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June 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda The Afghan government says the foreign forces put civilians in the crossfire but the alliance claims such operations are important in capturing and killing Taliban militants.
On May 2, US President Barack Obama and President Karzai signed a deal that authorizes the presence of US troops for a period of 10 years after 2014, which was the original date agreed earlier for the departure of all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan.
On May 26, Afghanistan’s parliament approved the security pact.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, professor at the James Madison University, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: US troops have immunity in any criminal case that they may face in Afghanistan. How can cases like the recent air raid on the Afghan home jeopardize the pact with the US?
Hanifi: In many ways depending on how the chain of command is revealed through organizations such as Press TV finding out truly where these commands come from and how they’re executed. There needs to be transparency in the command chain, in my opinion, for these things to be resolved and also to prevent fallout from them.
Press TV: Talking about the media, a huge war machine is working in Afghanistan, there is no media access to the so-called war zones and many of the developments in Afghanistan may never come to light. What is the real situation on the ground that maybe not seen by us or the media?
Hanifi: The information that circulates by the victims of these attacks is primarily circulated initially in oral terms, and it’s quite a while before those oral renditions of these events hit any kind of electronic airwaves. I do not know precisely how these various attacks throughout the country are being digested socially within the country. I can only point to oral networks of communication that stand apart from electronic networks of communication.
Press TV: How would you see relations between Washington and Kabul in the long term?
Hanifi: In the long term, depending on how we define long term, let’s just take a generation as a long term marker, I suspect the relations between Afghanistan and the United States would remain rather tense and tenuous in the next generation.
Consequences and fallout from the last decade or more of occupation will linger for a considerable time among the Afghan populace. The legacy of current actions will remain very tangible and lived by those engaged in the country for the next generation.
Press TV: Do you think the US will suffer from the same fate the Russians suffered from when they were in Afghanistan?
Hanifi: If that means a collapse of the political system, no. I think that we can point to other social and economic forces in the United States that the Afghanistan excursion or war will feed into.
When we talk about the lack of information about bombing raids, I think the lack of information about Afghanistan will sort of mark the end of the war. In other words, Afghanistan will be increasingly less talked about and will basically stay out of popular political discourse quickly.
But the long term economic and social consequences of this war will last considerably longer than the political ephemera.
Press TV: Let’s talk about the opposition in Afghanistan. How effective do you think their effort is and how much does the opposition in Afghanistan resonate within the general public in Afghanistan?
Hanifi: I suspect quite strongly for various reasons. The answer to your question from my perspective is hampered by lack of immediate knowledge. The opposition seems to be fractured and kind of divided in regional terms. I’m really not sure how particular locales perceive the so-called opposition in Afghanistan.
But what I can say is that there is, as with any country that has foreign troops occupying it, there’s almost unanimous resistance to the presence of international armed forces in the country without question, and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future.
GMA/AZ
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