Taliban jail break in Kandahar

This seems to be a very ritualistic but unrealistic response to the Taliban jailbreak. It seems doubtful that the release of 400 militants back into the field will not have some impact on NATO operations. In case anyone has any doubts that Karzai is in power as part of U.S. plans to overthrow the Taliban this article should set the record straight. However, the article has nothing to say about Karzai's corruption or Zalmay Khalilzad''s plans to replace him as a U.S. puppet. Here is a snippet from the article:
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Karzai worked with American agents to oust the Taliban.
After the U.S. campaign to overthrow the Taliban, in which he commanded 4,000 fighters in the push on Kandahar, Karzai seemed to be an ideal choice to lead an interim government. On Dec. 5, 2001, a group of exiled Afghan political leaders met in Bonn, Germany. The group picked Karzai chairman of a 29-member governing committee and leader of an interim government.


Taliban jail break won't hurt efforts in Afghanistan, NATO says
Last Updated: Saturday, June 14, 2008 9:11 AM ET
CBC News
A demolished vehicle sits in front of the prison gate after Taliban militants attacked and freed 1,000 prisoners, including about 400 Taliban militants. (Allauddin Khan/Associated Press)
NATO leaders acknowledged that Taliban militants scored a success in Afghanistan Friday with a daring attack that freed 400 of their number and 600 common criminals from a Kandahar jail, but insisted it would not change NATO's resolve.
They remained optimistic, even though only six of the 1,000 prisoners had been recaptured by Saturday night.
"The operation was a success for the Taliban. We must admit that," but NATO will continue to take initiatives against the militants, said Brig-Gen. Carlos Branco, a spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
"Typically you have good days and bad days," said Gen. Denis Thompson, the Canadian commandeer in Afghanistan. "Clearly, yesterday was a bad day."
Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of Canada's defence staff, said the attack wouldn't hurt morale. "It doesn't indicate a massive breakdown whatsoever. These things do occur."
But one Afghan was not so optimistic, saying it revealed the weakness of the government. One resident of Kandahar told CBC News he's keeping family members inside because they're terrified of the escapees, and tension in the city is high.
Canadian soldiers were hoping to provide intelligence about the whereabouts of the missing Afghans to government soldiers, as U.S. marines searched for the missing men door to door in Kandahar.
The Taliban launched a co-ordinated assault on Sarposa Prison, destroying its front gate. Prisoners — who may have been tipped about the attack and were ready to flee — rushed out, Afghan officials said.
When the sun rose over the city Saturday, twisted metal, rubble and overturned vehicles were everywhere.
During the assault, a truck bomb went off at the main gate. A second bomb was detonated simultaneously, destroying a nearby police substation and killing nine officers, interior ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.
Rockets demolished an upper prison floor.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison.
It's believed about 400 Taliban fighters are among the escapees.
There were no indications that the militants received help from the inside, but as a precaution the prison's chief official, Abdul Qabir, was placed under investigation for possible involvement, said Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, a deputy minister

Karzai pleads for billions in new aid, promises to fight corruption

One problem is that putting up with corruption may be the price Karzai has to pay for support from regional authorities. The U.S. and others are already grooming another president Zalmay Khalilzad to challenge Karzai and put someone in power who is even more pliable and representative of U.S. interests. Notice that Karzai talks about peace and prosperity by 2020. You can expect that there will be more of a drain on Canadian taxpayers after 2011. We are throwing more good money after bad and supporting our troops by making sure that we will remain and suffer more casualties. All for a good cause though the triumph of U.S. imperialism and good defence contracts for U.S. and Canadian companies.


