James Petras, War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America

James Petras, teacher and humanist of a rare , encyclopedic, analytical intelligence, author of this compact masterwork, has long been recognized as the foremost social scientist of the United States

Frederick Clairmonte - 05.09.10 Clear Day Books, pp.132, Atlanta, Georgia, 2010. A REVIEW ARTICLE Frederic Clairmonte was for many years a permanent senior economic affairs officer in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He is one of the world’s leading international marketing and financial analysts. 1. James Petras, teacher and humanist of a rare , encyclopedic, analytical intelligence, author of this compact masterwork, has long been recognized as the foremost social scientist of the United States. I would go one step further without indulging in hyperbole , as I believe that most readers of this publication would concur with me, that his voluminously enduring creations forged over decades have clambered to the highest summits of world journalism and scholarship . Is it not obvious that he, and the noble causes worldwide that he has championed, should be the object of obloquy, loathing and persecution by the adversaries of all liberation struggles? 2. The memory of the ongoing crimes of what I have called the Zio-fascist state depicted with such matchless brio in this work never be ephemeral. This is so because these acts of colonial bestiality rank among the most atrocious in the annals of mankind’s tortured history. Long after the tribunals of history have met and proclaimed their irrevocable verdict of guilty, the sheer scale and horrors of these crimes will neither be forgiven nor forgotten. This creation is destined to become a classic not only in the history of colonialism but because it reveals the indomitable spirit of resistance of the Palestinians that have stood up and fought back at times with little more than sticks, stones and their bare fists against a murderous oppressor. Thus the Intifada will rank as one of the greatest epic struggles of resistance of all times. 3. The parturition of Israel was born in blood and torture, imprisonment and mass murder. The start of this genocidal thrust is Al Naqba (1947) that marked the advent of this mass pillage and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their native lands in a struggle that is still unfinished and which has endured for almost seven decades. A grisly process that can only be eradicated by the end of this ignominious occupation ; and not the fake quest and wicked charade of what has been brandished ‘ a negotiated settlement’. The masters of the Zion- fascist state are not alone in their crimes against humanity for the enemies of the Palestinian peoples are also rooted in the United States, the European Union, certain Arab states notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt , Jordan and the Arab League that have been the unquestioned accomplices to their crimes. 4. The creation of Greater Israel which is one of the quintessential pivots of Zionist ideology owes its provenance to the Nazi-inspired racialist doctrine of the Herrenvolk, or the master race, among whose paramount practitioners were Heydrich and Himmler and their killer caste. In this perspective, the Zio-fascist state that labels itself Israel and considers all Arabs as the Untermensch, whose lands and people are legitimate plunder to be used and junked, stands forth as the legatus apostolicus of Nazidom. It is therefore not an aberration that Rabbi Obadiah Josef, leader of the Shays party and one of the country’s most revered clerics ((some of whose members are in Netanyahu’s cabinet including the minister of the interior and the deputy prime minister) in his sermon for Rosh Hashanah ( the New Year) could clamor for the death of the Palestinian political leadership and the physical annihilation by missiles and bombs of all Arabs and Palestinians “ who are evil enemies of Israel.” No doubt the same pseudo religious rantings apply to the peoples of Iran that are also fated for the nuclear chopping bloc. To make sure that his audience fully grasped his message of exterminism he stressed at the end of his benediction that in the execution of this act of annihilation “there can be no place for mercy and pity”. 5. The findings of B Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, remind us of the scale of these huge land grabs, euphemistically peddled under the innocuous nostrum of ‘settlements’. The aggregate land grabs (300,000) have gobbled up 42% of the West Bank plus another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. The agony has not run its course. . This is what the masters of the Zio-fascist state have labeled “facts on the grounds”. Most of these ‘settlements’ are being funded by the big money bags of Zionist finance capital which, with the blessing of the US Treasury, are tax deductible. 6. Excluding the huge German reparations, since 1950 Israel has received yearly $5bn (that is the private sector payouts from international Jewry plus the US government) which works out to around $300bn over six decades and that in a land of about 6 million. Any move to halt this financial hemorrhage from a stricken US economy to Israel would be knifed by the Zionist cabals. Such massive unrelenting accumulation combined with the exploitation of an undifferentiated mass of Palestinian labour toiling for subsistence wages have rocketed the fortunes of Israeli capitalism now firmly meshed into the moorings of global imperialism. Not surprisingly, its per capita GDP is now 65% of its US counterpart. And growing faster. Thanks to its US financial moguls the Zio-fascist state has now been rocketed into the ranks of the OECD of rich countries... It is a de facto member of the European Union as well as NATO as Bush jubilantly proclaimed. I have underscored from of these salient facts that will enrich our understanding of the nature of what the author perceptively calls the Zionist Fifth Colunm in America. 7. His creation revolves around what he designates as the Zionist Power Configuration. The categorization is accurate but I would have preferred another designation that I have called the Zio-fascist complex so as to accentuate and throw into sharper relief the horrors of its being . The operative word is ‘fascist’ for, as Fidel Castro scathingly noted at the time of the genocidal assault against the defenseless people of Gaza, Israel is a brazen, despicable, Fascist monster. The mobilization and propagation of its power in the United States, on behalf of Israel, is exercised by elected and appointed Zionist officialdom. One of the keys to its awesome firepower is that it is a mass grassroots organization buttressed by the financial support of scores of millionaires, dozens of billionaires and an irreversibly corrupt mass media that is its handmaiden. 8. It hegemonizes, and in many instances has paralyzed the workings of the US Congress and the Executive. The United States and its military-political caste oligarchy is the epicenter of Zio fascist firepower and the unique propellant of Israeli war aims in the Middle East, strikingly so towards Iran now threatened with the nuclear bludgeon. This Zio- fascist phalanx not only acts as a foreign agent of Israel now, but has overtly done so over the last five decades. Influence is focused with laser-like accuracy on the epicenters of power: the Congress, the Treasury, the State Department, National Security and the Pentagon and all leading Congressional committees that relate to Israeli expansionism. The career profiles of the all intrusive power of its professionals that are the quintessence of the Fifth Column are to be found in every nook and cranny of Wall Street, the globe-girdling corporate law firms, the insurance industry, the big three stock market rating agencies and the big three accounting oligopoly. A point that the author makes clear when he emphasizes that “in effect pro-Israel career patterns and projections of power have established a kind of Judeo-Zionist hegemony of US public life.” In this perspective the regime scaffolded since 1947 must be seen as a totalitarian regime that continues to obliterate the most rudimentary forms of human rights and democratic aspirations; a feat that it has engineered with the concurrence of the US caste oligarchy. 