The first group of U.S. Marines will arrive in Georgia on Saturday to help train its troops for a mission alongside coalition forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. Embassy in Georgia said. Next spring Georgia's battalion will be deployed in Afghanistan. The training will focus on skills necessary for the troops to operate in Afghanistan. The training program will begin on September 1 and no weapons will be provided to the Georgian battalion as a part of training, the embassy said without disclosing how many Marines will arrive in Georgia.    

Why should the international community be spending two hundred and fifty billion dollars of its taxpayers' hard-earned money to perform state-building in Afghanistan when this country now produces 40 times more heroin than ten years ago and when corruption accounts for 2.5 billion dollars a year for NATO-trained officials to get rich?  A recent UN report, "Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as Reported by Victims" issued by the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) reveals that for the vast majority of the citizens of Afghanistan, the worst problem is corruption and not insecurity, despite the fact that this is becoming worse by the day. The report was based upon a survey involving 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and 1,600 villages.

In the last year, Afghanistan's citizens paid 2.5 billion dollars in bribes to the authorities to secure basic services which were supposed to be a right. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of UNODC, states in the report "The Afghans say that it is impossible to obtain a public service without paying a bribe". It revealed that 50% of Afghans had to pay some sort of bribe in the period in question.     

As NATO gets ready for a massive troop surge in Helmand Province, the local population flees ahead of what both sides promise to be the Mother of All Firefights. The Taleban have sneered at NATO's warning to move away or lay down arms in this important bastion, the center of the drugs trade which finances their operations and promise a bloodbath. But is it really necessary?

Operation Moshtarak ("Together", in Dari) is about to be unleashed by NATO in the southern Helmand town of Marjah, the largest population center under Taliban control in the region and the largest counter-insurgency operation since the Afghanistan campaign began in 2001. 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops, plus special forces are poised to attack a force of around 1,000 Taliban fighters, who have been warned to lay down their arms or leave the area. But they refuse.   

It looks like the United States is going to stay in Kyrgyzstan to Russia's great disappointment. The government of the former Soviet nation in Central Asia has changed its mind about the withdrawal of US troops from the airbase at Manas Airport.

The dispute about the fate of the US airbase at Kyrgyzstan's Manas, which plays a very important role in terms of maintaining NATO troops in Afghanistan, continues. The government of the Asian nation previously decided to close the base and passed the adequate law on April 2 of this year.    

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has condemned another NATO massacre of civilians in Afghanistan, the latest in its blase Wham! Bam! Sorry Ma'am! policy of slaughter from Kosovo to Kabul. This time it was a bus strafed with automatic weapons fire in Zhari, Kandahar Province. The victims included a woman.

The result of NATO's most recent escapade in Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, when a patrol of international troops opened fire on a bus full of civilians is 18 people injured and four dead, including a woman according to local news sources.

The massacre sparked off mass protests and outrage in Kandahar, where the chant of the day was "Death to America". Dozens of outrages citizens called for the ousting of President Hamid Karzai, who condemned the killings claiming that such actions violate NATO's commitment towards safeguarding civilian life.   

Three hundred civilians killed in Kandahar alone in just two years, vast areas of Afghanistan out of control, NATO massacres and cover-ups... Had NATO invaded last year, the chaos would be understandable, but nearly nine years on? What is NATO doing in Afghanistan, apart from overseeing a massive spike in heroin production?

"If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back".

Tangibly, what has NATO's campaign managed to achieve in Afghanistan? There have been 1,685 deaths of NATO soldiers and CIA operatives, 259,308,000,000 USD (Two hundred and fifty-nine billion dollars) spent, thousands of civilian casualties, the wholesale discrediting of the Karzai regime which amounts to a gaggle of warlords, heroin traffickers and smugglers and an increase by 40 times of heroin production. Not bad. Oh, and NATO payments to the Taleban not to attack.  

Former KGB Special Forces Colonel Oleg Balashov, who took part in the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan, told RT he doubts more U.S. soldiers will increase the chances of victory. This comment comes as the U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan have doubled over the last year while the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, admitted that even more are going to be needed to defeat the Taliban.   

The latest UN report spells an alarming tale of ineptitude both by the Afghan government and by the international community, which has seen the situation in Afghanistan deteriorate to the point that it faces a serious threat of catastrophic irreversibility. After thousands of civilian deaths, nearly 1,000 military fatalities, eight years and $ 250 bn. the country is teetering on the edge of a chasm.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report, released on Monday minces no words, calling the situation "critical", describing the Presidential election as "flawed", referring to the "adverse effects of increased Taliban...attacks", "insufficient resources", "lack of coordination", "lack of political readiness" which if not addressed and redressed, will lead not only to diminishing prospects of success but worse, "the deteriorating overall situation will become irreversible".    

