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A Pakistani Olive Branch Extended In Efforts to End the Afghani Conflict

By Vladimir Odintsov – New Eastern Outlook – 30.08.2020

In the face of the obvious failure of US policy in Afghanistan, Pakistan has stepped up its efforts to peacefully resolve the Afghani conflict.

On August 24, at the invitation of Pakistani Foreign Ministry, a delegation of the Taliban (movement banned in the Russian Federation – ed.), headed by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived from Doha, capital of Qatar, to meet both civilian and military representatives of Pakistan. Its purpose was to discuss the latest developments in the peace process in Afghanistan and further steps in this direction, improving the security situation for civilians in Afghanistan as well as trade between the two neighboring countries, as confirmed by Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen on his Twitter.

This meeting was already the third of its kind: previously the parties met in October 2019 at the Pakistani Foreign Ministry and in February this year in Doha. This third visit of the Taliban delegation, as intended by those behind it, should contribute to resolving the contradictions that have arisen in recent days on the eve of the intra-Afghan peace talks that did not start on August 20 and were postponed to a later date, and were part of the agreement signed in Doha in February between the Taliban and the United States. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi emphasized in his statement that Islamabad invited the Taliban to emphasize the importance of negotiations, adding that negotiations are “the only way forward” in Afghanistan. “It is the Afghanis who need reconciliation, and our task is mediating,” he said. “The main goal is to ensure peace, and the next stage should be the beginning of an intra-Afghan dialogue.”

In a statement in connection with this meeting, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry highlighted Islamabad’s positive contribution to the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan, which culminated in the signing of a peace agreement between the US and the Taliban in Doha on February 29, 2020. Therefore, Pakistani officials are confident that Afghani stakeholders must seize this historic opportunity to secure a comprehensive political negotiated solution to the Afghani conflict. Islamabad called on the international community to step up its participation in the reconstruction and economic development of Afghanistan, by creating the necessary economic opportunities and conditions conducive to the return of Afghani refugees to their homeland.

Islamabad leaping to action in the peaceful resolution of the Afghani crisis is in part due to Washington’s unrelenting criticism of Pakistan for “insufficient efforts to counter Afghani anti-government forces,” which the US State Department has repeatedly noted in its reports. In particular, the United States emphasizes how Pakistan failed to prevent a number of attacks by militants from its territory against Afghanistan, and makes minimal efforts to suppress the activities of terrorist organizations. At the same time, it is especially clear Islamabad only conducted anti-terrorist operations against those militants who carried out attacks specifically on Pakistani territory. This critical position has been repeatedly voiced by the current Afghani authorities close to the United States, accusing Islamabad of supporting the Taliban and other militants operating in the weakly defended border, indicating, in particular, that Taliban leaders are based in cities along the Pakistani-Afghani border, including Quetta and Peshawar.

Washington’s latest accusations against Islamabad were voiced in the annual report on terrorism published by the US State Department on June 24. In it, in particular, it was noted that Pakistan is a haven for terrorists and terrorist groups operating in South Asia, such as the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and aysh-e-Mohammad (all banned in the Russian Federation), and the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Pakistani army have been accused of inaction. In addition, the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report indicated that religious minorities and children are frequent victims of the slave trade in Pakistan.

For these reasons and for alleged “insufficient support by the Pakistani authorities for the American strategy on South Asia” in 2018, the United States refused to provide financial assistance to Islamabad in the amount of $300 million. This has already caused Islamabad’s harsh discontent with such assessments of Washington’s actions by Pakistan, since the indicated amount was supposed to be not help, but compensation for funds already spent by this country on countering terrorism.

However, today everyone is already well aware that Washington’s criticism of Pakistan in recent years is primarily due to the desire of the current American authorities to shift the blame for the apparent failure of their policy in Afghanistan to a third party, including the deaths here of more than two thousand American soldiers as well as over 20 thousand injuries, hundreds of billions of dollars worthlessly spent on goals incomprehensible to the public, which was more than enough to have long ago made Afghanistan a flourishing state in many ways. An important factor in such attacks by the Donald Trump administration on the Pakistani authorities is also the establishment of closer bilateral relations between Pakistan and China, as a result of which the traditional ties between America and Pakistan have all but disintegrated.

Although it is still early to speak into the results of the third meeting of Pakistani representatives and the Taliban, it is nevertheless obvious that the negotiations that took place in the current situation were very necessary in hopes to settle the Afghani conflict. And once again it was Islamabad who extended the olive branch in an effort to achieve peace in Afghanistan.

August 30, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

US Forced to Flee Afghanistan, Iraq and Now Syria

By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 28.08.2020

Multiple missile strikes carried out in recent weeks on American military facilities and overseas bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria indicate that a growing number of people living in countries that have endured American military invasions have had enough of America’s intervention and are fed up with Washington’s policy.

The level of dissatisfaction among the Afghan people with the US military presence in Afghanistan has already received extensive coverage in the media, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has even been forced to declare that the US will pull all of its troops out of Afghanistan by May 2021.

Outside Afghanistan, anti-American sentiment has long prevailed among people living in Syria and Iraq, which has not only been voiced through peaceful means, such as holding anti-American protests or appealing to the UN to demand the American troops be withdrawn.

Powerful explosions sparked a raging fire in the late hours of July 28 at the Majid al Tamimi Airbase in Iraq, where both Iraqi and American soldiers are stationed. This was the second strike to be carried out within the space of the same day. In an attack earlier that day, three rockets were launched on the territory of the US Camp Taji base located north of Baghdad.

On August 10, an explosion near the Iraqi border with Kuwait hit convoys supplying US-led coalition forces with military equipment. On the same day, another rocket attack struck near the US Embassy in Baghdad. The actual territory of the American Embassy was hit by missiles on July 5, and after another attack on the embassy on June 11, Washington was forced to negotiate reducing the US military presence in Iraq with Baghdad.

