Return to Afghanistan: Americans begin to suffer grim and bloody backlash
By Robert Fisk

"The Afghan people will wait a little longer for all the help they have been promised," the local district officer in Maiwind muttered to me a few hours later. "We believe the Americans want to help us. They promised us help. They have a little longer to prove they mean this. After that ..." He didn't need to say more. Out at Maiwind, in the oven-like grey desert west of Kandahar, the Americans do raids, not aid.

Even when the US military tries to bend its hand to a little humanitarian work, the Western NGOs (non-governmental organisations working with the UN) prefer to keep their distance. As a British NGO worker put it with devastating frankness in Kandahar: "When there is a backlash against the Americans, we want a clear definition between us and them." You hear that phrase all the time in Afghanistan. "When the backlash comes..."

It is already coming. The Americans are being attacked almost every night. There have been three shootings in Kandahar, with an American officer wounded in the neck near the airport two weeks ago. American troops can no longer dine out in Kandahar's cafés. Today, US forces are under attack in Khost province. Two Afghan auxiliaries were killed and five American soldiers wounded near the Pakistan border at the end of July. [read more]

thanks to also not found in nature

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Afghanistan is on the Brink of Another Disaster
by Robert Fisk

The garden was overgrown, the roses scrawny after a day of Kandahar heat, the dust in our eyes, noses, mouth, fingernails. But the message was straightforward. "This is a secret war," the Special Forces man told me. "And this is a dirty war. You don't know what is happening." And of course, we are not supposed to know. In a "war against terror", journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely on the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much about human rights.

How many human rights did the mass killers of 11 September allow their victims? You are either with us or against us. Whose side are you on? But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the "coalition allies", as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden. "The Americans don't know what to do here now," he went on. "Their morale in Afghanistan is going downhill – though there's no problem with the generals running things in Tampa. They're still gung-ho. But here the soldiers know things haven't gone right, that things aren't working. Even their interrogations went wrong". Brutally so, it seems. [read more]

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Leaks and lies
There's growing sentiment within neocon circles that a U.S.-Saudi showdown is inevitable--and, moreover, desirable.

If George W. Bush bothered to turn on C-SPAN and watch the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Iraq, he might have learned he has a problem—not with Senate Democrats, but with Senate Republicans. As various experts testified about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (actually, the possible threat), the appropriate U.S. response, and what obligations the United States might be stuck with after a military attack on Iraq, at least two key GOPers, Senators Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel, expressed doubts about the rush to war and seemed to be signaling "whoaaa" to the White House. And the two joined with Democrat Joe Biden, the committee chairman, in saying often that the White House had promised them it would not strike Iraq either before the November elections or without consulting Congress. This was a piece of Washington theater, with influential senators publicly laying down a marker—and trying to box Bush in. Lugar is essentially the ranking Republican on the committee, now that Jesse Helms is sidelined due to health problems; Hagel is a Vietnam combat hero with McCain-ish credibility on military topics. [read more]

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This Modern World

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MORE DELAYS: IRAQ NOW SAYS U.S. MUST PUBLISH "INTENT TO ATTACK" NOTICE IN BAGHDAD PAPER
U.S. Also Needs Invasion, Demolition, Military Housing Permits

A confusing knot of new Iraqi regulations that require "non-resident aggressors" to obtain hundreds of federal and provincial pre-invasion permits and licenses will further delay any attack on Saddam Hussein, said frustrated U.S. officials who have also been told they must publish an "Intent to Overthrow" notice in an Iraqi newspaper of record.

"I'm starting to think all the hassle is just not worth it," complained U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has been shuttling back and forth between Washington and the Iraqi consulate in Paris trying to get the appropriate paperwork. "We have to get temporary military lodging permits, heavy equipment usage permits, waivers from provincial archaeological commissions, you name it." [read more]

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