NameNotFound

The Telegraph will lose even more readers this year, once the stolen disc euphoria evaporates, unless it stops feeding them the utter tosh we've seen lately.

Take this recent headline in the Sunday Telegraph:

“Russia's £11bn UK bond bid. Vladimir Putin's deputy visits London this week as the crisis-hit country seeks Western relief”.

You've got to love the Telegraph scribes.

It starts with the usual rant about “Russia's crisis-hit economy... unpredictable investment climate... series of diplomatic and corporate crises,” and, of course, about “Putin, who now needs Western money to support the ailing Russian economy.”

It continues with solid praise for the only Labourite The Telegraph really likes “…Mr. Miliband would tell his Russian counterparts that Western firms needed a more modern economy to invest in…”

So, here you have the world according to The Telegraph where stern faced Miliband tells the needy and therefore humble Putin how to behave.

The story ends, however, with a statement that the demand for Russian bonds is expected to be high.

Whoa – hang on a second.

If Aleksey Kudrin indeed comes to London with palm outstretched, why would the City line up money bags to lend to him? Why would Peter Mandelson, the Business Secretary, declare himself delighted with the Russians' visit?

Here's why – and it is fairly simple.

Britain needs Russia far, far more than Russia needs Britain.

Russia's financial recovery was much quicker this year than the West's, especially the British one.

No, Russia can't yet show Chinese-style GDP growth, but every other objective financial indicator points upwards.

So much so in fact, that the Russian Central Bank, an analogue of The Bank of England, or The Fed in the US, keeps on buying US dollars to stem the flood of financial speculators, eager to buy roubles

The stock market capitalization has doubled since the beginning of the year.

Yes, the price of Brent Crude hovering around $80 surely was a help, but what helped much more were steady financial policies and the trust in the current government demonstrated by ordinary Russians.

Anybody even vaguely familiar with the country would remember that both in the late 80s under Gorbachev and late 90s under Yeltsin, the Russians did not pour onto the streets en masse to protest – they had other ways of demonstrating their distrust in their rulers.

They rushed to the banks to withdraw all their savings – and to convert them into something tangible, from golden earrings to a lifetime supply of salt.

They didn't, however, rush to the banks last autumn and winter despite the rouble indeed losing its value rather rapidly and the economy shrinking.

This lack of the usual Russian panic was remarkable and well noted by smart observers. Some foreign investors, who were astute enough to listen to the Kremlin, invested at the market's bottom and are making a veritable killing now ...how about 30% returns this year so far?

So, Aleksey Kudrin, the guy many credit with keeping the ship of the Russian finances going steady and strong in rough seas, is likely coming to London knowing he will be wooed by many.

The bond in question promises to be the cheapest money ever borrowed by Russia. Now, how far is that from the needed “relief” declared by The Telegraph?

That The Telegraph prefers to skew the world to fit its neocon ideas is essentially their problem and their readers’.

To us it seems they simply want to borrow heavily from their ideological partner across the ocean – Fox News television, where liberals – as well as Russians – are always the enemies.

Meet Hamid Karzai, leader of Afghanistan for the last 8 years.

His meteoric rise to stardom is next to none. Until November 2001, even journalists who covered the Afghan wars did not really know or consider him important.

When GWB decided that he would hurt the Taliban badly and swiftly, the CIA quickly went through their files of former anti-Soviet mujahedins who were on their payroll during the 80's.

The man named Hamid Karzai seemed a perfect match - an ethnic Pushtun from a powerful family with a few scores to settle with the Taliban.

Within days, Hamid was back inside his home country in the company of the US SF, or Special Forces soldiers, a tough and extremely capable lot.

The war was swift - the reeling mullahs decided not to push their luck against B-52s and B-1Bs, each of which cost more than the entire Taliban war chest.

The new rulers rolled into Kabul - amongst them a still relatively-unknown, but already ascending, Hamid Karzai.

His natural photogenic charms, coupled with the relentless pushing of the neocon White House did the trick - at the post-war Bonn Conference in December 2001, the man was presented as the "leader of the new Afghanistan"

The West was going ecstatic looking and listening to this man in traditional chapan and karakul hat.

"The IRC (International Rescue Committee) has bestowed its prestigious Freedom Award on President Hamid Karzai in recognition of his leadership and courage in helping Afghanistan and its people move toward peace and freedom..."

"....the Liberty Medal has always been awarded to world leaders of great courage, vision and faith in the future…President Karzai is working tirelessly and skillfully to unify his country’s diverse factions, strengthen its economy and move towards democratic values and practices."

"...Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen. The honor had been recommended by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The ceremony in the Oak Room, the Queen's private sitting room at Windsor Castle, was a mark of the esteem in which Mr Karzai is held by the British Government..."

The lone voice of animal rights campaigners complaining about Karzai's famous hat being made from aborted lamb fetuses was not heard.

"The process of producing karakul may seem brutal to outsiders, but it is part of Afghanistan's culture," a Karzai loyalist said in defense of his boss.

They should have listened already then to that bit about "Afghanistan culture", but those newly in love are deaf, are they not?

Why are things so bad?