9. This is one of the salient traits of the operational Fifth Column that operates within the United States. The retention of its grip is vastly magnified by the stranglehold on the major media outlets notably on the Middle East that is a primordial concern of Israel’s foreign policy. This is seen, as the author argues, by the power exercised by Israel First academics that straddle the editorial pages of the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and almost exclusively the entire print media. Its power extends to the major TV media: Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN as well as secondary outlets. It would be difficult to do justice to the prodigious research which sheds light on the interlocking directorates in every domain over which the Fifth Column has exercised its paramount influence. In understanding the parameters of the system it must not be ignored that the ramifications of the Zionist behemoth are by no means solely confined to the kingdom of the US political caste oligarchy. Indeed its tentacles are globalized. It is exhibited in strength in all the major EU countries. Among its ventriloquist dummies will be found the likes of Kouchner and Miliband, Berlusconi and Aznar. 10. There is an overarching unity in Petras’ entire work sanctified by an alluring stylistic grace and elegance where le mot juste is never remote. A work that conjures up the dictum of the great Bossuet (1627-1704) spring to mind: ‘le style c’est l’homme.” It is this stunning assemblage of words and ideas , the relentless pursuit of truth , and not the fakery of one hundred footnotes per page, that has rocketed him into the ranks the world’s leading social scientists, publicists, broadcasters and public figures. The sheer expanse of his reach is not confined to a single continent illumining the planetary scope of his creations. In short, his all-encompassing and militant internationalism exposes ruthlessly the logic and genocidal madness of imperialism and its works. When the war criminals in Israel and their henchmen are flung to the tribunal of justice, as ineluctably they must and will be, this poignant work which is an indictment of their crimes, will be a salutary reminder of the scale of these crimes. 11. Like many of his life-long readers, I have been the benefactor of what I regard as his enduring teachings. Some have called him a sociologist but such professional categories fail to grasp the essence of his work as do other attributes as political scientist and economist. This is an attribute he shares with Marx whose Promethean creations transcends such wholly trivial professional pigeon holes. Like Marx and Keynes he has combined seamlessly meshed the creative flows of journalism and scholarship. 12. As his adversaries have long recognized he is a social scientist of a special breed. One whose exalted moral commitments, militancy and impassioned combat merge with his revolutionary strivings. It is this that demarcates him from the pedestrian academic herd of bourgeois scholarship whose pseudo academic dribblings are wedded to the perpetuation of the prevailing propertied order. And hence the bulk of those who market themselves under the name of social scientists have pursued trajectories that have transformed them, directly and indirectly, into the apparatchiks of imperialism. 13. A social scientist I might add of a special breed in that he has swept aside contemptuously the trappings of a decadent and irrevocably corrupt academic order that has prostituted itself in the market place . The ranks of the upper crust of this caste have swelled over time and with the lush pickings and prospects of corporate droppings and other insidious forms of political office holding. 14. This inspired humanist with unbending single-mindedness has clung through thick and thin of the social, political and ideological struggles. He stands in the forefront of all social and political struggles for the making of a better world -- a world in which the terrors of class rule, exploitation and social injustices spawned by capitalism and imperialism will be consigned to the rubbish can of history... What matters in this context is not the savagery and duration of the battle but the belief that ultimately the forces of evil can brought to book. In this respect he could be likened to what the Red Army would have called a Frontovnik: a combatant on the front line who battles on relentlessly, knowing well that bulldozing the system into its fetid grave can only be achieved by those that grasp the logic ( and illogic) of the system’s rapacity.. 15. It is the bold uncompromising marshaling and analysis of these interlocking facts that helps to explain how the US caste oligarchy subjected to the assaults of an omnipresent Zionist Fifth Column has become the major accomplice of Israeli war crimes amid unanimous worldwide condemnation. It is the surfacing of these facts which help also to elucidate the utterly depraved conduct of the Obama White House and the fact that nine-tenths of the US Congress excoriated the Goldstone Report. Since this book went to press the preparations for the obliteration of Iran have gathered speed. Almost unanimously the Congress has demanded even ‘more crippling sanctions’ – the term is that of Clinton - as though the already existing body of criminal sanctions and embargoes were inadequate.. The vote in Congress was galvanized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and boisterously acclaimed by all the major 51 American Jewish organizations. 16. The upsurge of Zionism as he notes is a virulent form of tribal-religious identity linked to a foreign power. Its overwhelmingly successful hegemonic inroads have been abetted by the abject capitulation of the US ruling class oligarchy and its failure to recognize a US national identity. The US political complex and successive administrations with no exception have become part of the interlaced web of Zionist power that is ramified in every nook and cranny of all sectors of American capitalism. It was revelatory that there was not a whimper from the zionized White House when Israel’s foreign minister was brazen enough to pontificate that if had not been for the Gulf oil calamity, the Obama war machine ( no doubt with the support of Israel) would have nuked Iran. No less revelatory was that there was not a solitary member of Congress that that bellowed his indignation against this outrageous remark. 17.In conclusion , it is to be hoped that Petras’ grand body of scholarship embodying years of painstaking research will be translated into all languages and be read by many people of our planet with their diverse cultures, creeds and political persuasions. What ought never be obscured is that the creation of this combatant and humanist is not merely a pitiless dissection of the Zio-fascist complex , but no less important, I am confident, is that it will long find its niche as an irrepressible documentation that raises its rebel voice against these sordid crimes against humanity. It is thus a cri de coeur for human dignity and decency that imperialism and its acolytes have always consigned to the gutter. 18. In a recent encounter with President Shimon Peres, an entrenched Zionist and implacable hater of Palestinians , which is not incompatible with his confessed boundless love for occupied Palestinian land , an obsequious Obama raised the question. “What can we do for Israel?” Given the fact that Obama is a political money-raising hustler of long standing the question was obviously touted for publicity reasons: to solicit funds from the Zionist money-bags in the United States that have always lavishly bankrolled the Democratic party. We are not privy to the retort of Peres whose open contempt for the US presidential stooges of Israel requires no publicity. But I presume his riposte runs something like this: “Just keep on groveling as you and other Presidents have done. If we spit in your face as we did to Biden and bombard your warships, just give us your other cheek. . And forget it. Make sure, however, that you keep on shoveling your debased dollars into our money boxes. . And, above all, keep going through the motions of the crapulous babble of negotiated settlements for as you well know there is nothing to negotiate... The facts on the ground already speak for themselves.”

