|
How the US Funds the Taliban
Aram Roston
The Nation
Thursday, Nov 12th, 2009
On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban's rule
over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador
in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several
dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's
right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an
imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban,
and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his
right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right
hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during
an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.
But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen.
In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had
been charged in the United States with conspiring to import
more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released
from prison in 1997.
Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal's
cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard
down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy
businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate
case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn.
The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan,
a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most
important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals' private
military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies
in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort,
is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to
Kandahar, carrying American supplies.
Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It
is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections,
with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands
with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government
funds in the name of the war effort.
Full
article here
"When the people find they can vote themselves
money, that will herald the end of the republic."
- Fall Of The Republic - Buy
the DVD here
|
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
|
