Quit Afghanistan - By Ghulam Muhammed

Friday, September 04, 2009

QUIT AFGHANISTAN

Today BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner has gone record with a clear admission that US/NATO operations in Afghanistan on Taliban and Afghan civilians has nothing directly or indirectly relates to US/NATO’s avowed claim to be fighting Al-Qaeda terrorism in Afghanistan. None of the terror attacks in the West that Frank Gardner rattles off in his BBC intervention, according to him, has any remote relations with Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Daily aerial bombings are a serial war- crime murders committed against civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al-Qaeda is not necessarily based in these areas. They can operate from Yemen, Somalia and in future from North Africa. With each incident of wanton massacre of civilians, Obama, Gordon Brown and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen instantly go on TV and fool their people back home, that their bloody mission in Afghanistan is necessary to protect homeland from terrorism emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is patent lies. They cannot fool all the people all the time. Time has come for US/UK/NATO to quit Afghanistan forthwith, without committing more and more war crimes daily on the innocent hapless people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

NATO forces yesterday shot an oil tanker, hijacked by Taliban in Kunduz province. The tanker was stuck while crossing a river and Taliban had asked local people to empty the tanker, by taking away the fuel for their private use. NATO did not find it necessary to find out if the crowd collected around the hijacked tanker was that of civilians or Taliban. Reconnaissance can easily make out. However, NATO forces directly undermined clear instructions from the High Command and in an enraged vindictive action blew up the tanker. The action resulted in over 90 killed. BBC in its first report clearly mentioned that all were civilians. But the NATO Chief later fined it convenient to resort to blatantly lie and say that all killed were Taliban. An enquiry is promised. But all such enquiries are self-serving, bending backwards to prove the forces to be not guilty. However, the civilians in these cannot be fooled. This carnage is going on by the hour and the world seems to be sanitized to one of the most blatant and wanton criminal war inflicted on a UN member country.

Though India at some level seems to be involved in the conspiracy being played out in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Indian people are not fully taken into any confidence, if the criminal acts have any legal basis. Indian government should gather up moral courage and come out with open notice to the US and NATO forces to QUIT AFGHANISTAN. A moral India owes it to its people to oppose such horrendous carnage in its neighbourhood. Needless to say, the fire could spread into India's own territory, in one form or other.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com