Karzai pleads for billions in new aid, promises to fight corruption
Canada, U.S. already committing extra money to Afghanistan
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 8:22 AM ET CBC News
Clean water, electricity and health services are not available in most Afghan villages. President Hamid Karzai is appealing for $50 billion US in new funding for development and security but concern is growing about corruption in his government. (Tomas Munita/Associated Press)
Afghanistan's president appealed for more than $50 billion in new aid for the country while attending an international donors conference Thursday in Paris, promising the money will be spent on reconstruction and not frittered away through corruption.
The appeal for new money was in a strategic development plan that Hamid Karzai presented to the conference, saying Afghanistan would achieve peace and stability by 2020 if it got the needed aid.
"Afghanistan needs large amounts of aid but precisely how aid is spent is just as important," Karzai said, referring to donors' worries about graft and thievery by government officials.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon also warned about the debilitating impact of corruption on reconstruction and development.
"Every act of corruption is a deliberate act by someone in a position of authority," he said in a speech at the Paris conference.
A recent report from an independent aid-monitoring group, Integrity Watch Afghanistan, said only 60 per cent of foreign help sent to Karzai's government since 2001 has reached the Afghan people.
Corruption was only partially to blame, the group found. International aid agency spending on bureaucracy and salaries soaked up a significant amount of money meant to create jobs, train police and build roads, said the group's report released Tuesday.
Karzai should fire corrupt officials: donors
CBC's David Common, covering the conference in Paris, said there are real concerns among donors about Afghan government corruption.
"Some donor governments have privately pleaded with Karzai to fire corrupt officials within his cabinet, including governors who run their provinces like personal fiefdoms."
There are also continuing concerns about the drug trade, with opium production at record levels in almost all the country's 29 provinces. Farmers say they're driven to grow poppies by poverty, and the failure to rebuild rural roads and infrastructure needed to produce other, legal crops.
Most Afghans still live in mud-brick homes, with fewer than 20 per cent having access to electricity, clean water or health services.
Poverty helps insurgency
Taliban insurgents use the country's continuing poverty and the seemingly slow pace of internationally assisted development to recruit fighters in desperately poor areas, observers say.
Canada has already announced a significant boost in its aid to Afghanistan over the next three years.
David Emmerson, acting foreign affairs minister representing Canada at the Paris conference, said the new Canadian money would include funding for a crucial hydro project in northern Kandahar province and a polio immunization drive for seven million children.
The United States has also added $10 billion US to its current commitment to Afghanistan, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who warned that without security, aid spending had little impact on poverty and disease in the Afghan countryside.
"It's a mistake to think of security and reconstruction as somehow different parts of the problem [of Afghanistan]," Rice said.With files from the Associated Press

What we are fighting for in Afghanistan!

Rick Hillier with his foul mouth claims that our mission in Afghanistan is:
Canadian Forces were going to fight "detestable murderers and scumbags," he said. Their focus wasn't reconstruction or aid. "We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people," he said (Victoria Colonist.)
However, it seems that we are in the business of killing the Taliban scumbags and murderers so as to support an Afghan government that re-introduced the Dept. of Virtue and Vice and now is pushing strict Islamic laws of a Taliban type, a government that condemns people to death for converting from Islam to Christianity etc.etc. From Yahoo News.

Afghan parliament committee drafts Taliban-style moral law Wed Apr 16, 1:25 PM ET



An Afghan legislative committee has drafted a bill seeking to introduce Taliban-style Islamic morality codes banning women from wearing make-up in public and forbidding young boys from wearing female fashions.

The draft, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, needs approval by both chambers of the Islamist-dominated parliament and President Hamid Karzai signature to become a law.

"Women and girls are obliged to not wear make-up, wear suitable dresses and observe hijab (veil) while at work or classrooms," said one article of the draft.

It also aims to ban women dancers performing during concerts and other public events as well as on television.

"The mass media including television and cable networks must avoid broadcasting programmes against Islamic morals," it said without giving details.

In a similar move the parliament, which is dominated by former anti-Soviet Islamist warlords, called earlier this month for a ban on dancing and Indian soap dramas on private television networks.

Men and young boys must avoid wearing bracelets, necklaces, "feminist dresses," and hair-bands, the draft reads.

The proposals also demand an end to dog and bird-fighting, pigeon-flying, billiards and video games, all past times favoured by many Afghans.

It demands separate halls for men and women during wedding parties, while loud music is banned at such gatherings. Afghans hold big and costly get-togethers for weddings, usually in a public hall with music.

If the proposals are passed, violators could be fined 500 Afghanis (10 dollars) to 5,000, according to the draft.

The plans mirror many of the laws introduced by the extremist Taliban regime, which ruled the country from 1996 to 2001 with strict Islamic Sharia law.

Karzai doubts more troops would help Afghan security situation.

This is from wiredispatch. Here we have everyone scrambling to find more troops to send to Afghanistan while the country's leader doubts more troops will help the security situation. The U.S. is already sending about 3,000 more troops. Karzai would not miss us if we brought our troops home and the US won't miss us because NATO troops are not well trained in counter-insurgency anyway!

