Kerry’s Middle East Tour Prepares Endless War in Afghanistan, Syria
By Alex Lantier
March 27, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"WSWS" - US Secretary of
State John Kerry left Kabul for Paris yesterday, after a Middle Eastern
tour to Jordan and Afghanistan to plan broader wars across the region.
In Paris today, he is expected to discuss arming opposition forces
fighting Washington’s proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
with French officials.
During his unannounced two-day visit in Kabul, Kerry held a joint press
conference with President Hamid Karzai, the leader of the American
puppet regime in Afghanistan. He announced that US forces will remain in
Afghanistan beyond the Obama administration’s 2014 withdrawal deadline.
Kerry and Karzai both called upon the Taliban to open an office in Doha,
the capital of the US-allied Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, from which
location they could negotiate with Karzai. To encourage the Taliban to
accept the offer, Kerry stressed that the Taliban should not count on a
US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Currently there are some 100,000 occupation troops in the country,
including 66,000 US forces. American officials have reportedly discussed
a lasting presence of roughly 12,000 US and European troops in Afghanistan.
Kerry also offered to hand over formal control of Bagram prison to the
Karzai regime. This was apparently designed to allow Karzai to posture
cynically before the Afghan people, claiming he is restoring Afghan
sovereignty over the country. The US-controlled prison, notorious for
the killings and torture of Afghan resistance fighters imprisoned there,
has become a hated symbol of the NATO occupation.
This action was apparently aimed at smoothing US relations with Karzai,
strained after the latter criticized Washington for “colluding” with the
Taliban.
The handover of Bagram has nothing to do with ending US rule in
Afghanistan, however. Karzai made clear that Washington would continue
to effectively control detainees at the prison, promising that an Afghan
review board would consider intelligence provided by US authorities
before deciding to release prisoners. Afghan officials also reportedly
gave “private assurances” that no “enduring security threats” would be
released from Bagram.
By threatening to continue the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan,
Kerry is pushing the Taliban leadership to negotiate a political
settlement with Karzai that would include a lasting US protectorate in
Afghanistan. Washington’s control would rest upon US air superiority and
a permanent occupation force stationed in the country. It would be based
on collaboration between Washington, the warlords backing Karzai and the
Islamic fundamentalist leadership of the Taliban to suppress resistance
to foreign occupation by the Afghan people.
The American ruling class sees Afghanistan as a launching pad for US
operations in Central Asia, such as the hundreds of drone strikes
Washington has launched in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. The
New York Times commented, “The Obama administration has made a priority
of reaching an agreement on an American military presence here after
2014 that will allow the United States to keep tabs on Iran and Pakistan.”
Significantly, Kerry had hoped to visit Pakistan during his tour, but
decided against it. There is deep anger in that country over US drone
strikes and the collaboration of the Pakistani army and intelligence
with Washington. (See also: “UN says US drone war in Pakistan violates
international law”)
Instead, Kerry reportedly met privately with Pakistani army chief
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in the Jordanian capital of Amman on
Sunday, before traveling to Afghanistan.
Washington’s neo-colonial war in Afghanistan—like its proxy war in
Syria, Iran’s main Arab ally—aims at establishing US imperialist
hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia. This involves not only
controlling and manipulating the conflicts in Pakistan and broadly
across Asia unleashed by the Afghan war, but also organizing regime
change in Iran, an oil-rich state that Washington sees as the main
obstacle to its interests in the Middle East.
Kerry’s visits both to Amman and to Kabul were clearly bound up with
Washington’s war drive against Iran and its regional allies. As the
Secretary of State left Jordan for Afghanistan, the Associated Press
(AP) reported that the US is working in Jordan with Britain and France
to train Syrian opposition fighters. These fighters then cross the
border into southern Syria to carry out attacks.
The AP wrote that these forces were “secular” forces, apparently in an
attempt to distinguish them from Al Qaeda-linked forces that provide the
bulk of the Syrian opposition’s fighting forces. The wire service’s
description of these forces made clear, however, that they are largely
army deserters recruited on a religious or tribal basis.
It wrote, “The training has been conducted for several months now in an
unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal
Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army, officials
told the Associated Press. The forces aren’t members of the leading
rebel group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which Washington and others
fear may be increasingly coming under the saw of extremist militia
groups, including some linked to Al Qaeda.”
The AP report came a day after the New York Times published an extensive
report detailing how Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia helped finance and
arm the Syrian opposition for over a year. This took place under CIA
supervision and after General David Petraeus, the CIA director until
last November, “prodded various countries” to arm the Syrian opposition.
The White House was regularly briefed on these arms shipments. (See
also: “The CIA war against Syria”)
On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed that the US “has
provided some logistical nonlethal support that has also come in handy
for the Syrian rebels.”
With Kerry now headed to Paris to discuss stepping up the war in Syria,
the Arab League also joined in the campaign against Assad yesterday,
formally seating Syrian opposition officials as Syria’s representatives
to the Arab League.
Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani officially welcomed Moaz
al-Khatib, the former imam of Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque who recently
stepped down as the Syrian opposition’s official leader, to represent
Syria. Al-Khatib was replaced by Ghassan Hitto, a US-based information
technology executive. This move apparently aimed to present the
opposition as less Islamist and reliant on Al Qaeda-linked forces from
Libya, Iraq and Chechnya.
Al-Khatib’s speech at the Arab League made no secret of the Syrian
opposition’s continuing ties to far-right Islamist elements. Denouncing
Assad and supporting Hitto, he defended the presence of foreign jihadist
fighters among the anti-Assad militias—though he awkwardly tried to
downplay this by suggesting that if Islamist fighters’ families needed
them at home, they should return to their families.
Copyright © 1998-2013 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved
Robert Luis Rabello
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Meet the People video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txsCdh1hZ6c
Crisis video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZedNEXhTn4
The Long Journey video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4muxaksgk
_______________________________________________
Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel