After seven months of blockade, the US and Pakistan on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding reopening NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. And the Taliban are reportedly happy about it.
The reopening of the supply routes means the US can move arms and equipment to its troops occupying Afghanistan for billions of dollars cheaper than going through the northern route. Additionally, it means that the Pakistani government will again be eligible for increase US aid.
But the two uneasy allies aren’t the only ones getting a monetary benefit from the agreement. In 2010, the Taliban and related warlords managed to raise $360 million, and more than half that amount stolen from convoys along the supply routes.
“Stopping these supplies caused us real trouble,” one Taliban commander told the Associated Press. “Earnings dropped down pretty badly. Therefore the rebellion was not as strong as we had planned.”
“We are able to make money in bundles,” another commander told the AP. “Therefore, the NATO supply is very important for us.”
Essentially, even when the clumsy US counterinsurgency mission believes itself to have gained a strategic advantage in the lost war in Afghanistan, it unknowingly screws itself and benefits the enemy.
And one of the best measures of the failed Afghan adventure is the continuing loss of U.S. soldiers
with seven confirmed dead yesterday July, 30. The forty one U.S. soldiers killed in July, 2012, is proof the Afghan mission is a failure and the rate of U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan remains at a very high level despite the alleged draw down of NATO soldiers.
You know you're an idiot when "The Enemy" sends you thank-you-notes. …well thank God it's cheaper than that other way to suck us dry.
Great news, the freedom fighters are extracting their dues from the cowardly invaders which enables them to kick ass. Poetic justice.
You'd think the USG might be just a little embarrassed by this admission…you'd think. I mean, it's one thing to be a closet fool, but to have it all out in the open for everyone to see – and continue to carry on regardless…classic.
Well I guess either all that talk about all of Afghanistan's opium going to a 50-60 billion dollar world heroin market to the benefit of the Taliban is either a load of crap or them thar Taliban are mighty greedy.
How else can you have a perpetual war? That seems to be the objective here.
"War is a racket". When you privatize your army, everybody in the show gets a cut.
Taliban commanders don't speak like that. I don't believe those quotes are real, but the gist of the story is probably true.
Typos:
"…eligible for increaseD U.S. aid."
Second sentence, third paragraph, "and" should be "with."
Please understand that the program is to conquer what was an ideologically communist people…President Dr. Mohammad Najibullah established the Republic of Afghanistan after the Soviet Union fell and Russian troops left. He managed to hold out until 1996 when he was murdered by the CIA/DIA/ISI backed "Mujahideen", a mercenary force. Nothing has really changed in that equation except the names and methods used their players.