The Iraqi media notes that attacks on American military facilities are carried out on almost a weekly basis in Iraq, and although there are no casualties or people left injured in many of these attacks according to official data, the infrastructure of the military facilities has suffered material damage. At the same time, the threat of far more serious attacks being carried out in the near future has not been dismissed by the US.

According to the al-Hadath TV channel based in Dubai, Iraq and the United States came to an agreement on August 22 in response to the significant increase in the number of protests being held in Iraq against the US military presence in the country, agreeing to relocate American troops and equipment from Camp Taji north of Baghdad to Erbil — the capital of the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. Almost all the troops are now known to have been moved to the military base in Erbil, in what was the largest withdrawal of US troops from an American military base in the Middle East.

There are also more and more reports coming from Syria about missile attacks on US military bases, especially in the northeast of the country in the al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor governorates. The Syrian Al-Watan newspaper reported that one of these attacks targeted a US military base in the town of al-Shaddadah, the administrative center of the al-Hasakah governorate in northeastern Syria, which was hit by rockets in early August. In May, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that another armed attack was carried out on the US military using machine guns and grenades, in which at least eight people were injured.

In some articles, observers claim that the American facilities targeted in these attacks are being used as infrastructure to protect oil fields and for the illegal production of Syrian oil. For instance, one of these attacks carried out in mid-August targeted an American military base near the Conoco gas field (north of the Deir ez-Zor governorate), which is controlled by the US and Kurdish armed groups. As anti-American sentiment gains momentum, and with periodic attacks being carried out on American targets in Syria, the United States has already begun drafting a special combat unit in Syria to protect oil fields east of the Euphrates. According to local sources, this special unit includes ethnic Arabs drafted from the ranks of the militia fighters in the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is militarily led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a mainly Kurdish militia which forms the backbone of the SDF. However, local tribes are increasingly taking a stand against the presence of American armed forces and their SDF henchmen in Syria. According to Al-Masdar News, one of these clashes took place on August 17, when fighters from the Al-Baggara tribe reportedly drove SDF forces out of the village of Jadid Baggara in a rural part of Deir ez-Zor governorate in eastern Syria. It is indeed the eastern regions of Syria where numerous protests are being held against military occupation and new US sanctions, which are trying to put the Syrian government in a difficult position to prevent Damascus and its allies from working together to rebuild their vision of Syria.

Given these circumstances, US President Donald Trump has been repeating his intention to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria more and more frequently. Donald Trump made another remark about withdrawing US troops from Iraq at a press briefing on August 19 that was streamed on the White House Twitter account. In Trump’s opinion, the US army should never have gone into the Middle East, and he recalled that the United States is continuing to reduce the number of American troops stationed in Afghanistan.

It should not be forgotten that during a speech Donald Trump gave on June 13, addressed to graduates of the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York, he said: “We are restoring the fundamental principles that the job of the American soldier is not to rebuild foreign nations […].” In Trump’s own words, there is now “a renewed, clear-eyed focus on defending America’s vital interests.”

However, on June 9, Donald Trump informed members of Congress from both the Senate and the House of Representatives that Washington will continue operations against DAESH, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other related groups listed as terrorist organizations and based in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Niger.

Yet considering how people living in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have railed against the presence of US troops and military bases in their countries, one could expect to see similar acts of protest in the very near future in other countries around the world where more than 600 US military bases are hosted.

August 28, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Democrats’ election platform demands end to ‘forever wars’ — most of which were launched last time Biden held office

By Helen Buyniski | RT | August 17, 2020

The Democratic Party’s 2020 electoral platform includes a call to end the US’ “forever wars” – which sounds great, except that a Democratic president started many of those wars and the party has stonewalled efforts to end them.

“Democrats know it’s time to bring nearly two decades of unceasing conflict to an end,” the platform, released in draft form on Monday and expected to be approved by Democratic leaders later this week, reads.

It’s a relatively uncontroversial statement in itself: at nearly 19 years and counting, the US war in Afghanistan is the longest conflict in American history. The various satellite wars that have sprung up as part of the “War on Terror” have devastated large swathes of the Middle East – and the US itself, which has spent upwards of $6 trillion on fighting them while much of the country slid into a permanent recession – over the past two decades.

However, the responsibility for many of those satellite conflicts lies with Democrat Barack Obama’s administration, which liberally bombed Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in addition to Afghanistan and Iraq, turning the already-disastrous two-front War on Terror of his predecessor George W. Bush into a regional quagmire. Democratic candidate Joe Biden was Obama’s vice president, cheering those wars on and defending his boss’ decisions. Now, the party wants Americans to believe only he can put an end to them.

The 2020 platform promises a “durable and inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan” along with an end to US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and a repeal of the threadbare 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that has been repeatedly (mis)used to excuse US interventions in the Middle East under the guise of fighting terrorism. All great ideas, but the party has been here before.

Despite receiving the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after his inauguration, Obama didn’t bring the peace he promised in his 2008 campaign – he just made war more palatable to the liberals who had previously protested against it. By dramatically expanding the US drone program and cloaking murderous airstrikes in the warm fuzzy rhetoric of spreading democracy and “responsibility to protect,” Obama, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Democrats in his administration took the wars out of sight, and out of mind for the average American.

Even while taking credit for “ending” the war in Iraq, launched in 2003 on the fraudulent pretext that leader Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction and/or was somehow involved in the 9/11 terror attacks, Obama subsequently returned US troops to Iraq under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State terror group (IS, ISIS/ISIL). However, IS is widely considered an outgrowth of the US’ botched Iraq policy, which destabilized the region by flooding the country with many of the suddenly-unemployed (but still well-armed) remnants of Saddam Hussein’s military. At the same time, the CIA has a long history of supporting terror groups that dovetail with its political aims, from arming and training al-Qaeda’s predecessors to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan to arming and training so-called “moderate rebels” whose tactics are often indistinguishable from ISIL or al-Qaeda to take out the Syrian government. Terrorism has thrived amid the war “against” it.

