I bet that dog really enjoys his camping trips. I wonder if he talks like Junyah.
:)
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
A Brief History of Afghanistan (Part 2)
Continuing on -
Daoud had seized power with the help of a political party named the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) – a pro-Moscow communist party. The PDPA had aided and collaborated with Daoud in exchange for government posts.
In 1978 the PDPA seized power from Daoud in a military coup. Immediately following the PDPA coup, the Soviet Union took an active interest and dismayed by the clumsiness of the radical faction of the PDPA, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and handed power over to Karmal, the leader of the more moderate faction of the PDPA.
Once inside Afghanistan, the Soviets found themselves forced to commit more and more troops and material to prop up the unpopular PDPA government. Several Islamic fundamentalist groups sprang up and began waging guerrilla warfare, many of them operating from camps set up by the CIA and Pakistani Intelligence within Pakistan, from which they could strike into Afghanistan, and then retreat over a guarded border.
For its part, the United States government paid little attention to the PDPA coup in Afghanistan; its attention was instead focused to the west, where a popular revolution had overthrown their most valuable Middle East ally, the Shah of Iran. Once the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan, however the United States got involved.
At that point the United States began aiding the Islamic fundamentalists waging war on the PDPA and the Soviets. The CIA provided military training to the Islamic guerrillas, called the Mujahadeen. They provided billions of dollars worth of weapons, including sophisticated anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles that allowed the guerrillas to take on modern Soviet tanks and jet planes.
The Soviet military gradually became worn-down and discouraged. They were able to occupy and hold all of the major cities, but they were unable to subjugate the countryside. Soviet causalities began to mount dramatically, and with the CIA’s providing the Mujahadeen with Stinger missiles, even their control of the air became a costly affair.
At the same time the CIA was supplying the Mujahadeen weaponry, the Saudis and Persian Gulf Emirates also contributed billions of dollars, and thousands of Arabs responded to the Mujahadeen’s call for jihad, or holy war, against the secular Soviets.
One of the Arabs that responded was the wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden – who quickly became one of the CIA’s most important operatives in its proxy war against communism.
In 1989 the Soviet Union withdrew, leaving the PDPA government to fend for itself. The CIA soon lost interest in its mercenary forces once the Soviets had withdrawn. The various Mujahadeen factions then began fighting amongst themselves as well as with the remaining PDPA forces. It wasn't until 1992 that Mujahadeen fighters were able to topple the remnants of the PDPA government – ending the attempt to bring communism to the people of Afghanistan.
The collapse of the PDPA government did not mark the end of Afghanistan’s civil war. Different Mujahadeen leaders then occupied and ruled different cities and regions of the country and they continued to fight each other seeking to enlarge their new fiefdoms at the expense of their neighboring rivals.
Hoping to end the civil war which threatened the stability of their own country, Pakistani Intelligence aided in the creation of a new Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Taliban.
The Taliban came from the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Its leadership and the bulk of its initial ranks, were made up of young students, primarily Pashtuns, motivated by religion and the belief that they were ordained to bring stability and the ways of Allah to their war torn land.
They fought against the contending Mujahadeen factions inside Afghanistan, and when they mounted a military push to conquer the country, they were initially well received by some parts of the Afghan population. Their ranks were joined by rank and file Mujahadeen fighters and young idealists from inside the country, and city-by-city they were able to occupy most of the country.
In 1996 they captured the capital city of Kabul, and had forced most of the remaining Mujahadeen leaders into a small pocket in the far north of the country. These leaders subsequently formed a defensive coalition termed the Northern Alliance.
Once in power the Taliban sought to create a theocratic state based on their interpretations of the Koran and an effort was made to purge the country of any signs or remnants of secular or Western influence.
Then came the current war.
Following the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City, the United States accused its former ally, Osama Bin Laden of the crime. Bin Laden had left Afghanistan following the defeat of the Soviets, but had returned there after falling out of favor in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. government demanded that the Taliban hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban’s response was to demand proof of Bin Laden’s guilt, and after receiving none, they refused to hand him over.
Within a few weeks, the United States began bombing Afghanistan as well as providing active support to the Northern Alliance leadership. Following weeks of bombing, and several failed offensives, the Northern Alliance succeeded in breaking out of its northern enclave, seizing the city of Mazar–E–Sharif, and then moving on to take Kabul. This set in motion a series of defeats for the Taliban, which began surrendering and abandoning almost every major city in the country, and retreating into the mountains.
At least hundreds, and more likely thousands, of people have been killed by U.S.-led forces, and many more are dying as the Northern Alliance and Taliban continue to fight it out. It’s hard to say how much longer the Taliban will continue to fight or when the U.S. will end its war.
