Antony Loewenstein

The relentless US-led drone war against “terrorists” in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond rarely examines who is actually being killed. President Obama has massively expanded the global program.

This weekend saw a Drone Summit held in Washington DC that highlighted this still largely secret war.

A keynote speaker was the leading investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill who has actually done the work of a real journalist and visited the countries in which Obama’s drones are operating;

The life and times of Osama Bin Laden post 9/11 remains shrouded in mystery. During my recent visit to Pakistan, I spent time with Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani Army Brigadier, who personally investigated the story behind Bin Laden’s killing last year.

This lead story in the Guardian by Jason Bourke adds more details to the picture (though frankly, after more than a decade of Western-led war in AfPak, and our empowering of brutal warlords in the process, the role of Al Qaeda and the Taliban seem almost secondary):

Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan.

The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.

They indicate a “very considerable degree of ideological convergence”, a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.

The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.

One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.

…

A reliable account of Bin Laden’s life on the run can now be established, pieced together from the testimony, viewed by the Guardian, of one of Bin Laden’s wives, the recollections of the ISI officers who interviewed her compiled by retired Pakistani army brigadier Shaukat Qadir, statements of militants detained by the US published by WikiLeaks and interviews with former US officials.

Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in November 2001, Bin Laden’s wives and children fled Afghanistan , travelling first to Karachi, the vast Pakistani port city, where they spent several months. Bin Laden himself headed north into the remote Afghan province of Kunar after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. According to ISI officials quoted by Qadir, a senior militant detained by the ISI in 2006 told interrogators that Bin Laden had met Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan insurgent leader, in Kunar at this time. ISI officials also maintain that Khaled Sheikh Mohamed told them that the al-Qaida chief was there.

Former American officials this weekend told the Guardian that there was considerable intelligence indicating that Bin Laden was in eastern Afghanistan and making occasional journeys across the border into Pakistan at this time.

By the summer of 2004, Bin Laden appears to have moved into Pakistan permanently. According to the testimony of his youngest, Yemeni-born wife, she and her two children were reunited with her husband in a house in a remote district of the rugged Swat valley, in northwest Pakistan, in March 2004, before moving to another safe house in a small town called Haripur, 20 miles from Abbottabad, that autumn. In early summer 2005 the family then moved into the newly constructed compound where they would spend the next six years. They were joined there by Bin Laden’s second wife and her three children.

According to ISI officers interviewed by Qadir, the location had been scouted a year previously by senior militant Abu Farraj al-Libbi who then travelled to Swat to get Bin Laden’s approval for the move. The al-Qaida chief insisted that the land for the house be bought, not rented, and sketched out a design for the construction – currently in the possession of the ISI.

The al-Qaida leader himself evaded detection while on the move by pretending to be an ailing Pashtun former militant, still on Pakistan’s wanted list, who hoped to return home to die, Qadir has written.

Western security officials believe Bin Laden’s oldest wife joined him in Abbottabad after being released in deal between Iranian authorities and a Pakistani militant group holding an Iranian diplomat.

By November 2010, the crucial courier had been identified and located. He then led the hunters to the Abbottabad house.

Intriguing interview in The Daily Beast that highlights the internal struggles within a movement that has beaten the US and its allies in Afghanistan:

Not so long ago, Agha Jan Motasim was one of the most important men in the Afghan Taliban. That was before he was sacked as head of the ruling Quetta Shura’s political committee—and before the day last August when someone pumped him full of bullets and left him for dead on a street in Karachi. No one has claimed responsibility for the broad-daylight assassination attempt, but it’s clear that hardliners in the group wanted him out of the way, and Motasim believes he knows why. He dared to suggest that the group should respect the civilian population’s humanitarian needs and should open peace talks.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast from his current home in Ankara, Motasim talked about what went wrong. “Due to a lack of understanding, some of my colleagues and friends did not agree with my concept that the Taliban should be a political movement as well,” he says. “My differences of opinion were not with the rest of the shura but with a few Taliban hardliners.” His conversation with The Daily Beast was the Western media’s first on-the-record interview with a senior Taliban minister and leader since the 2001 U.S. invasion.

