SYNDICATED COLUMN: Islamo-Gangsterism


In a Deteriorating Afghanistan, a New Breed of Terror

KABUL–“In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth,” Joshua Partlow reports in The Washington Post, “Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan.”

Two other cartoonists and I were a day away from heading to Faryab–a remote, rural, Uzbek-dominated province in the northwest known for its brutally entertaining matches of buzkashi–when Partlow’s piece appeared. He described a phenomenon that deploys novel tactics out of a bizarre 1970s action flick.

It was years after the 2001 U.S. invasion before the Afghan national police began to take control of the country’s major highways. Now there are government-run gun nests every few kilometers.

Insurgents have responded to government control of the highways by basing themselves in rugged villages far away from the freshly-paved asphalt. Riding Pamir motorcycles supplied by Pakistani intelligence–thus paid for by American taxpayers–Taliban bike gangs swoop across the desert, taking one village after another.

“They move constantly on unmarked dirt roads outside the cities to ambush Afghan police and soldiers and to kidnap residents. They execute those affiliated with the government and shut down reconstruction projects,” wrote Partlow.

They now control every district in Faryab province, a vast region that borders Turkmenistan. But Afghan sources across the country say their reach is far broader. Talibikers control the center of the country in a north-south axis that begins with Faryab and Baghlis and runs all the way down to Helmand and Nimruz.

Their checkpoints and raids along the three main east-west traffic arteries have effectively bifurcated the country. Whether it’s government officials, members of NGOs or the media, you have to fly if you want to get from Kabul to Herat or vice versa.

Partlow’s article, and his personal feedback, prompted us to cancel our plan to travel to Herat via Faryab. We left Mazar-i-Sharif for Kabul. Now we’re looking for a driver willing to take us via the Central Route to Herat: a scenic, bucolic, previously calm stretch of unpaved road that begins at Bamiyan, site of the ruined Buddha statues, and runs west via Ghor province. So far, no luck.

“I wouldn’t take you there for $10,000,” is a typical response. “Why do you want to die?” runs second.

The average Afghan earns $40 a month.

South of Mazar we noticed our driver nervously scanning the desert. Several recently charred trucks testified to the presence of the Taliban. “The Taliban,” our driver said, “here they come on motorcycles.”

I asked: Even during the day?

“Even during the day,” he confirmed.

Like “Mad Max.”

What’s really worrisome is the behavior of these self-described Talibs. Like the Taliban regime that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, they enforce an extreme form of Sharia law. In village after village, they have been stoning people accused of adultery and shooting those accused of working for the Karzai puppet regime. But the similarity stops there.

The first-gen Taliban led by Mullah Omar practiced what they preached. They were scrupulously honest. Living ascetic lives, they didn’t tolerate corruption or dishonesty among their own ranks.

The so-called neo-Taliban were the second generation: the madrassa kids, many of them orphans, who grew up in the refugee camps in Pakistan during the war. Less worldly and completely uneducated, this coarse bunch came to dominate the anti-U.S. resistance from 2003 to 2009.

Here comes Taliban Mark 3: the Taliban biker gangs from hell. They’re still radical Islamists. But they’re also gangsters, brazen thieves who have adopted the thuggish behavior of the warlord class during the so-called “mujahedeen nights” of the early 1990s.

These aren’t your father’s Taliban. They don’t follow the rules: certainly not the Koran.

Like the “moojs,” Talibikers set up checkpoints and ambush points to catch motorists. They’re yanked out of their cars, robbed at gunpoint, and sent on their way–if the victims are lucky. Many have been shot to death.

“Taliban” and “bandit”–once mutually exclusive, even opposite terms–are now used interchangeably.

Everyone expects the Taliban to control most, if not all, of Afghanistan by next year. Whether it happens then or it takes longer the question is, which Taliban? As the U.S. presence wanes and influence of the Karzai regime fades even further, I foresee a clash, perhaps even a civil war, between the “real Taliban” (sales pitch: we’re tough but honest) and these self-branded Talib-cum-robbers (motto: shut up and pay up).

