Afghanistan war an £8bn disaster

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Afghanistan war an £8bn disaster

(Wednesday 26 November 2008)

by DANIEL COYSH




HUMAN COST: An estimated 24.9 million Afghans live below the poverty line.



THE Stop the War Coalition denounced the "economic, military and moral disaster" of Britain's war in Afghanistan on Wednesday after revelations that the cost has doubled to £8 billion.

The latest Ministry of Defence figures revealed that spending for the Afghan war in 2008-9 is predicted to be £2.3 billion, an increase of more than 50 per cent from £1.5 billion in 2007-2008.


However, this does not include the £5.7 billion allocated to be spent on equipment. A further £1.4 billion is to be spent in Iraq.


Coalition convener Lindsey German asked why the Brown government was determined to blow billions on wars which are opposed by over two-thirds of the British public, according to a recent BBC poll.


"The cost of these wars and occupations in human and financial terms is escalating," she added.


"They are life-and-death disasters for the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan and an economic, military and moral disaster for the people of the UK.
"At a time of recession, why are we spending billions of pounds of public money on wars which have never had popular support?"


The coalition also warned that the effects of the war are exacerbating the threat of mass starvation across Afghanistan.


Defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute recently revealed that 8.4 million Afghans, a quarter of the population, don't have enough to eat because of drought and rising food prices and will depend on emergency supplies to survive this winter.


The institute's study noted: "Reports already indicate that Afghans are migrating in search of food, some are eating grass and a tiny number have died of starvation."


The World Food Programme estimates that 24.9 million people in Afghanistan live below the poverty line.


It found in 2005 that 6.6 million Afghans had not met their minimum food requirements, a problem compounded by drought in the intervening years in the south, east and south-west of the nation.


The Stop the War Coalition is holding a £10,000 fundraising drive to enable a series of new-year rallies on Afghanistan and a mass protest at the NATO conference in Strasbourg in April.

Contact Us
Copyright Morning Star, all rights reserved
published by the Peoples Press Printing Society

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Karzai demands end to foreign occupation

(Wednesday 26 November 2008)




TENSE: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai meeting the delegation of UN ambassadors and other representatives.



AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai called on a visiting UN security council delegation on Tuesday to set a timeline for ending military intervention in his country.

After delivering a bleak overview of the situation in Afghanistan, he told the delegation of UN ambassadors and representatives from 15 countries that "the international community should give us a timeline of how long or how far the 'war on terrorism' will go.


"If we don't have a clear idea of how long it will be, the Afghan government has no choice but to seek political solutions," he declared, explaining that this meant "starting to talk to the Taliban and those opposing the government."


Mr Karzai stressed that Afghans were "not hopeful for the future" because of soaring civilian casualties and the apparent failure of occupation forces to create conditions conducive to stability and development.


He was at pains to emphasise that Kabul is committed to the "war against al-Qaida and those Taliban who take orders from outside."


But Mr Karzai declared that his government "will talk with those Taliban who, for various reasons, have joined the opposition and are not against the Afghan constitution."


Mr Karzai criticised the US and other occupying powers for creating a "parallel government" in Afghanistan's countryside, suggesting that it served to undermine national unity.


And he reiterated calls for an end to "aerial bombardment of our villages."
Occupation forces have set up a system of military-civilian reconstruction teams across Afghanistan.


Mr Karzai said that the so-called provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs, have undermined provincial governments.


"The problem here is, in a diverting play, the presence of the international community has created a parallel government to those of the Afghan government that are functioning," he observed.


Mr Karzai insisted that "there has to be change, which means enable the Afghan people to run their own affairs.


"In security, give them a better army, give them resources to have a better army, enable them to have a bigger police force and a better police force," he added.


There are currently about 70,000 mainly Western troops in Afghanistan, most of them under a UN security council mandate.


US president-elect Barack Obama has emphasised that Afghanistan would be a priority for his government and he campaigned on a pledge to pull troops out of Iraq and put them into Afghanistan.


US military leaders say that up to 20,000 more US soldiers could be poured in next year.


Some 4,000 US soldiers are scheduled to arrive in January.

Contact Us
Copyright Morning Star, all rights reserved
published by the Peoples Press Printing Society

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

http://www.rinf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5119

!