My friend Benjamin Gilmour, film-maker and writer, is in Afghanistan. Here are some of his reflections (which match much of what I heard during my recent visit):

How can we bring development to Afghanistan if we don’t have security? It is still the question put to us by backers of our longest war, and we buy it. How indeed, can aid convoys get through if they are being fired upon? First battle the enemy, then build.

But the argument is flawed. Since 2006 Afghanistan has had 27 PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) and each of these are military led. They have a commander and between eighty to a hundred-and-fifty army personnel and only three or four civilian advisors. This is the development we are sending in. Soldiers. What does the Afghan see coming? Soldiers. What does the Afghan hate most? Soldiers.

As I walk around Afghanistan this past two weeks, unarmed, dressed like a local, the same comment keeps coming up. ‘If you want to help us, we will die for you. If you come with guns and shoot us, we will fight to the last man.’ While this Afghan war is undoubtedly complex, with various powerful players bearing their own agendas, for an ordinary Afghan it is also very simple. If you want to help, don’t destroy. If you want peace, then talk to the enemy. Instead we are making the Afghan people swallow the pill of progress at gunpoint, which they will not do. PRTs in southern Afghanistan are still too busy defending themsleves to actually build anything.

Staying in Herat, the safest place in Afghanistan, with only one security incident or so a month, I have come to ask myself what ‘aid’ has followed ‘security’ here.

My following investigation appeared in Australian publication Crikey last week:

The private security compound is on the outskirts of Kabul, along the road to Jalalabad, a notorious strip of highway, the landscape is predominantly industrial, with shipping containers set against a string of mountains on the horizon. Several logistics companies sit behind these concrete walls — this is an industry that has enjoyed a massive growth spurt since the US-led, 2001 invasion in Afghanistan.

While Indian Gurkhas trained outside to join the company’s ranks, “Scott”, a former British soldier and now the Western head of one of the country’s leading private security firms, explains that “we don’t call ourselves mercenaries” but a reliable corporation that provided “static” security for foreign embassies, journalists, aid companies, hotels and other key assets. Launching in Afghanistan soon after the US invaded, “we survive off chaos”.

“From 2002 onwards,” says Scott, “we worked with the Afghan government because the Ministry of Interior (MOI) could not secure businesses or people and Western insurance companies insisted on using a private military company [PMC]. Internationals felt they could not trust MOI when moving province to province.”

This is the reason such an industry self-perpetuates even though President Karzai has demanded for years that these companies be replaced with the interior ministry’s Afghan Private Protection Force (APPF).

According to Scott, the implementation of Karzai’s plan this year has been “chaotic”. During our interview, he received a call from an American client who didn’t understand Karzai’s new PMC rules. “This happens all the time at the moment. For example, an Afghan is supposed to be assigned in every PMC in the country but this has never happened.”

The complicated realities of modern conflict has served as the stated rationale for this massive growth industry globally, especially in war zones since September 11. Scott offers a simpler explanation. “The Americans, British and foreign forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are not big enough to re-build nations, so PMCs are needed to fill the void. We protect contractors building prisons and schools. If the US had used more troops, we would not be necessary.”

The West has now been in Afghanistan longer than both World Wars combined. The US has spent tens of billions of aid money in the country and yet working services are minimal.

Apart from the escalating rate of civilian deaths, from Taliban and Western forces, the rise of private security armies has defined the war, resulting in numerous contractor crimes against Afghan civilians. The record of Western security firms is filled with a troubling lack of justice for victims.

Two Afghan men sit upstairs in a simple restaurant near the centre of Kabul — both have families who’ve suffered privatised violence first hand. Tariq-U-Rahman and Fahim, both from Wardak Province, explain that they’ve faced threats from three elements; the Taliban, the US army and private security companies, and were subsequently forced to move to Kabul.

Afghan firms have been hired and empowered by the US military to transport their equipment across the country. The job is to guard the convoys but they regularly establish so-called security perimeters and in the process engage in fire-fights with the Taliban, wantonly harming civilians. One of the worst offenders is Watan Risk Management, a leading company with close ties to the Karzai family that pays off the Taliban not to attack US convoys.

