William Bowles: BBC hypocrisy re/ Afghanistan

Have you ever seen anything more outrageous? Talk about double standards! For weeks the BBC bombarded us with outrage concerning the elections in Iran with wall-to-wall coverage of the protests and predicting some other kind of ‘colour’ revolution, a green one this time (what will USAID, NDI, Freedom House, George Soros et al do, when they run out of colours?).[1]

“Millions of Iranians simply did not believe the result. The main demand of the protesters has been an annulment of the result and an election re-run.” — ‘Q&A: Iran election aftermath’, BBC News, 22 June, 2009

Compare the BBC’s squeals of outrage over the Iranian elections with how the BBC ‘delicately’ deals with the Afghan elections. No wall-to-wall coverage of Afghan outrage over a stolen election. Instead,

“There was no further reference to fraud. It was pointed out that the figures were more or less in line with the opinion polls – President Karzai, the candidate of the majority Pashtun people, in the high 40s and Dr Abdullah in the low 30s.” — ‘Karzai back in favour – conditionally’, BBC News, 2 November, 2009

More or less? And pointed out by whom? Reading ‘between the lines’ here the BBC is actually telling its readers that Karzai is ‘our man in Kabul’ whether crooked or not. Then the BBC, ever faithful mouthpiece for the Empire informs us that the first ‘condition’,

“…is that the Afghan government has to start taking a lead in security operations. This was already one of the conditions attached to the British government’s decision in principle to increase its forces by 500 to 9,500.

“But it goes well beyond that into a strategic necessity. The international forces have to be seen as acting in support of the Afghan government and not the other way round.” — ibid

So, just like the ‘election’ it’s not the reality that counts but how things are seen as far as the BBC is concerned. Government? What government?

“The second is that there have to be moves to end corruption and get better government.” — ibid

Fat chance! The ‘election’ that got Karzai ‘elected’ in the first place was a fix. Corruption? Karzai’s brother is a high-up in in the opium trade, a trade worth around $65 billion a year (around 2% gets interdicted)! The CIA are up to their necks in opium and have been so since the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

“U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies ‘because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.’ In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. ‘Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,’… ‘I don’t think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout…. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”[2]

The paradox of requesting a corrupt government to end its own corruption is of course studiously avoided. And what of the hated Taliban?

““US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast,” a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net requesting anonymity for not being authorized to talk about the sensitive issue with the media.”” — ‘US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases’, Uruk Net 2 November, 2009

What is going on here!? On the one hand we have our glorious leader G Brown telling us that in slaughtering Afghanis and getting his troops killed, it’s all about stopping the Taliban/al-Qu’eda from taking over the UK, and on the other hand he’s trying to do deals with the (formerly hated?) Taliban, offering to swap bases for provinces like it’s a game of Monopoly!

And then in another story that reinforces the proffered deal it is clear that the US intend to stay in Afghanistan regardless of ‘elections’ fixed or otherwise.[3]

The BBC’s scandalous ‘news’ reports on events in Afghanistan are more of a coverup than coverage. But in a story today on the BBC Website we finally get to hear from Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s opponent in the fraudulent elections.

“Former Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has said Hamid Karzai’s re-election is “illegal”.

/../

“BBC correspondents say it is difficult to assess the motives for Dr Abdullah’s remarks at this point, or whether they might be seen as a call to action by his supporters.” — ‘Karzai poll victory ‘is illegal’’, BBC News, 4 November, 2009

Difficult to assess? But clearly the elections were fixed, of that there is no doubt, so why the difficulty? Amazing, when it comes to assessing motives in Iran the BBC is not short of words (or pictures) but in a country that has been invaded and thousands of its people slaughtered, allegedly to install ‘democracy’, the Beeb is suddenly bereft of explanations as to why Abdullah Abdullah says the elections were stolen.

References

1. For more on ‘colour revolutions’ see ‘Colour-Coded Revolutions and the Origins of World War III Part 2’ By Andrew Gavin Marshall

2. See ‘War, the CIA and Narco-Trafficking Afghanistan, American Drug Colony’ By MIKE WHITNEY, Counterpunch, 8 September, 2004.

Chossudovsky, Michel. “Who Is Osama Bin Laden?”.

3. See ‘What’s the US objective in Afghanistan?’, “Pentagon officials are going public with a plan to set-up indefinitely in the region.” Real News Network, 3 November, 2009

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