Taliban insists on combat during Afghan peace talks

…by Kadir Mohmand, USA

Former commander with the Afghan Mujahideen, North American spokesman for Mujahideen veterans

[ Editor’s Note: Kadir brings us another of his letters to a high official format reports, this one on the merry-go-round Afghan peace talks. As these talks drift sideways, the war continues, with only the hosting hotels seeming to profit.

We have this strange situation where the sitting government is frozen out of the talks, as the Taliban refuses to talk to them. I have seen no one pose any credible path as to how an agreement can ever be reached via this format. The Taliban is insisting on a complete surrender of the opposing side.

So we have another remake of Vietnam here, where if the Taliban ends up on top, it will begin a slaughter of all former regime people.

Those that stole enough already have a safety nest, soft-landing somewhere. But for those who allegedly served their country with the Kabul regime, they will want to come to the US. And that would include getting set up at a level that many Americans would like to enjoy, as refugees go to the top of the list for things like subsidized senior housing.

The Taliban wants all foreign forces out, something that cannot be done, as they will always be needed if for nothing else than to protect the diplomatic community in a country where kidnappings and bombings are a common method of sending a “I don’t love you letter”.

I fear that the US guaranteed defeat in these talks by agreeing to the current format. That would mean that the goal was to stretch the US presence out longer, but to what end?

Trump seems to want to disengage, not just to end the conflict, but to have that US military support available for “other work”. Color me suspicious… Jim W. Dean ]

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– First published … June 11, 2019 –

To the Honorable Alice Wells, U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, U.S. Department of State

RE: Meeting in Doha.

Dear Deputy Wells:

The 7th round of peace talks in Doha, Qatar, is a farcical show for the continuation of the occupation of Afghanistan and the killing of Afghan Villagers for Rare Earth Elements (REEs), Opium, and a New Outer U.S. Defense Perimeter (geopolitics)

The seventh round of Afghan peace talks between the United States government and the Afghan Freedom Fighters will be held very soon in Doha, Qatar. Once again these talks are just a farcical show so that the American public and the world think the U.S. wants peace.

In reality, the United States government does not want peace in Afghanistan. The United States wants to stay long term in Afghanistan so it needs instability to justify to the American public and the world its long term presence there.

A few years ago at an U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing, General John Campbell stated that the United States would “continue the effort to destabilize Afghanistan.” After his Freudian slip which revealed the truth, he corrected himself.

The United States’ long term military presence in Afghanistan is not really about 9/11 or terrorism. It is all about Rare Earth Elements (REEs), opium and geopolitics-a new outer defense perimeter. First, Afghanistan has the largest untapped vast deposits of Rare Earth Elements in the world, worth trillions, which the United States needs. Second, since the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, it has become a narco state producing the most opium in the world.

The United States wants to control and stock pile Afghans’ REEs, and benefit from the opium trade in Afghanistan. Third, Afghanistan is the Heart of Central Asia, which is now the United States’ outer defense perimeter, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

First, the United States’ desired long term presence in Afghanistan is all about REEs!!! The continuation of the instability and war with permanent U.S. military bases allows the United States to control Afghanistan’s Rare Earth Elements (REEs) which are worth trillions and vital to defense systems and technology.

The 17 rare-earth elements are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er),europium (Eu),gadolinium(Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr),promethium(Pm), samarium (Sm),scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb),and yttrium (Y). It allows the United States to build its strategic stock pile of REEs.

In a Pentagon internal memorandum, the Pentagon called Afghanistan “the Saudi Arabia of Lithium”. REEs such as Scandium, Yttrium and fifteen lanthanides are key ingredients in a number of military applications such as guided missiles, lasers, radar systems, night field equipment, battlefield communications, guidance and control systems for Tomahawk Cruise missiles, smart bombs, predator unmanned aircraft etc.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is establishing a strategic stock pile of these REEs as it has an insufficient supply to meet its demand.. China has mined REEs in its country and has dominance as the main supplier of REEs that are of strategic importance to the U.S. military. China controls 90% of the world’s supply and is the major exporter to the United States.

According to petroleumnews.com (03/31/2013), U.S. Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski, and Representative Mike Coffman, stated that “’clearly rare earth supply limitations present a serious vulnerability to our national security…” The U.S. DOD provided Congress with a written report on its REE demand and stock pile requirements.

