Is insurgency Afghanistan’s only problem?
http://atimes.com/2015/05/is-insurgency-afghanistans-only-problem/Is insurgency Afghanistan’s only problem?
By Salman Rafi Sheikh
May 22, 2015
In a recent report by Washington Post, Attiquilah Amerkhil — a Kabul-based political and military analyst — was reported to have said, “This is the worst fighting season in a decade … there is now fighting in every part of the country.” The report went on to say that “in the first spring fighting season since the U.S.-led coalition ended combat operations in Afghanistan, heavy clashes are being reported in at least 10 Afghan provinces. The provinces are in every corner of the country, creating widespread unease about whether the Afghan government and army can repel the threat.”
It is quite clear that the Taliban are still fighting (as we also showed in our previous article on Afghanistan), and that they have intensified their so-called “final victory” campaign in their quest for re-establishing their supremacy in Afghanistan. A glimpse of their spring offensive can be had from their latest attack on May 18, 2015. Reportedly, a Taliban attack on a district government headquarters in Afghanistan`s southern Uruzgan province on Monday killed at least seven people, an Afghan official said. Among those killed in the pre-dawn attack in Khas Uruzgan district were five policemen, a former district chief and a school principal, according to Abdul Kareem Karimi, the district chief administrative official. A few days ago, a rest house in Kabul, where foreigners used to stay, was also attacked (May 13, 2015) resulting in five casualties at least. The five dead also included an American and two Indian nationals.
This heightened insurgency is a continuation of the spring offensive the Taliban launched in April. They have since rolled out a fierce battlefield strategy across the country`s north and east, forcing the government to spread its security forces thin on many fronts. Targeted assassinations of government and judicial officials have also been on the rise.
While all this is true and constitute the gravest problem Afghanistan is faces today; it is also a fact that the Taliban are by far only one of the many problems Afghanistan is currently facing. Among other grave problems is political instability. Such reports as published by Washington Post tend to reduce Afghanistan’s problems to insurgency alone. While there is no doubt that the insurgency is continuing, political instability is by no means an “automatic” outcome of it. It has its own dynamics too.
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I've been asking myself for years - why are we still in Afghanistan?
https://www.corbettreport.com/exciting-investment-opportunity-in-afghanistan-record-returns-expected/
Exciting Investment Opportunity in Afghanistan! Record Returns Expected!
by James Corbett
TheInternationalForecaster.com
May 6, 2015
Great news for poppy farmers in Afghanistan: a mysterious, brand new strain of poppy seed has appeared on the scene this year promising a better crop than ever before. According to farmers in poppy-rich Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the seeds appeared out of nowhere, delivered to them by the same drug traffickers who provide them with tools, fertilizer, farming advice and cash advances at the start of each growing season and come back to collect the crop at the end of each season. As Gul Mohammad Shukran, head of Kandahar’s anti-narcotics department, explains, this new strain of seed is expected to produce “better drug plants, which require less water and have a faster growth time.”
It goes without saying that this news is even better for the mysterious seed-suppliers who end up taking the harvested opium and transporting it off to foreign countries to be processed into heroin and sold on the black market. But it works out best of all for the treaty organization that invaded the country 14 years ago and has overseen record bumper poppy harvest after record bumper poppy harvest year after year after year after year after year ever since.
That the NATO forces in Afghanistan are protecting the poppy crop is not even a point of controversy. Five years ago Lt. Colonel Brian Christmas of the U.S. Marines went on Fox News to lament that it “may grind in his gut,” but the NATO troops just have to help the farmers cultivate the poppy crop otherwise the farmers would turn against them.
#t=0
And just like that, the entire “war on drugs” is exposed for the lie that we already knew that it was. Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium from which heroin is derived. The poppies from which that opium is collected are protected by U.S. marines and others in the full knowledge that this will end up on the streets of countries around the world as heroin.
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We have done this before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Politics_of_Heroin_in_Southeast_Asia
= new reply since forum marked as read
(Russia seems to be signaling it's time for it to get out of Afghanistan. Who knows how that will work out.) 
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Russia stops transit of NATO military cargo to Afghanistan
Published time: May 18, 2015 23:14
Edited time: May 20, 2015 07:04
Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev has revoked a decree that allowed delivery of NATO military equipment to Afghanistan through Russian territory.
According to the official document, signed by Medvedev and published on Monday, all previous decisions on NATO cargo transit to Afghanistan have now been revoked. This includes an act allowing delivery of military hardware and equipment via rail, motor vehicles, or through Russian airspace.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has been ordered to inform all the countries involved.
In 2014, Washington announced that the military operation in Afghanistan was over. The US-led coalition has pulled out most of its forces and the Afghan military has assumed full responsibility for national security. However, while the 2001 resolution has been terminated, some 13,000 ISAF troops will remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2016 to oversee local forces and provide training on counter-terror operations.
http://rt.com/news/259809-russia-stops-nato-afghanistan-cargo/
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Int’l flight chaos feared if US stops managing Afghan airspace
May 7, 2015
The US is expected to stop managing Afghan airspace once its contract with the government in Kabul expires at the end of June, but international airliners are worried that development could create a no-flight zone over Afghanistan.
The US military coalition’s air traffic control contact, first begun in 2001, is scheduled to expire at the end of June. If a new contract is not negotiated with the Afghan government, it could lead to international airliners being forced to cancel flights into and over the country.
International airlines that fly into Afghan include Emirates, Air India and Turkish Airlines, with many other airlines flying over Afghanistan. There are no flights from the European Union because it doesn’t recognize the Afghan Civil Aviation Authority, which it can’t certify due to safety concerns.
"The international community does not want to be in a situation where we are continuously stuck with paying for this because they [Afghan authorities] are simply not seriously going to take it over," a Western diplomat in Kabul told the Associated Press. "This is causing reluctance with some of the partners who would otherwise bridge the gap."
The AP reported that, according to an internal NATO memo, the US government will not extend its current contract for another six months, to the end of 2015 – an extension that requires $25 million.” The memo offered no reason why the US wouldn’t extend the contact, and US Embassy officials in Kabul didn’t respond to the AP for comment.
A Japanese official told the AP it might be willing to help fund a “bridging contract” until the end of 2015, when Kabul would take over managing its own airspace.
Afghanistan’s minister of transport, Daoud Ali Najafi, told the Wall Street Journal in September 2014 that its Aviation Authority lacked qualified air-traffic controllers, so the Afghan government planned to hire a contractor to run its airspace while instructing the Afghans how to manage air traffic.
He told WSJ: “It’s very important to us. Afghanistan can connect the Far East, Middle East and Central Asia.”
Transit of military cargo to Afghanistan through Russia was permitted after a 2001 UN Security Council resolution. The document established an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and called on all countries to support the NATO-led security mission. In 2008 Russia signed a decree allowing ISAF cargo to pass through its territory.
http://rt.com/usa/256301-us-management-afghan-airspace/