That the Democrats should campaign in 2020 on ending forever wars suggests they might have learned something from 2016, when then-candidate Donald Trump pledged to do just that, luring disaffected liberals who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for notorious warmonger Hillary Clinton. Her flippant dismissal of the brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – “We came, we saw, he died!” – remains chilling years after she helped reduce the country with the highest standard of living on the African continent to a failed state where slaves are sold in open markets.

But while Trump has profoundly failed to keep his end-the-wars promise, instead increasing the number of drone strikes beyond Obama’s sky-high levels, even Trump’s minimal efforts to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan have been ferociously opposed by the Democrats.

Indeed, the only foreign policy acts the self-styled #Resistance has praised from their political nemesis have been his bombings of Syria in response to extremely dubious reports of gas attacks by the Assad government. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria claimed the strike represented the day Trump “became president of the United States.”

The disingenuous call to end the military quagmires is far from the only lofty pledge embedded in the Democrats’ platform, which alternates between eye-rolling social-justice pandering and common-sense measures with broad appeal.

The party has also pledged to “end the Trump Administration’s politicization of the armed forces,” improve healthcare for veterans, “root out systemic racism from our military justice system,” and “prioritize more effective and less costly diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement tools” over military invasions in conducting foreign policy.

It remains to be seen which, if any, of those promises they will keep.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

August 18, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

US intelligence saying IRAN is paying bounties to kill Americans in Afghanistan is pure parody

By Scott Ritter | RT | August 18, 2020

It was Russia in June, now it’s Tehran. Don’t US analysts understand that Taliban fighters really don’t need any more motivation to target American troops? This is simply politicized (un)intelligence that isn’t fooling anyone.

According to CNN, the Iranian government has paid “bounties” to the Haqqani network, a terrorist group with close links to the Taliban, for six attacks on US and coalition forces in Afghanistan in 2019, including one on December 11 which targeted Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, which wounded four US personnel.

This explosive allegation was contained in a Pentagon briefing document which was reviewed by CNN. While the bounties mentioned were attributed to an unnamed “foreign government,” CNN claims that sources “familiar with” the intelligence named the country as Iran. These bounties, and the attacks on US personnel they underwrote, played a role in the deliberations that led to the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, by US forces in early January 2020, the network reported.

The CNN report comes on the heels of similar allegations regarding “bounties” paid by Russian military intelligence to the Taliban, likewise for the purpose of underwriting attacks on US and coalition personnel in Afghanistan. The Russian bounty story has since turned out to have been based upon uncorroborated raw intelligence deemed by senior US officials as being too poorly sourced to be actionable by the president or his senior advisers. The intelligence was leaked to the press regardless, in what appeared to be an effort to undermine President Trump’s ongoing efforts to forge a peace agreement with the Taliban and to embarrass him in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.

At first blush, it appears that the CNN reporting is cut from the same cloth as was the Russian “bounty” story. First and foremost (as the CNN reports notes), the Haqqani network did not, and does not, need financial incentives from outside agencies to motivate it to carry out attacks against US and/or coalition targets. As such, even if payments were in fact sent from Iran to the Haqqani network, the likelihood that they were linked to the December 11 attack, or any other, is virtually nil.

The linkage attributed to the December 11 attack on Bagram Air Base and the decision by the US to assassinate Qassem Soleimani is likewise tenuous. In the days, weeks and months following the Soleimani assassination, the Trump administration was called to task by Congress and the media about its justification for the Soleimani strike. While a great deal of weight was given to a rocket attack on K-2 Air Base in Iraq on December 27 that killed a US civilian contractor, there was no mention at any time about any Iranian “bounty” scheme ongoing inside Afghanistan, despite the fact that a direct correlation between such a “bounty” and the need to kill Soleimani would have been a stronger argument in favor of the attack on the Iranian general.

US intelligence has claimed that Iran has been providing “modest” amounts of armaments to the Taliban on an ongoing basis since 2007, something both the Taliban and Iran deny. According to statements made by US intelligence spokespersons in November 2019, this assistance was beefed up in 2015 to assist the Taliban in confronting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) inside Afghanistan. No mention was made of any “bounty” scheme, although Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did link the Iranian assistance to an attack on US forces in May 2019.

While there is evidence to suggest that Iran and the Taliban enjoyed some sort of a relationship dating back to 2007, this relationship seemed focused on supporting Taliban forces based out of western Afghanistan, along the border with Iran; there was no evidence that this relationship included the payment of “bounties” for targeting US personnel.

Moreover, there was no suggestion that at the time of the December 27, 2019 attack on Bagram Air Base, Iran was providing support to the Haqqani network, a Sunni terrorist organization with close links to Pakistani intelligence and which operates out of the Pakistani city of Quetta. Indeed, the first indication of an Iranian connection to the Haqqani network came in the aftermath of the signing of the US-Taliban peace agreement in February 2020, when fringe elements of the Taliban, including allies within the Haqqani network, broke away in order to continue the struggle against the US in Afghanistan.

Even this reporting is sketchy – the alleged Iranian-Taliban-Haqqani cooperation was in the “early stages of forming,” not indicative of the kind of maturity that would have had to exist to sustain any viable bounty scheme. Moreover, any cooperation that was still in its infancy in February 2020, could not have been the basis of an arrangement regarding an attack that took place in December 2019. Finally, an Iranian-Haqqani bounty scheme would fly in the face of the public commitment by the Haqqani network in support of the US-Taliban peace agreement. In short, the CNN report fails on matters of fact and logic.

The timing of the CNN report provides the greatest insight as to why such a poorly sourced and thinly argued claim would be made against Iran at this time, coming as it does on the heels of the US losing a major vote in the UN Security Council concerning the lifting of an arms embargo against Iran.