What is the solution for Afghanistan? What will end the suffering of its people?
I do not know. Something tells me this country needs to be left alone for a change.
Daoud had seized power with the help of a political party named the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) – a pro-Moscow communist party. The PDPA had aided and collaborated with Daoud in exchange for government posts.
In 1978 the PDPA seized power from Daoud in a military coup. Immediately following the PDPA coup, the Soviet Union took an active interest and dismayed by the clumsiness of the radical faction of the PDPA, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and handed power over to Karmal, the leader of the more moderate faction of the PDPA.
Once inside Afghanistan, the Soviets found themselves forced to commit more and more troops and material to prop up the unpopular PDPA government. Several Islamic fundamentalist groups sprang up and began waging guerrilla warfare, many of them operating from camps set up by the CIA and Pakistani Intelligence within Pakistan, from which they could strike into Afghanistan, and then retreat over a guarded border.
For its part, the United States government paid little attention to the PDPA coup in Afghanistan; its attention was instead focused to the west, where a popular revolution had overthrown their most valuable Middle East ally, the Shah of Iran. Once the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan, however the United States got involved.
At that point the United States began aiding the Islamic fundamentalists waging war on the PDPA and the Soviets. The CIA provided military training to the Islamic guerrillas, called the Mujahadeen. They provided billions of dollars worth of weapons, including sophisticated anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles that allowed the guerrillas to take on modern Soviet tanks and jet planes.
The Soviet military gradually became worn-down and discouraged. They were able to occupy and hold all of the major cities, but they were unable to subjugate the countryside. Soviet causalities began to mount dramatically, and with the CIA’s providing the Mujahadeen with Stinger missiles, even their control of the air became a costly affair.
At the same time the CIA was supplying the Mujahadeen weaponry, the Saudis and Persian Gulf Emirates also contributed billions of dollars, and thousands of Arabs responded to the Mujahadeen’s call for jihad, or holy war, against the secular Soviets.
One of the Arabs that responded was the wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden – who quickly became one of the CIA’s most important operatives in its proxy war against communism.
In 1989 the Soviet Union withdrew, leaving the PDPA government to fend for itself. The CIA soon lost interest in its mercenary forces once the Soviets had withdrawn. The various Mujahadeen factions then began fighting amongst themselves as well as with the remaining PDPA forces. It wasn't until 1992 that Mujahadeen fighters were able to topple the remnants of the PDPA government – ending the attempt to bring communism to the people of Afghanistan.
The collapse of the PDPA government did not mark the end of Afghanistan’s civil war. Different Mujahadeen leaders then occupied and ruled different cities and regions of the country and they continued to fight each other seeking to enlarge their new fiefdoms at the expense of their neighboring rivals.
Hoping to end the civil war which threatened the stability of their own country, Pakistani Intelligence aided in the creation of a new Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Taliban.
The Taliban came from the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Its leadership and the bulk of its initial ranks, were made up of young students, primarily Pashtuns, motivated by religion and the belief that they were ordained to bring stability and the ways of Allah to their war torn land.
They fought against the contending Mujahadeen factions inside Afghanistan, and when they mounted a military push to conquer the country, they were initially well received by some parts of the Afghan population. Their ranks were joined by rank and file Mujahadeen fighters and young idealists from inside the country, and city-by-city they were able to occupy most of the country.
In 1996 they captured the capital city of Kabul, and had forced most of the remaining Mujahadeen leaders into a small pocket in the far north of the country. These leaders subsequently formed a defensive coalition termed the Northern Alliance.
Once in power the Taliban sought to create a theocratic state based on their interpretations of the Koran and an effort was made to purge the country of any signs or remnants of secular or Western influence.
Then came the current war.
Following the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City, the United States accused its former ally, Osama Bin Laden of the crime. Bin Laden had left Afghanistan following the defeat of the Soviets, but had returned there after falling out of favor in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. government demanded that the Taliban hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban’s response was to demand proof of Bin Laden’s guilt, and after receiving none, they refused to hand him over.
Within a few weeks, the United States began bombing Afghanistan as well as providing active support to the Northern Alliance leadership. Following weeks of bombing, and several failed offensives, the Northern Alliance succeeded in breaking out of its northern enclave, seizing the city of Mazar–E–Sharif, and then moving on to take Kabul. This set in motion a series of defeats for the Taliban, which began surrendering and abandoning almost every major city in the country, and retreating into the mountains.
At least hundreds, and more likely thousands, of people have been killed by U.S.-led forces, and many more are dying as the Northern Alliance and Taliban continue to fight it out. It’s hard to say how much longer the Taliban will continue to fight or when the U.S. will end its war.