CIA did business with Blackwater through over 30 brass plate firms -- WMR names them

CIA did business with Blackwater through over 30 brass plate firms -- WMR names them

In yet another example of how Barack Obama is subservient to the wishes of the CIA, his one-time employer through a well-documented front company, it has been revealed by the Senate Armed Services Committee that the former Blackwater established a network of 31 brass plate, shell, and off-shore tax dodging subsidiaries, many of which had contracts with the CIA. Some of these contracts continue with the CIA, as well as the State Department. The CIA's contract work with the successor companies to Blackwater and its subsidiaries has been authorized by CIA director Leon Panetta, who one former CIA official described to WMR as an "asshole who is merely a figurehead."

The New York Times recently reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee released a chart showing that Blackwater and its various entities, described as over 30 shell companies, to garner U.S. government contracts even after it was cited for human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, the successor to Blackwater, Xe Services LLC, was awarded a $100 million contract by the CIA to provide security for its base of operations in Afghanistan. Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, recently moved to Abu Dhbi with his family to seek new business for Xe Security in the region.

The New York Times misses the point in its revelation. Blackwater/Xe and all of its contrivances, many of them off-shore firms far removed from U.S. government oversight, fit the pattern usually found with CIA front companies. The fact that President Obama, himself, worked for such a firm, Business International Corporation in Manhattan, appears to have been lost on Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and his committee investigators. With Panetta at Langley and Robert Gates, a former CIA director at the helm of the Pentagon, Obama has signalled to the U.S. intelligence community that the use of CIA proprietaries by his administration is every much "business as usual" as was the CIA's use of Southern Air Transport, another CIA proprietary, during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. There also is no indication that Obama has abandoned the use of CIA airline proprietary firms, with post office box and mail drop addresses scattered across the United States that were first used by the Bush-Cheney administration in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" kidnapping and secret detention program.

The Times article mentions two Blackwater/Xe shadow firms, XPG and Greystone Ltd. WMR previously reported on the use of Barbados's company confidentiality laws by Blackwater to establish Greystone as an international marketing arm of Blackwater/Xe. From Barbados, Blackwater/Xe is free to conduct mercenary recruiting operations from nations around the world with dismally poor human rights records and ex-security force personnel more than willing to engage in their murderous activities under contract to the CIA, Pentagon, or any other repressive tin-horn dictatorship willing to pay.

On October 13, 2007, WMR reported on Greystone stirring up a political hornet's nest on Barbados: "Blackwater USA's international marketing branch, Greystone, Ltd., registered as an International Business Company in Barbados, is beginning to create a political stir in the Caribbean island nation. Recently, Erik Prince, Blackwater's Chairman and CEO, testified under oath to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Blackwater did not market foreign governments to provide security services. He testified that the only foreign contracts performed by Blackwater were under license from the U.S. government. However, Greystone's website statesthe following about the subsidiary's foreign marketing:

"Greystone is an international security services company that offers your country or organization a complete solution to your most pressing security needs. We have the personnel, logistical support, equipment, and expertise to solve your most critical security problems."

Prince seems to have omitted Greystone as a Blackwater firm during his congressional testimony. Or he perjured himself under oath. Blackwater's presence in Barbados, under the corporate confidentiality regimes of the Caribbean island nation's off-shore corporation hosting legal contrivances, has stirred up opposition in the country. Bajans are pointing to Prime Minister Owen Arthur's Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Senator Lynette Eastmond, who has oversight authority for foreign corporations in Barbados. However, the selection of Barbados as Blackwater's headquarters for its international marketing arm is likely due to the island nation's past cooperation with other U.S. covert activities."

In the book, "Jaded Tasks: Brass Plates, Black Ops, and Big Oil," this editor delved into the use of various corporate contrivances by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies in the so-called "global war on terror." Although Obama said the global war terror is a thing of the past, it is another case of not listening to what Obama says but watching what he does. There is no indication that Obama is any different from his predecessor in using secretive corporate identities to mask U.S. covert operations, many of them of questionable legality, abroad.

The New York Times curiously did not produce Levin's committee's chart showing the some 30 Blackwater/Xe shell firms, partnerships, and subsidiaries. We are providing that information in the table of Blackwater/Xe's various corporate contrivances and linkages at the end of this article.

With private military contractors like Blackwater/Xe having hired tens of thousands of soldiers of fortune to supplement the military and para-military activities of the United States, Britain, and other countries, there may be another reason to keep these privateers fully employed. One such ex-private military contractor, who now finds himself out of work because of blowing the whistle on contract fraud and ties between private contractors and known terrorists, was more than willing to tell WMR what he discovered in his work in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Afghanistan and that is that "Al Qaeda is made-up bullshit."

On April 16, 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, the then-commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stated in a speech in Paris that the use of private security contractors in combat zones had "gone too far." Perhaps that was one of the major reasons that the CIA's sock puppet, Obama, and its one-time director, Gates, fired McChrystal. To have the top U.S. military commander questioning the CIA's covert wars and use of brigands to support them was likely the final nail in McChrystal's professional coffin.