Even starting in the 1990s, the United States was looking for a new supply chain for REEs. In 1999, the United States’ Congress issued a report (the “Cox Report”), which was commissioned by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military and Commercial Concerns. It addressed China’s Rare Earth dominance and the need for the U.S. to stockpile REEs, which are critical components of defense technology.

The only REE mining operations in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California closed down in 1998 after about 300,000 gallons of its radioactive mine waste solutions leaked into the Mojave Desert. There are strict U.S. regulations regarding mine waste and tailings.

China does not have all of these environmental regulations. In 2008, Molycorp reopened the Mountain Pass REE mine but because of the low cost of the Chinese REE oxides it went bankrupt in 2015. During the past three decades, China has been trying to control and monopolize REE mining, production and manufacturing of magnets, alloys and other products from REEs.

It does so at a much lower price with cheap economic costs and virtually no regulations. In the 1990s China bought a plant, Magnaquench, located in Indiana, which made magnets using REEs. In 1998, it shut down the Indiana plant moving all operations to China. China has bought interests in REEs all over the world. Its goal is to monopolize the REE market.

In 2010, China implemented a REE embargo of Japan. Before that it cut off supplies to American companies like W.R.Grace American Chemical, which in turn moved some of its operations to China.

Just recently, a group of international investors, under the name MP Materials, bought the Mountain Pass Mine land and are trying to get it up and running. China also has an interest in it. The Shenghe Rare Earth Company, Limited, has a non-voting minority interest in MP Materials.

Trump is interested in Afghanistan’s REEs. At one of his media events in the fall of 2017, Trump boldly stated that he wanted the United States to “exploit” Afghanistan’s REEs. Until that statement, the Pentagon kept the existence of the vast deposits of REEs in Afghanistan under the radar.

Trump cannot help himself. Probably when he was briefed in 2017 about the REEs worth trillions, his inability to keep quiet and his greed took over. Trump had to state that that he wanted his friends like Michael N. Silver of American Elements, a mining company and Stephen A. Feinberg of Dyncorp. Probably Trump and his family will find a way to financially benefit too.

Based on information I have received, I strongly believe the United States knew about the REEs deposits in the Helmand Province even before the tragic events of 9/11 and before it chose to invade and occupy Afghanistan long term. Soon after its invasion in October, 2001, the United States dropped down geologists into the REE deposits in Helmand with special operation forces.

The U.S. had maps from the Soviets. The U.S. has used special aircraft with special technology to look at the subsurface geological strata to map out the location of REE deposits in Afghanistan. Afghan villages located near the vast REE deposits are bombed and destroyed. Any survivors relocated to tribal areas.

There is a special department within the DOD to address REEs. The U.S. under the Trump Administration and NATO are escalating the war against and massacring the Afghan/Pastun villagers in Helmand and other mainly Pashtun areas where the super majority of the REEs are located.

The only roadblock to this successful exploitation of the Afghans’ REEs is the Afghan Pashtun villagers in the Helmand and other Pashtun areas and provinces. They are fighting to defend their homeland, their families and their mineral wealth The Pashtun villagers are forced to relocate or are killed. They are wrongly labeled “terrorists” because they resist the destruction of their homes and villages and the stealing of their REEs.

I believe the U.S. and its Afghan puppet government are committing war crimes. They are terrorizing the Afghans in these areas just like the U.S. has terrorized the indigenous peoples of the United States – relocating them from their resource rich valuable lands

In September, 2012, when I met with Amb. Hugo Llorens, second in charge of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, he talked about the REE deposits. He thought because of my engineering background I would be interested in obtaining a contract to be involved in the REE mining.

While I was still in Afghanistan, after two years of no response to my FOIA request regarding REEs, to my home in Michigan, I got an unusual certified response from the U.S. government which included 2 pages of documents regarding Afghan REEs. I did not know whether to take it as a push to get a piece of the Afghan REE pie or as a threat to shut up about the Afghan REEs.

The timing of the response after only a few days after my conversation with Llorens was not coincidental. I am not a war profiteer so I did not get involved in the REE mining to get a piece of the pie. I would not profit from war and the blood of my Afghan brothers.

I also will keep exercising my First Amendment right to speak out against the war and the real reasons the U.S. is staying in Afghanistan and is continuing to kill the Afghan villagers, who are the only oadblock to the U.S. control over the Afghan REEs.

It is all about U.S. control of the REEs. It is all about Afghanistan being the United States’ new supply chain for REEs ! It is not about nation building. It is not about terrorism!

