I look forward to the defenders of the mission to Afghanistan justifying this one. This isn’t the Taliban doing this. It’s regular Muslims.
Category Archives: Mission to Afghanistan
Diana West on ‘Catch and release’ policy in Afghanistan.
Add this to the piece we republished on the policy towards Somali pirates even caught with booty, weapons and slaves.
This is the beginning of the article. Please click here to Diana West’s webpage to read it all.
Recon Marine Cpl. Todd Love (above) got a hero’s welcome in his hometown of Acworth, Georgia this week. Love lost both legs and his left arm in an IED explosion in Afghanistan a few months ago. The Washington Examiner story below by Sara Carter tells us that even if US forces had photographed the bomber in the act and captured him with bomb traces on his hands, they would then have had to feed him, clothe him … and let him go.
This is another Afghanistan scandal that should get Congress pounding tables and demanding answers from the Pentagon and the White House. It should get readers doing the same. After all, we pay $350 million a day for this.
Carter writes:
Several Taliban detainees who had been captured in February after being observed placing bombs in the culverts of roads used by civilians and military convoys near Kandahar were fed, given medical treatment, then released by American troops frustrated by a policy they say is forcing them to kick loose enemies who are trying to kill them.
Pastor Jones responds to the Afghan riots
This woman who interviews Jones is quite bereft of any understanding of any of the issues she herself raises. The near desperate attempt to resuscitate moral and cultural relativism by this media person is itself offensive. Thanks Kitman for this video. Here is the CTV clip I posted the other night of the riots in Afghanistan.
INCREDIBLE SHOT: BRIT DISPATCHES TWO TALIBAN WITH ONE ROUND
Feel good story of the day. As the old saying goes, “two flies with one swat”. Kudos to the brave men fighting on the front lines. KGS
[…] On September 12th, a known Taliban commander appeared on the back of a motorcycle with a passenger riding pillion. There was a British patrol in the village of Gorup-e Shesh Kalay and under the rules of engagement, the walkie-talkie the Taliban pair were carrying was designated a hostile act. As they drove off, Osmond fired warning shots with his pistol and then picked up his L96, the same weapon – serial number 0166 – he had used in Iraq and on the butt of which he had written, ‘I love u 0166’.
Taking deliberate aim, he fired a single shot. The bike tumbled and both men fell onto the road and lay there motionless. When the British patrol returned, they checked the men and confirmed they were both dead, with large holes through their heads.
The 7.62 mm bullet Osmond had fired had passed through the heads of both men. He had achieved the rare feat of ‘one shot, two kills’ known in the sniping business as ‘a Quigley’. The term comes from the 1990 film Quigley Down Under in which the hero, played by Tom Selleck, uses an old Sharps rifle to devastating effect.
Why American troops in Afghanistan shouldn’t have to wear headscarves
Here is a good reason to be pissed at Rumsfeld.
From The Washington Post:
American troops, wearing headscarves rather than helmets, patrol through a bazaar in Afghanistan’s Zabul province last fall, as part of the U.S. Female Engagement Teams. (Photo By Seth Robson/stars And Stripes)
By Martha McSally
Sunday, February 20, 2011
In 2001, I was an Air Force lieutenant colonel and A-10 fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, in charge of rescue operations for no-fly enforcement in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. Every time I went off base, I had to follow orders and put on a black Muslim abaya and head scarf. Military officials said this would show “cultural sensitivity” toward conservative Saudi leaders and guarantee “force protection” – this in a nation where women couldn’t drive, vote or dress as they pleased.
To me, the abaya directive, with its different rules for male and female troops and the requirement that I don the garb of a faith not my own, violated the U.S. constitutional values I pledged to defend and degraded military order and cohesion.
I already had tried for years to get the policy changed, without success, and late in 2001, I sued then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the policy. Congress stepped in and unanimously approved legislation that prohibited anyone in the military from requiring or encouraging servicewomen to put on abayas in Saudi Arabia or to use taxpayers’ money to buy them.
I remember a discussion with congressmen and staffers about whether the legislation should be broadened to cover military personnel serving in any country. We naively decided that Saudi Arabia posed the worst-case scenario; the military would get Congress’s intent and would not require servicewomen to wear Muslim attire in any mission elsewhere.