With General David Petraeus, the neocons' favorite general, now in command in Afghanistan and Prince safely ensconced in Abu Dhabi, the CIA and its former employee Obama are free to continue to act in the shadows away from public scrutiny.

The Web of Blackwater
The Prince Group (holding company) Blackwater USA à Xe Services LLC Blackwater Worldwide à Xe Services Prince Manufacturing Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), LLC The Black Group (merged to form TIS) The Terrorism Research Center, Inc. (merged to form TIS) Technical Defense (merged to form TIS) Blackwater Lodge & Training Center à US Training Center Blackwater Airships, LLC à Guardian Flight Systems Blackwater Maritime Solutions Raven Development Group Blackwater Target Systems à GSD Manufacturing Blackwater Security Consulting Blackwater Peace and Stability Operations Institute Blackwater K-9 Aviation Worldwide Services (AWS) à AAR Corporation STI Aviation, Inc. (subsidiary of AWS) Air Quest, Inc. “ Presidential Airways, Inc. Blackwater SELECT (Karachi) Kestral Holdings (Pakistani partner) Kestral Logistics Kestral Trading Blackwater PTC Paravant, LLC. XPG E&J Holdings LLC Greystone, Ltd. (Barbados) Satelles Solutions, Inc. (Philippines) Constellation Consulting Grupo Tactico (Chile) (partner) --> Red Tactica Consulting Group, Washington, DC Neskowin (Uruguay) (recruiter) Global Guards (Panama) (recruiter) --> Gun Supply (Lima) --> Triple Canopy --> Your Solutions, Inc. (Honduran recruiter) --> Clayton Consultants --> AIG TigerSwan (spin-off) Babylon Eagles/TigerSwan (Iraqi joint venture) Sovereign Military Order of Malta (diplomatic cover)*

* Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta(SMOM) is a Roman Catholic order based in Rome and enjoying sovereignty under international law. It has observer status at the United Nations and issues diplomatic passports. It has diplomatic relations with a number of nations where Blackwater/Xe is reportedly active, including Chile, Philippines, Bulgaria, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Panama, Uruguay, and Somalia. The entity also operates its own military aircraft. Prince and other top Blackwater/Xe executives are members of the SMOM, leading to charges that they are trying to renew the Christian Crusades against the Muslims.

CIA's 'Red Cell' Hypocrisy on Terror By Robert Parry

The Central Intelligence Agency has scoffed at an internal memo that cites a few terrorist acts by some American citizens as possibly causing foreign nations to see the United States as an “exporter of terrorism.” The CIA notes that the paper came from its “red cell” analysts who are assigned to “think outside the box” to “provoke thought.”

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However, what’s most striking about the secret three-page memo, dated Feb. 4 and disclosed by WikiLeaks last month, is how it reflects CIA self-censorship regarding the agency’s own long history of supporting acts of terror and protecting terrorists.

Cases of terrorism that implicate the CIA or its operatives, such as the blowing up of a Cubana airliner in 1976 or the arming of Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s, are ignored by the “red cell” analysts even though many of the alleged perpetrators and their funders are still harbored in the United States – and include current and past U.S. government officials.

Yet, instead of citing these well-documented terrorism cases, the “red cell” memo references a few cases of individual Americans who have gone abroad and committed terrorist acts as well as some distant history of terrorism linked to U.S. immigrants.

The “red cell” memo notes that Irish-Americans have supported the Irish Republican Army back to the 19th Century. The analysis then skips to Zionist terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 29 Palestinians as they prayed at a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

In sketching this background, the analysts jump over a lot of blood-soaked history of CIA-connected terrorism. Though assigned to “think outside the box,” the “red cell” analysts apparently knew better than to open a can of worms that they might have found inside CIA’s document vaults.

So, instead of noting the obvious truth – that other countries might view the United States as “an exporter of terrorism” because the U.S. government and particularly the CIA have had a long history of exporting terrorism – the “red cell” analysts confine their study’s frame to some individual Americans with no connection to the U.S. government or the CIA.

Thus, terrorists who have ties to Official Washington are left outside the frame.

For instance, there is no mention of Luis Posada Carriles, the alleged right-wing Cuban mastermind of the bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people, nor to any of the former Nicaraguan contras who slaughtered civilians as part of a bloody campaign to destabilize the leftist Sandinista government. Yet, Posada and many ex-contras still openly live in or visit Miami.

The CIA files are surely filled with data about Posada and the contras because the CIA worked closely with and provided material support for them.

Not that self-censorship by the “red cells” is all that surprising. It’s been practiced by U.S. government officials and the Washington news media for decades now.

Otherwise, the American people would have been confronted with the uncomfortable reality that many esteemed U.S. government officials, including Republican icon Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidents, had their hands dipped in the blood of innocent victims of terrorism.

Double Standards

What if ex-President George W. Bush’s dictum – that a government that harbors or helps terrorists should be punished as severely as the terrorists themselves – were applied to the United States or even to his own family? Maybe the “red cell” should have asked that “out-of-the-box” question.

In other words, the U.S. political/media system – including these “red cell” analysts – continue to view the world through a cracked lens that focuses outrage on “enemy” regimes and groups while refracting away a comparable fury from similar actions by U.S. officials.

So, for instance, American officials, pundits and journalists rage against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for allegedly assisting Colombian guerrillas, but are getting ready for a year-long celebration of Reagan’s centennial birthday in 2011.

Yet, not only did Reagan arm the Nicaraguan contras, but he continued the covert war after the ruling Sandinistas won an election in 1984 that most outside observers praised as free and fair. He also wasn’t deterred by disclosures of the contras’ human rights abuses – kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering civilians – even when those acts were acknowledged by some senior contra leaders.

Reagan was well aware of the contras’ cruelty (he privately called them “vandals” in a conversation with CIA officer Duane Clarridge), while he hailed them publicly as “freedom fighters” and equated them with America’s “Founding Fathers.”

Reagan kept arming the contras even after Congress ordered him to stop and the World Court denounced the CIA’s secret mining of Nicaragua’s harbors.