It is not about helping the Afghan people! A former State Department employee, who worked on the ground in Afghanistan, told me in an e-mail that the U.S. government does not care about Afghans. So please U.S. government officials and elected congress people, cut the crap that you care about the Afghan women, children and the rest of the Afghan people.

Have courage and tell the truth. It is all about Afghanistan’s REEs! Of course, REEs are never discussed at the hearings of the armed services committees because control of Afghanistan’s REEs is the main reason the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, why it occupies it, why it has 9 permanent military bases there, why it keeps installing puppet governments, holding fake farcical peace talks, why it has communist war criminals and thugs in the Afghan government like Rashid Dostum to terrorize and kill Afghans who resist ( do the U.S.’s dirty work), and why it is so secretive about the REEs in Afghanistan.

The United States can control, exploit and stock pile Afghanistan’s REEs without having to worry about any environmental regulations to stop the radioactive byproducts of mining REEs from contaminating the Afghan environment.

The U.S. and the Afghan war profiteers do not care about the Afghan villagers, who if not already bombed or massacred, will die from cancers or die in the womb from the invisible radioactive materials in their water, in their soil and ultimately in their bodies.

The U.S. will have a cheap source of labor and the mining of Afghanistan’s REEs will be economically a lot less expensive than in the U.S. Stop the killing of Afghan villagers for REEs!

Second, it is a fact that since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan the opium drug trade has soared. The United States has restored such drug trafficking. It funds its CIA paramilitary operations with drug monies. The United States supports and benefits from the drug trafficking.

Even better, through its media propaganda machine, the U.S., NATO and the U.S. selected Afghan administrations can blame it on the Afghan resistance. The U.S. puppets, the Northern Alliance, are the drug traffickers. They always have been. It is a fact that under the Taliban government rule the drug trafficking and poppy production were almost completely eradicated.

Even the United Nations General Assembly in October 2001 acknowledged this fact when it referenced the Taliban’s 2001 Eradication Program. Every Afghan knows that it is top officials in the puppet Afghan administrations, provincial governors and war lords like Gul Agha Sherzai are the drug traffickers.

It is also common knowledge that the CIA and JSOC fund their dirty secret operations with money from drug trafficking and laundering drug monies through CIA shell companies and fronts and banks in the Middle East and off-shore. The CIA started this type of funding for its operations in the 1980s when it was involved in the war in Afghanistan.

As many have discovered, unfortunately heroin has become part of the U.S. war funding and war agenda. The U.S. uses the historic drug traffickers, the Northern Alliance war criminals, to increase and keep the heroin drug trafficking going in Afghanistan.

It will not stop until the U.S. and NATO withdraws and the war criminals/traffickers are prosecuted. There is evidence that it is not about the U.S. government stopping the drug production and trafficking but just the opposite.

Third, the United States wants to have a long term military presence in Afghanistan, the Heart of Central Asia, which is the United States’ post-Soviet, new outer defense perimeter. As reasons for staying long term, General Campbell testified that Afghanistan is “a vital area in the world”.

It is located in a neighborhood that does not follow rules. He further stated that “presence equals influence”. He testified that if the United States was not there long term other countries such as China and Russia would be. The United States needs long term presence in the region and Afghanistan is the Heart of Central Asia.

As I stated many times in the past, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the world had one superpower, the United States determined that its new outer defense perimeter would not be in Europe along the former Warsaw Pact countries’ borders, but it would be in Central Asia with Afghanistan being the heart.

Thus, the building of permanent military bases in Afghanistan to form this so-called outer defense perimeter is one of the true reasons the U.S. wants to be in Afghanistan long term. It really is not about terrorism.

In order to justify to the American people this long term presence, the United States must keep feeding the American public with the appearance of terrorism in Afghanistan and must continue the CIA’s divide and conquer policy to create an Afghan Resistance and instability.

The U.S. must change its policies in Afghanistan. There must be the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not a threat to America, NATO and its neighbors. It is just the opposite.

The Afghans must be allowed to resolve its internal affairs without outside foreign interference. The U.S. must stop killing Afghan villagers for REEs, Opium and its new outer defense perimeter. Stop the propaganda and the farcical peace talks. The Afghans have suffered enough. Americans deserve the truth.

Sincerely, Kadir A.Mohmand

Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus.  He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.  He now writes and posts periodically for VT.

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