Nederland en Afghanistan 85

Truthout bericht: 'Afghan Violence Kills More Than 500.

The worst three weeks of violence since the fall of the Taliban have left more than 500 people dead, the U.S.-led coalition said Saturday.
Fighting on Saturday killed six insurgents and three police, officials said. Late Friday, a top Afghan intelligence agent narrowly survived a bomb attack on his convoy that killed three other people near the capital, Kabul.
Much of the recent Taliban fighting is believed funded by the country's $2.8 billion trade in opium and heroin - about 90 percent of the world's supply.
The daily violence has raised fears of a Taliban resurgence almost five years after the Islamic extremists were driven out by a U.S.-led invasion for harboring al-Qaida.
More than 44 militants were among those killed in the last week. More than 30 of them died in a battle with Canadian and Afghan troops in Zabul province on Monday, a coalition statement said.
A coalition spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, said there would be no letup in attacks on militants.
"We will not be deterred from our mission to provide a safe and secure environment to the Afghan people," he said in a U.S. military statement.
In an apparent attempt to kill Kabul's director of government intelligence, Humayoon Aini, a bomb ripped through the first car in his convoy late Friday, killing a local politician and two other people, said Kabul's police chief, Amanullah Ghazar.
Aini, who was in the second car, was unhurt, Ghazar said. The intelligence director had been returning to the capital from a meeting in a neighboring district, Ghazar said.
In southern Zabul province Saturday, Afghan troops battled insurgents for hours, killing two and capturing two, before dozens of others fled into nearby mountains, army commander Gen. Rehmatullah Raufi said.
The Afghan Interior Ministry announced that in the past week 9 tons of opium and 88 pounds of heroin have been seized in raids across the country.
The United States, Britain and other countries are spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the drug business.' Dat laatste doen de Verenigde Staten en hun bondgenoten door het in het zadel houden van de krijgsheren die tevens drugsbaronnen zijn. Lees verder:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061106Z.shtml


Een verhelderend overzichtje was onlangs in de Guardian te lezen: 'After four years and $12bn, £6.5bn, in foreign aid, the majority of Afghans still scrape through life without electricity or clean water. More than seven million people are chronically hungry, according to the UN, and 53% live on less than a dollar, or 54p, a day. The sight of foreigners earning large salaries and driving large vehicles protected by private security companies has focused frustrations. More recently, a spate of civilian deaths in US anti-Taliban bombing has aroused public anger in a country with a history of violently ejecting foreign occupiers. The government and its western backers argue that, since reconstruction started from an impossibly low base, much progress has been made. The west and north are peaceful, smooth roads stretch through the countryside, and the economy is projected to grow by 10% this year. A record number of children attend school. But faith in the Karzai government, dogged by violence in the south and allegations of corruption in Kabul, is faltering.
Many Afghans believe their $12bn in aid has been squandered or stolen.' Lees verder:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1785600,00.html