Karzai doubts more troops would help Afghan security situation
dpadpa - International News Service in English
Jan 30, 2008 03:37 EST
Berlin (dpa) - President Hamid Karzai has expressed doubt whether the deployment of more foreign troops to Afghanistan will improve the security situation, in an interview published in a German newspaper Wednesday.
"I am not sure whether deploying more troops would be the right answer," Karzai told Die Welt.
Concentrating on the training camps and refuges where the terrorist groups had fled was more important, Karzai said.
"Afghanistan is not a (terrorist) refuge. It was one, but we have reversed that," he said.
"For us, the war is not here but elsewhere," the Afghan president said.
Afghanistan needed to expand its human capital and institutions more than anything else, Karzai said pointing to the army, the police, the civil service and the judiciary.
US President George W Bush has called repeatedly for NATO countries to respond to the need for greater effort in Afghanistan, but major alliance members such as Germany and France have restricted the way their forces can be deployed.
A furore broke earlier this year over comments from US Defence Secretary Robert Gates after he was reported to have criticized the training of NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan.
The Western alliance has around 37,000 troops deployed in the country. dpa rpm gma
Source: dpa - International News Service in English

Karzai blames UK for return of Taliban

This is from the CBC. It seems that Karzai is quite angry at the UK for talking to the Taliban without consulting the central govt. apparently. Karzai also supported a local warlord and the UK and the US both suggested he get rid of him plus his security detail. I expect the result was that the warlord joined forces with the insurgency and indeed the security situation probably did get worse.
Criticisms such as this will not help create domestic support for the Afghan mission in the UK. If only Karzai would criticise the Canadian mission now it would probably do a great deal more good to create more public support to bring the troops home.
The US has criticised NATO partners for not being well trained in counter-insurgency---in contrast no doubt to the sterling performance of US troops!-
but there was an immediate footnote that of course Canadians were not meant to be included. Maybe it was the Monaco contingent!




Karzai blames Britain for return of Taliban
Last Updated: Friday, January 25, 2008 9:39 AM ET
CBC News
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused British troops of making the security situation worse in parts of southern Afghanistan, saying the area "suffered" after their arrival.
Speaking to a group of journalists at the Davos Economic Forum on Thursday, Karzai said he shouldn't have listened to British and U.S. officials who said he should remove the local security forces that were already in place in Helmand province, The Times reported.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai speaks during a working session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. (Michel Euler/AP Photo)
Britain has about 7,700 military personnel in the area, most of them fighting a resurgent Taliban in the country's south.
"There was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces," Karzai said. "Before that we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge.
"They came and said, 'Your governor is no good'. I said 'All right, do we have a replacement for this governor; do you have enough forces?'. Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them.
"And when they came in, the Taliban came."

When asked if he blamed Britain for the return of the Taliban, Karzai said: "I just described the situation of mistakes we made. The mistake was that we removed a local arrangement without having a replacement.
"We removed the police force. That was not good. The security forces were not in sufficient numbers or information about the province. That is why the Taliban came in. It took us a year and a half to take back Musa Qala. This was not failure but a mistake," Karzai said.
But Britain's Foreign Office rejected the claim, saying its policy was to work in consultation with Karzai's government
"Our strategy in Helmand has been to work with the Afghan government to extend their authority throughout the province, creating a secure environment which allows political and economic development," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with ministry practice.
"Our armed forces have suffered losses and shown great determination and bravery to achieve that objective," the spokesman said.
Last week, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates sparked criticism after he suggested in a newspaper interview that NATO forces in southern Afghanistan do not know how to properly combat a guerrilla insurgency, and that could be contributing to rising violence in the country.

Karzai and an Afghan history lesson

This is a completely different view of Karzai than the usual one presented in the press. It is harsher assessment than I would make for certain. THe article also has an interesting recent history of Afghanistan something that most western media simply ignore. This is from http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lohdi.php?articleid=12032


December 11, 2007
Karzai Discredits Democracy in Afghanistan

by Bahlol Lohdi
In a recent speech given at the American-Afghan business conference, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the UN, and one of the enthusiastic proponents of using American "hard power" to reorder the Muslim world, finally admitted to the myriad problems facing the international community in its efforts to resolve the Afghan conflict. That these pronouncements were now trite, since they were well-known facts to all who had the misfortune to deal with the gangs of Afghanistan these past six years, didn't faze the speaker a jot.

"There is [a] serious problem of governance in Afghanistan," he asserted boldly.

"At the national level, corruption exists at unacceptable levels. At the provincial and district levels, especially in contested areas, government, particularly police, too often is weak, ineffective, sometimes nonexistent, and sometimes even predatory," he added.

