An Afghan man is being tried in a court in Kabul for his conversion from Islam to Christianity.

He could be sentenced to death for the act and his refusal to recant.

The trial of Abdul Rahman reflects the struggle between religious hardliners and reformists over what shape Islam will take in Afghanistan.

Bombed BACK to the stoneage?

Yeah, we all believe America is funding the Taliban.

If there are any Taliban left to plant those bombs.

I hear US and UK forces are eliminating Taliban fighters at the rate of up to 2000 a month,especially in the lawless Helman province.

The Taliban only held on to a very small perecentage of Afganistan, in isolated regions.The taking back of these regions is happening at a fast rate.

If there are any Taliban left to plant those bombs.

I hear US and UK forces are eliminating Taliban fighters at the rate of up to 2000 a month,especially in the lawless Helman province.

More than 600 people, mostly militants, have been killed in the past month

Whoo hoo hoo! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stor...MS&SECTION=HOME


So thats at over 20 a day for June.Havn't your newspapers and news channels of choice been reporting these facts Barmy??

I have read reports that 2000 have been killed in a previous single month of heavy fighting.Although i admit, it doesn't average out a 2000 a month (thats why i said up to 2000 a month.)

Some people are such bad losers.

Some people are such bad losers.

So 400 died in May.600 in June.So that means Reuters think not one person died in January,Februrary,March, or April.Or were Reuters figures compiled before June.Which means they took their estimates from only the months January to May.

And i bet you googled after you posted.

And as for the figure of 2,000 who knows where that was from.

Whoo hoo hoo! Freedom and democracy are NUMBER ONE!

This account shows how difficult things are in Afghanistan now. A Sunday Times journalist describes an attack on quite a large force of british troops, by, as she describes them, Afghans in rubber sandals.
She says when they called for air support, but it wasn't available. A lucky escape for the british, but more Afghans dead. The killing of hundreds in recent months was thought to have made the locals less well disposed towards the occupation.
A captain describes seeing ten or fifteen men walking below them, and firing into them with heavy machine guns. ''All that was left of those guys was red mist'' he said.
Flippin' hell this is serious. Have you ever used a pistol?

This account shows how difficult things are in Afghanistan now. A Sunday Times journalist describes an attack on quite a large force of british troops, by, as she describes them, Afghans in rubber sandals.
She says when they called for air support, but it wasn't available. A lucky escape for the british, but more Afghans dead. The killing of hundreds in recent months was thought to have made the locals less well disposed towards the occupation.
A captain describes seeing ten or fifteen men walking below them, and firing into them with heavy machine guns. ''All that was left of those guys was red mist'' he said.
Flippin' hell this is serious. Have you ever used a pistol?

Here's another article from Max Hastings.
It's the third time I've put up articles of his, and as he was once the editor of the daily telegraph, he might be dismissed as a tory.
But have a read. The man is livid. As a military historian, he knows what he is talking about.

Bloody betrayal.

--snip--
The way to help the Afghans is to train and fund local security services and armed forces - and I don't mean "Here's a AK-47; point it at the enemy and fire," I mean proper training and proper equipment. That is something that the British Army could do very well and would have a far greater and lasting impact on the country.

Holland sends 1400 troups to Hellmand too.
Pointless.

I think they're doing that too... not that there's any shortage of AK47s

Btw any particular reason why you think Afghans are unable to differentiate different sorts of foreigner? seen some interviewed on telly who didn't seem best pleased with the Arabs turning up there to have a holy war.

Yeah.Its pointless in trying to stop an evil bullying regime,which used its land as a base for global terrorism and for exporting the scurge of illegal drugs around the world.How pointless

And how pointless it is to try to quell the re forming and re emergence of that destuctive and dangerous regime in a NOW free and democratic soverign state.How pointless

It was right for the world community to remove the Taliban regime from Afganistan,and it is right to now ensure that they don't regain a foothold in Afganistan.End of. You may agure what went on before, past foreign policy..etc,to your hearts content.It doesn't change the fact that tough decisions have to be made TODAY.What should have happened in an ideal fantasy world in the past (with the benifit of hindsight),is of no relevence to discisions that have to be made in the present.I'm afraid some people obsessions with the past and ideologicaly perfect 'world senarios', are twisted their persepctive on right & wrong and of justice ,fairness,and safety in the present.So is their inbuilt hated for The West/Bush/Blair/Uk/US..etc.