As the London Conference on Afghanistan gets under way, it is imperative that the international community gets it right after nearly ten years of mistakes which have cost thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and have done nothing whatsoever to improve the daily lives of the majority of the Afghan population.

Having sided with the war lords against the Pashtun-based Taliban, the international community took a short-term option which has turned into a nightmare, turning the historic ethnic mix of the country upside-down. The appearance of foreign troops has only exacerbated the Afghan population who do not see them as freedom fighters but invaders and vast quantities of the rivers of taxpayers' money being spent in Afghanistan are squandered.    

The phantom Bin Laden comes out whenever Washington needs him

The Pakistan Minister for Interior Affairs Rehman Malik told in an interview with The Sunday Times that Osama bin Laden had left for Afghanistan, therefore the USA should stop missile attacks against the territory of Pakistan. Despite Islamabad's protests during the recent ten months, the USA have attacked the north-western tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, where major Taliban bases are located, 40 times already. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the attacks.  

The photographer seems to want to concentrate on the fact that the miners have a dirty job. That is true. It's also a dangerous job. Afghanistan is one of the poorest nations in the world. Yet the mountains blanketing this central Asian nation hide one of the world's biggest treasure chests. There are gemstones, precious metals, coal and oil. To date, 95 percent of his country's natural wealth remains untapped.

Recently, the government has begun promoting private efforts to mine the gems - with an eye toward cashing in on the taxes and fees generated by the business. One precious stone being mined is lapis lazuli. Theirs is a primitive operation. Save for using the old drill, some dynamite and flashlights, the miners pretty much extract lapis the same way their ancestors did centuries ago: with hammers. What is new is what happens with the lapis once they remove it. Almost all of the lapis being mined in Afghanistan is now being bought and traded legally for the first time in 50 years. 

The Conference held by Afghan women activists ahead of the Afghanistan Conference on Thursday served as a launching point for their recommendations on good governance and a lasting solution which will bring stability to all members of society, paving the way towards reconstruction. The key? In a word, inclusion.  The Afghan women activists' recommendations on security, development and governance are the only input from Afghan women concerning the key decisions being taken about their country...by men.

Three quotes, to highlight the plight of Afghanistan's women and to underline why the London Conference gets it right:  "As the global community knows, nowhere are women's rights more at stake than in Afghanistan. Therefore it is of grave concern that women's voices and perspectives are largely missing from this London conference on Afghanistan's future. The international community should stand behind the women of Afghanistan, and elevate their voices, not barter away their rights in the name of short-term peace and stabilization". (Wazma Frogh, Afghan Gender and Development Specialist).   

Why doesn't NATO take Russia's approaches on a new security pact seriously? Because the Freedom, Democracy, Stability and Prosperity labels attached to the Organization are no more than outer packaging which hides the reality within: NATO is no more and no less than an instrument which serves the interests of the arms lobby.  Russia's approaches for a bilateral security treaty, which would inevitably pass by a serious and long-standing binding bilateral agreement on friendship and non-aggression, will not be accepted by NATO for one reason alone: NATO is not about collective security any more and has not been since the Warsaw Pact was disbanded on July 1, 1991.

Last month, Andres Fogh Rasmussen, the non-elected Danish Secretary-General of the non-elected NATO (which nevertheless still dictates the foreign policy of its member states), declared "There can be no doubt whatsoever that NATO will remain our framework for Euro-Atlantic security". In a nutshell, there is no space for collective agreements with Russia because NATO continues to focus its attention on the Western Europe-Atlantic space common to the Cold War.    

Why is it that NATO makes and breaks promises to Russia, encircles Russia by arming regimes which are hostile to Moscow after promising not to, and then asks for Russia's help when it gets itself into trouble?
 
The fact that NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is to meet President Dmitry
Medvedev, Premier Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Mironov of the Federation Council, and Boris Gryzlov of the Duma shows the importance of his visit to Moscow.

 
On the table is apparently the subject of logistical support for NATO operations in Afghanistan, where after 8 years, casualties are at record levels and vast swathes of the country are under permanent control of the Taliban at a total cost to date of  $231,596,444,845, or two hundred and thirty-one point five billion dollars, where Hamid Karzai's government resembles a gaggle of gangsters and where ten per cent of the Pentagon's spending is paid to fund the Taliban not to attack.
 

This, after NATO itself, albeit indirectly, created the problem in the first place by unleashing extremist terrorist movements in central Asia to destabilise the Soviet Union, among which were the Mujaheddin movement, complete with Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, which morphed into today's Taliban. Payback time was 9/11.
 
So after promising Russia time and again that NATO would not expand eastwards if the Warsaw Pact were to be dismantled, then promptly placing its hand round Russia's throat with NATO presence along the northern and western borders, and then courting Georgia, whose regime launched a criminal and murderous savage cowardly and under-handed attack against Russia last Summer, Russia is now expected to help.
 
