Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Afghanistan is a booming narco-state…

Intro: Afghanistan is an affluent narcotic state despite the country being invaded to liberate it from the drugs trade

Prior to the war in Afghanistan, the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, said that one of the most compelling reasons for going to war was to curtail the trade in narcotic drugs such as heroin and opium. However, if one was to examine the facts it would be shown that the Taliban government had already started to deactivate Afghanistan’s drugs trade. In 2000, the Taleban were the ruling authority in the country and had declared the heroin trade as being ‘un-Islamic’. Following that decree the fundamentalist regime managed to reduce production by 99 per cent in the areas that it controlled. Yet, by contrast, the war with the West has witnessed a lucrative market for Afghan’s poppy farmers. After more than 12 years of fighting – which has cost Britain dear in terms of lost lives and resources expended – opium production in Afghanistan is at a record high. The United Nations drugs agency says that the area under cultivation rose by 36 per cent in 2013 and that Afghanistan now provides 90 per cent of the world’s heroin. The country Britain invaded partly to liberate it from the drugs trade has become a flourishing and affluent narcotic-state.

Was there a way in which this now booming trade could have been stopped? Arguably, if the West had put all its resources and efforts into eradication the likelihood of crushing the drugs trade in Afghanistan  would have been high. Unless that task is approached with the ruthless methods and barbarism of the Taliban, any other approach would likely falter. The planting of an alternative crop may have been another consideration but even that would have been troublesome because Afghanistan’s environment makes it perfect for poppy cultivation but inhospitable to almost anything else.

A genuine alternative, however, might be to turn the situation to the world’s advantage. Four years into the Afghan campaign, the Senlis Council, a think tank, suggested buying the crop and using it to manufacture palliative medicines for Western consumers – turning Afghanistan’s poppy farmers into legitimate businessmen.

If we consider that opium poppies are already grown under strict legal controls in India, and also in Britain, the idea is not as radical as it might sound. The world has a shortage of pharmaceutical painkillers, such as morphine and codeine, and the Afghan farmers could easily meet that demand. Whether the country has the ability to police such an ambitious programme, though, does raise doubts. One thing above all else is certain: the West has lost its war on the poppy.

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Afghanistan, Britain, Government, Military, National Security

The court martial of a Royal Marine sergeant and two others…

VERDICTS

Society’s norms are cast adrift in a world of firefight and ambush, where air strikes leave disfigurement and random death in its wake. Protagonists could argue that society has no real business judging people who live and operate in a world of war-torn combat.

That is why it has been imperative that the Royal Marine Sergeant found guilty of murdering a wounded Afghan insurgent in September 2011 was tried in a court martial. Some may suggest the guilty verdict is an outrage; after all, there was no disagreement that the victim was an armed enemy combatant sworn to kill British soldiers if he could.

Others, too, may consider the not guilty verdicts of two other Royal Marines in the dock also appalling. The cleared two had been present at the killing, did not try to prevent it, and therefore, by the standards applied by most criminal courts, equally guilty – even though they did not pull the trigger. This kind of scenario, however, is one that never gets put before a civilian court.

Afghanistan was a war zone in which the participants – British soldiers and Afghan fundamentalists – were not only trying to kill each other but also, in the case of the Royal Marines, had lawful justification for doing so when in a firefight.

What is more, Helmand is a notorious battlefield where the Royal Marines’ enemies do not obligingly wear uniform. One moment they can be innocent and virtuous civilians, the next a lethal and devastating enemy intent on murdering soldiers, a juxtaposition that makes counter-insurgency operations especially difficult. Amid such severe brutality and death there is an altered morality.  Because the rules of engagement that soldiers operate under may result in a killing and may seem bizarre to some, this could also generate sympathy for the marines caught up in a situation that has become ever-more bitter.

Nevertheless, rules do exist for a very good reason. Morality may be altered, but it still exists. The code of the Geneva Convention, to which British armed forces have long subscribed, says that combat ends when the enemy either surrenders or is incapacitated to such an extent that fighting becomes impossible. Killing the enemy after either of these points has been reached becomes murder.

The court martial heard recordings of the conversation held by the Royal Marines at the time the Afghan insurgent was murdered. They show that the soldiers knew of the rules, especially the one convicted who was a sergeant in command of the others. In an attempt to vindicate himself the sergeant assumed the victim would not have respected the Geneva Convention and would have happily murdered the Royal Marines had he been in a position to do so. He claimed, which was also recorded, that he believed the man was dead before he shot him through the chest.

As the outcome of the court martial has shown this was rightly rejected. There is no justification at all. The Royal Marines were deployed to Afghanistan in a humanitarian cause which was to aid the removal and suppression of a Taleban regime which not only supported and facilitated killing and the terrorising of other nations including ours, but also brutalised their own people. The Afghan insurgent murdered by the Royal Marine sergeant is in complete violation of his rules of engagement. And he knew it.

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Government, Intelligence, Military, National Security, United States

Bradley Manning and the US court-martial verdict…

BRADLEY MANNING

The US military court ruling on finding the WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning guilty of espionage (but not of aiding the enemy) shows a proportionate sense of perspective after one of the most turbulent episodes in recent US judicial history.

In a highly emotive summing up by the prosecutor, Major Ashden Fein, claimed that Manning was ‘a determined soldier with the ability, knowledge and desire to harm the United States.’ He was not a whistleblower, but a traitor… and Manning had, said Major Fein, ‘general evil intent.’

Nobody ever suggested that this young and disillusioned soldier had deliberately sent military secrets to Al-Qaeda, but the court-martial ruling has proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that his voluntary actions to disclose more than 700,000 documents would ‘lead to them being in the hands of the enemy.’

Manning was responsible for the largest leaking of classified information in US history. His actions sent shockwaves through America’s military and political establishments, but undoubtedly their response to his actions was part of the US mindset that materialised after 9/11 in policies such as extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and events that have transpired since at Guantanamo Bay.

The presiding judge over Bradley Manning’s court-martial, Judge Colonel Denise Lind, struck a very different note saying that the policies of the George W Bush presidency which were responsible have been reversed. Whilst that does hold some credence, the malign consequences linger on, including the compulsion in the United States to silence those, like Manning, who discovered that the exercise of American power on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan was significantly different from the way it was advertised back home.

In many ways a dichotomy has been exposed. American claims of fostering a culture of free information have often been inflated, and its media have certainly failed to take full advantage of those freedoms they did possess. But the high collision of President Bush’s ‘war on terror’ with the explosion of information released by the internet – which WikiLeaks came to symbolise – created in America a national mood of paranoia reminiscent of Stalinism. President Obama’s attempts to cool that feverish atmosphere is slowly being achieved with the winding down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s refusal so far to countenance any large-scale involvement in Syria or Iran.

While both Bradley Manning and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were guilty of recklessly flooding media outlets with secret and classified information with little concern for what has subsequently happened to the people who had been named, their underhand dealings enabled many to learn about atrocities committed by the US military which otherwise would have been covered up for ever.

Governments and their military establishments are known in wanting to keep their dirty secrets to themselves, but we should also know they must not be allowed to. Freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and whistleblowers just happen to be a vital component to the functioning of societies that aspire to be free. Reconciling that to the authority of their rulers will always throw up issues perfectly witnessed in the court-martial of Bradley Manning.

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