A dubious Community Defense Initiative

McChrystal, has also earmarked $1.3 billion to fund local ‘anti-Taliban’ militias in fourteen areas. McChrystal refuses to disclose details to his NATO allies. And who is to say that armed attacks of these US-funded ‘anti-Taliban’ gangs is ‘Taliban’ or ‘anti-Taliban?’

They are dubbed Community Defense Initiative. It is controlled by Special Forces Group, reports directly to McChrystal. other NATO members are kept out of his US arming of local militias.

there is strong opposition within other NATO member states to the idea of arming local militias. McChrystal has outsourced local militia operations to Arif Noorzai, who is widely distrusted. This is an integral part of the Petraeus ‘surge’ strategy.

On May 19, the Pentagon press services said ‘insurgents’ had launched an assault on Baghram. The previous day, suicide bombers attacked a convoy in Kabul. The US military reported that the Taliban claimed credit.

What is not clear is whether the ‘insurgents’ were some of the thousands of freshly-armed locals recruited by Arif Noorzai, loosely-supervised Community Defense Initiative, or Afghanis genuinely resisting US military assaults and atrocities. Also
whether the Taliban claim of masterminding were just political opportunism, a ploy to make them appear stronger

Pentagon uses private contractors in Afghanistan to do what under law the US Armed Forces are prohibited. This is the privatization of warfare. An New York Times article detailed secret and illegal private military contractors under Lockheed Corporation — ‘Strategic Influence Alternatives’ (sic) or ‘American International Security Corporation’ —to carry out operations in eastern Afghan and Pakistan. One such network supervised by CIA veteran Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, ‘counter-terror’ expert in the CIA’s 1980s drug-running Nicaraguan Contras operations

Arming local Afghan militias, deploying private military mercenary companies not bound by Geneva Conventions on warfare or any Afghani laws, comprised of Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries directed by veteran US intelligence officials—this is all a recipe with a colossal potential to spread wars and conflict like a wild brushfire. The record of the US military commands in Iraq, as well as now in Afghanistan, suggests this is in fact their intent—Low Intensity Operations as a method of expanding the war, all under the deceptive umbrella of the NATO ‘Peace Keeping Operation.’