To complete the list of woes, he said that there was "too much polarization" among Afghan political leaders, a growing opium economy, high unemployment, and the lackluster pace of reconstruction.

I am sure that members of the audience must have been nodding vigorously in agreement with Khalilzad's assessment of the current debacle in Afghanistan, waiting with bated breath for Dr. Khalilzad's prescription for curing the plague inflicted on the Afghan people by the good doctor's previous policy recommendations.

"Key reforms must include: making appointments based on merit, countering corruption, implementing programs for institutionalizing the rule of law, and working systematically to extend state authority and good governance to provincial and district levels," he continued, with appropriate gravitas.

By this time the audience must have been ecstatic – there might even have been shouts of "Zal, you're my man!" But wait: who was to take on the Herculean task of ordering Afghan society in accord with King Zal's new wishes?

"President Karzai has committed himself to this objective, he has promised to direct his government to advance these goals. We look forward to seeing the concrete steps that are needed to realizing this vision, and NOW," he thundered.

The sense of disappointment, at least among the Afghans who know all about the government of the Karzais, by the Karzais, and for the Karzais, must have been palpable – the Karzai mob and clean government? Either Zal needed the help of men in white coats, or American society had become so changed that it was possible to "fool all of the people all of the time."

On cue, Karzai parroted Khalilzad's charges against the congeries of his fellow scoundrels in the Afghan "government" and "parliament" in his next public speech.

"All politicians in this system have acquired everything – money, lots of money. God knows it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen. The luxurious houses [built in Afghanistan in the past five years] belong to members of the government and parliament, not only in Kabul but here and there. Every one of them have three or four houses in different countries," he accused.

"With the support of the world community – money, aircraft, and their soldiers – and with full sympathy of the Afghan people, the Afghan politicians were able to return to their country. Unfortunately, I see now that they did not learn the lessons of the past. They should know that the Afghan people will rise against us. And this time, there will be no place [abroad] for us to flee," he lamented.

These Karzai statements revealed two things: First, that there's no honor among Afghan thieves, and second, that the reason for the Karzai gang's desperation to hang on to power, irrespective of the cost to the international community in blood and treasure, is because this time there will be no place for them to flee!

The chutzpah of Messrs. Khalilzad and Karzai is astounding – here are two people who've been responsible for so much death and destruction, all resulting from their own self-serving aims and actions, yet they address the resulting chaos as if it were somebody else's mess. It brings to mind a friend's old Labrador who used to fart and then get up and leave the area of his stench, looking accusingly at anyone else in the vicinity.

During the immediate aftermath of the "leftist" coup that brought down Prince Daud's government, I happened to be sitting and discussing the possible future course of events with an Afghan ambassador. He was one of the old breed of American-trained technocrats: he'd been sent abroad on an Afghan-funded scholarship to one of the Ivy League universities and had taken a degree in one of the "hard" subjects, unlike the subsequent "Khalilzad generation," who were given American government scholarships and shepherded and mentored through "soft" subjects like sociology essential to playing their future roles in Afghanistan.

The discussion ended with the ambassador saying: "You'll see. The semiliterate Khalqi and Parchami self-styled 'socialists,' through their brutality and stupidity, will inevitably cause the people to rise against them. In the process, they will not only cause endless strife but will also disgrace themselves and communism." And that is exactly what happened.

The "socialist" revolution was followed by Mullah Rabbani's "Islamic Republic." The long-suffering Afghan people soon found that these people followed neither Islam's tenets nor republican ideals – money and power were their motivating factors. As one of them was forced to admit recently, all of the people who stayed in obscene luxury in Peshawar, while they sent young men to their deaths in the jihad against the Soviet Union, were really interested in obtaining ya naam, ya naan, meaning "either status or livelihood."

The years of "Islamic clerical rule" of Rabbani & Co. added to the physical and moral destruction of Afghan society to such an extent that the people welcomed the advent of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban movement, because at least it brought peace and security to Afghanistan, albeit with the Afghan rural traditions and Islamic values so resented by the relatively small urban "educated" population.

One of the canards purposely propagated about the Pashtun Taliban, particularly by their Tajik opponents, is that they brought Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to Afghanistan. All serious students of Afghan affairs know that this is the big lie that is continually repeated in the hope that it will be accepted as historical truth. The reality that Osama bin Laden first arrived on the scene during the time of U.S.-supported Afghan jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan is conveniently ignored by the Tajiks' foreign supporters and their allied corporate media.