Fahim says his cousin, a shopkeeper, was shot dead by a Watan guard a year ago for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Watan admitted fault, he said, and offered $US20,000 compensation but the family is still waiting for the money. The victim’s wife and children are now struggling despite the family financially assisting them.

Fahim explains that private security companies could be necessary in other countries with more stability but in Afghanistan it had only brought “misery and violence”.

The current situation in Afghanistan confirms his scepticism. M. Ashraf Haidari, a suave, American educated senior Afghan official who is the deputy assistant national security adviser and senior policy and oversight adviser to Karzai, told me that Afghan authorities were shutting the “illegal and without licence” firms and “the new rules attempt to regulate the system”.

But several Western and local security corporations confirmed to me off the record they were still operating in the area and imagined doing so for years to come, finding ways around the new rules. Furthermore, a couple of PMCs that the Karzai government said had been shut down were still operating even if signs around their compounds were removed.

“Many embassies, for example, simply won’t trust the Afghan Private Protection Force (APPF) and will continue to rely on foreign security companies,” one said.

The supposed logic of the mass expansion of the security industry post-September 11 globally is to replace tasks the state’s military can’t or won’t do. But in a poor nation such as Afghanistan resentment built quickly, I was consistently told, when it was discovered that the Afghan army was getting paid substantially less than the private militias.

Outsourcing security isn’t the only task that has become privatised in the Western-led mission. Intelligence is increasingly collected by private companies and given to American, Australian and British forces.

Some privatised intelligence has involved the hiring of corporations to gather information about Afghans that is then used by the military for so-called counter-insurgency. Jeremy Kelly in the London Times first published extracts in late March of extensive documents by US-based “consultancy company” AECOM — the company had been hired by NATO to spy on mosques, universities and the general community throughout the country. The work started just over a year ago.

I viewed dozens of pages of this intelligence (and extract below different sections to the Times). The files detail conversations from March 2012: people complain about the Karzai government’s corruption and inefficiency; clerics in mosques demand Western forces leave immediately; family members complain about proposed marriages between the Taliban and local girls; others express support for the insurgency and complain of troubles when working in Iran.

The research comes from a range of districts and is separated between “supportive” and “non-supportive” individuals of the NATO mission.

One entry, from March 14 in the Sheberghan District, details an “overheard conversation between two Uzbek males between the ages of 40-45 at market.”

“One man said, ‘The other day I was riding on a bus when it became very windy. It seemed as if it was raining dust. People were saying that this could be a sign God’s wrath. This is happening to us because the Americans have burned the Quran, but we are calmly sitting idle. We should be rising up against the Americans for what they have done. We are being punished for doing nothing.’

“The other resident stated, ‘I do not know, but it might be possible’.”

In another extract, from March 15 in Shahr-e-Safa in a public car, an Afghan spy overheard “two concerned men ages 50 to 60, discussing private escort companies threat to the safety of civilians.”

“The first man said, ‘People distrust the private escort companies because when a Talib fires at them, they return fire at houses, people, even the trees are cut if a Talib is shooting from behind them!’

“The second man replied, ‘Most of the time, innocent people are killed or injured in the crossfire.  People want the government to either make sure escorts do not harm civilians or disarm them’!”

Such details appear as mundane, normal and daily conversations by local villagers across the state, but they can form the knowledge for US-led night-raids that cause deaths and deep Afghan anger. Mistakes are routinely made. Innocent men are kidnapped. Many are killed.

The recent announcement that Afghan forces would now take thelead on night-raids was dismissed as propaganda by sources in Afghanistan, a face-saving exercise by the Karzai government to show it has sovereignty in its own country.

Meanwhile, the US military and its allies have little idea of the agendas of the Afghans giving them intelligence. It’s why respected organisations such as The Afghanistan Analysts Network refuse to undertake commissioned work for clients, concerned that its research may be co-opted for military means.

As soon as the Taliban was toppled in 2001, Northern Alliance forces and its friends routinely issued payback against enemies, real and imagined. Even today, a local warlord and police chief in Uruzgan Province, Matiullah Khan, is using Australian forces to take out his rivals and fuel conflict.

A reporter from the Chicago Tribune witnessed this trend as far back as November 2001.

