New Moon Message 01/12/31/120

Dear Friends,

In 2002 we examined the logic of the events in that year that led up to the Bali bombings and the invasion of Afghanistan (http://www.ccg.org/_domain/ccg.org/Sabbath/2002/S_10_19_02.htm).

In 2005 we dealt with the issue of opium production in Afghanistan and the relative levels of production. http://www.ccg.org/_domain/ccg.org/Sabbath/2005/S_09_10_05.htm

“In 1999 Afghanistan was a country ruled by warring factions and those factions trafficked in opium. This drug was used for medicine but, usually, from this source, it was a drug of illicit trade being used in the heroin trade and it enslaved and killed millions. In 1999 the opium production of Afghanistan for heroin was 4,800 tonnes per annum.

In 1999 the Taliban seized control and began to suppress opium production. Most of the opium from there found its way to the West and killed our youth in Britain and the USA and also elsewhere in Europe, but mainly in Britain and the USA.

By 2001 the Taliban had brought opium production down to 185 tonnes for the year. This raised serious problems for the European and US drug dealers. The suppression also angered the Afghan farmers who had become dependent on it and the warlords who profited from opium production. Somehow the Taliban had to be removed.

The west was convinced that it was a dreadful regime and the Taliban suppressed women and all those other dreadful things that they did.

After the Taliban were removed and the new regime was established, the opium production got into full swing and the opium trade is now almost back to normal. In 2004 production was up to 4,200 tonnes despite claims to suppress it. The attempts at suppression are made much of, but the US military and other forces have only managed to wipe out about 200 ha of some 25,000 ha of the opium crop, or less than 1% of the crop. In Vietnam the US managed to wipe out whole forests with relative ease. This reduction is sheer tokenism. Much of the area is under UK control. That is the country where the drug is destined to arrive and kill thousands of young Britons.

President Karzai is said to be genuinely trying to suppress the opium crop but the local officials and governors are so involved in the trade that he is said to be hamstrung.

The farmers like the crop because it is easy to harvest and stores well in view of the transport difficulties. The British and US have control of the poppy fields. A new army is being raised and that will also control the fields in future years. The army of occupation destroy bits but the overall fields are massive. Australian television reported on this problem on Tuesday, 23 August 2005.

The UK officials say it will take twenty years before the crop is reduced. The year 2030 is given as the likely year for the effective reduction.

The answer to this problem appears to be that it is being encouraged and not reduced. The army is not being directed at the elimination of the crop but rather at its maintenance at high levels through token reductions.”

The fact is now in 2009 the Afghan administration is calling it for what it is. Opium is grown mostly in the Coalition controlled areas. The Afghans want it closed down and the allies simply will not close it down. The US has now taken over from the British as the major source but it is a close race for the best crop production between them. British sector production has not reduced and the American sector production has simply increased.

So we trade insults and the Afghans are labelled as corrupt by the allies and the Afghans label the allies as the source of drug production. There is no doubt whatsoever that the allies could suppress the opium production but have no desire to do so and the crop levels can only be being condoned by the allies if not actually supported.

It is a strange situation where the West is occupying a country where the areas under their command are being used for the production of a crop that is killing more of their people on the streets of their home countries than the enemy is in the occupied country.

The real reason for the occupation of Afghanistan is the control of oil pipelines and the control of the heroin trade by British and US Secret Services. It is big money and these drug runners are killing more of their own people at home than the Taliban are in Afghanistan. The heroin on the streets of Sydney is pure brown Afghan heroin and has killed many because of its purity. Australia mourns over the loss of one soldier there and says nothing about the loss of hundreds by overdose.

The fact is that the US reliance on air strikes will alienate and has alienated the Afghan and Pakistani tribesmen. Afghanistan will not be won that way and not by foreigners. An article by Benjamin Gilmour on 13 January 2009 in the Australian said exactly that. We said it in 2001 and 2002.

He says: “US missiles fired into Pakistani territory, along with commando raids in the past year, have fuelled rebellion and support for Islamic militants even among moderate, secular Pashtuns on both sides of the border.

