Listener concern over developments at Free Speech Radio News (FSRN) and its move to parallel the mainstream coverage of National Public Radio and commercial news sources grew Wednesday, July 30, 2008, with a six minute news segment entitled "Taliban War Propaganda Tools in Pakistan." "Taliban War Propaganda Tools in Pakistan"

FSRN has been appealing to listeners with funding requests to make up a loss of funding from Pacifica that has never been explained publicly. Listeners in Los Angeles could not understand how anyone at FSRN would think that abandoning and insulting its left-wing, progressive base would advance the broadcast and organization. A broad base supports a national radio daily alternative news program and has concern over FSRN's move from that goal.

KPFK runs Free Sppech Radio News at 6:30 p.m., Monday - Friday.

In FSRN listener and progressive circles, accurate understanding of the Afghan war has long existed. "Let's Speak the Truth About Afghanistan" ; "NATO Genocide in Afghanistan" ; "Afghanistan: The Brutal and Unnecessary War the Media Aren't Telling You About" . The U.S. and its Nato Allies, Britain, Canada, Germany, and France, have recruited and financed the Tajik and Uzbek tribes, former allies of the Soviets, to fight a tribal war against the Pashtuns, former allies of the U.S. against the Soviets.

The Pashtun live on both sides of the Afghan Pakistan Durand line border. Per one source:

"The line devised by the British was worked by the British Colonial Officer Durand and thus became known as the Durand Line. The document was to be ratified by the legislative body in Afghanistan. It never happened. It was to remain in force for one hundred years. It has not been revived on the deadline, which was 1993 either. ... Legally the Durand Line remains as an imaginary line dividing families on both sides. It has never been demarcated either, especially from Khyber Agency north to Chitral. "The Unholy Durand Line"

Living on adjacent territory, the Tajik, Uzbek, and Pashtun tribes have fought for centuries. Generally speaking, the level of conflict among them has ebbed and flowed with external financing of their wars, British, Soviet, and American. When they have to pay their own bills for their battles, they tend to get more agreeable.

The Pashtuns learned of 9/11 when everyone else did. The Pashtuns and the Pashtun Taliban regime had no knowledge that Osama was planning anything like 9/11 and offered to extradite him to the U.S.or a third country if the U.S. provided some evidence against him. "Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden Over" Extradition treaties uniformally require a prima facie showing of guilt, a level beyond mere probable cause.

The Taliban Afghan government had rejected a deal for the Trans Afghan pipeline with an American Company, Unocal, in favor of one with Bridas Corporation of Argentina, a front for non-U.S. oil interests. "From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil" Just like when some Central American political leader talked of taxing the United Fruit Company and Smedly Butler was a general in the Marine Corps, Bush sent in the Marines.

As seen by ordinary Pashtuns, they were minding their own business with their usual conflicts, when Bush comes in, for no reason to them, with smart bombs that tend to land on women, children, and wedding parties. After six years of this, they are sick and tired of America and its attacks and bombs. "US-led forces kill more Afghan civilians" ; "CIA death squads killing with
"impunity" in Afghanistan" ; "US offensive displaces thousands of civilians in Afghanistan"

In a tradition dating back to Alexander the Great, if you start a tribal fight the Pashtuns, you have to fight the whole tribe, the ones in Pakistan and the ones in Afghanistan. As stated in "Fall back, men, Afghanistan is a nasty war we can never win; Britain's commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth" :

"To have set one of the world's most ancient and ferocious people on the warpath against both Kabul and Islamabad takes some doing. But western diplomacy has done it. . . .

"There is no sensible alternative to ending military operations against the Pashtun.

Obama's call for two more divisions for Afghanistan is as big a joke as is McCain's call for three divisions. Neither has the least understanding of the unwinable, externally financed tribal war into which the Afghan conflict has become and which has no connection to true American national security.

Neither shows any understanding that a tribal war with the Pashtun undermines the U.S. strategic goal of a pipeline through Afganhistan.

Neither shows any understanding that Pakistan holds a trump card here in its geographic control of U.S. supply lines to Afganhistan.

And now we get to the Free Speech Radio News version of the world: "Taliban War Propaganda Tools in Pakistan":

"Meanwhile, a growing black market of anti-US propaganda is emerging in Pakistan's tribal areas, with unlicensed FM radio stations and pirated DVDs regularly reaching thousands of villagers. According to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), more than one hundred pirate FM channels operate at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

Wow! People making Anti-U.S. propaganda. They don't like us? Sounds like we need Obama now to go in and clean up Pakistan.

With crap like this, FSRN RIP.