not know what is. How shameful must it be for Bush's US county club elites to be repeatedly humiliated by the statist Cubans, of all people?
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Asadabad, Kunar Province: A Humvee rolled over here, killing 1 US soldier, Army Sgt. Jeremy Edward DePottey.

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Vardak Province: Police arrested 12 Taliban here, including the head of the cell who came from Helmand Province. Vardak is also quite stable and it is similarly ominous that the Taliban are gaining force here. Vardak has a population that is 70% Pashtun, 20% Hazara and 10% other ethnic groups.

A girls' school with female teachers in Vardak Province in an undated photo. Note the smiling faces of the girls, the teacher in the burka and the stark, desolate beauty of the terrain in the background. The fact that many girls are in school in Afghanistan now, as opposed to zero under the Taliban, is, like it or not, a sign of progress rendered by the US invasion.

Those who oppose the invasion due to opposition to US imperialism ought to consider that not one of these girls would be in school if the US had not invaded and the women teachers would have been unemployed and depressed, holed up in their homes, since of course the Taliban cavemen would still be in power.

For supporting the entirely reasonable US attack on Afghanistan and even the (botched) occupation of Afghanistan, I have been called a "neoconservative" by so-called anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist and pro-Islamist freaks like Joh Domingo. Progressives need to really watch who they keep company with these days. I do not think alliances with reactionary Islamists, no matter how much they oppose US imperialism, are in our interests at all.

The Taliban and those like them have been slaughtering our comrades in Afghanistan since the 1960's - we should support them for WHAT reason? Conservatives (including Islamists), everywhere on Earth, are pretty much the enemy in one way or another - face it. Let's stop making alliances with Islamist reactionaries!

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Day Chopan, Day Chopan District, Zabul Province: The Taliban raided the district police chief's headquarters here. 1 Taliban fighter was killed and 3 more were wounded. This district has been very unstable for a long time. US forces fought a huge battle here quite some time ago, claimed that they cleaned out the area, and now the Taliban are back again.

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Gorcak, Khost Province: 2 mid level commanders of Hezb-i-Islami were arrested here. One was a bomb maker suspected of attacks on Shombowat Bazaar (this town could not be found on any map) in the Gurbuz District. The Gurbuz District extends south of Khost City to the Pakistani border. That district is probably very unstable.

Another was suspected of the bombing of an Afghan army checkpoint in Khulbusat (actually called Khulbesat - map here) and the killing of an Afghan army officer. Khulbesat is located 11 1/2 miles northwest of Khost City in the Sabari District. Gorcak itself (map here) is located 10 1/2 miles northwest of Khost City in the Tere Zayi District. It is located near Khulbesat.

Hezb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist organization but they are not nearly as radical as the Taliban. Mostly, they are fighting to oust foreign forces, who they see as equivalent to the Soviets. Hezb-i-Islami was one of the main forces fighting the Soviets during the Afghan War.
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Nangarhar Province: 7 guerrillas were arrested by US forces here. One was a Hezb-i-Islami commander and the others were suspected members of Al Qaeda.

Nangarhar is definitely a Hezb-i-Islami stronghold and it is also quite probable that Al Qaeda has fighters in the area, considering that bin Laden's Tora Bora redoubt was in Nangarhar as was one of his bases at the town of Farmada, south of Jalalabad (which cannot be found on any map). Warlord Tunis Khalis controlled many of the fighters in Nangarhar and was an ally of bin Laden's.

Khalis' forces have now reportedly taken up arms against the Karzai regime alongside the other forces fighting them. When the US first invaded, Khalis quickly made peace with the US troops, but I guess he has reneged on that promise.
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Sunday, September 10

Northern Afghanistan: Unknown forces attacked Swedish troops here. There were no details on the incident, but no Swedish troops were hurt.

Jalez District, Vardak Province: Masked gunmen kidnapped 3 aid workers here. 1 was Colombian and 2 others were local Afghans. They were all working with an NGO. As mentioned above, Vardak has been fairly stable, so these incidents are really ominous. The Jalez District is on the northeastern edge of Vardak on the border with Kabul Province.


Friday, September 8

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Logar Province: Afghan police arrested 9 Afghans for helping Afghan and Pakistani fighters prepare for suicide attacks. This province is fairly stable and it is ominous that these arrests occurred here. Tribal leaders in Logar claim that the men are innocent shepherds and were set up as part of a local dispute. Such setups are pretty common in the traditional treacherous atmosphere of Afghanistan.

Machine guns, thousands or rounds of ammo and bomb-making materials were also confiscated from a home allegedly linked to the 9 arrested, further complicating the matter. Logar Province, south of Kabul Province, is majority Tajik, with a large Pashtun minority. There were several Al Qaeda training camps here during the Taliban's rule, but the foreign fighters were reportedly not popular with residents.
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