Sadly, we were mistaken. Nearly a decade later, some female soldiers serving in Afghanistan are being encouraged to wear headscarves. Some servicewomen have taken off the regulation helmet and worn just the scarf, even when on patrol outside, in their combat uniforms and body armor, M-4s slung over their shoulders.
The more common practice is to wear the scarf under one’s helmet or around the neck, pulling it on as the servicewoman removes her Kevlar helmet upon entering a village or building.
“Within Afghanistan, the donning of a scarf or other type of head covering by our female service members can be done as a sign of respect to the local culture and people they must necessarily interact with,” a senior U.S. military official told me via e-mail. “This can help promote greater trust and a fuller interaction with the local population as well as increased access to persons and places that contribute to mission accomplishment.”
Unlike in Saudi Arabia, this attire is considered optional and at the discretion of “leaders on the ground,” said the official.
However, when a superior tells a military subordinate any practice is optional, the very mention of the practice creates pressure to comply. This is especially true in combat settings, when subordinates must trust their commander’s direction to maximize mission effectiveness and protect lives.
Most of the U.S. servicewomen wearing headscarves are assigned to Female Engagement Teams (FETs), charged to reach out to local Afghan women and win their hearts and minds as part of the new counterinsurgency strategy. Wearing the hijab is thought to facilitate this access, since all Afghan women are expected to wear a headscarf when in public.
In the regions where the FETs are working, most local women still wear burqas, the head-to-toe gown that has a net over the eyes. So our female soldiers hardly blend in, with their weapons, boots and camouflage, and that bright scarf over their hair.
One officer told me she refuses to wear the scarf but is unwilling to speak out publicly against it. Yet many female troops defend the practice.
Another Afghan sentenced to death for converting to Christianity.
Exactly why are good Canadian men and women fighting, being horribly injured and being killed for this government in Afghanistan please?
The story below is wrong in oh so many ways. But I am sniffing up the trail of one, as I understand it, much much worse than this even and of much more immediate concern to Canadians. Meanwhile, this from the Daily Mail:
One-legged Afghan Red Cross worker set to be hanged after converting to Christianity
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:03 AM on 7th February 2011An Afghan physiotherapist will be executed within three days for converting to Christianity.
Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison were he claims he has been tortured and sexually abused by inmates and guards.
Mr Musa, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion in the 1990s, has worked for the Red Cross for 15 years and helps to treat fellow amputees.
Execution: Christians pray during a mass at a church in Kabul (file picture). Said Musa is facing execution unless he converts back to Islam
He was arrested in May last year as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy following a crackdown on Christians within Afghanistan.
He claims he was visited by a judge who told him he would be hanged within days unless he converted back to Islam.
But he remains defiant and said he would be willing to die for his faith.
He told the Sunday Times: ‘My body is theirs to do what they want with.
‘Only God can decide if my spirit goes to hell.’
Defence lawyers have refused to represent him, while others have dropped the case after receiving death threats.
Mr Musa was arrested after a TV station showed western men baptising Afghans during secret ceremonies.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354246/One-legged-Afghan-Red-Cross-worker-hanged-converting-Christianity.html#ixzz1EBcvROFX
The red cross, abandoning its own employee because he is Christian in Afghanistan. Where is the moral high ground now Red Cross? The time for Canada to stop wasting one more penny or drop of blood in that Taliban Vs. Kharazai, Tweedle Dee Vs. Tweedle Dumb nightmare may be here. I suggest it might be more prudent to defend ourselves from this ideology from infecting us rather than fight to preserve it half way around the world. The barbarians are no longer at the gates. They are building prayer rooms in our schools. And we are paying for them.
Eeyore.
Uncomfortable demography.
Thank you KitmanTV
Ezra Levant: What is the point of Afghanistan?
From the Toronto Sun:
One hundred-and- fifty-four Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan, not just for the big things such as fighting international terrorists, but for the small things, too.
Like the right of Afghan girls to go to school. Simple things, like the right to listen to music. These things were actually banned under the Taliban, which enforced sharia law.
So what would our soldiers think of Winnipeg’s Louis Riel School Division, where a dozen Muslim immigrant families have demanded changes to the curriculum to accommodate their fundamentalist view of Islam? The families don’t want boys and girls in the same classes, such as physical education.
And they don’t want their children to hear to any instruments or singing in music class, either.