This embarrassing defeat, in which the US was only able to garner a single additional vote in support of its resolution, has set the stage for an even greater confrontation at the UN over so-called “snap-back” sanctions the US seeks to impose on Iran.

The Iran-Haqqani bounty allegation was leaked by persons in the US intelligence community who have no qualms about injecting manufactured and/or misleading intelligence into the American news cycle at a critically sensitive time, with less than 90 days remaining until the 2020 US presidential election. Instead of seeking to embarrass President Trump, this leak is designed to bolster the Trump administration’s argument that Iran is a threat worthy of sustaining a major confrontation at the Security Council which could threaten the legitimacy and viability of that organization.

In the end, the motives behind an intelligence leak are irrelevant. The US intelligence community, through its repeated use of well-timed leaks to influence policy by deceiving the American public about the truth, has shown itself to be a highly politicized institution that operates at the whim of nameless partisan operatives, and not in the best interests of the United States.

That it can still ask for and receive a budget in excess of $80 billion per year is a harsh indictment of just how decrepit the US system of government has become, where a blind eye continues to be turned when it comes to the blatant abuse of intelligence for purposes other than what it was intended for.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

August 18, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Afghanistan’s grand assembly approves freeing of 400 Taliban prisoners

Press TV – August 9, 2020

Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of elders, has approved the release of 400 imprisoned Taliban militants who had been involved in serious crimes in Afghanistan, removing the final obstacle to negotiations between the Afghan government and the militants.

After three days of deliberation, the elders approved the release of the 400 militant prisoners on Sunday.

Former president Hamid Karzai told the convention, “This is a very happy day. Based on the information I have, the intra-Afghan talks would begin within two to three days after the release of the 400 Taliban prisoners.”

Chief negotiator Abdullah Abdullah, who is the head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), said, “The decision of the Loya Jirga has removed the last excuse and obstacles on the way to peace talks. We are on the verge of peace talks.”

Kabul and the Afghan Taliban have been involved in a prisoner exchange for a couple of months. The prisoner swap was an Afghan government obligation under a deal between the United States and the Taliban that was struck in February. Kabul was excluded from the talks, and the obligation was imposed on it.

The exchange has been regarded as a first step toward broader talks between the government and the Taliban. The prospect of the talks was dimmed after Kabul refused to free hundreds of inmates involved in serious crimes. Last month, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he had “no authority” under the country’s constitution to release the remaining inmates because of their involvement in serious crimes. Ghani said the decision on the release of those militants had to be made by the Loya Jirga.

Under the deal with the Taliban, the US will start a phased withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. US Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced on Saturday that a sizable number of US troops would be pulled out of Afghanistan before the end of November.

The United States invaded Afghanistan and toppled a Taliban regime in 2001 under the pretext of fighting terrorism following the September 11 attacks.

Official data shows that bombings and other assaults by the Taliban have surged 70 percent since the militant group signed the deal with the United States.

August 9, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Alleged war crimes by British Special Forces in Afghanistan set to have major repercussions

Members of the Special Air Service and its sister unit, the Special Boat Service, were active in Afghanistan during the British military presence in the war-torn country.
Press TV | August 2, 2020

New evidence has come to light that British Special Forces in Afghanistan routinely committed war crimes by shooting dead unarmed civilians.

The fresh material follows an investigation by BBC Panorama which focuses on the concerns of the Special Forces top brass that the units under their command were routinely killing unarmed men and women as part of their operations.

At their height, the operations, dubbed the “night raids”, occurred on a virtually nightly basis and were ostensibly targeted at senior echelons of the Taliban militant movement.

The new documents – held by the courts – were recently released to the solicitors Leigh Day as part of an active case at the High Court, which is set to rule on whether allegations of unlawful killing by British Special Forces were originally investigated properly.

The original complainant in the case is Afghan national, Saifullah Ghareb Yar, who claims four members of his family were “assassinated” by UK Special Forces in the early hours of February 16, 2011.

The case is of seminal importance especially in the light of the British government’s consistent refusal to properly investigate alleged war crimes committed by British troops – both regular and Special Forces – in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The situation has deteriorated to the point that the International Criminal Court (ICC) intervened back in November 2019 by stating its willingness to investigate the British military for the first time.

The ICC’s intervention has been widely interpreted as a major embarrassment to the British government and military alike.

August 2, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Taliban Group Says Completed Release of 1,000 Afghan Prisoners Under Agreement With US

Sputnik – 31.07.2020

KABUL – The Taliban movement has completed the release of 1,000 Afghan prisoners as per the Doha deal agreed with Washington, Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, said on Friday.

“According to the Doha Agreement, in which the Islamic Emirate promised to release 1000 prisoners in exchange for 5,000 prisoners, this number was completed by us today,” Shaheen said.

Earlier in the day, the Taliban completed the process by releasing 82 prisoners in the Afghan provinces of Herat, Farah, Ghor, Nimroz, Zabul and Balkh, the spokesman added.

The Afghan government and the Taliban committed to releasing each other’s prisoners — 5,000 and 1,000, respectively — as part of a peace deal negotiated by the group and the United States in the Qatari capital of Doha on 29 February, with the outlook to launch intra-Afghan talks. Kabul has so far freed only 4,400 detainees, according to the Taliban.

Earlier this week, Shaheen said that the Taliban would release the remaining Afghan prisoners before the Muslim sacrifice festival of Eid al-Adha, which starts on Friday, as a goodwill gesture. The movement expects the peace talks with the Afghan government to start in August following the release of the prisoners.

July 31, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

Taliban say will free Afghan government inmates before Eid al-Adha

Press TV – July 30, 2020

The Taliban militant group says it will release the remaining Afghan government prisoners before Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice) as a “goodwill gesture.”

