NATO Genocide in Afghanistan

NATO Genocide in Afghanistan

www.informationclearinghouse.info

Ali Khan argues that the internationally recognized crime of genocide applies to the intentional killings that NATO troops commit on a weekly basis in the poor villages and mute mountains of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban.

Sloganeers, propagandists and politicians often use the word "genocide" in ways that the law does not permit. But rarely is the crime of genocide invoked when Western militaries murder Muslim groups.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.csun.edu
www.commongroundcommonsense.org
www.prisonplanet.com

This is sure to ruffle some feathers...

I am not sure I'd call our involvement in Afghanistan genocide, but definitely many thousands of innocents have been killed in the process of warfare in the region.

The dehumanized label of "Taliban" is used to cloak the nameless victims of NATO operations. Some political opposition to this practice is building in NATO countries, such as Canada, where calls are heard to withdraw troops from Afghanistan or divert them to non-combat tasks.

This sounds familiar to the term 'terrorist' and 'insurgent' in the entire Middle East.

We seem to have no problem killing people labeled as 'Taliban' because they are supposedly treating women as subservient. Where is the proof of such behavior?

You know its funny that the US supported the Taliban when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. We trained and supplied Bin Laden in the Afghan war, but now when he wants to 'rule' Afghanistan on his own we have a problem?

The interconnection between our poppy field production and arms trafficking is pretty intense.

I suggest you read this article Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden, and the Taliban before you cry about how we're not involved in tragedies in Afghanistan.

We seem to forget we're fighting more than one war. The 'war on drugs' involves Columbia and Afghanistan (coc aine and poppy, respectively). What is interesting is that the CIA has no problem importing coc aine and heroin into the US for profit. The "Cocaine Importing Agency" has a lot of 'splaining' to do, but I suspect none of it will happen. Not while the people doing the drug smuggling are still alive anyway.

I'm interested in hearing some dissenting opinions, as there are always people who seem to support what we are doing 'over there' regardless of the tragedies in human life and otherwise.




www.informationclearinghouse.info
(visit the link for the full news article)

While I might not agree we the policies of this or other administration, I will always stand up for the troops. I been to Irak and I know that while stuff happens in War, is not our intention when we go out the fence to kill civilians, we get drill over and over in LOAC and ROE's.

Now what you say about the CIA and all the other stuff related to it, you might be right I mean, I dont know Im not that informed on that aspect.

[edit on 2-2-2008 by Bunch]

reply to post by Bunch


I don't think its the average US Army soldier or Marine doing the killing.

These are crack troops being sent into the Afghan mountains to deal with the Taliban.

These men know how to kill and have an ingrained sense of national pride like no other.

The majority of soldiers do not kill civilians and even if they do its not on purpose. However, the few bad apples (mainly in Afghanistan actually; hiding from the heavy ground war and occupation in Iraq) are away from the media's attention.

They can get away with pretty much whatever they want to and not worry about incarceration (not that they'd be prosecuted anyway).

These bad apples make the rest of the military look bad, who in my opinion, are fine upstanding citizens.

Contrary to how I may appear, I am a firm supporter of the military. That is, if they're used in a civil situation and not for ulterior motives.




[edit on 2/1/2008 by biggie smalls]

The real problem comes down the same way in any geurilla engagement. You never really know who the enemies are, leaving you open to slaughtering hundreds of innocents just to get to a handful of bad guys.

But in this case, who are the bad guys really? We are told that Taliban is bad because they opress women. This is B.S. The US government doesn't care about this. American soldiers are not dieing to liberate Taliban women either.

Then we have the al-Qaeda connection. The Taliban were not responsible for 9/11, even if you believe that al-Qaeda was. So who are we really fighting? We are killing people in their own country, no wonder they want to kill Americans.

June '07 - 'Up to 80 civilians dead' after US air strikes in Afghanistan

June '07 - Afghan President Karzai says too many civilian deaths by multi-national forces

July '07 - Airstrikes kill scores of Afghan civilians: officials

I don't believe its the troops themselves, rather the commanding
officers who are big fans of airstrikes, and not too keen on old
fashioned footwork. These stories have been coming out for awhile
now, and over time what else can you call it other than genocide?

Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, raised the issue of civilian casualties on a four-hour visit to Afghanistan on Friday on which he met the senior Nato commander there, the American General Dan McNeill.

Senior British soldiers have previously expressed concerns that McNeill, who took command of the 32,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan only recently, was 'a fan' of the massive use of air power to defeat insurgents and that his favoured tactics could be counter-productive.

source (July '07)

Half a year later and counter-productive translates to genocide.

I've done a little more research on the subject of the CIA backing the Taliban.

We had been directly funding the Taliban to fight the Soviets, as well as training and supplying them, but this has been edited from the history books.

The Taliban has taken steps to eradicate the poppy fields in Afghanistan and this has the CIA worried. Their supply lines for their drugs are being cut.

The Taliban has shown they are an extremely conservative sect that believes in no drug use at all. It would be kind of contradictory for them to be growing opium for heroin production.

However, the US backed warlords are only in it for profit and have no problem supplying the West with their opium.

