The Haqqanis and al-Qaeda

[hairan]

These so called western "intellectuals" cannot even establish a basic sewage system in kabul. Yet they want to fight Islam. LOL

I think you don't know about these things:

1) More than three million children are studying in thousands of schools now in the country where there were only total about 10 schools (and that in the worst conditions) during the Taliban.

2) Modren roads and railway lines are being built in the areas where the Taliban drove Pakistan-imported donkeys.

3) 24 hours electricity is provided in the cities where the Taliban did their press conferences using candles.

4) About 400 media outlooks (about 350 of them independent) are functioning where there was only one Taliban-run sharia radio during the Taliban.

5) About 15 million Afghans have access to telephones and 3 million to internet where only a few Taliban officials had telephones and that also with Pakistani numbers, not Afghan.

6) More than 10 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan, Iran, and European countries during the past 9 years, while about 2 million had fled Afghanistan during the 6 years of Taliban (there were only about 3 million people in Afghanistan when they seized power).

7) There is a functioning army, police force, intelligence force, courts, electoral system, and other infrastructure while none of them existed during the Taliban.

8) There is a rich museum and many more cultural and historical treasurers which attract many tourists from around the world while all these things were looted and sold out in Peshawar's kabari bazaar during the Taliban.

[MazloomyarMaseed]

Again I would like to congradulate you Hairan roara jan

Iqilab is a Lal Masjid Student from Punjab, Obviously he will defend his brothers who graduated from the darul Islami Haqqania.

Taliban did nothing for Afghanistan besides allow Pakistanis to steal from it, especially the timber, that taliban gave freely to Punjabis to sell in Lahore.

No Afghan is going to bring Taliban back

Kind Regards

[hairan]

@hairan

Material gains and luxuries doesn't mean progress to religous people

Real progress is the truth being established and justice being done and the only justice is from God.

So no matter what kind of reports you bring forward about how Afghanistan has progressed it doesn't make a difference to some people.

Being poor and living with dignity is more important than living in luxury with no dignity.

I don't support the Taliban though. They made fundemental mistakes and couldn't be wholly trusted. I am for independent Afghanistan managed by Afghanistan and being self sufficient. I undrestand 30 years of war has crippled the people and I shouldn't judge them if they want peace and quiet for a while. But I don't think this situation can go on forever.

Grana wrora, my answer was for the other brother who said that mullahs can build and the intellectuals cannot. I told him what was the reality of the construction.
Now to your comment. All the people in Afghanistan are not religious fanatics. And the material gains are much more important to these fanatics but they want the luxuries only for themselves, for other people they want sabar (patience) and sawab.
But you cannot ignore the reality that the people you rule need a system. They need jobs, they need foods, they need roads, health facilities, communication facilities, educational institutions, and all the other things that I listed in the above post. If you cannot provide them all these things, you don't have the right to rule them.
I know there are many faults in the current system. I have been a staunch critic of many current policies, but that does not mean that Taliban were better than the current system. Never. There is no way to compare them. We can say that Taliban were 0.02% and the current system is 20% good. We still need to work to make it 100% good for the population.

[Catya Sher]

I think Sangar knows what he's talking about.
Hairan doesn't, no offense!
It was Charlie Wilson, a highly disreputable US congressman from Texas that I think you mean.

More importantly, there is NO evidence WHATSOEVER of any serious link between Maulavi Jelaluddin Haqqani and Al-Qaeda.

Don't believe this stuff!
It is one of the many cases in this entire American war in Afghanistan where nebulous "facts" are pounded in so many times that even the locals start to believe them. Even that name "Haqqani Network" was invented by American officials or journalists.
In an interview recently, the son Sirajuddin specified that is NOT what THEY call themselves.

Further, Sangar is absolutely correct that Jelaluddin is extremely kind person. Anyone would agree with that who was around in those days of the war against the Soviets like I was [a freelance journalist who also traveled to various battle fronts where Jelaluddin was conducting battles against Afghan Army and Soviet military outposts.
He has been completely misrepresented by the American media.
Even they kept insisting for awhile that he had visited President Reagan in the White House.
That struck me as highly unlikely, as Jelaluddin rarely left the front or Tribal Areas. Why would he go to Washington D.C. for a pomp and circumstance ceremony?
If the statement WERE true, why has not a single photo been produced? Surely there would have many taken at such a photo-opportunity.

Lastly, as I recall, the article above appeared on a very suspicious site: that of The Council on Foreign Relations. Seems to me that's where I originally read it.

Anand Gopal seems to be collaborating with them. Hmmm.
If you study who the CFR is, you can get the picture that they are a strong arm of that New World Order stuff. Stay away!
[If anyone is interested to read a good investigation of this and related power elite organizations, check out "The True Story of the Bilderberger Group" by Daniel Estulin. The title and cover seem innocuous, but you will never be the same again, for the well-documented investigation gives a key to what really is behind American and European policy-making. Hence these wars.

[شمله ور خراساني]

Anand Gopal, Ahmed Rashid and Abdul Hadi Hairan (hairan on Pashtunforums) are quite similar characters.

If you google where hairan works, how he gets paid and what kind of events his organization (Caps) participate in, you will understand why he is so persistent in shoving the American version of the story down peoples throat.

After all, his organization, CAPS which is lead by Hekmat Karzai (causing of you know who) is founded and designed as project to influence the media.

I was quite amused to see his articles appear on huffington post.

[شمله ور خراساني]

Sangar do you mean our very own PF hairan?

yes. He is employed by a front organization by the name of CAPS

[Catya Sher]

Interesting about the three of them.

I always have had the most skeptical feeling about the widely quoted 'expert' Ahmed Rashid.
I knew he doesn't give a very balanced viewpoint to my own point of view.