The al-Qaeda network was expanded during Rabbani's tenure as president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. In fact, it was Rabbani who in 1996 "allowed Osama bin Laden to shift from Khartoum [Sudan] to Jalalabad [Afghanistan]," as confirmed recently by B. Raman. Furthermore, Rabbani's Tajik government facilitated al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts by issuing visas and Afghan passports to hundreds of foreign extremists, all under the guise of "Islamic solidarity." And people conveniently forget that Rabbani and his associates started their political careers by joining the Muslim Brotherhood.

The cardinal sin of the Pashtun Taliban was not any particular commitment to the al-Qaeda cause; it was their pride and stiff-necked resistance to U.S. demands that these people, who claimed sanctuary with them, should be handed over to the U.S. authorities for judgment. Pashtun honor codes made this impossible.

The events following 9/11 provided a renewed opportunity for three groups of people to play a decisive role in the ensuing Afghan tragedy:

Ahmad Shah Massoud's Northern Alliance of mujahedeen-cum-Communist ragtag militias, who were cowering in a small mountainous strip of northern Afghanistan.
The majority of the Afghan diaspora in the West, who were either living on welfare in European countries or eking out a modest living in the United States.
The royalists, who agitated on behalf of the politically sedentary ex-king in the hope of one day riding his coattails to high office in Kabul, if the Taliban relinquished power as part of a UN-negotiated settlement.
While everyone else joined or supported one of these three groups, the Karzai clan not only had a foot in each of these camps, but they also associated themselves for a time with the Taliban – that is until the association was terminated when Karzai's father was killed for allegedly misappropriating Taliban funds in Pakistan. Obviously, the Karzais subscribed to Bob Hope's precepts: when asked why Hope attended both Christian and Jewish religious functions, he quipped that he did not want to miss going to heaven on a technicality. The Karzais adapted the Hope theory to Afghan affairs, though they aimed to reach financial heaven.

The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan allowed all these disparate and bitterly opposed rival groups to occupy center stage on the Afghan political scene.

An analysis of the process leading to the Bonn Accords and subsequent political maneuverings would require the space of a tome. Suffice it to say that at every juncture, Khalilzad and his fellow sociologists either proposed and implemented ill-thought-out and dubious policies or were outsmarted by their opponents. Even ignoring the kleptocracy that they managed to install and foster in Kabul, it takes incompetence bordering on stupidity to be responsible for bringing a previously anti-Iranian country within Iran's sphere of influence. What were their assumptions and why?

Contrary to what people may think, politics in Afghanistan during Khalilzad and his contemporaries' time was restricted to Kabul. The population of Kabul at the time was perhaps half a million, if not less. Of these, fifty thousand or so were in government employ, the majority being the Tajiks living in Kabul. At the top of the pyramid sat the royal household. Consequently, Afghan politics consisted of trying to acquire or keep royal favor, or at least get near the centers of power, which emanated from the palace.

The rest of the country, making up almost 90 percent of the population, was content to be left alone to work their land and raise their crops – as far as they were concerned, the less government attention turned toward them, the better. To them, "government" meant taxes from which they saw no benefit and their sons being taken from them and conscripted into the Afghan army. This situation bred a total disconnect between the population of Kabul and those living in the rest of the country.

The divisions were so marked that the relatively small urban population and the majority rural population appeared almost to live in different countries. Crucially, the two populations' perceptions of government, and the limits of its power, differed.


The residents of Kabul, particularly those at the extreme edges of the circles of power, mostly the offspring of government employees, were ignorant of the limits of government power in Afghanistan. They wrongly assumed that just as they and their fathers were in awe of even minor government officials, the same fear pervaded the hearts of Afghanistan's rural population.

Consequently, Zalmay Khalilzad and others who espoused democratic ideals, and before them, the young urbanized officers who staged a coup espousing socialist ideals, were deluded – their acquisition and use of the government's "monopoly on violence" consistently failed to overawe and shock the rural population into submission. Instead, the "educated elite," flying the flags of convenience of either leftist or rightist ideology, and their foreign mentors have themselves been shocked and awed by the rural population's resistance to the imposition of imported political and social paradigms. In the process, the elites have succeeded in discrediting first socialist dictatorship, then "moderate" clerical rule, and now democratic capitalism in Afghanistan.

Some of Karzai's foreign supporters have been repeating ad nauseam that while Karzai has surrounded himself with base scoundrels, he himself is honest and of royal stock. The people in Afghanistan, particularly the Kandaharis, know this to be arrant nonsense.

