The Mess That Is Afghanistan

[evworldeditor]

Last night, I spent three hours with a physician friend of mine who is an Afghan activist. I spent most of the time showing him how to maintain a web site I developed for him. (www.hipp-usa.org)

After the training session, he showed me a letter he was going to send to the Democratic National Committee on behalf of an Afghan political party he has help organize back home. The letter was an uncompromising indictment of the Bush Administration, perhaps a bit too uncompromising. I helped him redraft some of the points to tone down the rhetoric and be a bit more diplomatic.

His frustrations with the situation back home were clearly manifest in the angry tone of that letter. He told me that he had just called his sister, a physician in Jalalabad in Eastern Afghanistan, the night before. She told him that her home, located just 100 meters from the provincial governor's home, had recently been broken into by armed men allied with the controlling Northern Alliance warlord. They stripped the house of anything of value and drove off.

He also confirmed a rumor that I had heard that Afghan children are being kidnapped and murdered for their organs. He doesn't have any proof, himself, but he said he believes it to be true.

His letter goes on to warn that because of the Administration's neglect of Afghanistan and support of the Northern Alliance, Pashtun villages are again realigning themselves with the Taliban and Al Qaeda as defense against the predations of the brutal and rapacious warlords.

So, it's little wonder the government there has postponed elections until the Spring of 2005. The country is again lapses into the same conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.

We had a chance to make a difference there -- which is what he has urged all along -- to show the Moslem world that we do care about their plight, and we blew it in pursuit of an ill-advised, illegal and probably unnecessary war in Iraq.

[Fusions_Minion]

1. Some info on the possible use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan

Unanticipated outcomes of the 2002 Afghan civilian studies

Radiological measurements of the uranium concentrations in Afghan civilians’ urine samples indicate abnormally high levels of non-depleted uranium. Radiological measurements of Afghan civilians’ have high concentrations of uranium in a range beginning at 4 X’s and reaching to over 20 X’s normal populations. This is 400% to 2000% higher than the study controls and normal population baselines of the concentrations of nanograms of uranium per liter of urine in a 24-hour sample. UMRC has completed initial but still preliminary studies that corroborate these finding in biological controls and geological samples taken in Operation Enduring Freedom bombsites.

These findings are significant in three ways:

1. The volumes (total concentrations) of uranium in the civilians studied are abnormally high as compared to local population controls. The only other findings presenting with these high concentrations are historically anomalous in certain populations exposed via unusual geological and technological (including occupational) conditions.

2. 100% of the studied population in the preliminary sample groups in Afghanistan is positive for these abnormally high concentrations.

3. The isotopic signature of the uranium in the Afghan study population is Non-depleted Uranium. This is an unexpected finding in that there has been no report of or confirmed findings of Non-Depleted Uranium in OEF or other military conflicts. It is not know at this point if the uranium is adulterated with transuranics.

http://www.umrc.net/AfghanistanOEF.asp