What is the solution for Afghanistan? What will end the suffering of its people?
I do not know. Something tells me this country needs to be left alone for a change.
Monday, November 2, 2009
A Brief History of Afghanistan (Part 1)
Afghanistan is one of the most impoverished, most war-torn nations in the world.
It is a nation that has been beset by invasion, external interference and internal upheaval since before the time of Alexander the Great (c. 330 B.C.)
Afghanistan is the link between Central Asia, the Middle East and India. It is a nation made up of at least a dozen contentious major ethnic groups – Baluch, Chahar Aimak, Turkmen, Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Nuristani, Arab, Kirghiz, Pashai and Persian.
Historically the Pashtun nationality has been the most dominant and today the Pashtuns represent about 50% of the total population. The vast majority of the Afghan people are Muslims – and many of them consider Islam to be one of the defining aspects of their ethnic identity.
Islam was brought to Afghanistan during the eight and ninth century by the Arabs. Following a break down in Arab rule, semi-independent states formed, but these local dynasties and states were overwhelmed and crushed during the Mongolian invasions of the 1200's. Mongols remain in control of part or all of the country until the 1500's, despite much internal resistance and strife.
Following the collapse of Mongol rule, Afghanistan found itself caught between the vice of two great powers. For nearly 200 years the Mughals of northern India and the Safavids of Iran that fought over Afghanistan.
In 1747, Afghanistan was freed from the external invasions by a Pashtun named Ahmed Shah. Ahmad's clan was to rule Afghanistan, in one form or another, for the next 200 years, years that saw very little peace.
Ahmad was able to unify the different Afghan tribes. His successors proved unable to hold his vast empire together, however and within 50 years much of it had been seized by rival regional powers. Within Afghanistan, there were numerous bloody civil wars. For many Afghanis it meant that their lives were now being uprooted and destroyed by ethnic kin, as opposed to foreign invaders.
Beginning in the 1800's Afghanistan’s internal affairs were further disturbed by two new imperialist powers – the British Empire and Czarist Russia. The British were expanding their colonial holdings in India, and looked at the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan as a natural barrier to prevent invasion by rival imperialists.
The Russians, for their part, were expanding south and east. The two great powers essentially engaged in a race for Afghanistan, and their seizures of land, overthrows of indigenous nations and reckless interference into the affairs of the remaining independent states in the region became known as "the Great Game."
During this time, on two separate occasions, British armies from India invaded Afghanistan in attempts to install puppet governments amenable to British economic interests, and that would oppose those of Czarist Russia.
The first occassion, known as the First Anglo-Afghan War, took place in 1838. Outraged by the presence of a single Russian diplomat in Kabul, the British demanded that Afghanistan avoid any contact with Russia or Iran, and that it hand over vast tracts of Pashtun inhabited land (regions that are today part of Pakistan) to British India. Dost Mohammad, the Afghan ruler, agreed to these demands, but the British invaded the country anyway. The British seized most of the major cities in Afghanistan, but their heavy-handed rule soon resulted in a popular uprising by the people which resulted in the massacre of the entire British army of 15,000, save one.
British outrage over the uninvited arrival of a Russian diplomatic envoy in Kabul in 1878 resulted in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Again, the British were able to occupy all of the major cities, brutally crushing a rebellion before withdrawing after they had set up a puppet government.
Afghanistan would remain a British protectorate until 1919. Then, following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the wave of popular rebellions that rippled through Asia, the King of Afghanistan, Amanullah, declared his country’s full independence, signed a treaty of aid and friendship with communist Russia's Lenin, and declared war on Britain.
After a period of border skirmishes, and the bombing of Kabul by the Royal Air Force, Britain conceded Afghanistan’s independence. Britain however, conspired with conservative religious and land owning elements within the country who were unhappy with Amanullah’s attempts to secularize and reform the country. The outbreak of yet another civil war forced King Amanullah to abdicate in 1929.
Different "warlords" contended for power until a new king, Muhammad Nadir Shah took power. He was assassinated just four years later by the son of a state execution victim, and was succeeded by Muhammad Zahir Shah, who was to be Afghanistan’s last king. He ruled with autocratic power for the next 40 years.
In 1973, King Zahir was overthrown by a prominent member of his own family, Daoud, who titled himself president instead of king and declared Afghanistan a republic.
...more to come...
It is a nation that has been beset by invasion, external interference and internal upheaval since before the time of Alexander the Great (c. 330 B.C.)