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban’s office in Qatar, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday that the militant group had decided to release the 1,000 prisoners before Eid al-Adha, which marks the culmination of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

Shaheen called on the Afghan government to complete the release of the 5,000 Taliban prisoners that has been underway in a gradual format as part of a prisoner swap between the two sides.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Tuesday that his government would soon complete the release of the 5,000 Taliban prisoners in order to demonstrate its commitment to peace.

He also said negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban militant group were expected to begin “in a week’s time,” following the completion of the prisoner exchange.

The prisoner swap has been an Afghan government obligation under a deal between the United States and the Taliban that was struck in February. The Afghan government, which was not a signatory to the accord, was required to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The militants, for their part, were obliged to free 1,000 government captives.

The exchange has been regarded as a first step toward broader talks between the government and the militants. Its implementation had faced hurdles since the deal was signed.

The deal envisages a complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and the Taliban pledged not to attack American and other foreign forces. They made no such pledge in relation to the Afghan government and people.

The Taliban on Tuesday declared a three-day ceasefire for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, starting Friday. Kabul welcomed the announcement with a note of caution.

The truce announcement has been welcomed by the public and officials in Afghanistan and they have called for a lasting ceasefire in the war-ravaged country.

The militants declared a similar three-day ceasefire at the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in May. That truce prompted widespread relief across Afghanistan, but it was short-lived, with the militants resuming deadly attacks straight afterwards.

Official data shows that bombings and other assaults by the Taliban have surged 70 percent since the militant group signed the deal with the United States.

July 30, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

War Crimes and War Criminals: Who Will Be Held Accountable?

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 23, 2020

There is something unique about how the United States manipulates the “terrorism” label to avoid being accused of carrying out war crimes. When an indigenous militia or an armed insurgency like the Taliban in a country like Iraq or Afghanistan attacks American soldiers subsequent to a U.S. invasion which overthrew the country’s government, it is considered by Washington to be an act of “terrorism.” Terror attacks de facto permit a carte blanche response, allowing virtually anything as retaliation against the parties involved or countries that support them, including the assassination of foreign government officials. But for the attacker, whose perspective is quite different, the incident often could reasonably be described as legitimate resistance to a foreign occupier and much of the world might agree with that assessment.

So, it all comes down to definitions. The United States covers its version of reality through liberal use of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) which more-or-less gives a blanket approval to attack and kill “terrorists” anywhere at any time. And how does one become a terrorist? By being included on the U.S. government’s heavily politicized annual list of terrorist groups and material supporters of terrorism. That was the argument that was used by the United States when it killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January, that his organization, the Qods Force, was on the “terrorist” lists maintained by State and the Treasury Department and he was therefore held to be guilty of any and all attacks on U.S. military carried out by Qods or by presumed Iranian surrogate militias.

The case made to justify killing Soleimani was considered deeply flawed at the time it took place. Because the United States says something is legal due to a law Congress has passed does not make it so, just as most of the world would consider the U.S. profile killings by drone in Afghanistan and elsewhere, based on nothing more than the assumption that someone on the ground might be a “terrorist,” to be little more than war crimes.

It has recently been revealed that the Trump Administration has issued a so-called “finding” to authorize the CIA to conduct more aggressive cyberattacks against infrastructure and other targets in countries that are considered to be unfriendly. The finding specifically named Iran, North Korea, China and Russia as approved targets and it is of particular interest because it basically left it up to the Agency to decide whom to attack and to what degree. As Washington is not at war with any of the countries named and is essentially seeking to damage their economies directly, the activity undertaken by CIA has constituted acts of war and, by widely accepted legal definition, attacks on countries that are not actually threatening are war crimes.

To counter the negative publicity about Trump Administration actions and to establish a possible casus belli, Washington has been floating numerous stories alleging Iranian, Russian and Chinese “aggression.” The ridiculous story about Russia paying Afghans bounties to kill American soldiers was quickly debunked, so the White House and the captive media are now alleging that Moscow hacker/spies are seeking to steal proprietary information dealing with the development of a coronavirus vaccine. The agitprop coming out of Washington to blame Russia for nearly everything notwithstanding, opinion polls suggest that most of the world considers Washington to be the primary source of global instability, rejecting the assertion by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the U.S. is a “force for good.”

So, it is reasonable to suggest that the United States has been guilty of many war crimes in the past twenty years and has only been shielded from the consequences due to its ability to control the message combined with its power in international fora and its unwillingness to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.

But the willingness of the international community to look the other way in support of the war crimes double standard appears to be changing. The ICC, which has had its investigators denied entry to the United States, has been investigating Israeli war crimes even as it also looks at developments in Afghanistan and Iraq involving U.S. forces. Trump’s ban on entry by ICC personnel includes their families even if they are American citizens and it also protects Israel in that ICC investigators looking into the possible war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers and officers as well as the relevant Jewish state’s government officials will also be sanctioned and denied entry into the U.S. In practical terms, the Trump Administration is declaring that Israeli and U.S. soldiers will be regarded as one and the same as they relate to dealings with the ICC, a conceit that is little known to the American public.

The Israelis have responded to the threat from the ICC by compiling a secret list of government officials and military officers who might be subject to ICC issued arrest warrants if they travel in Europe for war crimes committed in Lebanon and Syria as well as of crimes against humanity directed against Palestinians. The list reportedly includes between 200 and 300 names.

That Israel is making a list of people who might be vulnerable to accusations of having possibly committed war crimes is a de facto admission by the government that such crimes were in fact committed. The ICC will soon decide whether to move on the December request by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate both Israel and Hamas over suspicions of war crimes in Gaza and Jerusalem as well as on the occupied West Bank beginning in 2014. The investigation would include “crimes allegedly committed in relation to the use by members of the IDF of non-lethal and lethal means against persons participating in demonstrations beginning in March 2018 near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which reportedly resulted in the killing of over 200 individuals, including over 40 children, and the wounding of thousands of others.”