Instead of sending their kids to a private or religious school, they want the public schools to change. Continue Reading →
Paedophilia ‘culturally accepted in south Afghanistan’
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse….
British forces were advised by a military study that paedophilia is widespread and culturally accepted in southern Afghanistan.
British officers requested the study to help them understand the sexual behaviour of locals and Afghan comrades Photo: AFP/GETTY
By Ben Farmer, Kabul 7:00PM GMT 13 Jan 2011
Older, powerful men boosted their social status by keeping boys as sexual playthings and the practice was celebrated in song and dance, a military study claimed.
British officers in Helmand requested the study to help them understand the sexual behaviour of locals and Afghan comrades after young soldiers became uneasy they were being propositioned.
American social scientists employed to help troops understand the local culture reported that homosexual sex was widespread among the Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan.
Strict separation of men and women, coupled with poverty and the significant expense of getting married, contributed to young men turning to each other for sexual companionship.
“To dismiss the existence of this dynamic out of desire to avoid western discomfort is to risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture,” the report said.
The study, called ‘Pashtun Sexuality’, said that as well as willing sex between young men, “boys are appreciated for physical beauty and apprenticed to older men for their sexual initiation”. Continue Reading →
Sodomy and Sufism in Afgaynistan
I post this because friends of mine who served in Afghanistan have told me similar things directly. In fact, one friend who served told me that culturally, women are strictly utilitarian. Men are for ‘fun’ sexually speaking, and this was the norm for that culture. In any case, below is a report on Afghan sexuality and add to this some of the documentaries presented on the matter, it would appear that rape of boys is in fact the norm for sexuality over there. Rape, and then killing them when they reach puberty. Th whole documentary of the dancing boys of Afghanistan is here on Vlad somewhere or likely can be found on kitmantv.blogspot.com
Eeyore for Vlad
Social scientists attached to the Second Marine Battalion in Afghanistan last year circulated a startling report on Pashtun sociology, in the form of a human terrain report on male sexuality among America’s Afghan allies. The document, made available by military sources, is not classified, just disturbing. Don’t ask, don’t tell doesn’t begin to qualify the problem. These are things you didn’t want to know, and regret having heard. The marines got their money’s worth from their Human Terrain adjuncts, but the report might have considered whether male pedophilia in Afghanistan has a religious dimension as well as a cultural one. I will explain why below.
Most Pashtun men, Human Terrain Team AF-6 reports, engage in sex with men – boys – in fact, the vast majority of their sexual contacts are with males. “A culturally-contrived homosexuality [significantly not termed as such by its practitioners] appears to affect a far greater population base then some researchers would argue is attributable to natural inclination. Some of its root causes lie in the severe segregation of women, the prohibitive cost of marriage within Pashtun tribal codes, and the depressed economic situation into which young Pashtun men are placed.”
The human terrain team responded to scandalous interactions between Pashtun fighters and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, some reported with hilarity by the media. An article in the Scotsman of May 24, 2002, reported, for example: “In Bagram, British marines returning from an operation deep in the Afghan mountains spoke last night of an alarming new threat – being propositioned by swarms of gay local farmers. An Arbroath marine, James Fletcher, said: ‘They were more terrifying than the al-Qaeda. One bloke who had painted toenails was offering to paint ours. They go about hand in hand, mincing around the village.’ While the marines failed to find any al-Qaeda during the seven-day Operation Condor, they were propositioned by dozens of men in villages the troops were ordered to search.”
Another interviewee in the article, a marine in his 20s, stated, “It was hell. Every village we went into we got a group of men wearing makeup coming up, stroking our hair and cheeks and making kissing noises.”
The trouble, the researchers surmise, is “Pashtun society’s extremely limited access to women,” citing a Los Angeles Times interview with a young Pashtun identified as Daud. He only has sex with men, explaining: “I like boys, but I like girls better. It’s just that we can’t see the women to see if they are beautiful. But we can see the boys, and so we can tell which of them is beautiful.”
Many of the Pashtuns interviewed allow “that homosexuality is indeed prohibited within Islam, warranting great shame and condemnation. However, homosexuality is then narrowly and specifically defined as the love of another man. Loving a man would therefore be unacceptable and a major sin within this cultural interpretation of Islam, but using another man for sexual gratification would be regarded as a foible -undesirable but far preferable to sex with a ineligible woman, which in the context of Pashtun honor, would likely result in issues of revenge and honor killings.”