Your ignorance really is quite astonishing KLF. Under the Taliban the poppy was being eradicated. It was seen as un-Islamic to make heroin - plain and simple. Under the new regime of course the poppy harvest gets better every year....

Everytime the Americans or Nato kill some Afghans they push more Afghans into the hands of the Taliban.

What do you not understand about that? And the more that Mayor of Kabul Hamid Karzai is seen as using the NATO and US forces the more he loses support in the provinces were the Taliban stand to make gains.
The current British mission will not destroy the Taliban - it will strengthen them.

Just like the war in Iraq has strengthened the Jihadi's so will this new emerging war in Afghanistan.

The British public will not take a large amount of dead in Afghanistan - if the death toll carries on like it has it will overtake the losses of British forces in Iraq quite quickly.As it stands the current operation will quickly become politically untenable

Ok - the world community didn't remove the Taliban (you are ignorant even of recent history). The Americans did - at least they provided serious aerial bombardment so that the Northern Alliance could enter Kabul. But they didn't send anywhere near the number of troops needed to provide security and training so that a functioning state could be created so handed over control of most of Afghanistan to the warlords. Remember Bush wasn't into nation-building - he just wanted to go after Al-Qaeda.

That is the situation as it is - The Taliban were never really defeated - they were removed from power

- and what is happening NOW is not going to stop the Taliban. The Taliban will quite happily pick our 3,000 UK troops off one-by-one - no matter how many of them get killed.

If you bothered to read what I had said before instead of going off on one of you incredibly dull, boring and predictable rants, you would see that I did offer a solution for now - what Afghanistan needs is well trained, competent, well paid security services and an army. Occupying forces cause resentment and hatred wherever they are: they are never welcome.

And if you want the farmers to stop growing heroin you need to think seriously about cutting the demand as well as trying to choke the supply.

http://servizi.radicalparty.org/documents/...=detail&par=266
Afghanistan is not only the world's largest producer of opium but it is also becoming a major manufacturer of heroin.
In fact, Talibans have proven unwilling or unable to ban opium poppy cultivation and heroin manufacture. Talibans continue to collect taxes on harvested opium poppy crop and manufactured heroin. In recent UN surveys it is stated that approximately 75% of the world production of opium takes place in Afghanistan with cultivation spreading to new zones "In Afghanistan, the area under illicit cultivation of opium poppy seems to have exceeded 90,000 hectares in the 1998/1999 growing season; it thus increased by over 40% compared with the 1997/1998 growing season" INCB Reports (E/INCB/1999/1, pg. 52). In 1999, the first year of the "drug-free" era, the production of illicit crops reached a record level of about 4,600 tons, enough to meet the annual demand for opium and heroin in the region, Western Europe and the United States twice over according to UNDCP Executive Director Mr. Pino Arlacchi.

Source: CBC News
Date: 04 July 2001
Afghanistan bans growing of poppies for opium

Reporter: Patrick Brown

The United Nations Drug Control Program says the world's biggest heroin producing country, Afghanistan, has gone out of the drug business.

A UNDCP report to be released next month will say Afghanistan has completely eradicated cultivation of the opium poppy, the plant producing the resin which is refined into heroin.

"We do not grow poppies and we will not grow them. This is a Taliban edict and it must be obeyed," Sheikh Rashimi, leader of the village of Spenghagbarga, told the CBC's Patrick Brown.

Spenghagbarga is just a dusty truck stop of a village. It used to be a way station on the long journey from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the heroin dealers on the streets of Moscow, London, New York and Vancouver.

The Taliban's ban on opium products has cost many people their livelihoods. But no one dares defy the ban.

Last year Afghanistan produced almost 4,000 tonnes of opium. This year's figure is zero.

Bernard Frahi of the UN Drug Control Program confirms those numbers. But now, he says, Afghanistan's farmers need help.

"Since they did something that is remarkable, and deserve respect by the international community, they deserve our respect and support to help their families," he said.

Last year Mohammed Nasir had a flourishing and valuable crop of opium poppies. This year his crop is mostly weeds. His income from the wheat and cotton he can grow will be a fraction of what he made growing opium poppies.

"If we had help with irrigation," he says, "seeds, fertilizer, it would be easier to make up the difference."

Canada's ambassador to Pakistan, Ferry De Kerckhove, says Canada is among countries seeking ways to help. But, without helping the oppressive Taliban regime.

