Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually — yet they completely reject the label of “homosexual.” . . .
The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.
The report said: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.’”
The Pashtun populations are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country. The Human Terrain Team that conducted the research is part of a military effort to learn more about local populations.
The report also detailed a disturbing practice in which older “men of status” keep young boys on hand for sexual relationships. One of the country’s favorite sayings, the report said, is “women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”
The report concluded that the widespread homosexual behavior stems from several factors, including the “severe segregation” of women in the society and the “prohibitive” cost of marriage.
Yeah, you could say that homosexual behavior is widespread in Afghanistan when even the Taliban is flamin’ gay:
You don’t have to be a genius to see that by giving the prize to Obama, the Nobel committee wanted to influence his decision on how to proceed in Afghanistan. Obama is currently deciding whether to send in more troops and make sure the country never again becomes a big terrorist training camp - or to quietly let the Taliban win and hope for the best. With the prize, the Nobel peaceniks are trying to make it harder for him to choose the former course. “Hey Barry, you’ve just won the Nobel peace prize – you won’t celebrate it by escalating a war that Bush started, will you?”
Make no mistake, folks – these people are trying to influence the foreign policy of the United States of America in a way pernicious to America’s vital interests. And they are doing it because they feel that with the current occupant of the White House, they have a good chance.
Oh, and these people don’t care about Obama – for them, he’s just a useful idiot who can be manipulated to help them achieve their real goal: weakening America. If they really cared about him, they’d wait until 2012 with their October surprise.
The Nobel committee hopes to influence Obama’s decisions on Afghanistan. Now that he is an internationally recognized man of peace, he is not going to order a surge in Afhanistan. McChrystal won’t get the troops he says he needs.
The White House has been preparing this ground for weeks, suggesting that since Al Qaeda is now weak a Taliban return to power needn’t worry us. We can live with that, they say off the record. The great military thinkers Joe Biden, John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod have developed a long-range John Murtha strategy that will operate along the lines of a video game: if you see movement on the screen, push a button.
And with the Taliban back in power, we won’t have to worry about messy elections. But what about those who fought with us? What has the Taliban in store for them? If Afghanistan were not a land-locked country, we could expect thousands of boat people.
But not to worry. When asked about a possible bloodbath following a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, Obama said he didn’t really have a problem with it and its possibility should not determine policy. He won’t have a problem with it in Afghanistan either. After all, we’ve been told, Afghanistan, like Vietnam or Iraq before the surge, was always unwinnable. We’ll accept a certain number of refugees to help ease the short-term sting of conscience over betraying an allly. But as with all vices, repetition makes the practice easier. This won’t be the first time we’ve betrayed an ally.
It will destoy the military, of course, but by the time that becomes clear Obama will have passed from the scene.
The chunk of money awarded by the Nobel people is over a million dollars. Its stated purpose is to influence an elected official, since it’s “aspirational” and not for any achievement.
Don’t elected officials go to jail for taking that kind of money?
The sniper was so far away that the Taliban commander didn’t even realise he was being shot at when he first round missed him. The second one went into his chest:
Cpl Chris Reynolds, 25, camped on a roof for three days as he waited for perfect conditions to take the shot.
He calculated the range, wind and trajectory before pulling the trigger – and the bullet flew 1,853 metres before hitting its target.
It is the furthest distance any fatal bullet has ever been fired in Afghanistan.
The warlord, known as Mula, was thought to be responsible for co-ordinating several attacks against British and US troops.
Cpl Reynolds, of 3 Scots, The Black Watch, has already claimed 32 rebel fighters.
His latest kill came last week during a firefight in the town of Babaji in Helmand Province. Yesterday he told how the Taliban chief slumped into the arms of a stunned colleague after being hit.
No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say. The pocket-size translation of the Quran has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges to spare their lives. They’re accused of modifying the Quran and their fate could be decided Sunday in court.
Communism under Babrak Karmal was probably a big step toward progress for Afghan society.
The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.
Four blue pills. Viagra.
“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.
The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills….
“And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area.”
They drink too much and they’re too fat to fight, that’s the damning conclusion of German parliamentary reports into the country’s 3,500 troops stationed in Afghanistan.
While British and U.S. troops in the country face a strict ban on alcohol, their German comrades are allowed two pints a day.
The stunning statistics reveal that in 2007 German forces in northern Afghanistan drank 1.7 million pints of beer and 90,000 bottles of wine.
The troops also downed 896,000 pints of beer in the first six months of this year, the Times reported.
The statistics only add to the embarrassment of the country’s federal army, Bundeswehr, after a report earlier this year found troops to be too fat, smoked too much and didn’t exercise enough.
It showed they lived on beer and sausages while shunning fruit and vegetables.
The parliamentary report claimed that some 40 per cent of all German army personnel are overweight – a higher percentage than in the civilian population.
At the time Reinhold Robbe, the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, stated: ‘Plainly put, the soldiers are too fat, exercise too little, and take little care of their diet.’
The Times also reported the damning allegation from a senior officer that Germany is failing in its main mission to train the Afghan police. He descibed the efforts as ‘a miserable failure’.
Germans used to be formidable soldiers, and they probably will be again if Germany is ever attacked. I guess Germany just doesn’t see the war on terror as a real war in which it is fighting for its interests. They are only in it because they were forced as NATO members, so they aren’t acting as seriously as they would be if they viewed the WOT as a serious matter.
This article first appeared back in September, but it is worth re-reading today, on Victory in Iraq Day, as it tells about the respect Americans in uniform earn from European soldiers who share the dangers of combat duty with them. An excerpt:
Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine – they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them – we are wimps, even the strongest of us – and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.
[...]
And they are impressive warriors! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days….
And combat ? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all – always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay…. [T]hey switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later – which cuts any pussyfooting short.
We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is – from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.
To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America’s army’s deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers.
It would be nice to hope that when the terrorists in Afghanistan are defeated and the American, Canadian, French and other troops are ready to come home, we will not have to fight a wall of silence in the media to declare the Afghan War won as we have to do now, after the Iraq War. It would be nice to hope that the troops’ sacrifice will at least be recognized with an official victory day. That would be a nice hope indeed - if it had any basis. As it is, though, we know that someone like the blogger who started the V.I. Day movement will again have to shout a rallying cry to give the heroes their own victory day – V.A. Day.
Rifts and tensions between the Taliban and Arab Al-Qaeda, as well as vastly different Islamic traditions, suggest that a basis for separation exists.
And:
The Taliban have also … been engaged in a reported internal debate about their own tactics. Some members, possibly including [Mullah] Omar, have come out against targeting civilians, aid workers, and key infrastructure. Some reports also claim that Omar has severed all his ties with Al-Qaeda.
It would be nice to hope they turn on each other and all end up dead, but we won’t be so lucky. There is still a lot of work to do in Afghanistan.