AFGHANISTAN: A MODERN SILK ROAD STRATEGY (Part 2/3)

 FOREIGN NATION BUILDING

Now it became apparent a long way into the war in Iraq that large government contractors such as Blackwater & Halliburton etc. were making huge amounts of money from reconstruction projects. It never became apparent to me that this was the REASON for the war, until I found out a bit more about global capitalism and free trade agreements, and the general Globalisation Agenda.

Now the key thing to remember if you pick up anything at all from this thread are: 

It is all about the money. Following the money will lead to the truth.

Governments and Banks like to ‘Pretend to Fail’.

Though you are conditioned to believe countries and nations are in competition with each other and are even enemies; this is a lie. There are no enemies in globalisation; everyone is in fact friends. 

Now this is where you really have to go to another link, because there is just that much good information and EVIDENCE that it would not be efficient to replicate it all here.

The reason this thread is so important is that this FRAUD is still happening now, today, and will continue to occur until it is somehow interrupted. The evidence is offered on a platter, and this time they are relying on us not noticing it is happening, because as soon as we do realise, the troops leave, and it is game over.

This time they do not have to worry about going to prison, because the governments are all in pocket, it is no longer cloak and dagger, just exploitation. Think about the illegal Coltan trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and think that on a truly GLOBAL scale. It is happening, you just never realised it yet!

Enough, time for you to take control and realise once and for all that you are being lied to, but you can stop it: 

AFGHANISTAN: A MODERN SILK ROAD STRATEGY

My Thread Link 

I think we have all expected or shall we say considered the fact for an ulterior motive for the war in Afghanistan for a very long time now. It is something that I definitely do not agree with, though I often bite my tongue when in conversations on the matter as there are a lot of people who have lost friends and family members to this war and to the different armed services.

I know think however that the truth will start to become more apparent. There are signs of investment now appearing such as there was post-Iraq invasion, including construction contracts etc. When considering the Afghan war there are a few questions I have asked myself a few times which help me get some perspective. A few of these are:

• Is it really feasible that we would go to so much expense (Human more than monetary), to protect ourselves from a threat that seems almost non-existent?

The most troubled areas seem to be Pakistan and India, and most of the ‘terrorism’ in Britain seems to originate from these areas.

• Is it really feasible that there is a very dangerous man and a group of loyal militants who are plotting to destroy the entire western civilisation?

The majority of us believe that Osama Bin Laden is dead, and that the Taliban was in fact first founded to stave off the Russian invasion is Afghanistan to begin with, which brings me onto my next couple of points.

• If the might of the Russian army couldn’t break the back of Afghanistan in a decade, what do we feel we can do different?

I fail to see how under stringent budget cuts, harsher conditions, and a better supplied enemy, we feel we can do better than what the Russians did.

• Where are the ‘enemy’ getting their arms from?

There is definitely a supply keeping the enemy going, It can only be presumed that this is happening at a very high level.

• Why has the Poppy yield not decreased?

I have not yet seen any evidence indicating that the yield has decreased, if anything I believe it could be found that the opposite is true, at least for the first few years since the invasion.

I could go on with my question & answers, but I think I have made my point for now. By asking these simple questions and then looking for the answer, it would seem that all the evidence amounts to what we all agree anyway, that the war is failing miserably, or its targets are different to what we are being told. Take a look at the following links, make a few searches for the keywords listed yourself, and see if anything seems to make any more sense: 

The_Great_Game

This is what it was all about in the first place, do things really change? Do we really learn from our mistakes? Or is the ego, and the desire to be dominant instead of merely sustainable, the real force that makes the World go round.

The_New_Great_Game 

The great game is just as Great, just as Playful than it ever was, only now days the stakes are a lot, lot higher. 

Silk_Road

Trade routes are things that have powered civilisations for years, and in time of a crisis and a lock down, whoever has the access to the natural stuff, be it minerals, oil, gas or crops, is the one who is going to come out on top. 