Reagan also backed vicious rebel forces in Angola and Afghanistan (including foreign Islamic fundamentalists who later coalesced into al-Qaeda), and he supported state terror against civilian populations in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, killing hundreds of thousands.

By any stretch of the imagination – if any other country had so brazenly violated international law and human rights standards – that government would be condemned by civilized nations and would be treated as a terrorist pariah.

But the vast majority of Republicans and many Democrats view Reagan as a political hero. In a ceremony last year, President Barack Obama feted former First Lady Nancy Reagan at the White House for the signing of a special law to commemorate Reagan’s 100th birthday.

To suggest that the late President was a war criminal or a sponsor of terrorism is unthinkable within the U.S. political mainstream. [For details on Reagan’s war crimes, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

Bush Family Terrorism

Similarly, it is unacceptable to note how the Bush Family has protected Cuban-American terrorists – from 1976 when George H.W. Bush ran the CIA to 2008 when George W. Bush balked at extraditing Posada to stand trial in Venezuela. At times, the hypocrisy was staggering.

On May 2, 2008, more than six years into Bush-43’s “war on terror,” there was a remarkable scene in Miami as Posada, then 80, was feted at a gala fundraising dinner. Some 500 supporters chipped in to his legal defense fund.

Posada arrived to thundering applause. Then, in a bristling speech against the Castro regime in Cuba, Posada told his supporters, “We ask God to sharpen our machetes.”

Venezuela’s Ambassador the United States, Bernardo Alvarez, protested the Bush administration’s tolerance of the dinner. “This is outrageous, particularly because he kept talking about [more] violence,” the ambassador said.

Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who worked for Venezuela’s intelligence agency in the 1970s, masterminded the Cubana Airlines bombing in 1976, according to an overwhelming body of evidence compiled by the U.S. government and in South America.

Despite the strong evidence against Posada in U.S. government files, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made little effort to capture Posada when he sneaked into Miami in 2005. Posada was detained only after he held a news conference.

Then, instead of extraditing Posada to Venezuela to stand trial for a terrorist mass murder, the Bush administration engaged in a lackadaisical effort to have him deported for lying on an immigration form.

During a 2007 court hearing in Texas, Bush administration lawyers allowed to go unchallenged testimony from a Posada friend that Posada would face torture if he were returned to Venezuela. The judge, therefore, barred Posada from being deported there.

After that ruling, Ambassador Alvarez accused the Bush administration of applying “a cynical double standard” in the “war on terror.” As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said, “There isn’t a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela.”

Different Rules

The kid-glove treatment of Posada and other right-wing Cuban terrorists stood in marked contrast to George W. Bush’s tough handling of Islamic militants. While Posada was afforded all U.S. legal protections and then some, suspected Islamic terrorists were locked away without trial at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a further ironic twist, the Bush-43 administration allowed Venezuela to be smeared about torture while Bush and his top aides were concealing the fact that they had authorized extensive torture on suspected Islamic “terrorists,” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other brutal torture techniques at CIA “black sites.”

Posada also made no apologies for his long terrorist career. In 1998, in interviews with a New York Times reporter, Posada admitted a role in a wave of Havana bombings, citing a goal of frightening tourists away from Cuba.

Similarly, his alleged co-conspirator in the Cubana Airlines bombing, Orlando Bosch, showed no remorse for his violent past. In a TV interview with reporter Manuel Cao on Miami's Channel 41, Bosch justified the mid-air bombing that killed 73 people in 1976.

When Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the Cubana plane crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.”

“But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?” Cao asked.

“Who was on board that plane?” Bosch responded. “Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese.” [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

Bosch added, “Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies…”

“And the fencers?” Cao asked about Cuba’s amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. “The young people on board?”

Bosch replied, “I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. … She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

“We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.”

[The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976 and which involved a CIA undercover asset.]

“If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult?” Cao asked.

“No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba,” Bosch answered.

Venezuela Case

Though Bosch and Posada have formally denied masterminding the Cubana Airlines bombing, Bosch’s incriminating statements and other evidence make the case of his and Posada’s guilt overwhelming.

Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the bombing.

But in fall 1976, Bush’s boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the investigations. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were well known. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP.

The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia “to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela.”

On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

“Following the 6 October [1976] Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack.

A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez.

After President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush took power in Washington in 1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing terrorism.

Iran-Contra Role

In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help of Cuban-Americans. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison.

Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President Bush. At the time, Rodriguez was handling secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet project of President Reagan.

After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and began using the code name “Ramon Medina.” Posada was assigned the job of paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation.

By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela’s jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington couldn’t credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch.

But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.

In 1992, also during the Bush-41 presidency, the FBI interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras. Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush’s vice presidential office in the secret contra operation.

According to a 31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush’s national security adviser, former CIA officer Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix Rodriguez.

“Posada … recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg,” the FBI summary said. “Posada knows this because he’s the one who paid Rodriguez’ phone bill.” After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada walk out of the embassy to freedom. [For details, see Parry’s Lost History.]

[For more on how the senior George Bush also looked the other way on Chile’s international terrorism, see Consortiumnews.com’s “When the Terrorists Were Our Guys.”]

The double standards on terrorism are now so deeply engrained in Official Washington that the well-established history of U.S. government officials collaborating with terrorists is not only kept “outside the box” of the city’s conventional wisdom but is ignored by the CIA's “red cell” analysts who are assigned to “think outside the box.”

So, the “red cell” analysts may take note of Irish-Americans filling coffee cans with cash for the IRA, dating back to the 1880s, and of individual Americans conducting outrages on their own, but the analysts know better than to look into their own agency’s files for the real reasons why foreigners might “see the United States as an ‘Exporter of Terrorism.’”

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

LIFE IN TALIBANISTAN Married to the mob By Pepe Escobar

This is the conclusion of a three-part report.
PART 1: 'Throw these infidels in jail'
PART 2: The degree zero of culture

Ten years ago, Taliban Afghanistan - Talibanistan - was under a social, cultural, political and economic nightmare. Ten years ago, New York-based photographer Jason Florio and myself slowly crossed Talibanistan. Those were the days. Bill Clinton was in the White House. Osama bin Laden was a discreet guest of Mullah Omar, and there was no hint of 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, or the "war on terror", or the rebranding of the AfPak war.