For the rest of this disturbing article, please click through to Asia times.
Afghan sex practices concern U.S., British forces
Washington examiner:
By: Sara A. Carter 12/20/10 8:05 PM
National security correspondent
Pfc. Martinez Wangner from Rockville MD of 2nd Platoon Bravo Company 2-327 Infantry stands guard outside the door of a house during a patrol in Chowkay district near Pakistani border in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
A document released by WikiLeaks described efforts by high-ranking Afghan officials to quash reports of police officers and other Afghans arrested for “purchasing a service from a child.”The leaked diplomatic cable quoted former Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar’s concern that publicity about the arrests, which involved the hiring of “dancing boys,” would “endanger lives.”
The author of the diplomatic cable fretted that the case would be “blown out of proportion, an outcome that would not be good for either the U.S. or Afghanistan.”
The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.
In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner. Continue Reading →
Why Are Rich White “Left-Wingers” Megaphones For The Third-World Far Right?
Terry Glavin does what geniuses do. Point out the painfully obvious that everyone else missed. H/T Father Grace
For some long while, what was once a merely subtle pattern has been a thing so predictable you can set your watch by it. In Afghanistan, the “troops out” and “talk to the Taliban” slogans emerged on the crypto-fascist and Islamist far-right. In Canada, these slogans became the default position of the “left,” up to and including the official position of the New Democratic Party. On the Israel-Palestine question, the politics counselled by Hamas and Hezbollah – the politics of the Islamist far-right – now form the basis of “left-wing” activism (most recently, see “Fascists on Campus”, for example).
The pattern repeats itself today in The Guardian, which everyone in the English-speaking world is expected to apprehend as a clarion of proper left-wing analysis. Simon Tisdall writes: “Pakistan was already under the American hammer before the WikiLeaks crisis blew. But leaked US diplomatic cables published by the Guardian show the extraordinary extent to which Pakistan is in danger of becoming a mere satrapy of imperial Washington. The US assault on Pakistani sovereignty, which is how these developments are widely viewed in the country, is multipronged. . .”
Well, no, not unless “widely viewed” is meant as a euphemism for the Guardian view – the “left-wing” view of rich white people, which now precisely echoes and accurately reflects the lumpen view incited by right-wing Pakistani chauvinists.
“There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area, and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty,” writes Farhat Taj. “I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them.”
What do intelligent writers from the Pakistani Left have to say about Tisdall’s “dangerous” Yankee-imperialist incursions on Pakistan’s sovereignty? Azizullah Khan Khetran writes: “We should not heed rightist propaganda and empty slogans. Let the drones hover over the terrorists and terrorise them.” Further: “Civil society in Pakistan is well aware of the fact that the drones are cleansing us of terrorists but sometimes they fail to resist the temptation to speak out against them. This is caused by the extreme right trumpeting warnings of US encroachments on our sovereignty.”
Two Afghan converts to Christianity risk the death penalty
ASIANEWS.IT
The two men have been in jail since June waiting for trial. A local TV station showed Afghans reciting Christian prayers and being baptised. Afghan law bans conversion from Islam to any other religion. Fr Moretti, in charge of the country’s onlyCatholic church, is interviewed about the matter.
Kabul (AsiaNews) – Two Afghans accused of converting to Christianity could face the death penalty, a prosecuting lawyer said on Sunday. Musa Sayed, 45, and Ahmad Shah, 50, are being detained in the Afghan capital awaiting trial, the prosecutor in charge of western Kabul, Din Mohammad Quraishi, said.
“They are accused of conversion to another religion, which is considered a crime under Islamic law. If proved, they face the death penalty or life imprisonment,” Quraishi said. Sayed, a Red Cross (ICRC) employee, has already confessed. There is also “proof” against Shah, Quraishi explained.
Sayed and Shah were arrested in late May and early June, days after local television broadcast footage of men reciting Christian prayers in Farsi and being baptised, apparently in a house in Kabul. The TV station also showed some people engaged in proselytising, which is banned in the Muslim country.
The ICRC’s spokesman in Kabul, Bijan Frederic Farnoudi, confirmed that Sayed worked for the organisation since 1995. He also said that he was able to visit him in prison.
