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GUEST: Nikolai Lanine, former Soviet soldier who served in Afghanistan

2006 has been the worst year of violence in Afghanistan with more than 3900 people killed. This represents a four-fold increase over the 1000 deaths last year. the 2006 fatalities include about 1000 civilians and 180 NATO soldiers. There were more than 115 suicide attacks which killed 270 civilians and 17 foreign occupation troops. Before 2006, suicide attacks were a rare phenomenon in Afghanistan. Scores of school teachers were killed and 110 schools burned down by so-called insurgents, identified as Taliban. What once was a “success story” for the Bush administration’s “war on terror” is now deteriorating by the day. Meanwhile, an ex-Soviet soldier, now living in Canada, warns that the US-NATO mission in Afghanistan is as doomed as the ten-year long bloody USSR occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. That occupation killed more than a million Afghans and more than 10,000 Soviet soldiers. According to Nikolai Lanine, “Like the Soviet-Afghan war, this one is fought in the name of state security, a peaceful Afghanistan, and women’s rights.”

Read Nikolai Lanine’s article here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
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