Given that Russia's government and Russia's position in the international community have historically adopted a sensible, balanced and correct reading of scenarios (it was after all right to support the socially progressive government in Afghanistan against the terrorist movements, just as NATO is doing today) it makes sense for Russia to help NATO by providing logistic support. Nobody gains by Afghanistan becoming a failed state again, although the notion remains that its people would far better off if the country had been left alone with its Government back in the 1970s.
 
Nobody gains either by international terrorism having any places to hide and develop, for the tragedy and horror of what happened in New York, London and Madrid and recently, Moscow, show that it is not just a fight between the USA and bin Laden but indeed civilization itself against a bunch of murderers.
 
Neither is Russia in any way hostile to NATO's campaign in Afghanistan. After all it is only right that NATO finishes the job it started back in the 1970s, although 15.000 Soviet lives were lost in the balance.
 
So NATO would do well to thank Russia for its support not only in Afghanistan but in other areas, namely combating piracy and trafficking and would do well in future to keep its word, not make hostile advances and not openly support regimes such as Saakashvili's Georgia.
 
The key to all of these issues (except Georgia, where "No Saakashvili, No problem" would be the order of the day) is development and this requires money, patience and time.  It also requires a world whose leaders and those who keep them in power are more focussed on solving common problems than in making personal gains. The world can only gain by coming together, with old foes becoming friends, with the international community living in friendship around our common lake, the seas. Tears taste of salt, whoever sheds them.
 
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru

We really have to take our hats off to NATO. This clique of arms lobbyists and defender of jobs for the boys invaded Afghanistan in 2001 on the pretext that Osama bin Laden was using the country to attack western interests. Almost a decade after the Taleban declared war on drugs production, NATO's Afghanistan is not only the world's largest producer of opium but now, of hashish also.

Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taleban, had stated in an interview with Pakistan's Dawn newspaper in 1998 that the USA would invade Afghanistan because he had refused to let them build a gas pipeline across his country in exchange for 5 billion USD. He was right. The invasion came three years later after those two jets flew into the Twin Towers, that one jet crash-landed in the Pentagon, managing to avoid two lamp posts with its wings and to fail to produce a single piece of evidence either on camera or otherwise and then there was the other one that simply disintegrated without trace.    

On the eve of the Afghanistan Conference in London, a male dominated affair hosted and chaired by six men, where decisions will be taken by men and for men, a handful of Afghan women activists, backed by UNIFEM and the Institute for Inclusive Security, are meeting in London to release their recommendations - the only input from consultation with Afghan women on key issues affecting their country and society.

On the eve of the Afghanistan Conference in London, a male dominated affair hosted and chaired by six men, where decisions will be taken by men and for men, a handful of Afghan women activists*, backed by UNIFEM and the Institute for Inclusive Security, are meeting in London to release their recommendations - the only input from consultation with Afghan women on key issues affecting their country and society.    

Georgia will send its military servicemen to Afghanistan to participate in a peacemaking operation, said David Sikharulidze, the Minister of Defense of Georgia. "Now we are negotiating with France to let our 170infantrymen to serve in the French contingent", he said in his interview to Kviris Palitra, published today. - "Now it is being specified, in which region and when will the mission of Georgian peacemakers in Afghanistan begin, it will presumably happen this year".  

US General Stanley McChrystal is now the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan instead of General David McKiernan. None of high-ranking officials of the Pentagon could explain the reason why the previous commander was dismissed and why Mr. McChrystal could handle the Taliban better than Mr. McKiernan could. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates only said that the United States was in need of a new military command and a new thinking because of a new strategy for the war-torn country.

Anyone who takes interest in history will probably see the likeness between the recent rotation and the one that took place during the US military presence in Vietnam, when General William Westmoreland was replaced with General Creighton Abrams. Westmoreland stood up for a more active participation of the US military contingent in the destruction of bases and guerrillas of Vietcong. Unlike Westmoreland, Abrams wanted to get Vietnam directly involved in the war.   

"The confession by the highest military official of the NATO war in Afghanistan [Gen. Stanley McChrystal] that it is a monstrous crime against the civilian population was not considered a news theme". It is with "news criteria" like this from the mainstream press in this world that imperialism shapes the social conscience of the people.

The war in Afghanistan continues to make many victims. The most numerous are those about which less is said: the Afghan population.

In February the Dutch government fell after the prime minister refused to meet his campaign promise to withdraw troops. Weeks later the German President resigned, after confessing the truth in public: the participation of Germany aims to defend the "interests" of the great German capital. Now was the resignation of the commander in chief of NATO troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal.