Feral Jundi

   First off, bravo to the boys at Four Horseman International for at least taking a stand and not playing the ‘pay-off’s’ game, and fighting your way through the roads. As for NCL Holdings? Pffft.

   One suggestion for the DoD is to use these convoys as opportunities to bring out the enemy and kill him. That, and give the convoys some fire power to deal with the threat. It should be costly for the enemy to attack these convoys.

   We should also be using the pay off scheme to track where the money is going, and then kill the source that way.  Where is the return on investment, when we just hand over money to the enemy for so-called protection services? Either way, there is no way in hell we should be paying off the Taliban or warlords in order to pass through those roads.  The only thing we should be giving the Taliban for passage on those roads, is hot lead.  That is my take on it. –Matt

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How the US army protects its trucks – by paying the Taliban

Insurance, security or extortion? The US is spending millions of dollars in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through – and it’s the Taliban who profit

Aram Rostom

Friday 13 November 2009

On 29 October 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

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