We experienced Talibanistan in action, in close detail. This is both a glimpse of a long-lost world, and a window to a possible future in Afghanistan. Arguably, not much has changed. Or has it?
If schizophrenia defined the Taliban in power, US schizophrenia still rules.

Will the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization reach a "Saigon moment" anytime soon - and leave? Not likely. As General David "I'm always positioning myself to 2012" Petraeus, like his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, advances his special forces-led, maximum force Murder Inc. to subdue the Taliban, the same Petraeus - no irony intended - may tell Fox News, as he did last week, that the war's "ultimate goal" is the "reconciliation" of the ultra-corrupt Hamid Karzai government with the Taliban.

This in fact means that while "favorable" conditions are not created on the ground, government-sanctioned drug trafficking mafias and US defense contractors will continue to make - literally - a killing. As for the PR-savvy Petraeus, he will pull all stops to sell his brand of Afghan surge to Americans as some sort of "victory" - as he managed to sell the rebranded Iraq war. And as for the (rebranded) umbrella of fighters conveniently labeled "Taliban", who seem to eat surges for breakfast, they will bide their time, Pashtun-style, and trust Allah to eventually hand them victory - the real thing, and not a PR fantasy.

Now let's go back to the future again.

HERAT, SPINBALDAK, BALOCHISTAN - Arriving in Herat after a hellish journey from Kandahar, I thought I had smoked prime Afghan opium and was on a non-stop trip to Persian fantasy. I had met Scandinavian non-governmental organization women intellectuals stranded right in the middle of Taliban theocracy, but in Herat they seemed to be in the right place. Because Herat seemed to be absolutely impervious to tyranny.

The oasis of Herat - established 5,000 years ago - is the cradle of Afghan history and civilization. It boasts the richest soil in Central Asia; Herodotus dubbed it "Central Asia's granary". For centuries it was a crucial crossroads between the Turkish and Persian empires. The whole population was converted to Islam in the 7th century. When I entered the grand mosque - built in the 7th, rebuilt in the 12th century - I felt I was really in Persia.

During the Middle Ages, Herat was a great Sufi center - mystical and profoundly spiritual Islam. Not by accident the city's patron saint is Khawaja Abdullah Ansari, an 11th-century Sufi poet and philosopher. Genghis Khan conquered Herat in 1222 and spared only 40 of its 160,000 inhabitants. Less than two centuries later the city recovered its glory when Tamerlan's son and his wife - queen Gowhar Shad - transferred the capital of the empire from Samarkand to Herat.

Tamerlan's empire was the first to mix the nomadic culture of the Turkish steppe with the extreme sophistication of Persian culture. At the bazaar, septuagenarian traders told me - the first foreigner they had seen in almost two years - how at the beginning of the 15th century the city was as wealthy as Venice, producing the finest carpets, jewelry, weaponry and miniatures as well as mosques, madrassas, public baths, libraries and palaces.

Herodotus might be having a blast with the historical irony of the Taliban - with their pathological horror of the female sex - now ruling a Persian city where once reigned one of the most seductive humanists and feminists of Asia. Gowhar Shad - the female, Persian version of Lorenzo de Medici - used to marry her "ruby-lipped" ladies-in-waiting with the Taliban of their time.

The queen built a fabulous complex including mosque, madrassa and her own tomb in the outskirts of Herat. The tomb - blue Persian tiles with floral decoration, a blue dome decorated with vertiginous Koranic inscriptions - is unanimously recognized by art historians as one of the masterpieces of Islamic architecture. The inscription on the tomb is a simple "the Bilkis of her time"; "bilkis" stands for "Queen of Sheba".

What is left of the complex are five elegant minarets, a few marble slabs and something from Gowhar Shad's tomb. The British Empire demolished almost everything by the end of the 19th century and the Soviets mined the area during the 1980s to repel the mujahideen. Heratis would comment that when the Soviets bombed the city in 1979, they wreaked more havoc than Genghis Khan.



The Taliban had no idea of the prodigious cultural, literary and political history of Herat. What mattered for them was Herat as a golden goose - the crossroads through which passed the non-stop smuggling of second-hand vehicles, consumer electronics and computers from Dubai and Bandar Abbas on the way to Pakistan. The taxes paid by the hundreds of lorries crossing Herat every day fed the Taliban central bank and financed the war to conquer the north of Afghanistan still escaping their control.

Unlike the rest of Talibanistan, there was no mass poverty in Herat. Pakistani Pashtun moneychangers insisted business was great. In two sprawling bazaars, eight-year-old kids crammed in small rooms were weaving for 12 hours a day the carpets that would flood all Asian markets (not anymore; now they are synthetic, or made in China). Before curfew, at 10pm, the bazaars were booming, as well as the juice and ice-cream shops.

Intellectually, this miniature of Persia was buried when the Taliban conquered it in 1995; the painters, poets and professors crossed the border to Iran. The Taliban locked all women behind closed doors; forbade visits to Sufi sanctuaries; imposed the degree zero of education closing down all schools; segregated hospitals; closed down public baths; and banished women from the bazaar.

They rebelled. Every day, from 8am to 11am, for the past three years, Latifah - a graduate of Herat's Medical Institute - had been conducting her own, homemade primary school, teaching math, Persian, Pashto, English, biology, physics, chemistry and Koranic studies. This was a two-year course, with a month's holiday. Officially, this school "didn't exist". But "they know", she would tell me. There had been no repression. But she was very anxious about the future.



For her beloved students, Latifah - one of the six daughters of an upper-middle-class Herati family - was none other than a reincarnation of Gowhar Shad. Her father, an engineer trained in the former Soviet Union, used to make thousands of dollars a month before the Taliban. Latifah was part of a sprawling west Afghan network of underground resistance - confiding that there was practically "one school in every street" and a few hundred teachers, although they never tried to communicate with each other.