Given the time frame, Israeli government officials and military officers would likely be the first to face scrutiny by investigators. According to Haaretz, the list would almost certainly include “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; former defense ministers Moshe Ya’alon, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett; former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, and current Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi; and the former and current heads of the Shin Bet security service, Yoram Cohen and Nadav Argaman, respectively.”

One wonders who would be included on a comparable list for the United States. There are a lot of lying politicians and sly generals to choose from. As both Israel and the United States do not recognize the authority of the ICC and will almost certainly refuse to participate in any fashion if the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity ever actually make it to the court, any discussion of lists are at this point merely travel advisories for war criminals. The United States will push back and will inter alia certainly attempt to discredit the court using whatever weapons are available, to include sanctions against the nations that support any investigation and trial.

One nevertheless has to hope that the court will persevere in its effort to expose the crimes that continue to be committed by the U.S. and Israel in both Palestine and Afghanistan. Embarrassing Washington and Jerusalem in a very visible and highly respected international forum might be the only way to change the direction of the two nations that more than any other insist that “might makes right.”

July 23, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Taliban Reject ‘Russian Bounties’ Report as ‘Fake News’ to ‘Damage’ Group’s Peace Deal With US

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 19.07.2020

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen has reiterated the militant group’s stance on its alleged collusion with Russia, which he said is nothing but “fake news”.

“The Russian bounties report is not true; it is a baseless allegation. We’re fighting neither for anyone nor for money. Our people have their own ideology and they are fighting for that and sacrificing”, Shaheen told RT on Sunday.

Referring to a US-Taliban peace deal signed earlier this year in Doha, he suggested that the “politically motivated” report “has to do with spoilers of the peace process” related to the aforementioned agreement.

The goal is to “damage and harm this peace process”, Shaheen underscored, slamming the opponents to the deal’s “baseless thinking”.

The remarks followed Shaheen’s previous rejection of The New York Times report about Russian military intelligence allegedly offering bounties to the Taliban for killing US servicemen in Afghanistan.

“We’re continuing our own investigation based on the information in the media. These accusations are false and groundless, and they were launched by an intelligence agency in Kabul to derail and postpone the peace process as well as the formation of a new government”, he said in a statement earlier this month.

Russia, which welcomes the Doha peace deal, and the Pentagon also denied the bounties claims, citing a lack of any proof pertaining to the allegations. The latter were even slammed by President Trump as a “fabricated hoax”.

The developments came after the US and the Taliban signed a long-awaited peace agreement in the Qatari capital of Doha in late February, a deal that envisages the timetable of the US withdrawing some of its 13,000 troops from Afghanistan.

The agreement also stipulates the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners and US cooperation with the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government and Washington’s non-interference in Kabul’s internal affairs.

In return, the Taliban is obliged to take steps to prevent terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, from using Afghan soil to threaten the security of the US and its allies.

July 19, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

The US Government Is Stealing A Significant Part Of Its Own Aid To Afghanistan

By Grigory Trofimchuk | One World | July 6, 2020

Despite the statements of the US President D. Trump on the need for an early withdrawal of the US military from Afghanistan, the interest of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the industrial complex in maintaining a military presence in this country is obvious. We are talking about the use of American financial aid flows to Afghanistan for selfish purposes.

For almost two decades of the Afghan campaign and the presence of the NATO and US contingent, Washington formally allocated large-scale funds not only for security assistance, but also for the civil reconstruction and development of this country.

Since 2001, approximately $130 billion was sent to Afghanistan. However, not all the money reached the country in need.

A significant part of the “aid” remained in the United States in the form of kickbacks, as evidenced, in particular, by the numerous reports of the US Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan, J.Sopko. This is also confirmed by an article about US corruption in Afghanistan on the Turkish “Aydinlik”.

As a result, corruption schemes for appropriating funds allocated to Afghanistan by the Americans themselves only worsened the already difficult economic situation in the country, which is trying to recover from military and political turmoil.

The question arises as to how those involved in the contract manage to retain a significant share of all tranches. The fact is that for the distribution of financial assistance to Afghanistan, there is a multi-level system of contracts, with the participation of American contractors and subcontractors.

To assign financial aid to Afghanistan, first of all, USAID is used, through which corrupt officials take about 50% of financial flows. For example, in the case of the program for the advancement of women in Badakhshan and Khost provinces, the share of appropriated funds reached 90-95%.

As a standard scheme, USAID transfers funds for the project to an Afghan agency that justifies its deliberately inflated cost to the local Ministry of Finance. After the contract is cashed out, half of this amount is given to USAID-related individuals. Grants from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are probably used in the same way, but in smaller amounts due to the greater number of witnesses in international organizations.

The very scale of American financial assistance, the feasibility of which is ambiguously assessed within the United States, also raises questions. In a report to the US Congress in February 2020, the above-mentioned J.Sopko noted that the amount of aid allocated significantly exceeds the capabilities of the Afghan economy.

According to the Inspector General, the amount of funds should be from 15 to 45% of the country’s GDP, while in 2007 and 2010, US grants to Afghanistan amounted to more than 100% of Afghanistan’s GDP. Obviously, such spending is not effective, but creates opportunities for plunder. At the same time, attempts by American politicians to reduce spending on Afghanistan are met with resistance from the military, who are interested in maintaining a significant source of income, as well as contractors involved in this area.

On March 23, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a $1 billion reduction in aid to Kabul due to the inability of two presidential contenders (A. Ghani and A. Abdul) to agree on power-sharing over highly questionable election dates. However, there is no confirmation that Washington is fulfilling the promises of the head of the Department of State. Recently, Democrat Senators even asked US Secretary of Defense M. Esper to report on cost reduction.

However, the report was not provided. Apparently, the Pentagon leaves this issue open, and the military clearly does not want to cut aid by reducing its articles.

The American defense industry has a special interest in the funds allocated to Afghanistan. Purchases and deliveries of goods to US and NATO contingents, as well as to Afghan security forces, are often carried out without regard to economic expediency and at inflated prices that are favorable to American manufacturers.

