Taliban 'use Iranian missiles on UK troops' !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: The Daily Telegraph on IranFocus
May 22, 2007 Author: Thomas Harding in Lashkah Gah




British troops in Afghanistan are being targeted by surface-to-air missiles supplied by Iran, a senior Army source said yesterday.

Officers in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are supplying hundreds of weapons, including the missiles, to Taliban insurgents, it is believed.

Most worrying is the news that SA7 Strella anti-aircraft missiles have been supplied to the Taliban. The weapons are a serious threat to helicopters supplying more than 6,000 troops.

It is not thought the Taliban are well trained in how to use the weapons most effectively. In southern Helmand yesterday they fired an anti-aircraft weapon at an American F18 fighter without hitting it.

Other weapons being smuggled in include plastic explosives, anti-tank mines, AK47s, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

Arms have been discovered by American Special Forces teams working alongside the Afghan National Army.

"There is reporting that leads us to believe a number of agencies, that possibly include Iranian organisations, are significantly supporting the Taliban," a military intelligence source told The Daily Telegraph.

His remarks are the most authoritative confirmation that British and other Nato forces face an increasingly sophisticated threat from Iranian supplied arms.

British forces have been in Afghanistan for six years, having helped the American-led campaign to destroy al-Qa'eda training camps and topple the Taliban regime in November 2001. More than 40 Britons have died on active duty.

But it was only last year that large numbers of British soldiers directly confronted Taliban gunmen in their former strongholds.

Since the arrival of the British, the tempo of the fighting has significantly increased. Under these conditions, the Taliban need to maintain a continuous flow of arms and ammunition.

The weapons are believed to come directly from Iran or are smuggled in by dealers. Most are brought across the poorly-patrolled border into Nomruz province and taken on trucks or donkeys to the Sangin valley where they are used against British troops.

The Taliban may spend about £100 million on military operations every year. Much of this sum comes from donors in the Middle East, but there is a big input from the proceeds of opium poppy growing.

The Shia-dominated Teheran regime and the Sunni extremist Taliban are far from natural allies. In fact, the Taliban's brand of religious zealotry holds that Shias are not genuine Muslims.

But the arrival of western troops in Afghanistan may have altered Iran's calculations. This has provided the Teheran regime and the Taliban with a common enemy.

There is no evidence that the technology behind the advanced roadside bombs that have penetrated at least four British armoured vehicles in southern Iraq has arrived in Afghanistan. But Iran is thought to have showed the Taliban how to make basic roadside bombs from old land-mines.

It was fear of Iranian backed bomb-making technology that was partly behind the decision that Prince Harry should not go to Maysan province.

• A British serviceman was gravely wounded and a lorry driver killed in an ambush on a military supply convoy in Basra yesterday as troops clashed with militia fighters across the southern Iraqi city.

The attackers were said to be members of the Mahdi army, the militia of Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which is waging a struggle to wrest control of Basra from the British-backed local government.

[Grant]

"The Shia-dominated Teheran regime and the Sunni extremist Taliban are far from natural allies. In fact, the Taliban's brand of religious zealotry holds that Shias are not genuine Muslims.

But the arrival of western troops in Afghanistan may have altered Iran's calculations. This has provided the Teheran regime and the Taliban with a common enemy."

Once our enemy leaves, my enemy will once again be my enemy. In the meantime, Tehran will play all sides.

[*Arabman]

Occupied Afghanistan must be liberated.

[Padishah]

Arm the Taliban with weapons they will not hesitate to use on people they consider non-Muslims. Sounds like a good policy, don't you think?

[*jr]

Adm. Fallon: Iran can't be ignored

Source: AP

NEW YORK (AP) — The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said Sunday that Iran is a major player in the region that cannot be ignored but that the United States has no intention of leaving, as Iran would like to see happen.

Adm. William Fallon said the U.S. would continue to maintain a presence in the Middle East, as it has for decades, at the request of other countries in the region.