Apart from teaching, she gave medical attention to anyone who needed it, and had worked for a de-mining organization. She used to say that when she got married, she would want "a person like me, who gives me permission to teach". That's what she may be doing in Herat nowadays.

By that time I had crossed Talibanistan from east to west. It was enough to share two certainties. For all that I saw, the tribalization of urban Afghanistan did not seem inevitable - even though it was accelerated by the rustic Taliban theocracy. And the talibanization of the whole of Central Asia - so much feared by Washington, Moscow and Beijing - also was a non-starter. Because of the strength of spirit of people like Latifah, Gowhar Shad, the indomitable humanist, would certainly give it the seal of approval with her ruby lips.

Free trade, here we come!
A horizontal canyon of containers fries in the Balochistan desert, casually watched over by a turbaned army. Inside, a Babel of conspicuous consumption, from Japanese video cameras to English knickers, from Chinese silk to computer parts from Taiwan.

In this Taliban version of Ali Baba's cave you can buy anything - cash; no major credit cards accepted. A few yards away, monster hauls of heroin, Eastern European Kalashnikov replicas and Iranian oil converge in an apotheosis of free trade. Yes, because 10 years ago "free trade" was not in the World Trade Organization in Geneva; it was here, in Spinbaldak - a ringside seat to the largest smuggling ring on the planet, involving the Taliban, Pakistani smugglers, drug lords, tribal chiefs owning transport mafias, bureaucrats, politicians, the police and selected army officials.

This low-tech version of the Silk Road - where lorries replaced 5,000-camel caravans - was the Taliban's real golden goose. The Silk Road linking China to Europe via Afghanistan and Central Asia was controlled by the same tribal chiefs and nomads who today roll in Mercedes.



This free-trade boom could only be a consequence of the interminable civil war in Afghanistan - linked to the expansion of the drug business and the overwhelming corruption in Pakistan. At the same time, this far west coincided with a consumer boom all across Central Asia.

Drug and transport mafias - all across what today the Pentagon calls AfPak - united in merry convergence

. The Taliban, since taking power in 1996, were encouraged by transporters to open roads for mass smuggling. It was the Quetta (Balochistan's capital) transport mafia that forced the Taliban to capture the Persianized Herat, and thus totally control the way to Turkmenistan. What a Pakistani diplomat had told me in Islamabad still rings true to this day; "It's this mafia that ultimately controls the fate of governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

The border "control" between Chaman, in Balochistan, and Spinbaldak, in Afghanistan, was a joke (and remains so to this day); a monster frat party drenched in endless cups of green tea. Everybody knows everybody else. Up to 400 trucks and lorries used to cross the border every day. Most of the Bedford and Mercedes trucks were stolen - with fake license plates. There was no invoice for anything inside them. The drivers would have crossed as many as six international borders with a fake driver's license, no road permit and no passport. Nobody paid customs or taxes of any kind.

Obviously, this was not a recommend spot for Westerners. We were met with accusations of being "UN spies". Only after a handful of altercations in Urdu were we "adopted" by some clans - who immediately started to peddle their wares. I could have bought a Toyota Corolla 92 for only $3,000, a Nihonkkai Japanese fire truck for less than $5,000, a Toyota Land Cruiser 96 for $10,000 or a Yamaha bike as good as new for only $700.

Abdul Qadir Achkazi was a key figure in the family of a terribly influential local warlord. He was a cosmopolitan - he'd been to Tokyo, Singapore, Dubai and had a "martyr" bother in the anti-USSR jihad. Reclined on a cushion over the dusty carpet inside his container office, serving the umpteenth cup of green tea, he laid down the free-trade law.

All this stuff came by ship from Yokohama to Bandar Abbas in Iran, via Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The transport of a container full of dodgy goods was $4,000, maximum. In Bandar Abbas, the container paid a harbor tax. From Bandar Abbas, it crossed the Iran-Afghan border and arrived in Spinbaldak on top of a lorry. Entering Afghanistan, the importer paid the Taliban up to $7,000 in taxes per container, or $3,000 if these were toys. For each imported Toyota, the Taliban got a cool $1,000. From Bandar Abbas to Spinbaldak, transport expenses would run to $600, paid before entering Herat - the Taliban's golden goose.

Abdul told me that all clients in this free-trade special were Pakistanis. And almost all traders had double nationality. Best-sellers at the time were cassette players, CDs and computers (nowadays it must be iPhones).

The absolute majority of traders confirmed that most deliveries were in Quetta - but they could deliver wherever the client wanted; after all they controlled their own transport networks. In this case, there would be an extra of 30%. If the merchandise was apprehended by police, the client would get all his money back. But anyway in Spinbaldak, as Abdul said, "Everything is legal. There's no Taliban interference because all taxes have been paid." In front of a container selling a pile of good old Sony Trinitrons, a group told me, "We fought the Russians. Today we support the Taliban."

The border with Iran, in Islam qila, a wasteland battered by endless sandstorms worked in the same register. Iranian lorries got rid of their containers, immediately lugged on to Afghan trucks that inevitably would fall prey to the sandstorms. The layout of Afghan "customs" was a row of transportation companies' offices. Faced with a few questions, the Iranian officials were as polite as a mortal Pasdaran enemy of still living Saddam Hussein.

It was only in 2000 that Pakistan actually woke up to the billions of dollars in taxes it was losing in this free-for-all. The informal economy at the time was 51% of gross domestic product (not much has changed). Smuggling was - and remains - an immense network trespassing Central Asia, Iran and the Persian Gulf (that's one of the reasons why sanctions against Iran will never work).

Already in 2000 it was pure wishful thinking to believe that powerful tribal lords could not live without Pakistan - to which they were and remain interlinked by trade and property

they bought outside of the tribal areas. Tribal chiefs raved about this huge, illegal duty-free corridor - and they still profit from it.

The porosity of Pakistan's borders - from the Khyber pass to Balochistan - benefited the Afghan mujahideen during the anti-USSR jihad, but at the same time allowed the infiltration all across Pakistan of the Kalashnikov culture. The Hindu Kush as much as the Durand Line, natural or human barriers, nothing has prevented a continuous flux of horrors to flow from Central Asia to South Asia.