Western forces enabled this behaviour by using provided intelligence and arresting, bombing and interrogating people they were told were Taliban. In reality, the information was often wrong. Crucially, it reinforced the Western belief that any breathing Taliban should be a dead Taliban.

That was then. Today, the US government realises it will have to negotiate with the Taliban but is hiring private firms to better understand who should be targeted first.

Privatised security and intelligence is now a natural part of Western war making. America simply cannot and will not launch missions without the backing of often unaccountable companies that complement its defence industry. Since the departure of US troops from Iraq, thousands of foreign contractors still populate the country, that doesn’t look set to change any time soon.

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author who is currently working on a book and documentary about disaster capitalism.

Joe Glenton fought in the British army in Afghanistan. No more. He explains why in the Guardian:

Recent attacks in Kabul confirm the occupation is falling to pieces. Claims about “decisive years” and “turned corners” are little more than cant. Instead for all their lack of air power, drones and high-tech equipment, the Taliban are gaining ascendancy.

The ability to attack up to seven different locations, to hold one for 20 hours, and to attack the fortified compounds of the occupiers and local supporters cannot sensibly be read as a sign that the insurgency is losing ground. Fighting in Afghanistan is seasonal and the Kabul attacks were the season’s opening game.

No insurgency can survive without broad support from the local population. The insurgent relies upon the people for intelligence, support, safety and more. The fact that insurgents now control great swaths of the country virtually unchallenged tells us the people have been lost, partially due to the occupiers’ bumbling efforts. The argument that Afghans are rejecting the Taliban falls flat.

Let’s not forget there is no mandate in law for aggression nor any mention of – or authority for – brutally occupying Afghanistan in the UN resolutions regarding it. Which is why I refused to serve a second tour in Afghanistan. I was sentenced to five months in military prison for it but other soldiers too have refused and are refusing to serve in Afghanistan – as is their right.

…

Those sending our young men and women to die or be mutilated for nothing have no authority to say what is honourable, courageous, heroic, or cowardly. You can volunteer, and you can un-volunteer. It’s in the contract. Then perhaps our cynical, diamante-poppy-wearing political class will stop using the last dead kid to justify the next dead kid – insisting we must fight on so they have not died in vain. By refusing, I clawed back some honour from an honourless war.

My following investigation is published by Lebanon’s Al Akhbar:

Since the US invasion in 2001, Afghanistan has seen multiple private armies take control of the country’s security sector.

The private security compound was on the outskirts of Kabul. Situated along the road to Jalalabad on a notorious strip of highway, the landscape was industrial with sun-drenched low mountains on the horizon, shipping containers, dust swirling in the air, and mud across the ground.

Countless logistics companies are housed behind high concrete walls here. This industry has enjoyed a massive growth spurt since the US-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, despite the Hamid Karzai government reportedly taming it this year.

Al-Akhbar met the Western head of one of the country’s leading private security firms. While Indian Gurkhas trained outside, hoping to join the company’s ranks, the former British soldier explained that “we don’t call ourselves mercenaries” but are rather a reliable corporation that provides “static” security for foreign embassies, journalists, aid companies, hotels, and other key assets. The company opened in Afghanistan soon after the US invaded, and according to its head, it “survives off chaos.”

“From 2002 onward,” he said, “we worked with the Afghan government because the Ministry of Interior could not offer security to businesses or people and Western insurance companies insisted on the use of private military companies [PMCs]. Internationals felt they could not trust the Ministry of Interior when moving from province to province.”

Such logic is how the industry self-perpetuates even though Karzai has demanded for years that these companies be replaced with the Ministry of Interior’s Afghan Private Protection Force (APPF) through Presidential Decree 62.

According the head of the company, APPF implementation in 2012 has been “chaotic.” During our interview, he received a call from an American client who didn’t understand Karzai’s new PMC rules. “One Afghan is supposed to be in every PMC in the country, but this has never happened,” he said.

The stated rationale for the massive growth in this industry globally, especially in war zones since September 11, has been the complicated nature of modern conflict. The company head offers a simpler explanation. “The Americans, British, and foreign forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are not big enough to re-build nations, so PMCs are needed to fill the void. We protect contractors building prisons and schools. If the US had used more troops, we would not be necessary.”