Everyone at present on the Afghan political scene has been guilty of "social status inflation": a father who was a minor provincial official is metamorphosed by the son into an adviser to the king; a district magistrate father is turned into a high court judge; a minor bank employee father is claimed to have been a member of a bank governing board. These elevations are sad but harmless lies that do not affect Afghan affairs.

However, Karzai's case is different, because it explains why the Afghans view him and his family with contempt. His family's history demonstrates the malign and destructive roles that the Karzai clan has consistently played in Afghan society for the past 60 years.

Taliban leaders open to talks

I just wonder whether these are splinter groups or the main leaders of the insurgency. I doubt that the main group will negotiate unless there is some agreement that the foreign troops withdraw but who knows what sort of deal Karzai and they might be cooking up. What is so laughable about all this is that the Canadian and other western governments always cry out against negotiating with terrorists while Karzai is willing to take them into his government. Anyway it is probably a step up from some of the warlords that are already part of his government.
The Karzai government is already influenced considerably by Islamists even to the point of resurrecting a ministry of vice and virtue.

Taliban leaders open to talks

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


This is from the canoe site.


KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that his government has had increasing contact with Taliban insurgents this year, including several talks this week with militant leaders living in exile.

Karzai said militants in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan have increasingly approached the government in the last eight months, even as the country goes through its most violent phase since the ouster of the Taliban after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

"Only this week I've had more than five or six major contacts, approaches, by the leadership of the Taliban trying to find out if they can come back to Afghanistan," Karzai told reporters in Kabul after meeting NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Karzai did not specify which leaders he had spoken to or where the discussions took place.

"We are willing to talk. Those of the Taliban who are not part of al-Qaida or the terrorist networks, who do not want to be violent against the Afghan people ... those elements are welcome," he said.

In the past Karzai has offered to hold talks with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and to give militants a position in government in exchange for peace. Omar rejected those offers.

Afghan and Western officials believe many Taliban and al-Qaida leaders are living and organizing militant activities from across the border in the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan. Pakistan denies the allegation and says its doing its best to quell the insurgency.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence in 2007, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.

Canadian Military Ghostwriters of Karzai Speech

It is not surprising that Karzai would get advice and even content for his speech from the Canadian military or that the Conservatives would also hope that his speech would shore up support for the mission. Karzai is a creation of the US and its allies. He needs continuing military and development aid. He even hires his guards from a US security corporation or perhaps the US foots the bill. I doubt that the military would write rather than contribute to and vet his speech but you never know..

Canadian military wrote Karzai speech: opposition
Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:18 PM EDT



By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A speech that Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivered to Canada's Parliament a year ago, urging the country's continued military support, was nothing more than a "political stunt," written by Canadian defense ministry staff, an opposition party charged on Tuesday.

The Afghan embassy denied the allegation, calling it ludicrous and insulting.

Dawn Black of the left-leaning New Democrats said the speech -- in which Karzai asked Canada to keep its soldiers in Afghanistan -- was a blatant bid by the minority Conservative government to shore up flagging support for the mission.

Canada has 2,500 troops in the southern city of Kandahar. One soldier was killed on Tuesday, the 71st to die since Canada deployed forces to Afghanistan in late 2002.

"President Karzai's address to Parliament was an elaborately staged political stunt by this government to sell Canadians on the combat mission in Kandahar," Black said.

Documents that the New Democrats obtained through access to information legislation showed a team of military officials worked on the speech at the request of Karzai's office.

"Team prepared initial draft of president's address to Parliament 22 Sep(tember). It was noted that key statistics, messages, themes, as well as overall structure, were adopted by the president in his remarks," reported one officer.

The Afghan embassy said the draft had been written by officials in Karzai's office. It added: "To suggest otherwise is not only ludicrous but also verges on being insulting."

In the speech, Karzai said Taliban militants were trying "to frighten us all into the dark ages" and urged Canadians to be patient.

A spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay accused the New Democrats -- who want Canada's troops withdrawn immediately -- of trying to undermine Karzai's integrity.

Polls show Canadians are split over the mission, which is due to end in February 2009. Critics say the military has spent far too much effort on fighting and not enough on development.

Black said military officers were so pleased by the reaction to Karzai's speech that they planned a follow-up tour of Canada by the Afghan development minister.

"The aim of the tour is to capitalize on the recent president's visit and address to Parliament by emphasizing the development work ... and drawing attention away from persistent media reporting of the security situation," read the report.

Black said she would call for an emergency debate in Parliament to consider the matter.



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© Reuters 2007.