Entrerprise Corruption 

Reinhardt is quite a peculiar fellow and has appeared in many threads on ATS. Whatever people may think, he certainly provides a very unique economic perspective on things and he is adamant that investment in foreign infrastructure in the main game when it comes to big money hitters. The name of the game is Enterprise Corruption, and it has been seen over and over again in history, Afghanistan is just the latest instalment.  

KEY DOCUMENT:The Key to Success in Afghanistan, A Modern Silkroad Strategy

One of the most promising ways forward for the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan is to focus on removing the impediments to continental transport and trade across Afghanistan‘s territory. Many existing international initiatives from the Mediterranean to the Indian sub-continent and Southeast Asia are already bringing parts of this network into being. Absent is the overall prioritization, coordination, and risk management that will enable Afghanistan to emerge as a natural hub and transit point for roads, railroads, pipelines, and electric lines. America and its coalition partners can provide these missing ingredients. 

Hmm, what about our security and helping the Afghan people? Or are they just a means to an end? I have downloaded the Ebook available, I am sure it would be a very interesting read.

Have a go yourself, search for the above as well as the following in regards to Afghanistan, particular noting dates of headlines and Web Pages and try and see the correlations to them and the military presence. The result is a very interesting timeline:

INVESTMENT
RAILROADS
HIGHWAYS
PIPELINES
MINERALS

And keep a very close eye on the markets within the next six months. Not long after that the first corruption charges will be under investigation and that’s when we really know that it will be a long, long time before the troops will really be coming home.

 FOLLOW THE MONEY, FIND THE TRUTH. 

What impact does this have on the troop movements? 

Opium Production

Farmers in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, the source of around 90 percent of the world's opium, agreed the harvest will fall this year. The farmers and other experts cited high rainfall in some areas, drought in others, free seeds for alternatives such as wheat and good prices for food crops, and a mysterious disease withering poppies in some areas.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UNODC, told the BBC that Afghanistan's 2010 opium output could fall by up to 25 per cent, thanks to the disease, a fungus that could have infected about half of the total poppy crop.

UNODC said opium output was down by 10 per cent in 2009 to 6,900 tonnes, but yield rose 15 per cent because farmers extracted more opium per bulb. Production far outstripped annual world demand of 5,000 tonnes, it said, with stockpiles of opium estimated at 10,000 tonnes as cartels hoarded in an effort to push up prices that had fallen by 30 per cent in a year. Stockpiles were equal to two years' supply of heroin for addicts, or three years of morphine for medical use, it said.

If opium is the talibans main source of income, the wise thing would be to cut out that funding. Is the mystery fungus a coincidence?

Or is this just a gimmick, and the taliban is being supplied by some other means? Their equipment is getting more advanced all the time, so WHERE IS IT COMING FROM & HOW IS IT BEING PAYED FOR!?

How many headlines read 'ITS NOT OUR WAR'?. And how many responses include the words 'National, Security'?

Has it not been said the biggest threat is from Domestic Terrorism?

It is all a CON. 

Arms Sent by U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands  

Pretending to Fail? Result: Longer Occupation. 

Leads to a coincidence and Image 2... 

Leads to the conclusion and Image 3..

There is plenty, plenty more of this information out there, and with WikiLeaks hot on the case now, there is a better chance than ever for the first time in history that this Con is brought to light.

Apart from Enron maybe... 

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai 

Ashraf Ghani is the guy quoted in the first of the three images above. Take a look at some of his credentials and what he has managed to pull off in recent history:

His academic research was on state-building and social transformations.

He joined the World Bank in 1991, working on projects in East Asia and South Asia until the mid 1990s. In 1996, he pioneered the application of institutional and organizational analysis to macro processes of change and reform, working directly on the adjustment program of the Russian coal industry and carrying out reviews of the Bank’s country assistance strategies and structural adjustment programs globally. He spent five years each in China, India, and Russia managing large-scale development and institutional transformation projects. He had worked intensively with the media during the first Gulf War, commenting on major radio and television programs and being interviewed by newspapers.