In the meantime, this new breed of fanatically religious desperadoes goes to prove something Afghans have always known. As bad as things seem, they can always get worse.

(Ted Rall is in Afghanistan to cover the war and research a book. He is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” which will be published in September by Seven Stories Press. His website is tedrall.com.)

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Different War, Same Situation

Nine Years Later, Afghan City is Buzzing But Still Menacing

TALOQAN, AFGHANISTAN–Nine years ago, when I was using this provincial Afghan capital as a base to cover the battle of Kunduz, Taloqan was a dangerous place with medieval charm. Donkey carts and horse-drawn carriages, their steeds decked out with red pom-poms, plied muddy ruts that passed as roads. The only motorized transport belonged to Western NGOs. Commerce consisted of a few sad huts you’d recognize as primitive convenience stores and an outdoor bazaar where 90 percent of economic activity was attributable to sales of opium paste.

In 2001 I wrote that good roads would change everything. And they have. Some time after 2005, when The New York Times reported that the U.S. hadn’t laid an inch of pavement in the entire country, road building happened–at least here in Takhar and in neighboring Kunduz province.

It’s impressive. Based on my 2001 experience and the absence of media reports that anything had changed, I had budgeted three to four days to travel from the Tajik border to Taloqan. Cruising down smooth two-lane highways at 80-plus mph–Afghan drivers apparently had a long-repressed need for speed–we made it in half an afternoon. Towers for high-tension conduits (the wires haven’t been strung yet) line the road, promising an electrified future.

The ghosts of ’01 are here–burned-out armored personnel carriers, lumps of earth where villages stood, tank treads used as speed bumps–but hard to find. Khanabad, the blood-soaked eastern front line during the battle of Kunduz, where my fellow journalist had the skin torn off his body by Taliban POWs using their bare hands, is a farm community marked by the kind of green-and-white reflectorized sign you’d see in the Midwest.

Most of Taloqan is paved. The donkeys and horses are gone. The soccer field used by the Taliban for stonings and by a Northern Alliance warlord as a helicopter landing pad is filled with kids playing on green grass. There are traffic jams (of cars and Indian-style motorized rickshaws) and white-gloved traffic cops to direct the mayhem. Business is booming. America is finished, but Taloqan is looking good.

Asphalt made a difference. But the basics–the social and political situation that in December 2001 prompted me to declare the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan doomed–remain the same.

Time magazine recently declared that the Taliban would sweep back into power after a U.S. withdrawal, brutalizing them and stuffing them back under burqas. But the Taliban never left. Neither did the repression. In Taloqan every woman but one wore the burqa, turning her head away so we couldn’t see her eyes through the netting as we passed.

Where are the Taliban? “They are all around us,” said my driver’s cousin, the campaign manager for a Canadian-Afghan actor running for parliament next month. “During the day, it is OK. They come at night.”

Indeed they do. The week before our arrival they stormed a small NATO garrison staffed by German troops at the airport here, killing seven. Cellphone signals go dead at night in deference to Taliban strictures.

In 2001 I stayed with a pharmacist in the center of town, across the street from the Red Crescent. Now Afghans are strictly prohibited from receiving foreigners as overnight guests. Only one hotel, the gaudy Ariana Hotel and Wedding Banquet Hall, can accommodate non-Afghans. “The situation in Taloqan is not good,” continued the campaign manager. “At night.”

We have the Ariana entirely to ourselves. Compared to the Spartan conditions we endured nine years ago–bed lice, outhouse guarded by a mean rooster–it’s a palace. Air conditioning, real beds, no parasitic bites as far as I can tell. There’s a generator to supplement the four hours a day of electricity supplied to the city.

But it’s a gilded cage, one surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire and guarded by a caffeinated man brandishing an AK-47. We can’t go out at night, and neither do most Afghans. There’s more prosperity. But it’s even less safe.