This is another drug war being fought beneath our noses and no one in the media is covering the story.

Afghanistan: Drug addiction lucrative for bankers and CIA

Of course, the Times does not bother to mention that the Afghan opium trade--in fact much of the opium trade in the so-called "Golden Crescent" (Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan)--was cultivated and nurtured by the United States government and the CIA, leading to countless cases of miserable heroin addiction in America and Europe. Reading the Times, we get the impression the Taliban--at one time sponsored by the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence services, so long as they were kicking Russian hindquarter--are responsible for the opium trade all on their lonesome. As usual, the Times twists the story through omission.

The Spoils of War; Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade

CIA covert actions and drug trafficking

Heroin, Afghanistan, and the CIA

The CIA and Heroin financed Mujahadeen

CIA worked with Pakistan to create Taliban

Afghanistan, Taliban, and the US



So how does this relate to the NATO genocide you may ask?

We are in Afghanistan protecting our precious poppy fields from Taliban eradication.

Of course, the media spins it the other way around as usual:

Afghanistan: Poppy Eradication Failing and Taliban Benefiting

The only people benefiting from this are possibly a few rogue Taliban commanders who are in it for money, but the majority are strict Islamics.


Then there's reports like this that have some amount of truth to them:

Taliban pledge to rid afghan province of opium poppies

So not all the media is reporting pro-CIA propaganda...

reply to post by biggie smalls


Alright so the Taliban are not 'good' guys, but they're not the devils they are made out to be.

According to this site "corporate giants, the United Nations and the U.S. Government are striking lucrative deals on everything from an oil pipeline to crop subsidies."

They have friends in high places, and guess what, they were getting away with their human rights abuses before they started messing with the drug trade.

Perhaps now the Taliban figured out how much money the CIA was making off their poppy and decided to get in on the action. I can't speak for them however.

What I can say is that despite the Taliban's actions, they do not deserve to be systematically destroyed from the ground level up. The population seems to support their rule, no matter how cruel some of the behaviors may be. Remember this is a very remote region of the world that belongs to an ancient form of Islam that believes women should be kept in a certain level of ignorance (is that the right term?). I do not agree with their policies, but I also do not agree with their murder either.


Why the USA needs the Taliban

I think I need to bring this thread back full circle to the original article.

Sorry about the long quote, but I think this needs to be read and this will ensure people see the claims made by this man.

Here's a quote that struck me as very significant:

In murdering the Taliban, NATO armed forces systematically practice on a continual basis the crime of genocide that consists of three constituent elements - act, intent to destroy, and religious group. The crime, as defined in the Convention, is analyzed below:

1. Act. The Convention lists five acts, each of which qualifies as genocide. NATO forces in Afghanistan are committing three of the five acts. They are killing members of the Taliban. They are causing serious bodily harm to members of the Taliban. They are deliberately inflicting on the Taliban conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. Any of these three acts committed one time constitutes the crime of genocide. NATO combat troops have been committing, and continue to commit, these acts through multiple means and weapons.

2. Intent to Destroy. The crime of genocide is a crime of intent. It must be shown that NATO combat troops and the high command ordering these troops carry the requisite intent to destroy the Taliban. Mere negligent killings do not qualify as genocide. The statements of NATO's Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and those of NATO spokesmen leave no doubt that the NATO conducts military operations to "hunt and destroy" the Taliban. Preemptive strikes to kill the Taliban are sufficient proof that NATO troops and commanding generals have specific intent to destroy as many Taliban members as they can find. The weekly murderous planning and intelligence gathering to locate and eliminate the Taliban leaders and members further demonstrate that the killings in Afghanistan are not negligent, accidental, or by mistake. For all legal purposes, NATO's incessant and deliberate killings of the Taliban are powered with the specific intent to destroy a religious group.

3. Religious Group. The Genocide Convention is far from universal in that it does not protect all groups from genocide. Its protection covers only four groups: national, ethnic, racial and religious. (Political groups are not protected). The Convention does not require the complete eradication of a protected group as a necessary condition for the crime of genocide. Even part destruction of a protected group constitutes the crime. It is no secret that the Taliban are a religious group. (They may also qualify as a national (Afghan) or ethnic (Pushtun) group). The Taliban advocate and practice a puritanical version of Islam. The Convention does not demand that the protected group advocate and practice a form of religion acceptable to the West or the world. The questionable beliefs and practices of a religious group are no reasons to destroy the group. That the Taliban are armed or support terrorism or oppress women are unlawful excuses to commit genocide. (All reasons that Hitler had to murder Jews would be simply irrelevant under the Convention).

It may, therefore, be safely concluded that NATO combat troops and NATO commanders are engaged in murdering the Taliban, a protected group under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to physically and mentally destroy the group in whole or in part. This is the crime of genocide.

reply to post by biggie smalls


Again no one cares about human rights violations.

Should I just stop posting these sorts of things? Its nice to know the average ATS user doesn't care about other forms of life.

I guess that is about the average human so I guess I shouldn't expect much, but I thought there was a 'higher' (wo)man than average here...

[edit on 2/2/2008 by biggie smalls]