SIXTEEN NATO OIL TANKERS BURNED
Afghan Army helps burn them

"... Around 1,000 people Sunday poured onto the streets against the killing of three members of a family in a coalition operation in the central province of Logar, the second demonstration against US troops in two days. The angry residents, chanting slogans against the United States and the provincial administration, blocked the Logar-Gardez highway in the Nasir village near Pul-i-Alam and burnt 16 tankers carrying fuel for NATO-led forces... Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were part of the raiding party..."
http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Main%20news3.html#01

NATO AGREES ON TRANSFER OF AFGHANISTAN
Corruption will be tolerated

"Nato has agreed on its long-awaited road map for the future of Afghanistan... an area will be deemed ready for transfer if serious violence has been in abeyance for a period of time, if there is access to power by different ethnic and tribal elements and if the conditions are present for development projects taking place in relative safety... a degree of corruption will necessarily have to be tolerated as long as it does not threaten the security of Nato forces..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/allies-to-turn-blind-eye-to-corruption-as-afghan-exit-strategy-agreed-1952987.html

TALIBAN DEFECTORS REJOIN INSURGENCY
Nato trying to create false perception of winning them over

"... Nato plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next five years tempting Taleban foot soldiers to lay down their arms. But... those efforts could make matters worse by swelling the ranks of the insurgency, exacerbating village level feuds and fuelling government corruption.... Almost a quarter of the low-ranking Taleban commanders lured out of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan have rejoined the fight because of broken government promises and paltry rewards...

"A report by the Afghan NGO Safety Office, which provides independent security advice to charities across Afghanistan... warns charity staff to prepare for Nato’s withdrawal by late 2011. “We note that International military forces have made their withdrawal contingent on being able to demonstrate two key… conditions: a degraded armed opposition and an improved government security force. We assess... that there is an awareness neither of these conditions can be genuinely extant in time and so strategies to create the perception of them are being pursued instead.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7104508.ece

94% OF KANDAHAR WANTS NEGOTIATION WITH TALIBAN BROTHERS

"An opinion survey of Afghanistan's Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers"... The decisive rejection of the use of foreign troops against the Taliban by the population in Kandahar casts further doubt on the fundamental premise of the Kandahar campaign, scheduled to begin in June, that the population and tribal elders in those districts would welcome a U.S.-NATO troop presence to expel the Taliban..."
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3002

U.S. CONTRADICTS KARZAI, WILL OCCUPY KANDAHAR WITHOUT CONSENT OF TRIBES

"The U.S. military has now officially backtracked from its earlier suggestion that it would seek the consent of local shuras, or consultative conferences with those elders, to carry out the coming military occupation of Kandahar city and nearby districts – contradicting a pledge by Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to carry out the operation without such consent....

"President Karzai said to a shura of between 1,000 and 2,000 Kandahar province tribal elders Apr. 4... (that) NATO's Kandahar operation would not be carried out until the elders themselves were ready to support it... (and) the elders were not calling for expelling the Taliban from the city and its environs. When Karzai asked the assembled elders whether they were "happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out", they shouted loudly, "We are not happy."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51059

PARALLELS TO VIETNAM

"... things are going from bad to much worse than anyone could have imagined. The insurgents are spreading fast across the countryside. Corruption is rampant. Local military forces, recipients of countless millions of dollars in U.S. aid, shirk combat and are despised by local villagers. American casualties are rising. Our soldiers seem to move in a fog through a hostile, unfamiliar terrain, with no idea of who is friend and who is foe...

"After years of lavishing American aid on him, the leader of this country, our close ally, has isolated himself inside the presidential palace, becoming an inadequate partner for a failing war effort. His brother is reportedly a genuine prince of darkness, dealing in drugs, covert intrigues, and electoral manipulation...