Money is exchanging hands. But the one thing Afghans wanted most in 2001–security–remains elusive. Though it is not a historical novelty, it is ironic that people are turning to those who create the threat in order to resolve it.

(Ted Rall is in Afghanistan to cover the war and research a book. He is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” which will be published in September by Seven Stories Press. His website is tedrall.com.)

Toonin’ in Mazar

Here’s Matt Bors and I sketching in the park adjacent to the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif a few days ago. It doesn’t look like it, but it was over 110 in the shade. The crowd got bigger, so big we couldn’t see what we were drawing and had to meander off.

More photos at Steven Cloud’s Flickr page.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Banksters Strike Again

Chase Bank and Obama’s “Make Home Affordable” Scam

SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN—It isn’t surprising, what with the world falling apart and all, that the world scarcely noticed that I lost my job as an editor in April 2009. Why should it? I was one of millions of Americans who lost their job that month.

But it mattered to me.

It wasn’t all bad. No more early morning commutes. And no more Lisa. Lisa was my boss. My mean boss. My mean and crazy boss. In the long run, I stand to save thousands of dollars on therapy.

In the meantime, however, one visit with HR cost more than half my annual income. (My ex-employer, the Scripps media conglomerate, offered just four weeks severance pay—if I agreed not to work as a journalist for the rest of my life. Needless to say, I refused.) Just like that, I was broke.

The bills, of course, kept coming. Including my home mortgage. Unlike many people, I was conservative. When I bought, in 2004, I put down more than 50 percent of the purchase price. Refusing an adjustable-rate mortgage, I took out a vanilla 30-year fixed-rate mortgage from Chase Home Finance LLC.

My monthly nut, a combined payment of $2200 for the loan plus local property tax, didn’t seem so bad in ’04. But property taxes went up. Now I’m shelling out over $2700—on half the income. I’m still making my payments on time, but only by borrowing from a home equity line of credit.

I’m not in foreclosure. But it’s easy to see how, if this keeps up, I will be. The credit line isn’t limitless. The more I borrow, the higher my payments on that. My cash flow is a disaster.

So I asked Chase for help.

Responding to political pressure to cut distressed homeowners a break, the big banks who destroyed global capitalism in 2008—including Chase—agreed to the Obama Administration’s request to create a program to assist distressed homeowners. The result was “Make Home Affordable.” (Nice name.)

From Chase’s website: “No matter what your individual situation is, you may have options. Whether your want to stay in your home or sell it, we may be able to help.”

Key word: “May.” Translation: “May” = “Won’t.”

As I can now attest from personal experience, “Make Home Affordable” is a scam. MHA is cited by bank ads as evidence that they get it, that their “greed is good” days are over, that we don’t need to nationalize the sons of bitches and ship them off to reeducation labor camps.

In reality, it exists solely to give banks like Chase political cover. They deliberately give homeowners the runaround, dragging out the process so they can foreclose. As of the end of 2009, only four percent of applicants received any help. By June 2010 the vast majority of that “lucky” four percent had lost their homes anyway—because the amount of relief they got was too small.

I was a banker in the ’80s. I often travel to the former USSR, where sloppy paperwork gives the police the right to rob you blind. So I know how to navigate bureaucracy. I’m careful. Thorough. When, among other things—many, many other things—Chase asked me for copies of my bank statements, I knew to send the blank pages too.

I explained my situation to an officer at my local Chase branch. “As someone who recently lost a job and thus a substantial portion of your income,” she said, “you clearly qualify for Make Home Affordable. But you have to keep making your payments on time. Don’t fall behind or you’ll be disqualified.”

Chase Home Finance’s lists qualifications for MHA; I easily fulfilled them. I was excited. To make sure I didn’t become the ten millionth American to lose his house since 2008, Chase would work to reduce my monthly payment. First, they would lengthen the repayment period. If that wasn’t enough help, they’d cut my interest rate. They might even reduce the principal.

I carefully filled out the forms. I copied all the financial records they demanded. I mailed them off to a brand-new loan center in Colorado that, Chase promised, had been set up to expedite the processing of HFA applications. The package was more than 100 pages thick.

