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In the end, the subcommittee and the American trucking executives don't only worry that American money is going to fund the Taliban. They are also worried that the contracting system is perpetuating Afghanistan's security problem; the payments to local contractors, they say, encourages instability along the roads and props up the kinds of warlords and local thugs who Afghans came to hate during the civil war of the early 1990s. And they say if Americans are seen to be supporting those people, then the Afghan public will refuse to support the Americans or the government-- whose police and army have been bypassed by the U.S. contracting system.
In this landlocked country, the United States has turned to eight private trucking companies to deliver the materiel and split a $2.16 billion Host Nation Trucking contract. To do that, the companies turn to the baddest, meanest, most heavily armed people on some of the most dangerous roads in the world: Highway 1 between Kabul, Kandahar, and Helmand.
"One senior Department of Defense official in Afghanistan stated that there have been significant discussions within the Department [of Defense] of the problem of protection payments to local warlords and the Taliban, but no action has been taken" today's report says. "In [the senior official's] view, the contracting officers with responsibility for the contract 'intentionally turn a blind eye to the problem and refuse to look past the prime [contractor] to see how the security subcontractors operate -- hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.'"
"The numbers are so large now, the problem has become that much more serious, magnifying something that's been there all along," says a U.S. military official. "We have to get into these subcontracting networks and really see who we're empowering and who we're enriching."
The poppy plant is behind possibly one of the largest con jobs that our leaders here in American and the filthy rich elite have perpetrated on the American public bar none. The Taliban runs the heroin production and the clown prince of Afghanistan is used as the front man with our so-called mafia leaders in America, one of the most lucrative money makers ever, involving secret drug shipments into America that has gone on for years. Our leaders have sold America out, using a phony war to make billions, possibly trillions, at one point costing Americans 2 billion dollars a week and then some.
The below piece is nothing more than a classic propaganda Three Card Monte, designed to confuse and fool Americans into oblivion, as our dollars continue to be thrown into a hell hole. Karzi is becoming fabulously wealthy while Americans starve. The war machine has been fed, as the American middle class has starved. Commentary
Afghan leader alleges US, Taliban are colluding
Karzai said two suicide bombings that killed 19 people on Saturday — one outside the Afghan Defense Ministry and the other near a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province — show the insurgent group is conducting attacks to demonstrate that international forces will still be needed to keep the peace after their current combat mission ends in 2014.
"The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents," he said during a nationally televised speech about the state of Afghan women.
Are American Troops Protecting Afghan Opium?
As many have noted, the U.S. government has – at least at some times in some parts of the world – protected drug operations. (Big American banks also launder money for drug cartels. See this, this, this and this. Indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. But that’s beyond the scope of this post.)
Over the next four years, the Prime Minister has pledged to give £710million to Afghanistan alone. That could mean up to £70million of British money going to the very people we are fighting.
The hard-hitting report found that despite billions being poured into Afghanistan in aid, the country shows no signs of becoming ‘politically stable or economically viable’.
]It also warned that there was ‘no possibility’ of the country becoming secure within the next three years, despite the efforts of Britain and other Nato countries.