Could you explain more, as I don't know any details, just my instincts.

As for Anand Gopal, first, why is a person of Indian origin so fascinated by Afghanistan? I saw a video where he was interviewed and said he gave up a career in business to pursue journalism. If true, he should get proper credit for idealism.
HOWEVER - I felt suspicious of his articles in The Christian Science Monitor, for whom I used to write on Afghanistan myself, as exactly toeing the US government's and media's "party line" which is monolithic. The same old garbage is repeated over and over and never challenged.

When Anand Gopal found a few supposedly former Haqqani commanders and dug up some very minor information about their group, he was probably immediately signed up as an expert. Anyone could have done that with even the tiniest bit of effort.

This is one flaw in the American system: if someone - anyone - travels even once to a remote war-torn area, they are billed thereafter as "expert" and taken into the elite policymaking circles slowly but surely.

Personally I would like to see REAL Truth get out there to the world, not this limited and often artificial or contrived version.

Yes Anand did sound reasonably intelligent.
Deep down, though, I questioned why would Pashtuns, or any Muslims, confide their deepest secrets to a person of Indian background? Wouldn't they have some reservations about that? They would say a few things, but not give away to him rthe most important elements and information.
Do you agree, Sangar and anyone else?

If my intuition is correct, Anand is a lousy choice for the CFR and The Christian Science Monitor to rely upon as authoritative source for analysis of Jelaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani and the entire region. But these places don't care: they want propaganda value to back up American government actions - but NOT truth!! The Monitor USED to be the most independent and balanced of all major US newspapers. Now it has sunk to the same blandness as the rest.

I would definitely like to hear more about Ahmed Rashid if you care to explain. Thanks!

I will check out this CAPS. Thanks for the background info which explains Hairan's attitude. I have no idea who is who anymore over there!

[شمله ور خراساني]

I don't know much about Anand Gopal. But I have same suspicion as you do. You have pretty much said everything that I was sort of guessing at before.

About Ahmed Rashid, interesting points in his first book about Taliban:

He claimed to be present at every major event in Afghanistan. My question is: HOW?

And how is it possible that Ahmed Rashid said so much about the Taliban, but he very carefully dodged the massacres in Kabul in the early 90's by other factions. He very briefly touched upon some of the atrocities committed by the opponents of the Taliban. Yet he wrote dozens of pages describing crimes committed by the Taliban.

But what are his sources? Hear-say? How is it possible that a man writes a book about the Taliban that only came to existence in mid 90's and were ousted from power within 5 years and yet, Ahmed Rashid claims that his book was 20 years in the making? Most of the Taliban commanders could barely walk and talk 20 years before Ahmed Rashid published his book.

He describes the Taliban era as very harsh, barbaric and cruel. And he claims to know all of it. But how does he know all of that? Did he travel in Afghanistan back then? I don't think so.

His story and his lies have been used as a source by practically anybody who needed a polemic argument against Taliban.

What's even more shocking, is how he goes on to say how nice Karzai is in his second book about Afghanistan. Descent into Chaos. He never mentions the fact that Karzai was a consultant for an American energy company. He pictures him as a tribal social activist.
But yet, in his previous books he claims to be a witness of an incident when a top representative from an Argentinian energy company wearing a suite visited Mullah Rahmani in Kandahar.

Again, he was absent when thousands of people were being butchered in Kabul and women gang-raped mutilated and then raised on top of wooden poles on sides of the road by Ahmed Shah Masoud and Mohaqiq and Khalilis men.

But he was present at this incident when Taliban were dealing with Argentinians.

He claims that Karzai would come to his office and talk about the fate of his people and how Taliban have ruined eveything.

Yet, Rashid is totally silent now. He doesn't say a word about the Karzai tyranny.

When I heard his lecture at CFR, I was disgusted to see how even Afghans start to rely on him as a source of expertise on Afghanistan & Taliban.

Oh...and Abdul Hadi Hairan and the rest of the CAPS crew, they also attend workshops and seminars where PsyOps crowd gathers to socialize and exchange material with each other. You should check out where the CAPS crw hangs out recently.

I guess they make good money.

[khyaal]

I think you don't know about these things:

1) More than three million children are studying in thousands of schools now in the country where there were only total about 10 schools (and that in the worst conditions) during the Taliban.

2) Modren roads and railway lines are being built in the areas where the Taliban drove Pakistan-imported donkeys.

3) 24 hours electricity is provided in the cities where the Taliban did their press conferences using candles.

4) About 400 media outlooks (about 350 of them independent) are functioning where there was only one Taliban-run sharia radio during the Taliban.

5) About 15 million Afghans have access to telephones and 3 million to internet where only a few Taliban officials had telephones and that also with Pakistani numbers, not Afghan.

6) More than 10 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan, Iran, and European countries during the past 9 years, while about 2 million had fled Afghanistan during the 6 years of Taliban (there were only about 3 million people in Afghanistan when they seized power).

7) There is a functioning army, police force, intelligence force, courts, electoral system, and other infrastructure while none of them existed during the Taliban.

8) There is a rich museum and many more cultural and historical treasurers which attract many tourists from around the world while all these things were looted and sold out in Peshawar's kabari bazaar during the Taliban.

excellent reply, hairan wrora!

[Catya Sher]

Thank you Sangar for that summary about Ahmed Rashid.
Who do you think he really is, then? A propagandist, paid by ___________?

i know why I could never look at his books. I also happened to see the start of an interview on a video and felt he was just saying empty words, and shut it off immediately. Not impressive.

What about Rahimullah Yusufzai ? What do you think? I don't have any knowledge myself.

I disliked the CAPS the minute it showed on the screen. Looks like a typical fake project that blabs away, tries to appear important, but accomplishes little if anything good.

Who are they a front for, the Cia, are you hinting?