The Political Conundrum!

Being a Career-long 11C myself, this one hits close to home. Not to mention that I probably worked with this guys at 8K feet in the mountains of Orgun-E in September of 2006 during the opening days of Operation Mountain Fury.

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This Blog Posting is dedicated to my good friend, Vampire6 who writes his blog over at http://afghanistanshrugged.com/

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Specially trained and equipped U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agents assigned to Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams (FAST), and specially trained officers assigned to the National Interdiction Unit (NIU) of the Counter-Narcotics Police of Afghanistan, successfully raided a number of remote heroin laboratories and hashish processing facilities in Afghanistan in the past several months. The raids were strongly supported by U.S. military and Department of State assets, which is unmistakable proof that the inter-agency ‘enforcement’ aspect of the Afghan counter-narcotics strategy is beginning to work. However, the need for a more forceful and consistent approach is just as evident.

What is most troubling, although no real surprise, is that these facilities were under the command and control of the Taliban. The best estimates by our government are that the Taliban generates somewhere between $300 - $400 million dollars a year from their involvement in the Afghan drug trade. I happen to believe that number falls woefully short of the real figure. A traffickers compound that was successfully raided over a year ago by FAST/NIU operators resulted in the seizure of evidence that clearly showed about $170 million dollars flowing through the hands of the responsible, Taliban-affiliated drug baron in just a 10 month period.

Our military, intelligence and law enforcement communities are doing magnificent work in disrupting the funding streams from very powerful, private donors, as well as from the Taliban’s state sponsors. As a result, the Taliban leadership has clearly been forced to make the same choice the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia were compelled to make about 18 years ago when their state sponsored funding stream evaporated virtually overnight—to move from simply taxing farmers, one of the most fundamental forms of extortion, to wholesale involvement in the manufacture and trafficking of drugs. The Taliban is quickly evolving into what I classify as a ‘hybrid terrorist organization’: one part designated foreign terrorist organization (by our Congress), and one part global drug trafficking cartel.

What’s the answer? The Afghan government, our military and intelligence services, as well as NATO forces on the ground in Afghanistan, have to become more aggressively involved in supporting counter-narcotics operations. I recently ran across a study dated July 12, 2002 conducted by Professor James D. Fearon of Stanford University entitled, “Why Do Some Wars Last So Much Longer Than Others?,” that sums it up pretty well. Fearon studied 128 insurgencies and civil wars over several decades and found that 17 lasted four to five times longer than the other 111, extending those 17 from the average of about 8 years as I recall, to over 40 years. What did the 17 all have in common that the others did not? The government opposition forces had access to contraband revenue—mostly drugs. The bottom line: we’re not going to be successful in Afghanistan, and will not get our troops out of the country, until the Afghan government, the United States and NATO get serious about cutting off the Taliban’s most important funding stream—the drug trade.

Nearly 66 years ago, 17 men were killed in an explosion at Eglin Field. On Wednesday, "The Eglin 17" were paid the tribute they have long deserved.

The rapid whop, whop, whop of a wind turbine outside the New Mexico National Guard headquarters hints at a new mission for the homefront military: Going green.

A U.S. Army medic was convicted of murder Friday for his involvement in the execution-style slayings of four bound and blindfolded Iraqi detainees shot in the back of the head in the spring of 2007.

Police say one joyride in a light tank wasn't enough for a drunken British soldier in Germany.

http://story.afghanistansun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/6e1d5c8e1f98f17c/id/465713/cs/1/

Really it shouldn’t, because I mean corruption runs from the lowest private to the President of the country himself. The ANA never tracked weapons by serial number and never had a reason to. I mean they normally got resupplied with weapons by whatever we found in caves, buried in the ground or confiscated from someone’s house. When we would find these weapons and we on the team verified that the weapons were usable, we would hand them to the ANA and say “Here these are yours now”. Needless to say we kept some for ourselves and used them as gun hatch weapons and in one instance my ETT NCOs even handed one to an ANA soldier who fell and broke his weapon in the middle of an operation.

So if there is a warehouse of full of weapons in Kabul with no tracking, no serial numbers, no accountability except for the officer in charge who wants extra money any way he can get it, then you should not be surprised. We (the American taxpayer) has paid for a lot of these weapons, many coalition partners have freely given these weapons, but in the grand scheme of things that does not matter. What matters is that these weapons are for sure landing in the enemies’ hands.

Before we worry about trying to institute Habeas Corpus, or trying to make Afghanistan’s infantite government look like ours that is matured and over 200 years in the making they need to get to the basics. Like writing down serial numbers of sensitive items, accounting for them, maintaining a chain of custody, and routine inspections. The Afghan army is supposed to be just that, an Army and not a loose group of guerillas. Mainting accountability and custody of weapons is Running an Army 101.

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Days before the aircraft carrier Eisenhower heads overseas on deployment, the Navy has acknowledged that 18 sailors in its reactor department were disciplined for misconduct related to a routine written test.

http://www.military.com/news/article/February-2009/krygyz-prez-money-behind-manas-closing.html

Why was President Kurmanbek Bakiyev thinking he could go back to Uncle Sugar’s well and get more money for Manus? Does he not watch the news? Don’t tthey have CNN in K-stan? The well is dry and even though the President just put a $800 billion dollar debt on my kids and grandkids I doubt that he or anyone else had K-stan in mind when they pushed this spendulus bill through.

Personally I think this excuse of wanting more money was truly that, and easy-out excuse. I still beleive in what I wrote here, http://blog.bouhammer.com/?p=2853

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