The multiple justifications for the 2001 invasion today ring hollow as women’s rights and development in rural villagers are lacking. America has spent tens of billions of aid money in the country and yet working services are minimal.

There is little evidence of lasting infrastructure built by the West, except for a handful of newly built roads and buildings in central Kabul. The outskirts of the capital remain poor and under-developed and districts further away have largely missed investment, except for some power lines and smooth asphalt near Surobi town.

Apart from the escalating rate of civilian deaths, at the hands of both Taliban and Western forces, the rise of private security armies has defined the war. This reality has resulted in recurring contractor crimesagainst Afghan civilians where no one was held accountable. The record of Western security firms post 9/11 is filled with a troubling lack of justice for victims.

Al-Akhbar spoke to two Afghan men in a restaurant near the center of Kabul. Both had families who’d suffered privatized violence first hand. Tariq-U-Rahman and Fahim, both from Wardak Province, explained that they faced threats before being forced to move to Kabul by three elements: the Taliban, US forces, and private security companies.

Afghan firms have been hired and empowered by the US military to transport their gear across the country. The job is to guard the convoys but they regularly establish so-called “security perimeters” and in the process exchange fire with the Taliban, wantonly harming civilians. One of the worst offenders is Watan Risk Management, a leading company with close times to the Karzai family that pays off the Taliban not to attack US convoys.

Fahim said his cousin, a shopkeeper, was shot dead by a Watan private security guard one year ago for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Watan admitted fault, he said, and offered US$20,000 compensation but the family was still waiting for the money. The wife and children were now struggling despite the family financially assisting them.

Fahim, an unemployed engineer, said he wasn’t overly concerned about the proposed 2014 departure of Western forces because the Taliban, who he expects to take over, would “hopefully” at least bring some stability and peace to the country, as had happened before the 2001 invasion. He also hoped that private security companies, whose individuals never face justice for killing and maiming civilians, would become unnecessary because there would no longer be any US convoys to protect.

Fahim said that private security companies could be necessary in other countries with more stability but in Afghanistan they had only brought “misery and violence.” Neither believed the Karzai pledge to completely disband the firms because they are controlled by the “powerful” close to government. “They have too much to lose if the companies shut down,” Fahim said.

The current situation in Afghanistan confirms his scepticism. M.Ashraf Haidari, an American-educated senior Afghan official who is the Deputy Assistant National Security Adviser and Senior Policy and Oversight Adviser to Karzai, said that Afghan authorities were closing the “illegal and un-licenced” firms and said that “the new rules attempt to regulate the system.”

International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] spokesman Jimmie E. Cummings Jr. said the same thing, detailing the Karzai government’s Presidential Decree 62 that “mandated the dissolution of private security companies by the end of November 2010.”

In many cases this has happened. But a number of Western and local security corporations confirmed they are still operating and imagine doing so for years to come, finding ways around the new rules. “Many embassies, for example, simply won’t trust the Afghan Private Protection Force and will continue to rely on foreign security companies,” one said.

The supposed purpose of the industry is to undertake tasks the state’s military can’t or won’t do. But in a poor nation such as Afghanistan, resentment built quickly when it was discovered that the Afghan army was getting paid much less than the private militias.

Outsourcing security isn’t the only privatized resource in the country. Intelligence is increasingly collected by private companies and given to American, Australian, and British forces. This information often forms the basis of the notorious, American-led night-raids across the nation that have caused the death of countless civilians and bred deep anger toward the West.

An Afghan translator who had recently worked with the US on night-raids in Kandahar said that the vast majority of home invasions targeted the wrong people, inflaming anti-Western hatred. He was targeted himself by the Taliban in Kabul.

It was only years after the 2001 invasion, according to a leading Western analyst in Kabul, that the West understood that their policies, alongside a corrupt Afghan government, “were fuelling the insurgency.” This realization convinced the Western military establishment to hire private intelligence firms in order to better understand the people they were fighting. There was the “clean slate idea,” the analyst said. “Namely that you get rid of the Taliban and install new leaders. But they actually empowered old figures with bad records.”

The Western-head of a private information gathering organization said that his company’s work was increasingly common because “today’s wars aren’t between two equal sides.” He used Afghans across the country to prepare briefs about the latest political and security situations for Western embassies but he claimed this information “never serves military purposes.”