According to Mohammad Khan, my friend and fixer for the film Son of a Lion, everyone - regardless of whether they agree with the Taliban ideology - despises foreign troops in southern Afghanistan. This includes those who accept bribes and foreign aid there, those who inform on Taliban positions for money to feed their starving families, and even members of the Afghan National Army who, according to Khan, "could turn their weapons on NATO troops at any time". This hatred is not surprising when, for example, Australian troops are accused of barging into village compounds and firing on civilians, as it's claimed happened in Oruzgan on January 5, the day after Sher's death. Ordinary Pashtuns are routinely armed and will defend their homes. This does not make them combatants. “

We have lost the lessons of the Malaysian Emergency and the Vietnam War. We are repeating all the mistakes the Americans made in Vietnam.

Gilmour noted that: “Just before the closure of the historic Khyber Pass last month after a series of attacks on NATO's supply lines, Kevin Rudd dropped into Oruzgan to express sympathy for our young men and women having to spend Christmas in such a "godforsaken part of the world", which he also described as a hellhole. Those who have spent any time in that part of the world will know that Afghanistan is not at all godforsaken. The majority of Afghans practise Islam peacefully, most pray to God five times a day and have historically lived by the moderate Hanafi and mystical Sufi doctrines.”

Gilmour said: “How arrogant of us, given our hedonistic society riddled with depression, alcoholism and failed relationships, to describe Afghanistan as a godforsaken hellhole.” He forgot to add the murders of our own children in abortions on a greater rate per person that anywhere else in the world.

As Gilmour noted: “The Afghans, more than anyone, believe they have God on their side.” He added: “Perhaps that's why they're winning the war.” Note that the mindset is not that the Afghan government and its people are an identity but rather the Afghans are becoming a composite anti-West Coalition. That is the beginning of the end as it was for the US in Vietnam.

Prime minster Rudd also commented to the Australian Diggers, that "the Australian people are behind you." Gilmour cogently argues that view is also mistaken. He says that: “Despite public calls from the likes of University of Sydney academic Peter Khalil and retired Australian Army general Jim Molan for more foreign troops, the most recent Lowy Institute opinion poll (September 2008) showed a majority of Australians - 56 per cent - did not support the war in Afghanistan. How convincing, then, are the arguments to remain there, let alone to commit more troops?”

The basis of the argument by Khalil is the same as that promoted by the Bush administration. Fight them on their own turf or they will come and take over ours. This view guided foreign policy in Australia for a hundred years. Will such action prevent terrorist attacks? The answer is no they will not. They will promote more terror which is why the war on terror was invoked in the first place.

Gilmour points out that “the most comprehensive study of suicide attacks, by Robert Pape of the Chicago Project, found that 95 per cent of these attacks have the same specific strategic goal: to cause an occupying state to withdraw forces from a disputed territory. So the opposite is true: by remaining an unwelcome element in Afghanistan, we are potentially making ourselves a target for terrorism. Recent statistics showing a 20per cent to 30per cent increase in Afghans fighting with the Taliban proves that our war is counterproductive. We are, in fact, fighting not the "evil" Taliban but a Taliban-led insurgency. It is what I keep hearing from Afghans in Australia, in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Our enemy has become the common Afghan, struggling for his freedom from foreign intervention, as he has always done.

This kind of widespread resistance movement for which the Pashtuns are famous simply cannot be beaten. Does [Maj. General] Molan, who has boasted about his perceived successes in Iraq, truly believe that doubling the 120,000 foreign and local troops in Afghanistan can achieve what almost a half million Soviet and local loyalist troops failed to do in the 1980s? A string of invaders before them also failed. His confidence in success based on our "moral superiority" is misplaced, because the Pashtuns believe the same thing. They will have their freedom from foreign intervention or die. In contrast to Molan's views, former US secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Colin Powell, interviewed on CNN, expressed doubt that more troops would make a difference in Afghanistan.”

The argument that we are trying to help them simply will not wash. The same thing that happened in Vietnam is happening here but without the discipline we had then. We talk about protecting the innocent and delivering aid, yet we make things worse. We are creating a unified Afghan-West Pakistan alliance that will see the corrupt leadership of both countries fail.

The experts were all baffled when the Taliban received such popular support in Pakistan's tribal areas. This area of West Pakistan was not pro Taliban and not fundamentalist Islamic. The vast majority of people voted against Islamist parties at the February 2008 elections. These tribal people have been occupied by a succession of tribes and peoples for three thousand years and they have thrown them all off. The people are more loyal to their ancient code of conduct than to Islamic doctrine. As Gilmour said: “the local mullah can often be the most unpopular man in the village. According to my filmmaking colleagues, who provide me with constant updates, the rapidly growing support for the extremists is a direct result of intensified foreign interference. Locals claim our presence is confounding their own resistance against these radicals.”

