By Tom Engelhardt

In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, spoke proudly of how, in July 1979, he had “signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul” and so helped draw a Russian interventionary force into Afghanistan. “On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border,” Brzezinski added, “I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’” And so they did — with the help of the CIA, Saudi money, the Pakistani intelligence services, and an influx of Arab jihadis, including Osama bin Laden. In fact, their Afghan War would prove far more disastrous for the Soviet Union than defeat in Vietnam had been for the United States. By the time the Soviets withdrew their last troops in February 1989, the economy of the Cold War’s weaker superpower was tottering on the brink. Less than three years later, the Soviet Union itself was no more, even as Washington, at first unbelieving, then celebratory, declared eternal victory.

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The Surge That Failed

Afghanistan under the Bombs

A bit past midnight on a balmy night in late August, Hedayatullah awoke to a deafening blast. He stumbled out of bed and heard angry voices drawing closer. Suddenly, his bedroom doors banged open and dozens of silhouetted figures burst in, some shouting in a strange language.

The intruders blindfolded Hedayatullah and, screaming with fury, forced him to the ground. An Afghan voice told him not to move or speak, or he would be killed. He listened for sounds from the next room, where his brother Noorullah slept with his family. He could hear his nephew, eight months old, crying hysterically. Then came the sound of an automatic rifle, after which his nephew fell silent.

The rest of the family — 18 people in all, including aunts, uncles, and cousins — was herded outside into the darkness. The Afghan voice explained to Hedayatullah’s terrified mother, “We are the Afghan National Army, here to accompany the American military. The Americans have killed one of your sons and his two children. They also shot his wife and they’re taking her to the hospital.”

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Kabul may have tried to reach out to current insurgents by meeting with former ones in Saudi Arabia last month.

Kabul, Afghanistan - The Taliban are not engaged in peace talks with the Afghan government, despite recent reports to the contrary, say sources close to the insurgents and the government.

Instead, meetings held last month in Saudi Arabia – which brought former Taliban officials together with members of the Afghan and Saudi governments – may be an attempt by Kabul to start negotiations with the current Taliban.

“The meetings signal that the Afghan government is weak and is desperate for a solution,” says Waheed Muzhda, a political analyst in Kabul and former official in the Taliban government.

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Aid trickles in, but locals struggle to find food before the winter’s harvest

Mya Sein Ken, Burma - The locals say things will never be the same in Mya Sein Ken, deep in the heart of the cyclone-savaged delta in southern Burma (Myanmar). Almost 300 people vanished when cyclone Nargis struck here in May. The torrent obliterated the rice crop, and locals worry they won’t have enough food to survive the fall. The storm swallowed scores of houses, leaving hundreds homeless.

“I awake every day remembering what happened,” says one villager from his temporary home, donated by aid agencies. “We are living on handouts, and I don’t know when we will stand on our own again.”

Everywhere across the delta, Burmese are still struggling to piece together their lives. While a modest but steady flow of aid has kept locals afloat, villagers warn that their troubles are far from over.

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From the GSI-IPS Subsidies Series.  Part 1, by Ashfaq Yusufzai, is here

KABUL, Sep 30 (IPS) - In a teeming petrol market on the outskirts of Kabul, black market traders sell fuel to everyone from individual customers to large business groups. Although much of this petrol comes from Iran or the Central Asian countries, a good amount also hails from Pakistan, where government subsidies have made the fuel much cheaper than in Afghanistan.

The Afghan government and private businesses generally avoid buying petrol from Pakistan because of the spiraling insecurity on the routes into Afghanistan, but still much petrol manages to get in. How it does so and where it goes illustrates the complicated world of smugglers, border patrol agents and foreign militaries.
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Burmese fleeing to camps in Thailand find that they get little aid or work and no legal status.

Mae La, Thailand - Myo Zaw thought freedom would begin the day he left Burma (Myanmar). Government authorities there had made it impossible for him to get a job and tracked his every movement after some of his relatives joined political resistance groups. Eventually Myo Zaw paid truckers to smuggle him out of Burma and to a hidden city, deep in the jungles of Thailand.

That city, a sprawling refugee camp carved into the base of a mountain range about 30 miles from the border, forms part of an archipelago of camps that house political dissidents, ethnic minorities, homeless, jobless, and others who have fled.

But instead of bringing Burmese closer to liberty, Myo Zaw and others like him say Thailand’s Burmese refugee camps are little more than open-air prisons, where Thai police tightly control movements and inhabitants face a growing threat of deportation.

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KABUL, Sep 22 (IPS) - If 11-year old Zayainullah doesn’t bring home enough money today, he says he will get beaten. “We don’t have food and my aunt threatened me, saying I have to bring back enough money to buy bread,” he says.

Like every day, he is sitting curbside on a busy Kabul street, begging for spare change. Shirtless and one-armed, his distended belly signals that he suffers from severe malnutrition. “We have always had food difficulties but our problems are growing worse by the day,” he adds.

Like Zayainullah, millions across the country face acute food shortages, according to a series of recent reports. A devastating drought, an unusually harsh winter, high food prices and general war and insecurity are driving the food crisis and may spark a major humanitarian disaster, agencies say.
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Monks teach children critical thinking and human rights, to groom the next generation of activists. Part 3 of 3.

Mae Sot, Thailand; and Rangoon, Burma - Deep in the Thai jungle bordering Burma (Myanmar), a group of children gather every day for their lessons. In an elongated but modest teak shack, nearly a dozen ashen-faced children – all different ages – sit in front of a tattered blackboard.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” teacher Zaw Lazein Oo asks. Each student answers in measured English. “A doctor,” answers one. “An aid worker,” another replies.

Such open-ended questions are unthinkable in Burma’s government schools, where learning is by rote and adheres strictly to the ruling junta’s ideology.

But a new generation of political activists is striving to change that by setting up a network of secret schools – from the Thai-Burmese border to monasteries in Burma – that service impoverished students and teach critical thinking and human rights.

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A simple museum tucked away on the Thai-Burmese border receates the infamous prisons. Part 2 of 3

Mae Sot, Thailand - Iron shackles lie heaped in the corner. A cement-gray jumpsuit, block letters emblazoned across the front, hangs from the wall. Wooden chess pieces, carved by Burmese prisoners, sit nearby.

But this 10-by-10-square-foot room isn’t actually a prison cell – the notorious prisons in Burma (Myanmar) are, of course, off limits to visitors. Instead, former political prisoners now hiding in Thailand have built a “prison museum” to expose the conditions inside the detention centers.

The replica on the Thai-Burmese border re-creates prison conditions, which curators hope will expose visitors to the plight of political prisoners.

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Afghan civilian deaths rise by 39 percent. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pledges to do more to solve the problem.

Kabul, Afghanistan - In a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Wednesday, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pledged to do more to prevent civilian deaths from military operations. Mr. Gates’s vow comes on the heels of a new UN report saying that the number of civilian casualties jumped by 39 percent in 2008, fueling controversy about the West’s role in the country.

“While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is also clear that we have to work even harder,” Gates told reporters.

Nearly 1,500 civilians have been killed by either the Taliban or NATO and US forces so far this year, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday. More than half of those deaths are attributed to the Taliban. And US Air Force data suggests that its bombing accuracy is actually improving.

But the UN findings come at a time of rising public criticism after a series of US and NATO aerial bombing raids killed large numbers of Afghan civilians. “Civilian casualties is becoming the main issue in the relationship between the West and Afghanistan,” says Nasrullah Stanikzai, lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Kabul University. If the trend of high levels of casualties continues, he says, it could drive a permanent wedge between Afghans and the US.

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