Both Western leaders and the mainstream media refused to register or acknowledge the blatantly obvious...

...that Karzai's authority has never extended beyond a handful of Central Kabul blocks from where "suspicious" citizens were expunged. (His nickname from the start? "The president of Kabul")

...that the deeply religious and patriarchal population refuses to accept even the basic tenets of Western liberalism

...that, put simply, nothing large-scale is being built or developed except for a couple of fancy hotels in Kabul (attacked by Taliban) and the new road to Kandahar (several stretches of which are now controlled by the Taliban)

Yes, girls have returned to the university in Mazar-i-Sharif. Yes, the strategic cement factory in Pol-i-Khumri is churning out all important building materials. And yes, the world's highest long-tunnel at the Salang Pass has reopened. But what does all that have to do with Karzai or his Western backers, exactly?

The Salang, the lifeline of Afghanistan, that connects the Northern and Southern parts of the country, was built by the Soviets in the 1960's, blown up by the Northern Alliance being pursued by advancing Taliban back in 1996, and re-built jointly by the British HALO Trust and the Russian Emercom rescuers in December 2001, when the Taliban retreated.

Restored and handed over to the Afghans without much pomp, the tunnel works and makes the country remain one, rather than splitting into Pushtunistan down south and Uzbeko-Tajikistan up north (with a Hazarajat in between).

The Afghans never forget anything. They did not forget the Soviet bombs and the BMP fighting vehicles destroying their mud-brick houses.

But they also remember well who built the Salang Tunnel, who explored and developed the Sheberghan oil and gas fields, and who built the Mikrorayon district of Kabul that is the only semblance of modern housing project Kabul has - even up to this day.

Compare the Soviet bombers with F16s, A10s and B1Bs that rain the new generation of deadly metal from the skies.

Compare BMPs to US Army Strykers in the amount of damage done to those still mud brick houses.

But you won't find anything resembling the Salang Tunnel under construction. What you will find instead is hundreds of foreign advisers, project coordinators and trainers cramming the more upscale (read - with occasional electricity) quarters of Kabul. Most of them are well-meaning and enthusiastic people.

But their individual monthly compensation package is roughly equal to the yearly income of a whole Afghan mountain village.

Viscious cycle

So, you are a well meaning, modern man or woman from a "developed world".

You wish all those local people well.

You know that girls should not be married at the age of 14,

…and that paying money to a local official or doctor is called bribe and not a "gift".

You are convinced that keeping foreign humanitarian aid to distribute later to select friends and clansmen is totally wrong.

Now try and do something about it when, for the people around you, those are the generational rules of life, not crimes.

Sooner or later, you get upset.

Then you get very upset.

Finally, you get so upset that you call for close air support and some unknown to you Capt. Jackson, USAF, arrives to administer a deadly portion of retribution and punishment to all those terribly medieval thieving criminals and child molesters, shooting blazing arrows from the skies, invisible and unassailable

...killing a 14 year old "wife" and her newborn child in the process.

And in one stroke creating a hundred men with only one thing on their mind - revenge

Karzai, who knows his people well through the virtue of being one of them, tells the West to stop.

It won't listen. It seriously believes that those "even smarter" weapons will know how to distinguish between the innocent girls and their nasty old husbands.

Divorce

So, after billions of reconstruction money has been spent in Afghanistan, after more billions were spent on fighting elusive enemy, after hundreds of Western soldiers are dead or maimed, things are markedly worse in Afghanistan from the Western point of view.
The ranks of the Taliban are swelling, the population is hostile to foreigners, there is no sign of benevolent Western influence, unless you discount bootleg copies of Hollywood movies for sale on every corner of the bazaar.

There must be somebody to blame, right?

And the former darling Karzai becomes Mr. "corrupt government" Karzai.

Let's re-rack a few years, shall we?

When a disgruntled Afghan soldier raised his gun at Karzai in September 2002, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief upon learning that the great man survived.

A few veteran journalists in Kabul tried to question how a soldier firing a volley from his AK-47 from a distance of 10 feet (3 meters) could miss a static target, but the editors back in New York and London quickly quashed the untimely thoughts.

Similarly pooh-poohed was any questioning as to why American bodyguards killed the would-be murderer who had already been wrestled to the ground by an ordinary Afghan well-wisher who happened to be standing nearby. The heroic well-wisher died too. Obviously, the DynCorp guards want to see their enemies dead very-very quickly. Why? At the time, nobody wanted to dig into that story either.

There was no bigger news in the world that day and the next: Karzai Survives Assassination Attempt.

What would the world do without the charismatic, charming Afghan leader?

Seven years later, beleaguered and angry, the Afghan president is facing overwhelming pressure to admit that the elections were rigged, that he is to blame for all the failures, and that "change is needed".

Today, not-quite-Sir (he cannot use the title as he is a foreign national) President Hamid Karzai is in the midst of a most bitter divorce.

Divorce from his former admirers - and donors.

The worst part? The sides can't quite decide how they can live apart and who is to blame.

Both sides were full of illusions. The process of divorce is hurting.

It seems to be hurting the Afghan people the worst.