"It is an eerie summary of relations between the Kennedy administration and South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon nearly half a century earlier, in August 1963. If these parallels are troubling, they reveal the central paradox of American power over the past half-century in its dealings with embattled autocrats like Karzai and Diem across that vast, impoverished swath of the globe once known as the Third World..."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175233/

KARZAI MAY CANCEL U.S. OFFENSIVE IN KANDAHAR

"The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai... threatened to delay or even cancel... Nato’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight. Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province... On the streets of the city this weekend there appeared to be little or no support for a Nato push in the province. .."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7094217.ece

U.S. TROOPS KILL CIVILIANS ON BUS

"American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar... killing as many as five civilians and wounding 18, and sparking anger in a city where winning over Afghan support is considered pivotal to the war effort..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?sudsredirect=true

AFGHANISTAN: NUMBERS ON THE RISE

"... the Defense Logistics Agency shipped 1.1 million hamburger patties to Afghanistan in the month of March 2010 (nearly doubling the March 2009 figure). Almost any number you might care to consider related to the Afghan War is similarly on the rise. By the fall, the number of American troops there will have nearly tripled since President Obama took office; American deaths in Afghanistan have doubled in the first months of 2010, while the number of wounded has tripled; insurgent roadside bomb (IED) attacks more than doubled in 2009 and are still rising; U.S. drone strikes almost doubled in 2009 and are on track to triple this year; and fuel deliveries to Afghanistan have nearly doubled, rising from 15 million gallons a month in March 2009 to 27 million this March. (Keep in mind that, by the time a gallon of gas has made it to U.S. troops in the field, its cost is estimated at up to $100.)"
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175228/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_numbers_to_die_for__/#more

U.S. PUPPET CUTS HIS STRINGS: KARZAI THREATENS TO JOIN TALIBAN

"Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened over the weekend to quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100405/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

"... in the speech he accused the Western coalition fighting against the Taliban of being on the verge of becoming invaders — a term usually used by insurgents to refer to American, British and other NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan. “In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that if the perception spread that Western forces were invaders and the Afghan government their mercenaries, the insurgency “could become a national resistance.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02afghan.html

"... "It's just to make sure that we all understand as to where each one of us stands," Karzai said. "Afghanistan is the home of Afghans, and we own this place. And our partners are here to help in a cause that's all of us. We run this country, the Afghans..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-06-Karzai_N.htm?csp=usat.me

"... Karzai dropped a bombshell, asserting the U.S. was occupying Afghanistan to dominate the energy-rich Caspian Basin region, not because of the non-existent al-Qaida or Taliban. Karzai said Taliban was “resisting western occupation"... he began openly defying his American patrons and adopting an independent position. The puppet was cutting his strings..."
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2010/04/09/13530691.htm
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BOTCHED U.S. RAID FOLLOWED BY LIES, COVER UP, EXPOSE, APOLOGY

On February 12 of this year, U.S. forces entered a village in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan and, after surrounding a home where a celebration of a new birth was taking place, shot dead two male civilians (government officials) who exited the house in order to inquire why they had been surrounded, and then shot and killed three female relatives (a pregnant mother of ten, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager) who sought to help the victims. The Pentagon then issued a statement claiming that (a) the dead males were "insurgents" or terrorists, (b) the bodies of the three women had been found by U.S. forces bound and gagged inside the home, and (c) suggested that the women had already been killed by the time the U.S. had arrived, likely the victim of "honor killings" by the Taliban militants killed in the attack..."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html

"... Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan... US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims' bodies... then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened... Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a Nato spokesman, said: "We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7087637.ece

OF 800 CLAIMS FOR KILLED CIVILIANS, MANY NOT PAID

"More than 800 complaints have been filed by families of civilians killed in US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan... many of the claims were denied under the "combat exemption" clause to the Foreign Claims Act (FCA), "which provides that harm inflicted on residents of foreign countries by US soldiers during combat cannot be compensated under the FCA, even if the victims had no involvement whatsoever in the combat"... Due to the claim denials, many innocent civilians were not compensated for their harm or were referred to the Commander's Emergency Response Program for a discretionary condolence payment that is subject to an automatic 2,500-dollar limit per death..."
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100402/twl-us-iraq-afghanistan-unrest-lawsuit-7e07afd.html