"Afghans
have little to be grateful to America for. It may have pumped in billions of
dollars in aid - but only theoretically. Practically, much of that has been
siphoned off and ploughed back by American contractors, making them rich while
Afghans get only lollipops."
Wednesday's student protest in
Jalalabad over the killing by U.S. Special Forces of 10 civilians in Kunar Province,
including children, should bring home to Afghanistan's occupiers how much the
public mood has changed. Not that this wanton civilian massacre by the
occupation armies is unique. Since their invasion eight years ago, they have
been killing the innocent. In one such event, U.S. forces wiped out almost an
entire procession of delegates who were traveling to a grand constituent Loya Jirga in Kabul. There
have also been several wedding parties, social gatherings and compounds taken
out on the mere suspicion that they harbored insurgents. And every time, the
slaughter draws an angry public backlash.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
In recent times, the
country's capital of Kabul has witnessed demonstrations of pubic outrage over the
barbarity of the occupation armies [see photo below]. Even President Hamid Karzai has broken his long-time
muteness, becoming increasingly strident in condemning the mayhem and civilian carnage.
While earlier he would make feeble calls to the occupation to eschew civilian killings
and take on suspected targets only with prior notification by Kabul, he now reflexively
orders independent probes conducted by officials of his government, despite the
occupier's repeated defiant denials of the civilian holocaust.
President
Obama burned in effigy in Jalalabad, southern Afghanistan,
by
people angry over a recent U.S. drone attack that is said to have
killed
10 civilians, Dec. 30, 2009.
But what makes Wednesday's
protest stand out is the way demonstrators gave vent to their outrage. They not
only burned a U.S. flag and an effigy of President Obama, they angrily and full-throatedly
chanted "death to Obama," "death to foreign forces," and
more ominously, "we'll take guns instead of pens and fight them."
Although, according to U.N.
statistics, civilian murders by the occupation escalated by 10.8 percent in the
first 10 months of 2009 - from 1,838 to from 2,038 during the same time period
in 2008 - the Jalalabad demonstration shows the direction Afghanistan's public
mood. It also shows General Stanley McChrystal's order to coalition forces to
avoid civilian deaths under any circumstances. The angry pallor of Afghanis is
changing and becoming nastier - and this change is cleary percolating up across
the country into every segment of Afghan society - even to President Karzai.
Whether this is because he
feels stung by widespread criticism over rampant corruption and poor governance
from his once fondling American and Western backers, or out of his own wish to show
some independence and stop playing a mere groom to his alien masters, he, too,
is displaying some stamina and striking poses of sovereignty.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
For instance, some ministers
that the Americans wanted out of his new cabinet are still very much in; and
some new faces they wanted in he has kept out. Neither has he obliged them by
taking in presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah and
other opponents to create a national unity government. The Afghan Parliament,
too, is showing a change toward sovereignty. It has held back on consenting
again to Abdul Rahim
Wardak as defense minister, despite his being favored by Washington and being
widely known to be the Pentagon's "blue-eyed boy."
Lawmakers held back their
endorsement, decreeing that he still has many questions to answer. To the point,
it was on his watch that hundreds of thousands of weapons unaccountably disappeared
from the stores of the Afghan Defense Ministry, a theft unearthed by U.S.
accounting inspectors. In addition, his U.S.-based businessman son, holding
dual Afghan-American citizenship, is also among eight U.S. defense contractors
being investigated by Congress for cheating on Pentagon contracts in
Afghanistan. These charges involve contracts that amount to over $2 billion, of
which Wardak's son got away with a $45 million slice.
Another American favorite, Mohammad Hanif Atmar,
is also still being backed for reappointment as interior minister by Afghan
lawmakers. It was under Atmar's charge that the ministry won public infamy for
being a corruption den and an active collaborator in Karzai's fraudulent election
victory.
In any case, Afghans have little
to be grateful to America for. It may have pumped in billions of dollars in aid
- but only theoretically. Practically, much of that has been siphoned off and
ploughed back by American contractors, making them rich while Afghans get only
lollipops. No wonder, Public Welfare Minister-designate Mirza
Hussain Abdullahi has pledged to lawmakers that if endorsed, he would award
construction contracts not to foreigners, as has been the case in the past, but
to Afghans alone.
When all is said and done, this
Afghan mood change doesn't bode well for the occupiers. It foretells an added impediment
for their already no-win predicament.