"We have to figure out a way to come to an arrangement with them," Fallon said about Iran in an interview with the Associated Press.

The admiral's remarks came on the eve of a meeting between American and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad to discuss ways to ease the crisis in Iraq. It would be a rare one-on-one forum between the two countries, which broke off formal relations after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... 28-fall...

[*Arabman]

Afghans pessimistic about NATO, struggle to feed families: study

by Michel ComteMon May 28, 3:08 PM ET

Half of 17,000 men surveyed in April in southern Afghanistan "chillingly" said they believe the Taliban will triumph against NATO forces, a think tank said in a report Monday.

Eighty percent of respondents also said they are preoccupied with trying to feed their families in the war-torn nation, according to the poll by The Senlis Council, an international think-tank.

The Taliban's "very clever propaganda" tells young Afghan men that NATO does not care about them, and is only concerned about waging their own war, said Norine MacDonald, founder and lead field researcher for the group.

Afghans are "worse off (now) than under Taliban" rule, she said at the opening of the council's Canadian office in Ottawa.

"The Afghan people, five years after the international community has come to Afghanistan, despite our best intentions, are suffering," she told reporters.

Southern Afghanistan is facing serious food shortages which could play into the hands of the country's hard-line former leaders the Taliban, she said.

Growing civilian injuries caused by NATO-Taliban fighting, and a US-led poppy eradication program have also heightened local villagers' frustration with NATO forces.

In a critical report, the think tank said the situation is "undermining military efforts" in Afghanistan.

The organization, an international policy group with offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Kabul, based its research on testimony from Afghans, and had videos showing injured civilians with poor healthcare and dozens of refugee camps in Kandahar province where Afghans line up for food scraps.

According to the organization's poll, fifty percent of men in Afghanistan said they believe the Taliban will defeat international forces.

MacDonald urged Canada to send a special envoy to Afghanistan to replace the Canadian International Development Agency, which is "almost non-existent" on the ground and has proven to be woefully inadequate in helping ease starvation in the war zone.

As well, aid funding must be increased and UN millennium goals for eradicating poverty and starvation should be adopted as benchmarks, the report said.

Opposition New Democratic Party defense critic Alexa McDonough said Canada has spent 17.1 billion dollars (15.8 billion US) on its military mission and only 600 million dollars (555.7 billion US) on development and aid in Afghanistan since 2002, citing ministers responsible for each dossier.

The government said military spending includes the overall cost of maintaining Canada's forces, who would have to be paid and equipped even if they were not deployed to Afghanistan, said Isabelle Bouchard, spokesperson for Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor.

Field hospitals must be set up in Kandahar province, the Senlis report urged, to treat civilians injured in fighting between NATO forces and insurgents.

The poppy eradication program must be halted until farmers have a chance to grow alternative legal crops, it said. MacDonald urged NATO countries to try a poppy-for-medicine pilot program in one village and expand it.

Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium, most of which is used in Europe, Russia, China, Iran and Central Asia often as heroin.

Senlis said Western policy was creating extreme poverty in Afghanistan and was pushing the population to seek help from the Taliban to protect their interests.

Instead of ripping up the plants, which has been "ineffective and inflammatory," says MacDonald, she recommended using them for medicinal purposes in pain-relieving drugs like morphine and codeine rather than as a narcotic.

Canada has 2,500 troops based in the volatile Kandahar province.

Fifty-six soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of the mission in 2002, after US forces ousted the Taliban from power for harboring accused terrorist Osama bin Laden.

MacDonald, a Canadian who has lived in Afghanistan for two years, has been invited by the opposition to testify at a foreign affairs parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

"Canada must not forget that the main objective in Afghanistan is to build a peaceful and prosperous nation," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070528/wl ... 0528190843

[musika man]

the iranians are very smart. distract the west in afghanistan and irak, help the sunni extremists with arms and they will achieve nuclear powers in time for a shiat-sunni war in the gulf region. the only winners in irak and afghan wars. everyone else is a loser.