After 9/11, he took leave without pay from the World Bank and engaged in intensive interaction with the media, appearing regularly on PBS’s News Hour as well as BBC, CNN, other television programs, the BBC, Public Radio, other radios, and writing for major newspapers. In November 2002, he accepted an appointment as a Special Advisor to the United Nations and assisted Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the Secretary General to Afghanistan, to prepare the Bonn Agreement, the process and document that provided the basis of transfer of power to the people of Afghanistan.

Returning after 24 years to Afghanistan in December 2001, he resigned from his posts at the UN and World Bank to join the Afghan government as the chief advisor to President Hamid Karzai on February 1, 2002.

As Chancellor of the University, he worked to institute a style of participatory governance among the faculty, students, and staff, Textadvocating a vision of the university where men and women with skills and commitment to lead their country in the age of globalization can be trained.

Since leaving the university, Dr. Ghani has co-founded the Institute for State Effectiveness, of which he is Chairman. The Institute has put forward a framework which proposes that the state should perform ten functions in the contemporary world in order to serve its citizens. This framework was discussed by leaders and managers of post-conflict transitions at a meeting sponsored by the UN and World Bank at the Greentree Estates in September 2005.

On March 31, 2004, he presented a seven-year program of public investment called Securing Afghanistan’s Future to an international conference in Berlin attended by 65 finance and foreign ministers. Described as the most comprehensive program ever prepared and presented by a poor country to the international community, Securing Afghanistan’s Future was prepared by a team of 100 experts working under the supervision of a committee chaired by Mr. Ghani. The concept of a double-compact, between the donors and the government of Afghanistan on the one hand and between the government and people of Afghanistan on the other, underpinned the program of investment in Securing Afghanistan’s Future. The donors pledged $8.2 billion at the conference for the first three years of the program –- the exact amount asked by the government -- and agreed that the government’s request for a total seven-year package of assistance of $27.5 billion was justified. 

KEY DOCUMENT

Securing Afghanistan's Future

This Agenda was created for the conference on 31st March 2004 which we can see from the post above resulted in the MASSIVE investment package into Afghanistan.

Now there may be nothing untoward in it, but lets look at it this way:

It promotes Globalisation.
Most of the heads were from the World Bank and the UN.
It provides a reason for occupancy: MONEY.
It describes Minerals, Railroads and Trade, just like what I posted above

I have no objection to promoting the growth of underprivileged nations. If you take time to look at the figures in this document, the progress of Afghanistan is Phenomenal, UNBELIEVABLE in fact. The point I have been trying to make is that it has been gone about in completely the wrong way.

WE used a War on terrorism to support an invasion of than Nation, with our Governments and corporations only interest being to make money and exert control. That is the bottom line of it. Now because it is harder than anticipated, our soldiers are dying, and will continue to do so, until a return on investment is achieved.

Anyone who has been involved in project management will see everything for what it is, a project. It has stakeholders, Investors, profits/losses risks, steering groups, the works.

Yes we are helping the nation in a sense, but we are also condemning it to a life of perpetual debt and Western Socialism and all our other irrelevant values. 

New Silk Road Built by China Connects Asia to Latin America

Silk Road in the MSM Today

The high-speed rail link China Railway Construction Corp. is building in Saudi Arabia doesn’t just connect the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It shows how Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are holding the world economy together.

Ties between emerging markets form what economists at HSBC Holdings Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc call the “new Silk Road” -- a $2.8-trillion version of the Asian-focused network of trade routes along which commerce prospered starting in about the second century. 

ASIA DEVELOPMENT BANK

 

 

This stuff is too good to be true, its history repeating itself! This sums up everything I have been talking about in this thread; Our troops, The Bankers, Corruption.

Kabul Bank

Kabul Bank Wiki

Central Bank Takes Over

Afghanistan's central bank has stepped in to take control of the troubled Kabul Bank. Central bank chief Abdul Qadir Fitrat said investigations had also been started into the dealings of the bank's top two directors and shareholders.

Corruption at Kabul Bank

(Reuters) - Afghanistan's ailing Kabulbank paid its top two directors and shareholders, currently under investigation for banking fraud, $500,000 each in bonuses in 2009, according to an independent audit earlier this year.