That was in January.

About a month later, Chase sent me a letter asking for the same exact documents I had already sent them. I was perplexed. The application was in the same package as the supporting papers. How could they know I wanted to apply for HFA, yet not have that stuff? They also asked for another bank statement—for the month that had passed between their receipt of my application and the date of their letter.

They did it over and over. They’d confirm receipt of an item, then demand it again. They asked for one particular month’s bank record three times—after telling me that they’d gotten it twice.

Want a good laugh? Try navigating Chase’s phone tree. It’s at (866) 550-5705.

I called in March. Happy day! After submitting 318 pages of records, most of them redundant, my application was finally complete. An Actual Living Human would be in touch shortly to tell me whether I’d been approved and, if so, how much of a break I’d get. I also got a letter. Application complete! Application complete! What were all those pissed-off Chase Home Finance customers on the Internet whining about? All you had to do was be thorough. And persistent.

Alas, April brought more melancholia. Another letter: my application still wasn’t complete again. Why hadn’t I sent in the same documents I’d already sent in four times and had confirmed three times? And what about the bank statement that arrived between March and April?

I sent in the stuff along with a pissy cover note threatening to contact my Congressman if they didn’t shape up.

So what happened? Democracy works! One week later, on May 18th, I received a rejection letter. The Reason: I had not suffered any loss of income.

“If it is determined that you are not eligible for a Home Affordable Modification,” their website assures, “we’ll evaluate you for other workout options to keep you in your home or advise you of other foreclosure alternatives.” Never heard from them.

As a former banker, I wondered: How could they say that I hadn’t taken a hit? Then it came to me. Chase only asks for records that show income: W-2s, pay stubs, income statements, bank statements. They don’t look at your debt: credit cards, home equity lines of credit, other mortgages. Like most people whose income drops, my debts went up as I struggled to pay my bills. Indeed, I offered to send that stuff. They refused it!

At this time I would like to express my unvarnished admiration for the ruthless cynicism that led the executives at Chase Home Finance to conceive of a fake lending branch entirely dedicated to increasing foreclosures, improving their public image, and driving distressed homeowners crazy.

“The foreclosure-prevention program has had minimal impact,” says John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “It’s sad that they didn’t put the same amount of resources into helping families avoid foreclosure as they did helping banks.”

I would also like to volunteer for the firing squad if and when these scumbags get what they deserve.

(Ted Rall is in Afghanistan to cover the war and research a book. He is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” which will be published in September by Seven Stories Press. His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL

Greetings from Mazar-i-Sharif

Matt Bors, Steven Cloud and I have just arrived in Mazar-i-Sharif, the fourth largest city in Afghanistan, the gateway to Uzbekistan, and about the hottest and dustiest place on earth. Don’t believe the Internet: It says it’s 81 here. More like 111.

It was a brutal drive from Taloqan, where we spent two nights looking for my 2001 fixer Jovid. (Follow my daily cartoon blog to find out whether or not we were successful. It was much, much worse in 2001, before road-paving, though. Yes, most major roads in Kunduz and Takhar provinces are now paved. This might have made a favorable impression on Afghans prior to 2003, but now it appears to be too late. Everyone knows the Taliban will soon be back in charge.

Women are still in burqas, same as it ever was. Business is booming, but poverty remains widespread. And American troops are still acting like assholes: buzzing through town at high speeds, terrorizing the Afghans they’re supposedly there to help.

We plan to enjoy a few days of R&R before heading west toward Maimana. Mazar has some major architectural treasures we plan to start seeing tomorrow morning.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Libertarian War on Free Speech

It’s the Economics, [REDACTED]

SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN—Two months ago long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas got fired by her employer, the Hearst newspaper conglomerate, in response to her off-the-cuff slam at Israel. I criticized the firing on free speech grounds.

