Protest/Press Conference

Press release: Embargoed till Thursday 14th May 2009 at 10am.

Press conference/protest called by The Scottish Afghan Society

Venue:
Outside the U.S. Consulate General Edinburgh, Scotland
3 Regent Terrace
Edinburgh EH7 5BWDay/Time: Thursday 14 May 2009, 10.00am



Confirmed attendee’s include:
Sandra White, SNP MSP
David Hayman, Actor and Director- Spirit Aid
Stop the War Coalition

Others invited
Pauline McNeill Labour MSP
Rose Gentle - Military Families

The Stop the War Coalition will launch its national petition to get the troops out of Afghanistan.

The petition wording is as follows:
Nothing the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, and the destabilisation of Pakistan arising from the NATO military intervention in the region and believing that only the Afghan people themselves can generate a political solution to their country’s problems, therefore demand that the government commence the withdrawal of all British military forces from Afghanistan.

Contact for further information:
Mohammad N Asif, Chair, Scottish Afghan Society – 07779573331-nmasif@hotmail.com

Notes to the editors
The war in Afghanistan was supposed to have been won without firing a shot. Today over 160 British soldiers are dead. Countless thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed and millions are refugees.
Another US air strike killed 147 civilians in the Farah province in Afghanistan, another promise by the Pentagon to "investigate".
Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan, -- adding another 21,000 troops -- will bring more death and destruction and ensure a steady supply of "collateral damage".
The Bush "war on terror" has been rebranded as "overseas contingency operations" by the Obama administration but everything remains the same.
Gordon Brown, visiting British troops in Afghanistan, said, "Afghanistan and Pakistan are the breeding ground, the crucible of terrorism. A chain of terror links these areas to the streets of many of the capital cities of the world."
He's right of course. The more terror the US and British armed forces rain down on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the more the victims who survive will be driven to acts of desperation against the perpetrators.
103 times more people have been killed in Iraq & Afghanistan than in all terrorist attacks between 1993 and 2004. So, who's the terrorist?
There will be no solution to terrorism until America and Britain end their occupations of mass slaughter and destruction in other people's countries. Which is why the 2009 Stop the War national conference voted to step up its campaign for a total withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan and for the restoration of Afghan sovereignty within international law.

End.

THE TWIN IDIOTS OF AFG-PAK WAR

The Twin Idiots (Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Zardari of Pakistan) went to Washington to meet the man who is responsible for the killing of Pashtoons on both sides of the Durand line. Villagers dug dirt graves Wednesday to bury what the international Red Cross said were dozens of Afghans — including women and children — killed in American bombing runs. A former Afghan government official said up to 120 people may have died. On the other side of the border more than 40,000 people have so far fled from clashes between the army and militants in Swat, officials’ say. Fighting erupted on Tuesday night in Mingora, Swat's main town, where the Taliban defied a curfew, they add.

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the deaths only unacceptable but does not have the guts and courage to tell the American clearly and bluntly that they must stop or otherwise leave our country. He was speaking only hours before his first face-to-face meeting with the American President at the White House. The current war in Afghanistan and Tribal areas of Pakistan is only against the Pashtoons.The death toll that has resulted from the 2001 illegal invasion of Afghanistan is estimated between fourty and eighty thousand. Indisputably, the overwhelming majority have been Pashtoons. This is unsurprising given that most resistance groups are Pashtoon and operate from Pashtoon areas; yet enormous numbers of Pashtoon civilians have also been killed. Air raids are indiscriminate and based on fatally flawed intelligence - the USAF have been effectively tricked, in several instances, into assassinating Pashtoon tribal elders by rival tribes or warlords who had deliberately fed them false information.

Only 3,500 innocent people died in 9/11 attack but more than one million were killed in Iraq and still no end to it. More than 80,000 were killed in Afghanistan and are still being killed. How much the US and its allies want to kill? How long America and Britain want to go on the killing spree? America and Britain has not apologised yet for the killing of Iraqis and Afghans but only has regret.

Mr. Obama and his predecessor both responsible for sidelining the country majority and have chosen to give power to a tiny minority (Northern Alliance) Despite comprising more than 50% of Afghanistan’s total population of 32m, the Pashtoons remain poorly represented at all levels of government. Whilst a number of ministers are ethnic Pashtoons, they are mostly coalition installed, pro-American, foreign nationals: Hamid Karzai’s links to US business interests are well documented; the defence minister and former finance minister are American citizens; the foreign minister, German; and the Interior minister, British - tribal Pashtoons do not see them as acting in their interests. Many Pashtoon parties are outlawed - not one is currently active in government - meaning that all Pashtoon ministers are therefore Independents, with little effective power. Real political power lies in the hands of the Northern Alliance warlords - many of whom have committed numerous war crimes, not least against the Pashtoons. From history we learned that Obama and his predecessors played the great game to create problems among the countries, armed tribes against tribes, nation against nation to safeguard their own interests. The Drone attack inside Pakistan has been intensified, and the genocide of the Pashtoon tribal belt continued unabated. Last year Pakistan finally closed camps that had housed Afghan refugees for three decades. During the past six months it's been forced to reopen them, this time for its own people.

Both Hamid Karzai and Asif Zardari are standing with Barack Obama but the big question is who is standing with the victims of the American and NATO bombing? No family has received an apology and compensation for the lost of their loved ones but only regret which can not heal the wounds of the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan but it only make them stronger to resist the illegal occupation. Asif Zardari is a very weak leader and has no guts to confront the Americans. Here he is with Wolf Blitzer.

“My government is not going to fall,” Zardari assured Blitzer as he sat with the cable news host in the Situation Room — not the one in the White House, but the one in CNN’s Washington bureau near Union Station. Blitzer directed Zardari to watch a presentation of the Taliban’s gains on CNN’s “magic map” plasma screen.
“Exaggerated,” Zardari said. “We’ve been giving them a fight.”
“Do you need American help?” Blitzer offered.
“I need drones,” Zardari said.
Luckily, Blitzer had some drone footage. “If you turn around over there, you can see some pictures,” Blitzer said. Zardari obliged. Next, Blitzer directed him to look at a video of a CNN “iReport” from a Pakistani College student in Florida. “Turn around and you can see him,” Blitzer ordered. Zardari, looking bewildered by Blitzer’s arsenal of plasma screens, obeyed.
“Are you going to send your troops in,” Blitzer demanded, “and clean out that area from the Taliban and al-Qaeda?”
“Most definitely,” Zardari promised Blitzer was satisfied. “Mr. President,” he said, “good luck.”
Hamid Karzai is no different than Zardari. The Afghan army and NATO forces are not able to fight against the resistance groups inside Afghanistan. The American, British and NATO rely on their air power as their ground forces are not capable of fighting the opposition. Every time a battle take place on the ground the Afghan President will urgently give a miss call to B52 and F16 to rescue them. It's too late now; the incompetent TWIN IDIOTS (Hamid Karzai and Asif Zardari) of this blighted land have made the things go beyond the point of no return.

Mohammad N Asif
Exiled Afghan Journalist
Chair, Scottish Afghan Exiles
nmasif@hotmail.com