Afghanistan is the link between Central Asia, the Middle East and India. It is a nation made up of at least a dozen contentious major ethnic groups – Baluch, Chahar Aimak, Turkmen, Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Nuristani, Arab, Kirghiz, Pashai and Persian.
Historically the Pashtun nationality has been the most dominant and today the Pashtuns represent about 50% of the total population. The vast majority of the Afghan people are Muslims – and many of them consider Islam to be one of the defining aspects of their ethnic identity.
Islam was brought to Afghanistan during the eight and ninth century by the Arabs. Following a break down in Arab rule, semi-independent states formed, but these local dynasties and states were overwhelmed and crushed during the Mongolian invasions of the 1200's. Mongols remain in control of part or all of the country until the 1500's, despite much internal resistance and strife.
Following the collapse of Mongol rule, Afghanistan found itself caught between the vice of two great powers. For nearly 200 years the Mughals of northern India and the Safavids of Iran that fought over Afghanistan.
In 1747, Afghanistan was freed from the external invasions by a Pashtun named Ahmed Shah. Ahmad's clan was to rule Afghanistan, in one form or another, for the next 200 years, years that saw very little peace.
Ahmad was able to unify the different Afghan tribes. His successors proved unable to hold his vast empire together, however and within 50 years much of it had been seized by rival regional powers. Within Afghanistan, there were numerous bloody civil wars. For many Afghanis it meant that their lives were now being uprooted and destroyed by ethnic kin, as opposed to foreign invaders.
Beginning in the 1800's Afghanistan’s internal affairs were further disturbed by two new imperialist powers – the British Empire and Czarist Russia. The British were expanding their colonial holdings in India, and looked at the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan as a natural barrier to prevent invasion by rival imperialists.
The Russians, for their part, were expanding south and east. The two great powers essentially engaged in a race for Afghanistan, and their seizures of land, overthrows of indigenous nations and reckless interference into the affairs of the remaining independent states in the region became known as "the Great Game."
During this time, on two separate occasions, British armies from India invaded Afghanistan in attempts to install puppet governments amenable to British economic interests, and that would oppose those of Czarist Russia.
The first occassion, known as the First Anglo-Afghan War, took place in 1838. Outraged by the presence of a single Russian diplomat in Kabul, the British demanded that Afghanistan avoid any contact with Russia or Iran, and that it hand over vast tracts of Pashtun inhabited land (regions that are today part of Pakistan) to British India. Dost Mohammad, the Afghan ruler, agreed to these demands, but the British invaded the country anyway. The British seized most of the major cities in Afghanistan, but their heavy-handed rule soon resulted in a popular uprising by the people which resulted in the massacre of the entire British army of 15,000, save one.
British outrage over the uninvited arrival of a Russian diplomatic envoy in Kabul in 1878 resulted in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Again, the British were able to occupy all of the major cities, brutally crushing a rebellion before withdrawing after they had set up a puppet government.
Afghanistan would remain a British protectorate until 1919. Then, following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the wave of popular rebellions that rippled through Asia, the King of Afghanistan, Amanullah, declared his country’s full independence, signed a treaty of aid and friendship with communist Russia's Lenin, and declared war on Britain.
After a period of border skirmishes, and the bombing of Kabul by the Royal Air Force, Britain conceded Afghanistan’s independence. Britain however, conspired with conservative religious and land owning elements within the country who were unhappy with Amanullah’s attempts to secularize and reform the country. The outbreak of yet another civil war forced King Amanullah to abdicate in 1929.
Different "warlords" contended for power until a new king, Muhammad Nadir Shah took power. He was assassinated just four years later by the son of a state execution victim, and was succeeded by Muhammad Zahir Shah, who was to be Afghanistan’s last king. He ruled with autocratic power for the next 40 years.
In 1973, King Zahir was overthrown by a prominent member of his own family, Daoud, who titled himself president instead of king and declared Afghanistan a republic.
...more to come...
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Goodyear Inflatoplane
The Goodyear Inflatoplane was an experimental aircraft made by a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, well known for the Goodyear blimp.
Although it seemed an improbable project, the finished aircraft proved to be capable of meeting its design objectives although its sponsor, the United States Army, ultimately cancelled the project when it could not find a "valid military use for an aircraft that could be brought down by a well-aimed bow and arrow."
Doh!
Designed and built in only 12 weeks, the Goodyear Inflatoplane was built in 1956, with the idea that it could be used by the military as a rescue plane to be dropped in a hardened container behind enemy lines.
Only 12 Goodyear Inflatoplanes were built, but development continued until the project was cancelled sixteen years later in 1973.
Goodyear donated two Inflatoplanes, one to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and one to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and I have had the dubious privilege of seeing them both in person.
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