Reports today from the European Union Monitors reviewing the recent election in Afghanistan state that as much as one third of the votes in the election were most likely fraudulent. This raises some very serious questions in my mind when we consider continued support of their regime.
President Hamid Karzai currently has 54.6% of the vote and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah has only 27.8% of the vote. The monitors state that nearly 1.5million of the total of 5.6 million votes show signs of fraud.
We have been there for some time and things are getting worse instead of better. This is a place with a long history of discontent with outsiders coming in and trying to press their will on a nation of Opium Poppy Crop growers whose largest trade in the world supports the drug traffic and little else.
It is estimated that 2/3rds of the population of Afghanistan exists on less than $2 US a day. This fact stands singular while one considers the following: (1) one third of the country’s GDP comes from the Opium Poppy crop and traffic in illicit drugs (morphine, heroin and hashish), (2) a geologic survey states that the country is processing 36 trillion cubic feet of natural3.6 billion barrels of petroleum and up to 1325 million barrels of natural gas and (3) the government is processing//exporting copper that could earn $1.2 billion in royalties every year for the next 30 years.
Does any of this trickle down to the population? It doesn’t seem so if they exist on $2 US//day.
The human side of this war does not get the attention that it deserves. There’s more to play here than meets the eye.
Look into it and make up your own mind.
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