Folks supporting our Afghanistan assaults don't really care about these people

[bigtree]

. . . beyond presuming to (claiming to) 'protect' them from the Taliban.

The residents of Marjah were certainly warned in advance about the U.S.-led assault on their sparsely constructed, rural town, but they weren't provided with anywhere to go or any provisions to sustain them during the period we were busy making the parcel of land safe for their Afghan plutocracy. Now the refugees from that opportunistic assault on their homeland have been left to wander without resource or livelihood . . .

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan —

. . . They have no water or electricity, nowhere to cook and nowhere to bathe. They are miserable, destitute and dirty.

. . . no one from the local government or international aid agencies had come to offer help.
"

. . . many others living in similar squalor in Lashkar Gah, Helmand's provincial capital, appear to have fallen between bureaucratic cracks after leaving everything behind in Marjah to escape the assault on the Taliban.

Local authorities and British officials at the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Lashkar Gah said people who sought refuge from Marjah had stayed with relatives and had mostly returned.

But this week it was not difficult to find Marjah families in Lashkar Gah who said they had not registered, had received no assistance, were not staying with relatives, and had no immediate plans to return . . .


read more: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-83H366?OpenDocument

[tekisui]

1. Creating displaced refugees, and ignoring them.

We need to get out before we have anymore 'successful' military operations.

[G_j]

9. I always thought deliberately creating refugees

was a war crime, especially if you don't see to their welfare.

[bigtree]

15. they want the residents they warned away from Marjah to come back

. . . and be part of their pretense of democracy. Who wouldn't want to be lorded over by a corrupt central government backed by folks who bomb your homes and kill your relatives while insisting they're doing all of that to protect you?

[G_j]

17. even the Afghan picked for Marjah government has a criminal record

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100306/marjah_leader_100306/20100306?hub=World

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/201...

Afghan picked for Marjah government has criminal record

The Associated Press
Date: Saturday Mar. 6, 2010 8:11 AM ET

KABUL, Afghanistan — The man chosen to be the fresh face of good Afghan governance in a town just seized from the Taliban has a violent criminal record in Germany, but Western officials said Saturday they are not pushing to oust him.

Court records and news reports in Germany show that Abdul Zahir, the man appointed as the new civilian chief in Marjah, served part of a more than four-year prison sentence for stabbing his son in 1998. A U.S. official confirmed that he did serve time in Germany, though Zahir denies he committed any crime.

"I was not a killer. I was not a smuggler. ... I didn't commit any crime," Zahir told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday evening. He said allegations of a criminal record were "all a lie."

Zahir's integrity is an issue because his job is to convince residents of the town in Helmand province that the Afghan government can provide them with a better life than the Taliban, which were routed during a three-week offensive by thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops. Marjah is the first major test of NATO's counterinsurgency strategy since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 new American troops to try to reverse the Taliban's momentum.

Adm. Gregory Smith, director of communications for NATO, said the international alliance strongly supports Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal, who picked Zahir for the job. "Zahir, from our reporting, is doing good work down there," Smith said Saturday, adding that NATO is not pushing Afghan officials to oust him.

Zahir said he lived in Germany for 15 years before returning to Afghanistan in 2000. During his time in Germany, he said he worked in a hotel and at a laundry service.


..more..

[Autumn]

2. Collateral damage?

No, no one seems to give a damn. My God. What the hell are we doing there? ;(

[gimama]

3. thank You for posting this

I don't know how anyone can be supporting these wars, but amazed almost daily, at the duers insisting Pres. Obama is right to escalate(my word)in Afghanistan.

Please help get the word out, PEACE activists are heading to DC, NOW, to camp out on the Mall & rally on March 20th, hell's anniversary.

WE have to end this.

www.march20.org
www.Peaceoftheaction.org
www.rethinkafghanistan.org
www.afterdowningstreet.org

[slipslidingaway]

4. True, but look how quickly we forgot about the millions of orphans

in Iraq and the millions of displaced people in Iraq, not to mention their casualties.

:(

[stray cat]

5. neither do those who don't support it - they are just political props

[bigtree]

12. there isn't some anti-occupation wing in Congress

. . . exploiting the victims of our military assaults. And if you're talking about anti-occupation advocates, I don't think that's true at all.

[rug]

6. The problem is not that they don't care. It's that they think other things are more important.

[Greyhound]

7. We must destroy the people to save the nation.

:crazy:

Why do they hate us?:dunce:

[G_j]

10. same story, different location

same lie, that is..

[Greyhound]

13. I really wish, harmful to my Kharma though it be, that every one of these cheer-leading assholes

could be dropped into a real war zone and see how many survivors still think it's so fucking "necessary".
:nuke:

[hobbit709]

16. +1000

[asdjrocky]

8. War is never the answer.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. One could say the same about those who'd turn Afghanistan over to the Taliban.

[bigtree]

14. We are responsible for the destabilizing militarism we support and practice

. . . in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

You may well want to portray that effort as a defense of Afghans against the Taliban, but the effect, so far, has just been an assault against Afghans who haven't lined up behind the U.S.-protected regime in Kabul which our own government admits is corrupt to the core. The consequence, so far, has been more killings, more maiming, and more wanton destruction of the homeland of anyone on the other side of our military advance.

In Marjah, most residents interviewed before the assault had not indicated any support at all for the violent, destructive takeover of their strip of land and the replacement of the Taliban-based authority there with the convicted criminal Kabul installed to lord over whoever remained. Houses destroyed, crops destroyed, livestock killed, relatives killed and maimed by NATO bombs and by the violence surrounding the arbitrary invasion . . .

But you might call that 'protecting' or 'defending' the residents from the Taliban . . .

[apocalypsehow]

18. Changing the subject is a very poor way to debate issues. Do you support leaving Afghanistan even if

it means there is a high likelihood the Taliban will shoot their way back into power? Yes or no?

Don't change the subject and turn it into a teach-in on the past evils of American imperialism, just answer the question: yes, or no?