We're stuck in Afghanistan for god knows how long. It's already a tough, unwinnable war. We are dealing with a corrupt government and neighboring allies who may or may not know where Osama bin Laden is.
We've been at war there for eight years already, and there's no clear time we will withdraw. Between President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates, the signals are mixed and the waters are muddied all around.
We don't even have a clear reason for being there. And now this:
How the US Funds the Taliban
By Aram Roston
[...]
In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.
A huge amount of money. This, to me, is turning into one big clusterfuck after another. I can't see how something like this won't hurt us in the future. We need to be careful who we prop up, if the past is any indication.
And anyway, how much money?
"It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.
Ten per cent of hundreds of millions of dollars. So we're at least giving millions to insurgents, including the Taliban. Tens of millions. We're giving them millions and then turning around and fighting them? Seriously?
I guess, if war were a video game this would make it more fun and challenging but it's actually... not a video game. This is just as bad as giving money and weapons to Saddam Hussein and giving a Bible, cake and weapons to Iran. And giving money to the Afghan Arabs including Osama bin Laden during the Afghan-Soviet war.
Have we learned nothing?
For what it's worth, the contractor system in Afghanistan is different from the one in Iraq, and not at all in a good way:
Whereas in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well. As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. "Every warlord has his security company," is the way one executive explained it to me.
It's like Blackwater/Xe, only with more danger.
The article goes on to say that we need these Taliban insurgents because US troops can't get their supplies without getting killed. They need these people to provide safe passage and transport.
"What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat," says a "veteran American manager."
Our are troops really that safe over there? And even more importantly, if they're being kept safe by the Taliban, why are we even there in the first place? I mean, can't we just pay them to leave us alone?
I should note that this, of course, isn't the first time the US has funded the Taliban in some way:
Yet the Bush administration did more than praise the Taliban's proclaimed ban of opium cultivation. In mid-May, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in addition to the humanitarian aid the United States had long been providing to agencies assisting Afghan refugees. Given Callahan's comment, there was little doubt that the new stipend was a reward for Kabul's anti-drug efforts. That $43 million grant needs to be placed in context. Afghanistan's estimated gross domestic product was a mere $2 billion. The equivalent financial impact on the U.S. economy would have required an infusion of $215 billion. In other words, $43 million was very serious money to Afghanistan's theocratic masters.
That was, perhaps, also an inconvenient time.
This story has been festering for awhile:
"That translates into money that the Taliban are using to attack and kill American military personnel, and that's just simply outrageous," said Rep. Bill Delahunt.
The international news organization GlobalPost quoted several unnamed contractors who said 20 percent of their budgets - or more - go to pay off the Taliban so it won't bomb their projects, or their people. It's a protection racket far more sophisticated than the typical mob-style shakedown.
Again, couldn't we pay them off from the comfort of our own homes?
Months ago it was revealed that:
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.
Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent followed up in a post that closed with this:
My emphasis. The Times discusses the police shootout in its piece. Ahmed Wali Karzai told the Times reporters that the police chief, Matiullah Qati, was in the "wrong place at the wrong time." Assume that’s true, and not the alternative explanation that Karzai had Qati killed. That suggests the money paid to Karzai, which helps him go about a business that helps finance Taliban attacks, also pays for a rogue force of killers. And that’s the benign explanation.
Oh boy.
I want out.