Tuesday, August 29, 2017

US Escalation in Afghanistan Things Can Only Get Worse
by our Asian Affairs correspondent
Editorial by the New Worker
Newspaper of the New Communist Party of Britain

PEACE campaigners have condemned the American decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan as a move than can only lead to more deaths, more refugees and more terror around the world. But the CIA is overjoyed because its black-ops budget — which is tied to the illegal opium trade in Afghanistan — is now secured possibly for another 20—50 years.

The country has a strategic value to the warmongers in the Pentagon who want central Asian bases as part of their plan to encircle and threaten China and Russia. Meanwhile the corporate greed of the big US corporations is focusing on the juicy oil fields and untapped mineral wealth of the country. The US military say that the reinforcements will be deployed in a matter of days to prop up the puppet government in Kabul and beat back the growing Taliban insurgency.

In the past Trump had called for an end to the American occupation of Afghanistan, which he said was costly and ineffectual. This week he bowed to the advice of his generals and the most aggressive sections of the American ruling class to vow to win the war in Afghanistan by committing more US troops, and called on NATO allies such as Britain to increase troop numbers “in line with our own”.

Some 4,000 more US troops are expected to be sent to fight the Taliban militia that ran the country until 2001 with the less than covert support of Pakistan and the feudal oil kings of Arabia. The Taliban militia now controls more territory than in 2002 when it was ousted from power in a US-led invasion.

Over the past 16 years US troops and their NATO allies waged a war of occupation in Afghanistan. There are currently 13,000 NATO troops in the country, which include 6,900 US “trainer” soldiers. Another 1,500 US troops conduct military operations under US command in Afghanistan.

British imperialism backed the US invasion from the start, sending thousands of troops to support the Americans in 2001 and helping to prop up the puppet regime for the next 13 years. Though the last British combat troops left Afghanistan in October 2014, some 500 British troops remain, providing security in Kabul and training at the Afghan Officer Academy.

“I think things are going to get worse for the people of Afghanistan, especially civilians. We are going to see far more casualties there. Who knows how many have been killed in the last 16 years. Things are not going to improve at all for the civilians of Afghanistan. I think the country, in general, is going to continue to spiral out of control,” Seyyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm, an Iranian political analyst, told the Russia Today news channel.

“One part of this policy that kind of also makes sense with regards to the corporate establishment over America and the West in general, is that it is part of a wider economic war against Russia, Iran, and China. China was doing great economic ties with countries in Northern Africa and also in Afghanistan. That has been put to an end because of the interventions and the regime change operations in North Africa like Libya; all the economic ties that China was developing with Afghanistan are now all at risk. The one trillion dollars’ worth of rich mineral resources under the ground in Afghanistan probably isn’t going to get developed, and it isn’t going to benefit the people of the country. That is all part of the US strategy toward its perceived enemies.”

Bad news for some but manna from heaven for others. The Trump administration has already had talks with the heads of Blackwater International and DynCorp International about supplying mercenaries to serve in Afghanistan. It’s also good for the CIA according to Mike Raddie, the co-editor the London BSNews online website, who told Russia Today: “The CIA is also overjoyed because its black-ops budget — which is tied obviously to the exponential growth of opium production in Afghanistan, which is fuelling the heroin epidemic across the West — that is now secured for another possibly 20—50 years. He has jumped straight back into the swamp. Far from clearing it, he has jumped into this swamp and people now can see his true colours. If they couldn’t already after the indiscriminate bombing of Syria recently.”

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