So, instead of building a factory in Afghanistan that would produce cartridges for M-4 and M-16 rifles at 12 cents apiece, Washington continues to buy cartridges from its suppliers for the needs of the Afghan security forces at the price of 57 cents apiece. In addition, the US military refused Russian kerosene at 94 cents per litre, buying it in Greece at $1.4 per litre. In order to maintain control, the United States provides financial assistance to the Afghan security forces through its own fund, not international structures.

American contractors on civil projects use the same principle with overstating the real cost of goods and services, including those supplied through USAID. For example, recently, not without their participation, the Ministry of Health of Afghanistan sold about 10,000 tests for coronavirus at a price of $48 each when their real cost is no more than $5.

The most “tasty” contracts are the supply of oil products and the supply of the Afghan army and the NATO contingent with weapons, military equipment and uniforms, which are lobbied by American congressmen whose wives get good positions on the boards of directors of the respective companies. At the same time, the real recipients of kickbacks are engaged in dirty work and are not “advertised”.

It is not surprising that American aid to Afghanistan, despite its astronomical size (the amount of aid exceeded the funds allocated under the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of post-war Europe), only allows the American military and contractors involved in its distribution to enrich themselves, while in Afghanistan the result of such assistance is not felt and its effectiveness, in general, is almost zero.

Recently, the media reported on the attempt of the top leadership of Afghanistan to redirect the flow of foreign financial assistance to themselves.

In April 2020, President Ghani bypassed the Parliament and announced the reform of the Ministry of Finance and the re-subordination of a number of its departments responsible for budget issues, state duties, and customs duties to the presidential administration.

However, the Department of State criticized Ghani’s decision as “corrupt”. It is noteworthy that immediately after such comments, the Afghan President withdrew his initiative. The political dependence of Kabul on Washington plays into the hands of US corruption schemes. The Americans clearly do not want to lose control over external financial flows to Afghanistan and do not allow even their wards to distribute them.

July 11, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

How the Pentagon failed to sell Afghan government’s bunk ‘Bountygate’ story to US intelligence agencies

By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | July 7, 2020

The New York Times dropped another Russiagate bombshell on June 26 with a sensational front-page story headlined, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says.”  A predictable media and political frenzy followed, reviving the anti-Russian hysteria that has excited the Beltway establishment for the past four years.

But a closer look at the reporting by the Times and other mainstream outlets vying to confirm its coverage reveals another scandal not unlike Russiagate itself: the core elements of the story appear to have been fabricated by Afghan government intelligence to derail a potential US troop withdrawal from the country. And they were leaked to the Times and other outlets by US national security state officials who shared an agenda with their Afghan allies.

In the days following the story’s publication, the maneuvers of the Afghan regime and US national security bureaucracy encountered an unexpected political obstacle: US intelligence agencies began offering a series of low confidence assessments in the Afghan government’s self-interested intelligence claims, judging them to be highly suspect at best, and altogether bogus at worst.

In light of this dramatic development, the Times’ initial report appears to have been the product of a sensationalistic disinformation dump aimed at prolonging the failed Afghan war in the face of President Donald Trump’s plans to withdraw US troops from it.

The Times quietly reveals its own sources’ falsehoods

The Times not only broke the Bountygate story but commissioned squads of reporters comprising nine different correspondents to write eight articles hyping the supposed scandal in the course of eight days. Its coverage displayed the paper’s usual habit of regurgitating bits of dubious information furnished to its correspondents by faceless national security sources. In the days after the Times’ dramatic publication, its correspondent squads were forced to revise the story line to correct an account that ultimately turned out to be false on practically every important point.

The Bountygate saga began on June 26, with a Times report declaring, “The United States concluded months ago” that the Russians “had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.” The report suggested that US intelligence analysts had reached a firm conclusion on Russian bounties as early as January. A follow-up Times report portrayed the shocking discovery of the lurid Russian plot thanks to the recovery of a large amount of U.S. cash from a “raid on a Taliban outpost.” That article sourced its claim to the interrogations of “captured Afghan militants and criminals.”

However, subsequent reporting revealed that the “US intelligence reports” about a Russian plot to distribute bounties through Afghan middlemen were not generated by US intelligence at all.

The Times reported first on June 28, then again on June 30, that a large amount of cash found at a “Taliban outpost” or a “Taliban site” had led U.S. intelligence to suspect the Russian plot. But the Times had to walk that claim back, revealing on July 1 that the raid that turned up $500,000 in cash had in fact targeted the Kabul home of Rahmatullah Azizi, an Afghan businessmen said to have been involved in both drug trafficking and contracting for part of the billions of dollars the United States spent on construction projects.

The Times also disclosed that the information provided by “captured militants and criminals” under “interrogation” had been the main source of suspicion of a Russian bounty scheme in Afghanistan. But those “militants and criminals” turned out to be thirteen relatives and business associates of the businessman whose house was raided.

The Times reported that those detainees were arrested and interrogated following the January 2020 raids based on suspicions by Afghan intelligence that they belonged to a “ring of middlemen” operating between the Russian GRU and so-called “Taliban-linked militants,” as Afghan sources made clear.

Furthermore, contrary to the initial report by the Times, those raids had actually been carried out exclusively by the Afghan intelligence service known as the National Directorate of Security (NDS). The Times disclosed this on July 1. Indeed, the interrogation of those detained in the raids was carried out by the NDS, which explains why the Times reporting referred repeatedly to “interrogations” without ever explaining who actually did the questioning.

Given the notorious record of the NDS, it must be assumed that its interrogators used torture or at least the threat of it to obtain accounts from the detainees that would support the Afghan government’s narrative. Both the Toronto Globe and Mail and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) have documented as recently as 2019 the frequent use of torture by the NDS to obtain information from detainees. The primary objective of the NDS was to establish an air of plausibility around the claim that the fugitive businessman Azizi was the main “middleman” for a purported GRU scheme to offer bounties for killing Americans.

