"Million Dollar Militia" - Fascinating Insight Into Dangerous US 'Buying' Of Afghan Tribes Strategy

[Turborama]

Run time: 24:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA9D--Akmsc   Posted on YouTube: September 01, 2010 By YouTube Member: AlJazeeraEnglish Views on YouTube: 2925   Posted on DU: September 03, 2010 By DU Member: Turborama Views on DU: 683

 
(If you don't have time to watch it now, I thoroughly recommend bookmarking it for later)

People & Power examines dangerous conflicts between the US and NATO strategies in the fight against the Taliban.

Early this year, a rare bright spot emerged in the US's longest war. The Shinwari tribe of eastern Afghanistan signed a treaty pledging to expel the Taliban from their territory and to end poppy cultivation and heroin production.

In return the US military pledged $1mn in aid to be paid directly to the Shinwari, bypassing the Afghan government in the process.

Comparisons were immediately drawn to the "Awakening Movement" in Iraq, where Sunni tribal militias were hired to fight the insurgency.

Others warn that bypassing the Afghan government in this way could undermine an already fragile state.

So who are the US's new tribal allies? And can they really help bring lasting stability to Afghanistan?

Filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jason Motlagh went to find out.

Can be watched here in very high quality, too: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/09/201091142034452109.html

Previous People & Power episodes can be watched here in full: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2007/06/20086150543219186.html

[Arctic Dave]

1. Bookmarked

[GreenTea]

2. Deficit raising, using & drainning OUR tax dollars....

Get the fuck out of Afghanistan and occupying the region.

[OhioChick]

3. Bookmarked for later n/t

[sabrina 1]

4. That is the kind of programming the American people should

be seeing. I think if we did, this war would have ended years ago.

It is interesting to hear the views of the people who live there and who will, as they pointed out in the end, still live there long after the NATO has left.

I don't believe anything positive can be achieved there. The U.S. on the one hand has set up a government that they are now undermining, by paying tribal leaders directly for their support. And a government that the tribal leaders do not trust and probably will never support as it would undermine their own power. Plus they all know that the U.S. will do what it did before. It's not like it is that long ago.

Two super powers turned that country into a Mad Max-like nightmare. If anything demonstrates the evils of war, it is the decline of Afghanistan from what it was before the Super Powers used it as a chess board, and then left it, destroyed when they had no use for it anymore. Only to return when they found a use for it once again. As a pathway to the oil in the Caspian Sea.

We should never have been there, in the eighties or now, not as a military force anyhow. But we do owe that country, so does the Soviet Union for destroying it.

I believe that a deal could have been made with the Taleban right after 9/11 and slowly over time maybe with the money poured into this war, being used to rebuild what we helped destroy, with conditions such as women being restored to their previous status eg, help to change things for the better.

Also, I know there are other voices in Afghanistan we rarely hear from, women, democratic voices. Those are the people who should be getting help. Noticed there were no women in this film. The War Lords we are helping are not much different from the Taleban when it comes to the way they treat women.

I don't see how the path they are on over there can lead to anything but an eventual withdrawal with nothing having changed in ten years or more, except a lot of lives lost and a lot of U.S. tax dollars wasted.

The program is definitely worth watching ...

[ihavenobias]

5. # 8 n/t