The darkest side of privatized intelligence is corporations gathering information about Afghans for use in Western counter-insurgency operations. Jeremy Kelly in the London Times published extracts in March of documents by US-based “consultancy company” AECOM. They had been hired by NATO to spy on mosques, universities, and the general community throughout the country. The work started just over one year ago.

There are files detailing conversations from March 2012. People complain about the Karzai government’s corruption and inefficiency, clerics in mosques demand Western forces leave immediately, personal matters are discussed including vocalized support for the insurgency, proposed marriages between the Taliban and local girls, and complaints about troubles when working in Iran.

The research comes from a range of districts and is separated between “supportive” and “non-supportive” individuals of the NATO mission.

One man in Jowzjān province said: “About 30 percent of our people believe that they should pick up weapons and start a jihad against ISAF soldiers. Another 70 percent believes that the financial situation is too weak and they do not have the ability to organize a fight against ISAF soldiers. Our country has been at war for the past three decades, and we are tired of war. We just want to live in peace.”

Another entry, from 14 March in the Shibirghan District, details an “overheard conversation between two Uzbek males between the ages of 40-45 at market.”

In the report one man said, “The other day I was riding on a bus when it became very windy. It seemed as if it was raining dust. People were saying that this could be a sign God’s wrath. This is happening to us because the Americans have burned the Quran, but we are calmly sitting idle. We should be rising up against the Americans for what they have done. We are being punished for doing nothing.” [A different] resident stated, “I do not know, but it might be possible.”

Such details appear mundane, but this is exactly the point. It is such seemingly insignificant comments that form the basis of Western “intelligence” against an enemy that continues to elude the most powerful military in the world.

These normal and daily conversations of local villagers form the “intelligence” behind US-led night-raids. Mistakes are routinely made. Innocent men are kidnapped. Many are killed. It is a failed counter-terrorism policy that is fuelling the insurgency.

People in Afghanistan believe the recent announcement that Afghan forces would now take the lead in night-raids was spin to show the Karzai government has sovereignty in its own country.

More disturbingly, the US military and its allies have no idea of the agendas of the Afghans giving them intelligence. Respected organizations such as The Afghanistan Analysts Network refuse to undertake commissioned work for clients, because they are worried their research may be co-opted for military means. As soon as the Taliban was toppled in 2001, Northern Alliance forces and their allies routinely sought payback from enemies, real and imagined. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune witnessed this trend as far back as November 2001.

That was then. Today, the US government realizes it will have to negotiate with the Taliban but is hiring private firms to better understand who should be targeted first. Being Taliban or related to Taliban members does not necessarily mean an individual is against the country’s positive future but the US too often sees all Taliban members or affiliates as the enemy.

Wikileaks has revealed countless names of innocent Afghans swept up in the invasion chaos. Their indefinite detention and torture at the hands of Afghan forces – the US still passes captured Afghan prisoners to Afghan-run jails with notorious records of abuse – led some of them to join the insurgency.

Most of the Western media coverage of Afghanistan remains focused on high-profile events such as the recent attack in the center of Kabul. While it is undoubtedly important in the context of Afghan security forces’ ability to assume full control by 2014, it only tells a small part of the picture.

Privatized security and intelligence is now a natural part of Western war making. America simply cannot and will not launch missions without the backing of often unaccountable companies that compliment its defense industry.

Since the departure of US troops from Iraq, thousands of foreign contractors still populate the country. Afghanistan will likely be no different after 2014. The lack of Congressional oversight or judicial review is deeply concerning and reflects an attitude of contempt toward the local laws of the occupied nation.

During Al-Akhbar’s visit to Afghanistan, in Kabul and surrounding districts the main message received was distrust of foreign forces, both fear and admiration of the Taliban, and loathing of Western and local private militias. The key lesson in Afghanistan is that invading, bombing, and empowering local warlords won’t bring either security for locals or safety for the West.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author who is currently working on a book and documentary about disaster capitalism.

Last night I appeared on ABCTV’s The Drum (video here) talking about a range of Australian issues, Afghanistan and Murdoch thuggery in Britain.

