"The opium industry of Afghanistan is solely designed by the United States" - Afghan parliamentarian

JackRiddler

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Fri Nov-13-09 06:28 PM
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"The opium industry of Afghanistan is solely designed by the United States" - Afghan parliamentarian

A few short excerpts from a much longer interview with Malalai Joya, youngest member of the Afghan parliament. Read the full text at the following link - and please kick to get the readers her voice deserves!

From Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6505

FPIF Commentary
Interview with Malalai Joya

Julien Mercille | October 16, 2009

Editor: John Feffer

(...)

Malalai Joya is Afghanistan's youngest member of parliament, well known for openly challenging the US/NATO, warlords, and the Taliban. She spent her childhood in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan, and returned to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where she worked for underground organizations helping women. She was elected to parliament in 2005 but was suspended in 2007 after saying it was worse than a stable, because at least "in a stable we have animals like a cow which is useful in that it provides milk, and a donkey that can carry a load." In her recent book Raising My Voice, Joya writes that "today the Afghan people are tragically sandwiched between two enemies � the Taliban on one side and the US/NATO forces and their warlord friends on the other." Afghans, she urges, should reject all three and, instead, empower progressives such as herself, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), and others. Joya dissents from the conventional view that the only options in Afghanistan are the Taliban or the U.S.-backed government. She depicts the latter as infested with warlords and fundamentalists � as a direct result of U.S. policy.

(...)

MALALAI JOYA: Talking of elections in the world's most corrupt, mafia-ridden, and occupied country like Afghanistan is ridiculous. And as seen, the turnout has been very low because apart from severe insecurity, people had no interest in participating in elections where such infamous elements were candidates and they know that the future president is already chosen in the White House. A majority of Afghans have come to the conclusion that these elections were just a dirty game that the United States and NATO (who heavily influenced the elections) played with the fate of our people, much more undemocratic and fraudulent than the previous one. I think these elections are just efforts by the United States to give legitimacy to its puppet regime in Afghanistan. Everyone knows that there could not be a free and fair election while the Taliban have a presence in 80% of Afghanistan, the rest of the country is controlled by brutal warlords, and the government has no control at all.

(...)

JULIEN MERCILLE: Have Afghan lives improved since 2001, compared to the Taliban years? In particular, how have women's lives changed?

MALALAI JOYA: Afghan lives have been getting worse since 2001. The current situation of Afghanistan is a disaster and is getting worse. People suffer from such extreme insecurity that many have stopped sending their children to school, especially girls, fearing that they might be kidnapped or raped. The cultivation and trafficking of narcotics and the rule of the drug mafia is among the biggest challenges Afghans face today. In the past eight years the production of opium was increased by over 4,400% and now Afghanistan is the opium capital of the world. Many of the top drug dealers are part of the Karzai government and they enjoy immunity. Fundamentalist terrorist bands of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban are much more powerful today than eight years ago, and they are a big danger for Afghanistan.

(...)

Women's conditions in some cities have slightly improved since the Taliban regime. But if we compare it with the era before the rule of the fundamentalists in Afghanistan, it has not changed much. Afghan women had more rights in the 1960s to 1980s than today. Rapes, abductions, murders, violence, forced marriages, and violence are increasing at an alarming rate never seen before in our history. Women commit self-immolation to escape their miseries, and the rate of self-immolations is climbing in many of the provinces. Afghanistan still faces a women's rights catastrophe. Every aspect of life in Afghanistan today is tragic, and I don't know what to mention first here. The root cause of this ongoing catastrophe in Afghanistan is that the government is controlled by fundamentalists of both brands (jihadis and Taliban) who are constantly nourished by the United States and its allies.

(...)

MALALAI JOYA: The opium industry of Afghanistan is solely designed by the United States. The drug business started long before in the 1980s during the Cold War, and the CIA worked hard to promote it in the areas under the control of the mujahideen. It is a joke when they are talking about counter-narcotics efforts while everyone knows that the production level goes up every year. If they had been serious about fighting the drug business, they would not have installed the biggest drug-traffickers like Ahmad Wali Karzai, Qasim Fahim, Rashid Dostum, Atta Muhammad, Daud Daud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and many others in the key positions of the puppet government

MUCH MORE AT LINK

- An election internationally acknowledged as fixed in the most obvious way.

- The cables from Amb. Eikenberry urging Obama to stop the escalation urged by McChrystal.

- Admissions even in the NY Times that Karzai's brother is a drug kingpin on the CIA payroll.

- Yesterday's story in The Nation revealing that the Taliban are financed in part by protection payoffs from US contractors arranged through other Karzai relatives.

What more do we need to know?

These stories could all be straight out of the history of the Vietnam war.

NATO and the United States expeditionary force are not helping the situation in Afghanistan.

Time to get out!