As in Vietnam we are our own enemies. Gilmour understandably predicts that: “The thousands of extra US troops due to land at Bagram this year will, predictably, inspire even greater resistance. Across the border, where every young boy once dreamed of joining the Pakistan army, teenagers can't wait to sign up for suicide missions. Local army operations in the tribal belt to flatten entire villages in collective punishment, cross-border raids by US forces and Hellfire missiles from Predator drones hitting civilian targets are all great terrorist recruitment triggers.”

The allies made the same error in Vietnam: They failed to make allies of Pakistan's frontier tribes and those in southern Afghanistan. In so doing they have missed the chance to help create unwelcome conditions for extremists in both Afghanistan and now Pakistan.

Gilmour was on set shooting the film “Son of the Lion” in 2007. He says that: “Since completing Son of a Lion in 2007, one of our actors has been shot and killed, another kidnapped, while our production car was destroyed by an explosion in which its owner and his son also died. And yet, after all this, a group of extras from the film has left to join the Taliban.”

He says that: “This once again reminds me that the violence Pashtun tribes are suffering at the hands of foreign forces will, instead of destroying the extremist minority, spread and strengthen its ideology. A war on terror will forever feed itself. We are better off ceasing our cat-and-mouse games with the Taliban and strengthening the Pashtun tribal institution instead. It may not be the style of democracy we wish to install, but it comes pretty close.”

The film is a 2008 film and he had direct experience there over the period.

In 1973/1974 the writer was tasked with making a systematic record and training manuals of the Australian experiences in Tropical Warfare. Officers and Warrant Officers were tasked with recording and systematising Advanced Tropical Navigation, Survival Training, Advanced Tropical Patrolling and Counter Revolutionary Warfare. All the lessons we learned were recorded and systemtised and placed in manuals. They were boxed up and placed in Army records. They appear to have been left there and forgotten.

The errors being made now in these countries will spread to the other nations of Islam and a vast anti-Western Host will be created where none need ever have been.

Pakistan is being wrongly dealt with so its former President Pervez Musharraf claimed last month (January 2009). He was interviewed in the US by Wolf Blitzer amid reports Friday of U.S. drones striking militant targets in Pakistan just days after the start of the Obama administration. The Obama administration has the same perceived national interests as the Bush administration. It has made combating al Qaeda and Taliban militants in the Pakistan tribal region near Afghanistan its most immediate national security priority.

Musharraf was asked whether he is comfortable with the continuation of the attacks, even with a new U.S. president in place. Pervez Musharraf said:

"Nobody in Pakistan is comfortable with the strikes across the border. There is no doubt in that. Public opinion is very much against it," he said. "But as far as this issue of the new president -- President Obama having taken over and this continuing -- but I have always been saying that policies don't change with personalities; policies have national interest, and policies depend on an environment.

"So the environment and national interest of the United States being the same, I thought policies will remain constant."

And so they have. And so it will escalate and ultimately the entire EU and Nato system will be pushed into full-scale war. It will move to the Middle East and then out into this radicalised Central Asian heartland for the escalation of WWIII.

The Israeli Gaza conflict is part of this radicalisation. The propaganda is taking effect now throughout the Middle East. In the end the Northern powers will have to occupy the Middle East and set their headquarters in the lands from the Gaza coast and northwards and east to Jerusalem as foretold by Scripture in Daniel 11:40-45. The Islamic confederation including Egypt will be all radicalised as they are being now and they will attack the EU and NATO. Jordan including the lands of Edom and Moab will withdraw and be saved. The Russians and Central Steppes will assist them after the occupation of the Middle East and hundreds of millions will be destroyed in the war in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The EU/Nato Forces will return to the Middle East and set up their Headquarters termed “palatial tents” in Daniel 11:45 between the sea and Mt. Zion occupying the ruins of Gaza and into Jerusalem.

The shattering of the power of the Holy People will occur and then they will look to their God. The Witnesses will deal with the issues over this period. They will be killed and the idolaters will simply throw one gigantic party and exchange “gifts”. It will be a gigantic Easter and Christmas party rolled into one.

At this time God will intervene and the shout of the archangel will be heard. The Messiah will return and the First Resurrection will occur (Daniel 12:1-4).

Then the kings of the East and the world alliances will be brought down to Armageddon and destroyed.

Over the next few months we will explain how all this will come to pass.

Wade Cox

Coordinator General