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Rent-a-peace with Taliban – cash over casualties
Published: 12 February, 2010, 08:47
Edited: 17 March, 2010, 09:50
TAGS: Conflict, NATO, Scandal, Europe, Afghanistan
More claims are surfacing of NATO troops bribing the Taliban. Italy's secret service is under fire for allegedly paying off insurgent leaders - which is thought to have led to the massacre of 10 French soldiers.
When parents outlive their children, their grief can be indescribable. But their pain is doubled if they learn the tragedy could have been prevented. Joel Le Pahun's son was one of 10 French soldiers killed during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan two years ago. Now he is suing his son’s commanders for “reckless endangerment”.
“We are suing them because they made our children go on patrol that day with no safety precautions. Commanders knew the Taliban were swarming all over the area. There was no scouting of the route from the air. And shortly before the attack, soldiers caught their Afghan translator talking to somebody on the phone, which is strictly prohibited. They reported it to their commander, but they were ignored,” Le Pahun says.
Recent reports have re-opened the father’s wound even deeper. Claims in the British media say the French made a “catastrophically incorrect” threat assessment because they were unaware the region was being kept calm because of bribes being paid by their Italian allies.
”After I heard the news I talked to the French soldiers – did you know about the bribes? And they confirmed that the Italians they took over the area from had paid the village chiefs. It wasn’t directly to the Taliban, but through middlemen,” Le Pahun says.
Rome denies the allegations. Even a fierce critic of the Afghanistan campaign refuses to believe that war tactics could stoop so low.
“I can rule out with almost complete certainty that our officials have ever paid the Taliban or terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda to avoid attacks on Italians. Italians take a different kind of approach. We try to build dialogue with the locals, we respect their religion. They’re attacked less often because they have closer ties with the Afghan people,” Franco Claretti from the Northern League Party says.
And yet some still hold the principle: “If you can’t kill your enemy you buy him.”
“Afghans are famous because as we say – you can't buy them but you can rent them, at least for a short amount of time,” says Luccio Caracciolo, Editor-in-chief of Limes Review of Geopolitics magazine. “It’s even in the counter-insurgency manuals. Look, for example, what the Americans did in Iraq after a certain amount of time, buying the tribal leaders in other areas. It was public, it was nothing secret.”
Paying off the Taliban has already become official strategy for some. A $500 million plan to buy off jobless fighters was recently approved. 43 NATO nations now fighting in the country believe this last-resort measure could end the 9-year war.
But Carol Turner, an activist from the Stop the War coalition, says Afghanistan badly needs money to rebuild, and paying warlords can only fuel violence.
“It’s simply paying warlords and tribal leaders to go over on to the NATO side. If this happens, whether it will last is another question,” Turner said.
But Joel is unconvinced. He can only speculate over where the Taliban got its cash to buy the weapons which killed his son – and he hopes that European protection money will not end up as gun-barrels pointing at their children.
12.02.2010, 08:44
2 comments
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Yeah. Old Man your right.. Americans thought they are so powerful, invincible perhaps. But now they face humiliation - all of that "change" is a cover up. Less then a 1000 years ago the Muslims defeated the crusaders in the holy land. To them current Americans are the new crusaders which will try to conquer the Arabic world, which is one of the last parts of independent world as we know it. Ironicly Americans have created the AL-Quaida against the Russians in Chenchnya, but now they face what they've created - a multi-diverse advanced well equipped, high moraled and decently trained expirienced fighters.
What a shambles. The worlds only remaining superpower, backed up by its NATO lackys and a host of high technology and modern weapons systems, is defeated in the face of a few units of freedom fighters armed only with light weapons. US weapons were designed for fighting standing armys, defined navys, obvious air forces, and for destroying cities. Faced with a low tech enemy without any of these assets, who use gorilla warfare tactics (now called terrorism by the west), the US war machine is struggling. Desperate, they now resort to short sighted and short term tactics. They continue to underestimate thier enemy and place their faith, as always, upon the power of the yankee dollar. Yes the Afghan and foreign fighters may very well take the money, and feign a cease fire. However this lull in fighting will simple allow these Afghan and foreign fighters to regroup, rearm, retrain, reorganise, and gather intel for future attacks, which will be harder and more effective then ever before. The US, just like the Soviets before them, and the British before them, are already defeated, they just have not realised it yet, or they do but are not yet ready to face the facts. Incidently, if the US pick a fight with Iran (or impose 'crushing' sanctions) they may also find that things can get much, much worse in Afganistan (and Iraq).
These news about bribing Talibans in Afghanistan are based on an article of the British ‘Times’. You have to know that the Anglosaxon press does not miss any occasion for throwing mud on Italy and even for trying to delegitimize the Italian government. The Times about 2 months ago accused the Italians of paying off Talibans to avoid bloody fighting. This charge was not only rejected by Italians, but also not confirmed by the French army. Money was very likely always been used by Italians and other NATO members to obtain information and to improve relations with local people; perhaps the former Italian leftist pacifist-oriented government was particularly unwilling to have its soldiers engaged in battles rather than in civil reconstruction. The trend under the present government seems to have a bit changed and paying off the enemy is even less likely. I do not know how the Afghan expedition will end up, but the American and the British do not have to lay the responsibility of a defeat on their allies, especially after it became widely known (and confirmed in a more reecent article of the Times) that now the American and British generals openly recommend to their officers to give money to Talibans for improving the situation. As for Russia, I do not think it is good for Russia that Afghanistan remains a destabilized area and a good ground for terrorists. I think also that it is wrong, for a blind antiamerican hatred, to idealize islamic countries such as Afghanistan or Iran, where an oppressive religion dominates, women are secluded etc. They can become a threat also for Russia, but it was a great mistake of American rulers not to have searched truly a collaboration with Russia. They did not change their approach after the end of the Cold war, they made (and are still making) an unfriendly policy against Russia, encircling it with military installations etc. We all will suffer the consequences of this mistake.