NDS clearly fashioned its story to suit the sensibilities of the U.S. national security state. The narrative echoed previous intelligence reports about Russian bounties in Afghanistan that circulated in early 2019, and which were even discussed at NSC meetings. Nothing was done about these reports, however, because nothing had been confirmed.

The idea that hardcore Taliban fighters needed or wanted foreign money to kill American invaders could have been dismissed on its face. So Afghan officials spun out claims that Russian bounties were paid to incentivize violence by “militants and criminals” supposedly “linked” to the Taliban.

These elements zeroed in on the April 2019 IED attack on a vehicle near the U.S. military base at Bagram in Parwan province that killed three US Marines, insisting that the Taliban had paid local criminal networks in the region to carry out attacks.

As former Parwan police chief Gen. Zaman Mamozai told the Times, Taliban commanders were based in only two of the province’s ten districts, forcing them to depend on a wider network of non-Taliban killers-for-hire to carry out attacks elsewhere in the province. These areas included the region around Bagram, according to the Afghan government’s argument.

But Dr. Thomas H. Johnson of the Naval Postgraduate School, a leading expert on insurgency and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan who has been researching war in the country for three decades,  dismissed the idea that the Taliban would need a criminal network to operate effectively in Parwan.

“The Taliban are all over Parwan,” Johnson stated in an interview with The Grayzone, observing that its fighters had repeatedly carried out attacks on or near the Bagram base throughout the war.

With withdrawal looming, the national security state plays its Bountygate card

Senior U.S. national security officials had clear ulterior motives for embracing the dubious NDS narrative. More than anything, those officials were determined to scuttle Trump’s push for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. For Pentagon brass and civilian leadership, the fear of withdrawal became more acute in early 2020 as Trump began to demand an even more rapid timetable for a complete pullout than the 12-14 months being negotiated with the Taliban.

It was little surprise then that this element leapt at the opportunity to exploit the self-interested claims by the Afghan NDS to serve its own agenda, especially as the November election loomed. The Times even cited one “senior [US] official” musing that “the evidence about Russia could have threatened that [Afghanistan] deal, because it suggested that after eighteen year of war, Mr. Trump was letting Russia chase the last American troops out of the country.”

In fact, the intelligence reporting from the CIA Station in Kabul on the NDS Russia bounty claims was included in the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) on or about February 27 — just as the negotiation of the U.S. peace agreement with the Taliban was about to be signed. That was too late to prevent the signing but timed well enough to ratchet up pressure on Trump to back away from his threat to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan.

Trump may have been briefed orally on the issue at the time, but even if he had not been, the presence of a summary description of the intelligence in the PDB could obviously have been used to embarrass him on Afghanistan by leaking it to the media.

According to Ray McGovern, a former CIA official who was responsible for preparing the PDB for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the insertion of raw, unconfirmed intelligence from a self-interested Afghan intelligence agency into the PDB was a departure from normal practice.

Unless it was a two or three-sentence summary of a current intelligence report, McGovern explained, an item in the PDB normally involved only important intelligence that had been confirmed. Furthermore, according to McGovern, PDB items are normally shorter versions of items prepared the same day as part of the CIA’s “World Intelligence Review” or “WIRe.”

Information about the purported Russian bounty scheme, however, was not part of the WIRe until May 4, well over two months later, according to the Times. That discrepancy added weight to the suggestion that the CIA had political motivations for planting the raw NDS reporting in the PDB before it could be evaluated.

This June, Trump’s National Security Council (NSC) convened a meeting to discuss the intelligence report, officials told the Times. NSC members drew up a range of options in response to the alleged Russian plot, from a diplomatic protest to more forceful responses. Any public indication that US troops in Afghanistan had been targeted by Russian spies would have inevitably threatened Trump’s plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

At some point in the weeks that followed, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency each undertook evaluations of the Afghan intelligence claims. Once the Times began publishing stories about the issue, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe directed the National Intelligence Council, which is responsible for managing all common intelligence community assessments, to write a memorandum summarizing the intelligence organizations’ conclusions.

The memorandum revealed that the intelligence agencies were not impressed with what they’d seen. The CIA and National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) each gave the NDS intelligence an assessment of “moderate confidence,” according to memorandum.

An official guide to intelligence community terminology used by policymakers to determine how much they should rely on assessments indicates that “moderate confidence” generally indicates that “the information being used in the analysis may be interpreted in various ways….” It was hardly a ringing endorsement of the NDS intelligence when the CIA and NCTC arrived at this finding.

The assessment by the National Security Agency was even more important, given that it had obtained intercepts of electronic data on financial transfers “from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account,” according to the Times’ sources.  But the NSA evidently had no idea what the transfers related to, and essentially disavowed the information from the Afghan intelligence agency.

The NIC memorandum reported that NSA gave the information from Afghan intelligence “low confidence” — the lowest of the three possible levels of confidence used in the intelligence community. According to the official guide to intelligence community terminology, that meant that “information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information.”

Other intelligence agencies reportedly assigned “low confidence” to the information as well, according to the memorandum. Even the Defense Intelligence Agency, known for its tendency to issue alarmist warnings about activities by US adversaries, found no evidence in the material linking the Kremlin to any bounty offers.

Less than two weeks after the Times rolled out its supposed bombshell on Russian bounties, relying entirely on national security officials pushing their own bureaucratic interests on Afghanistan, the story was effectively discredited by the intelligence community itself. In a healthy political climate, this would have produced a major setback for the elements determined to keep US troops entrenched in Afghanistan.

But the political hysteria generated by the Times and the hyper-partisan elements triggered by the appearance of another sordid Trump-Putin connection easily overwhelmed the countervailing facts. It was all the Pentagon and its bureaucratic allies needed to push back on plans for a speedy withdrawal from a long and costly war.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

July 9, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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