Having just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan, I talked about the reality of life in the latter under Western occupation and what’s likely to happen once most troops leave at the end of 2014. After more than a decade and tens of billions of aid (see this telling photo by my friend Benjamin Gilmour who just returned from Kabul and Herat) the nation is in a state of (mostly) chaos. Resistance to American and Australian forces have undoubtedly led to a Western defeat but what comes next? Many Afghans I met said they feared what would happen after the West leaves. This wasn’t because they wanted them to stay, although some did, but that Western aid and development should in some way assist the state. The time for war is long over.

I explained on the program that the West have empowered thuggish warlords; we’ve trained, armed and funded men with a horrific record in the name of “stability”. In reality, it’s created the opposite. I was researching the role of private militias and intelligence companies, both of which have corrupted the democratic process.

I heard over and over again how little America and its allies knew about Afghanistan despite spending more than 10 years fighting the Taliban and other forces.

In relation to the ongoing Murdoch saga in Britain, I argued that News International could rightly be called a mafia-like organisation and James Murdoch, who just gave testimony last night to the Leveson Inquiry, openly explained the intimacy between the Tories and his corporation (not that things were any better or different during the days of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown).

We are being watched and monitored on a scale never seen in human history.

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney spoke to Democracy Now! last week and said that he estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion “transactions” — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This probably includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States.

Who knows how it affects everybody else in the world.

Computer researcher Jacob Appelbaum has been targeted by the US for years, as has journalist Laura Poitras. Appelbaum says that government officials demanded he tell him about his political views including about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here’s the full and fascinating story of Binney’s whistle-blowing background.

Shameful:

Hayatollah is supposed to be teaching history and geography for grades six to nine at the Kahrezak Secondary School, located 60 kilometres from Chaghcharan, the provincial centre of Ghor province in central Afghanistan .

But when asked to identify Ahmad Shah Durrani, the first king of Afghanistan, the 22-year-old teacher replied with a smile that he did not know who he was. Asked to name the most famous rivers in Afghanistan, he said he did not know the name of any of them except the river Ghor.

Hayatollah said he was sent to Kahrezak two years ago by the provincial education department, but found out early on that the other teachers at the school did not possess even basic literacy skills.

He went back to Chaghcharan and never returned to the school. Even so, he has been receiving his monthly salary for the past two years.

“The cashier brings my salary to my door every month,” he said.

An investigation by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting indicates that at least 280 million afghanis, approximately 5.8 million US dollars, from the education ministry’s budget for Ghor province has been spent to little effect, and in some cases handed over to local power-brokers.

Only 20 per cent of the provincial education budget goes to staff who turn up and teach in the schools. The rest is either paid to absentee teachers, or appropriated in their name by education and law-enforcement personnel. To date, no government agency has looked into reports of embezzlement of this kind.

An IWPR survey indicates that of the 4,000 teachers currently on the payroll in Ghor, perhaps 3,200 have no qualifications – some cannot read and write.

IWPR compiled a list showing that 80 per cent of the 740 schools in the province are not operating at all, even though the education department still pays salaries to the teachers.

As a result of this situation, pupils are promoted from one class to the next, year after year, without learning a thing, according to both government officials and teachers who admit they have not set foot in a classroom for many months.

A disturbing story that reveals the danger real journalism poses to the vulture capitalists in our “democracies”:

A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.

The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY’s reporting on the military’s “information operations” program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan — campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored.

For example, Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 — just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company.

If the websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption.

“We’re not aware of any participation in such activities, nor would it be acceptable,” said Lt. Col. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman.

A Pentagon official confirmed that the military had made inquiries to information operations contractors to ask them about the Internet activity. All denied it, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries were informal and did not amount to an official investigation.

The websites were taken down following those inquiries. Various other sites and accounts were removed for violating their providers’ terms of service.

“I find it creepy and cowardly that somebody would hide behind my name and presumably make up other names in an attempt to undermine my credibility,” Vanden Brook said.

The activity is the work of what online reputation expert Andy Beal calls a “determined detractor.”

“It’s like a machine gun approach. They’re trying to generate as much online content as they can,” he said. “The person who’s behind this, we can give them a lot of credit here and assume they’re very sophisticated about reputation attacks.”