Update on the Railways in Afghanistan;

News Site Tracking Afghanistan Railway Project

"Historically, Afghans have regarded railways with suspicion. But now the government is embracing a plan that could help the country tap into global markets, delivering prosperity and even peace", says Afghanistan’s revolution on the rails, an article by Jonathan Gornall at UAE newspaper The National. It includes some interesting comments from railway consultant David Brice, who is working in Afghanistan:

Afghan Rail Revolution

On 16 June 2010 Asian Development Bank approved a further USD700 000 from its Technical Assistance Special Fund for:
A study on railway development for Afghanistan completed for the following routes: (i) From Hairatan at the border with Uzbekistan to Heart [Herat] in the west, via Mazar-e-Sharif; (ii) from Shirkhan Bendar at the border with Tajikistan, via Kunduz to Naibabad [which is on the line under construction from Hayratan] joining Mazar-e-Sharif to Heart; (iii) from Torkham at the border with Pakistan to Jalalabad; and (iv) Spainboldak at the border with Pakistan to Kandahar.

LOOK AT THESE FIGURES FROM ASIA DEVELOPMENT BANK

After nearly a century, a modern Afghan railroad is under construction reports CNN. "“This connects Afghanistan to the world,” says an 18-year-old high school student named Shakrullah. He says he hopes to one day get a job as an engineer for the railroad. “I want trains for all the provinces of Afghanistan, not just for Balkh province.”"

CNN Report 

 This is the place to watch:

Asia Development Bank

Here is the CNN report on Afghanistan:

 

How could China build a $7 BILLION dollar railroad through taliban infested Afghanistan..... without the help of the US army? PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO AND SEE THE DOLLAR SIGNS IN THEIR EYES! Minerals & Mining again.

ADB Report

KEY DOCUMENT

ADB Afghanistan Update OFFICIAL DOCUMENT

The New Uncle Sam: Craig Steffenson

Copper Mining in Afghanistan

China Metallurgical Group Corporation

Mining in Afghanistan

In 2010, small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

According to other reports the total mineral riches of Afghanistan may be worth over three trillion US dollars."The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world", the United States officials believe.

The Ghazni Province may hold the world's largest lithium reserves. The deposits were already described in the USGS report on Afghanistan issued in 2007. President Hamid Karzai remarked "Whereas Saudi Arabia is the oil capital of the world, Afghanistan will be the lithium capital of the world.

Deposits in the United States and Canada which need mining operations similar to those necessary for the deposits in Afghanistan went out of production due to cheaper production from lithium containing brines. Afghanistan invited 200 global companies for the development of its mines.

China Metallurgical Group won the bidding for a copper mining project in Aybak, Afghanistan. The bidding process has been criticized by rival Canadian and U.S. companies alleging corruption and questioning the Chinese company's commitment to the Afghan people

Why is it then that our troops travel around the world to provide 'freedom' to the Afghan people, then China walks right in and starts mining some of the biggest reserves in the world?

China Rail

Then the same company gets to build a railroad to transport their profits all over the country!?

Afghan Rail

In September 2010, China Metallurgical Group signed an agreement with the Afghan Minister of Mines to investigate construction of a north-south railway across Afghanistan, running from Hayratan (on the Uzbek border) to northern Pakistan. China Metallurgical Group was recently awarded a copper mining concession near the route of this railway

Whether you have read all the previous information I have posted on this thread or not and comprehended it is irrelevant. All you late comers have to do is watch the following video: 

 

Now you explain to me how the goals of this 'war' are ever going to be achieved? Again, following on from my original post, they can't! So why are we still there?

GLOBAL CAPITALISM

Another War ~ Another Trade Route

 

SHOOTING UP TOGETHER

 

Another reminder that there are no 'enemies' in the world of global capitalism. Russia, the great bear, the originators of the great game are now back in Afghanistan. But why? To Help China or US? 

 

 

A GLOWING FRIENDSHIP

Zbigniew Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen

Source

Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.

The below has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the indispensible, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" Portions of the books can be read at: Link

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

History Repeats?

 Carlitomoore