"We are not rewarding the Taliban, what we are trying to do it help labourers and farmers and I am perfectly at ease with that," said De Kerckhove.

It seems clear that the West has been taken by complete surprise by this total eradication of the opium poppies in Afghanistan. The test will be to see if the West can now provide aid before hardship forces Afghanistan's farmers to risk growing poppies again.

All well and good,but why is Helmand province, at present, Afganistans main producer of Poppy,when it is the only part of Afganistan that the Taliban are in control of?
And why are the Taliban persuading the local farmers,that the Troops have come to destroy their poopy fields and deny them their livelyhood.IF the Taliban had this policy of being anti-Poppy/Opium.It didn't last very long,and stopped before the invasion.And doesn't look as if they have it at present either.

AN OPEN LETTER TO FAUSTO BERTINOTTI ON AFGHANISTAN

8 July 2006

Dear Fausto:
I was surprised to hear that Rifondazione was preparing to vote in favour of keeping Italian troops in Afghanistan, for ‘humanitarian reasons’. I want to try and convince you that this would be a serious error, just as I argued in the last century with those on the left, who supported the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
Big powers or surrogate states acting on their behalf have no right to occupy countries. The two big projects of the global neo-liberal order have been (1) to insist that the new capitalism is the ‘sole’ way of organising humankind from now till the planet implodes and (2) to disregard national sovereignty as a key to international relations in the name of ‘human rights’.
A few weeks after 9/11, I debated a leading Bush ideologue, Charles Krauthammer for one hour on Canadian television. He admitted that the war in Afghanistan was as I had put it ‘a crude war of revenge.’ Three days ago the CIA disbanded its special unit created to track and exterminate Osama Bin Laden, a tacit acknowledgement that the situation had changed drastically since 9/11. So what is the function of NATO armies in Afghanistan? ‘Human Rights’? Even conservative journalists in Britain (whose soldiers are being killed regularly) would laugh at any such assumption. One of them, Simon Jenkins, recently returned from a trip to Kabul and wrote a public warning to Blair:
“The debacle of Britain-in-Afghanistan cannot be ignored, because British troops are at risk. They were never meant to be at risk and their presence in that country has nothing to do with British security. They are sweltering and dying in Helmand not to prop up an embattled regime in Kabul, for which they are hopelessly undermanned, but to keep NATO alive in Europe, an unworthy mission… How did the Americans induce NATO in 2004 to become Hamid Karzai's mercenary army? What intelligence did the cabinet receive from Washington, where officials openly spoke of dumping Afghanistan on uppity NATO to teach it a lesson after the Balkan shambles? …Every assessment I have heard suggests that the sort of campaign envisaged by the government in southern Afghanistan would require not 3,000 or even 10,000 troops, but over 100,000. Even the latter total has failed in Iraq, and Iraqis cannot hold a candle to Afghans for insurgent fanaticism.” (The Guardian, 5 July, 2006)
There is simply no excuse for the NATO presence in Afghanistan except that of pleasing Washington. In recent weeks the killing of Afghan civilians has increased tenfold. Headlines which speak of ‘500 Taliban killed’ are deliberate disinformation. As was predicted by some of us at the time, the Afghans do not like being occupied and would begin to resist sooner or later. Fausto, ask yourself why there should be any foreign troops there at all.
That the centre-left supports NATO and backs most US wars is well known. Let them do it with the support of Fini, Bossi and Berlusconi (they are, after all, of the same opinion). Why should the occupation of a foreign country be treated as a vote of confidence? And if it is, the honest answer has to be: we do not have any confidence in the NATO presence in Afghanistan. For Rifondazione to vote in favour would be a tragedy for the European Left, and I fear can only lead to disasters both in Afghanistan and in terms of creating an alternative in Italy. If you get into arguments such as the character of the regime that might follow a Western withdrawal you will be swimming in a dangerous sea. Don’t forget the pathetic imperial past of your own state. The invasions of Albania and Abyssinia by Mussolini were explained by the same logic: we are taking European civilization to these backward feudal monarchic states. Regime change was not acceptable them and it should not be now.
I write as an old friend of Rifondazione. I hope I can remain one after the vote next Tuesday.
Yours fraternally,
Tariq Ali

Lee.This is a discussion and debating forum.Stop just copying and pasting articles that are sympathetic to your own views.Its lazy propoganda spreading.