“Free speech must be defended no matter what—even that of cranky anti-Semitic columnists (if that’s what Thomas is/was),” I wrote. “Unless we are truly free to say what we think—without fear of reprisal—free speech is not a right. It is merely a permission.”

I received many letters in response. Most people disagreed with me.

A letter from Joseph Just was typical, but better written than most (which is why I quote it here):

“Ms. Thomas has been denied not one of her constitutional rights. She faces no fine, legal censure or criminal charges for saying what she said. Her immunity from the threat of such sanction (rather than immunity from being, shall we say, ‘asked to resign’) is what the First Amendment protects. The only reprisal Ms. Thomas has materially suffered (in addition to the public opprobrium directed at her) is the loss of her job at Hearst. She held her job at the pleasure of her employers, and if they decide that due her comments they no longer want her around, they are not obligated to retain her. She is not—indeed, none of us is—entitled to a forum…particularly a paid one.”

Legally, Just is right. The First Amendment does not protect us from economic reprisals. I was arguing that employers ought to choose not to fire people for speaking their minds.

Unfortunately, employers seem to be whacking people for what they say outside of work more than ever. Countless workers have gotten canned for statements they made on non-work-related blogs and social networking sites. Even more worrisome, many citizens don’t have a problem with that. Even self-described leftists have embraced the libertarian extremist view that you have the right to say whatever you want—but don’t expect to be able to feed yourself or your family if you do.

Posters at Democratic Underground, a left-of-center discussion site frequented by that rarest and most appreciated of creature, balls-out Democrats, has long been a community I’ve been able to count upon. On the Thomas issue, however, they sound like Sean Hannity. “Private organizations aren’t and shouldn’t be required to put up with speech they don’t agree with,” said one poster.” “Free speech is not guaranteed to be speech without consequences,” wrote another.

“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism,” argued a third. “It means that you can say what you want without the threat of being thrown in jail.”

Funny, these same libertarians would have freaked out if the artists who created the Danish Mohammed cartoons had all gotten fired by their newspaper.

True, the First Amendment doesn’t protect your right to keep your gig as a community banker even though you wear a swastika T-shirt and whistle the Horst Wessel song on your lunch break.

But it ought to.

If the First Amendment is to truly protect freedom of speech, it must allow Americans to say and think whatever the hell they want, no matter how outrageous. So the First Amendment should be expanded to prohibit economic reprisals.

As things stand, the First Amendment is pure sophistry, a bad joke. A right to free speech, ostensibly protected in order to encourage the vigorous exchange and discussion of ideas that make a society truly free, is meaningless if a person risks getting fired each time he opens his mouth. While it is true that some people will decide that the risk of professional opprobrium and unemployment is worth it, most people won’t. And don’t.

Consider the other basic right guaranteed under the First Amendment: freedom of worship. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for an employer to fire you because of your religion (or lack thereof). (There’s an exception for employers that are religious groups.) The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed numerous federal lawsuits against companies it accused of reprisals against employers due to their religious preference.

Why is religious expression granted greater protection than, say, political speech? It’s not because religion is inherently less offensive. To many people, religion is itself offensive.

The distinction is arbitrary and, ironically, wholly political: in the secular American republic, you have the right to say that your God is better than anyone else’s God without fear of losing your job. If Helen Thomas had thrown down a Muslim prayer carpet on the White House lawn and prayed toward Mecca, it would have been offensive to many people—she’d still be working.

Another way to examine my proposed expansion of free speech protections is to look at it from the standpoint of an employer. What would a boss stand to lose if the First Amendment were strengthened?

Certainly, employers would lose a measure of control over their workers. They would risk embarrassment. But they would also gain a big measure of CYA: when one of their staff did or said something outrageous (but constitutionally protected), they could point to the First Amendment and shrug their shoulders. In the Helen Thomas example, Hearst execs could say: “What can we do? She has the right to say whatever the hell she wants.”

Which of course she should.

(Ted Rall is in Afghanistan to cover the war and research a book. He is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” which will be published in September by Seven Stories Press. His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL

keyboard_arrow_up
css.php