The government launched its own investigation into the matter and suspended two aid groups, Norwegian Church Aid (a Protestant organisation) and Church World Service of the US (which includes Protestants, Orthodox and Anglicans), after the TV station reported two of their members were proselytising.
The Afghan constitution, adopted after the fall of the Islamic Taliban in late 2001, forbids conversion to another religion from Islam and in theory can sentence those found guilty to death. However, no one has been executed in recent years for converting.
Fr Giuseppe Moretti, parish priest at the only Catholic church in Afghanistan, a chapel inside the Italian Embassy in Kabul, told AsiaNews that he knew nothing about the affair. He was certain that they did not convert to Catholicism.
“No one in the country was baptised by a Catholic priest because proselytising is banned by law,” he said.
“The Catholic Church has been present in the country since 1923 with a mandate to take care of members of the international Catholic community living here. It has always respected that [principle] to the letter.”
As for the anti-conversion law, Fr Moretti has nothing to add, except to reiterate that the Catholic community has always respected it.
“The Little Sisters of Jesus of Charles de Foucault, the Sisters of Mother Teresa and the Sisters of the Interreligious Community are present here, and they too respect the ban. We bear witness to our faith through our commitment and our lives,” he said.
Some links for Tuesday, Nov 30 2010
It appears that the fellow who does Wikileaks is a very sought after fellow:
Here is an interpol page seeking his arrest for sex crimes in Sweden:
And I found this awesome video on Blazing Cat fur.
Over at Sheik Yermami, this story:
I have a theory about that fire. I bet it was the Mosque principles that wanted to destroy any records they have which may implicate them as partners with Mohamed Mohamed and his plan to kill lots of kids at the Christmas tree ceremony. We will know soon enough I’m sure.
Here is an article about Tower Hamlets. I hope to post something more on this tonight. A more general state of the nation with respect to Islam and England. A Millar is sending me a collection of links later on which, when seen in context and together, presents a fairly bleak picture of England. I can’t help but think to myself that it is no accident that A Clockwork Orange, and so much of Orwell’s books are about the UK.
Iran: Pastor Charged—Apostasy
The Assize Court of the province of Gilan, in Iran, has officially charged Pastor Youcef Nardarkhani with denying that Mohammed was a prophet. The court stated that this resulted in apostasy because Nardarkhani believes in Jesus and has shared his faith with others, according to The Voice of the Martyrs.
Here is a story I am hoping some of you can explain to me. Obama on his recent trip to India, cancelled a visit to a Sikh Temple because according to him, Americans can’t tell the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim, and he didn’t want to fuel speculation that he was a secret Muslim, then, he promptly visited an actual Mosque. I guess his grandmother didn’t get the memo.
I wish Julian Assange would Wikileak this story so maybe, just maybe American would finally pay attention to a real scandal.
From the AP:
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan border policeman killed six American servicemen during a training mission Monday, underscoring one of the risks in a U.S.-led program to educate enough recruits to turn over the lead for security to Afghan forces by 2014….
Is this what jihadist, Muslim-on-infidel murder by our Afghan “allies” is now — “one of the risks”? This is not a risk worth taking for the servicemen’s interest, the military’s interest, or the country’s interest. This effort, this theory, this utopian drive to remake Afghanistan in something akin to our own image is not workable, nor is it acceptable as the blood-and-treasure-draining policy of this nation.
Nor is this:
NATO is still investigating an incident earlier this month in which two U.S. Marines were killed in southern Helmand province, allegedly at the hands of an Afghan soldier.
Or this:
After two deadly shootings in July, NATO officers said they were re-examining training practices to make sure that such attacks did not happen again.
On July 20, an Afghan army sergeant got into an argument at a shooting range in northern Afghanistan and shot dead two American civilian trainers before being killed. Another Afghan soldier was killed in the crossfire.
Or this:
A week earlier, an Afghan soldier stationed in the south killed three British troopers, including the company commander, with gunfire and a rocket-propelled grenade in the middle of the night.
Please click over to Diana West to read the rest of this important story:
Carolyn Glick does her usual exceptional geopolitical analysis of Obama and North Korea here:
Video games now to be rated according to Islamic values:
.
NYT: NATO tricked out of loads of cash
KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”