So what was the purpose of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan? Well, I did learn that Talibanistan was conditioned by three "values": war, trade and pious morality. The Taliban did manage to recreate in almost the whole country the mindset of a madrassa.

Those taxes over free trade filled their coffers. And an internal jihad - against Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras - justified the regime. The legitimacy of the state and politics was absolutely zero; that is, any notion of citizenship or freedom was also absolutely zero. Only belief and obedience were legitimate. Ten years later, I still think this is a demented, (non)political experiment for the history books.

Well, we finally hit the Balochistan border, between pyramids of multinational tires and a traffic jam of donkey carts piled up with stereos. The Taliban control post was a small, fly-infested room. The official was asleep. When he awoke, he asked for exist visas. We improvised – showing him a letter from the Foreign Ministry in Kabul. It took him an eternity not to read our letter. But he eventually stamped our passports. We hit the main street like Gary Cooper in High Noon. A black-turbaned Taliban passed by. I couldn't resist; "Welcome home." We grabbed a Mad Max cab and burned rubber in the dust of this 7th-century black hole - and the time-machine brought us back to the year 2000.

Where's my refugee Buddha?
"Oh, I have Buddhas from Bamiyan."

The news - as cool, calm and collected as a Taliban rocket launch - took a while to sink in. The Cousin of the Mine King of Balochistan was still smiling. We had been in Quetta, frontier capital of the Pakistani side of Balochistan, only for a few hours.

In Afghanistan, we had been arrested (twice), menaced with a trial by a military court, accused of being UN spies. We were exhausted, and as far as Bamiyan was concerned, frustrated. Taliban officials in Kabul had denied us a visa do visit Bamiyan, allegedly because of "security reasons". At the time I lived in Buddhist Thailand. Apart from trying to understand what makes a warped madrassa worldview tick in the beginning of the Third Millennium, I had always longed to see the Bamiyan Buddhas.

But I never made it to Bamiyan. Instead, Bamiyan came to me.

At the Quetta Serena Hotel - a plush compound straight from Santa Fe, New Mexico - the Cousin of the Mine King showed up in style: chauffeur-driven in a Toyota Hi-Lux. This could only foment our paranoia: Toyotas Hi-Lux constituted the entire Taliban motorized Walhalla, and when we were arrested by the religious police in Kabul stadium in the middle of a soccer match for (not) taking photos, we were taken to interrogation in the back seat of a Toyota Hi-Lux. But the Cousin of the Mine King had other plans.

"Let's go meet some nomads."

A few hours later, we were in a tent sipping tea with a family of Balochistan borderland nomads. Compared to the destitute Ghazni nomads we had seen in Afghanistan, fleeing from the worst drought in the past 30 years, these ones were positively de luxe. The head of the family even tried to sell me a falcon: customers from the United Arab Emirates were snatching them at the time for as much as 1 million rupees.

The head nomad reveals himself to be an Afghan trader in the Punjab. His take on Afghanistan is extremely self-assured: the Taliban are falling apart, and the country has now split into three factions. All of them are responsible for the widespread destruction, as much as the whole population.

Back in Quetta, after the nomad warm-up, we are taken through a mud-brick labyrinth to a house in the middle of a desert wasteland. Kids swarm in the dusty "streets". One of them disappears inside a shack and emerges with a statue. And another. And then another. We are now contemplating the private collection of the Cousin of the Mine King. It features astonishing Greco-Buddhist boddhisatvas, hellenic arhats with their ribs protruding, and even part of a frieze. Some could be 3rd or 4th century, some even older. They are all pre-Bamiyan Buddhas.

The Cousin of the Mine King is naturally evasive. He would love to sell his collection to a Western museum

- but can't get it out of the country. The Guimet Museum of Asian Arts in Paris had recently reopened after lavish restoration work worth $50 million; they would kill for this "private collection". He "obtained most of the statues from the Bamiyan valley". Some of them "came from the Kabul museum". The methods were effective: "We just went there and took them".

With the boddhisatvas still in our minds, the Cousin of the Mine King take us to meet the Great Man himself. We are ushered into his living room, decorated with a silk Qom almost the size of a tennis court, and worth the gross domestic product of whole Afghan provinces. The Mine King is a Baloch from the borderlands - a member of the Sanjirani tribe. He controls coal, onyx, marble and granite mines. And he goes straight to the point.

"Afghanistan is a tribal society. We should leave it like that." For him, the only solution for the country would be the return of King Zahir Shah: "But that was already proposed in the early 1990s. Now itดs too late." The Mine King regards the Taliban as "very nice people". But he worries about the future, considering the vast amount of weapons in the country: "If there is a total collapse in Afghanistan, the ashes will be coming straight to Pakistan" (how prophetic was he, 10 years ago?)

The Mine King waves us goodbye, dreaming of enjoying New York City nightlife. Then a few months passed. I always thought that somewhere in the wasteland outskirts of Quetta, a few Afghan Buddhas were still sleeping half-buried in the sand. Then in March 2001 I knew for sure they had escaped the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas, bombed to ashes by the Taliban. But as the Mine King himself remarked, these ashes, brought by the winds, headed straight into Pakistan.



Ten years ago, and even by March 2001, not many people were fully aware that a geopolitical New Great Game was already unraveling in Central Asia. The Taliban were - and remain - just one of the (minor) players. They could obliterate Buddhist art that predates Islam itself. But Buddhism teaches us that everything is impermanent.

Ten years ago the Cousin of the Mine King could be the target of a few accusations; a few months later, he could be seen as a man who saved a significant part of the world heritage from the Taliban smashing orgy. And more impermanence: considering Central Asian volatility, the bombers themselves, sooner rather than later, were reduced to ashes in the New Great Game.

Or were they? Ten years later, they seem to be stronger than ever. Against all the firepower of the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they seem to believe they may even get their Talibanistan back. General Petraeus, go back to the future and eat your heart out.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.