Tajikistan a Victim of British-Saudi Permanent War

July 1 (EIRNS)—Located in the strategic Central Asia region, bordering Afghanistan and China, Tajikistan, a nation of 7 million people, has remained a victim of the British-Saudi design to keep the area unstable and violent. In the 1990s, Tajikistan underwent a civil war which almost broke the country up.

Particularly since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime, a good part of the opium produced in Afghanistan, as well as heroin, passes through Tajikistan to Russia, and beyond. The process has criminalized Tajik society and has become a major source of income for the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which wants to eliminate all Central Asian nations and make the area part of an Islamic Caliphate. The IMU is funded by drugs and Saudi Arabia, but its "peaceful" arm, Hizb ut-Tahrir, is headquartered in Britain.

In addition to the drug epidemic unleashed to weaken all of Central Asia, Tajikistan is a perpetually food-short nation. Only 5% to 6% of its land is arable, and most of that arable land grows cotton. Over the years, Tajikistan survived on remittances sent from Russia by almost a million Tajik migrant workers. At one point in recent years, 54% of its GDP was coming from such remittances. Now that the Russian economy is tanking, Tajik migrants are coming back home in the midst of abject poverty and violence.

U.S. Launches Offensive in Helmand, as Anti-U.S. Mood Grows

July 2 (EIRNS)—Led by Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson (USMC), about 4,000 U.S. Marines, as well as 650 Afghan National Army troops, launched what is termed a "massive ground offensive," Operation Khanjar (Operation Strike of the Sword), into the Helmand River Valley, a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. According to Nicholson, Operation Khanjar is different from the previous anti-Taliban assaults because of the "massive size of the force" and its speed. The U.S. troops entered Helmand province after the situation had deteriorated while some 8,000 British troops were stationed there for the past four years. During this period, opium production in the area ballooned, and the Taliban took hold of almost the entire area.

Last year, an American Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,400 men secured a small, but critical, area in the district of Garmser in southern Helmand, choking off Taliban supply routes from the Pakistani border, while reopening the town for commerce. The operation had a crippling effect on Taliban forces operating in neighboring Uruzgan Province.

The objective of Khanjar is to push out the Taliban, and destroy the opium and heroin stocks built up by the drug traffickers, but not the opium fields. Most of the opium in Helmand has already been harvested.

The mood of the Afghan people has tipped toward revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban. The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO's deployment to the region began in 2006. Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns.

Pakistan's army said it had moved troops from elsewhere on its side of the Afghan border to the stretch opposite Helmand, to try to stop militants from fleeing into Pakistan. It gave no more details, but U.S. and Pakistani officials have expressed concern that stepped-up operations in southern Afghanistan could push the insurgents across the border.

Will the Philippines Follow Honduras?

June 2 (EIRNS)—The Philippines press and political circles are buzzing with the news from Honduras (see Ibero-American Digest), as the circumstances of the two nations are nearly identical: an incumbent President running up against constitutional limits on power, moving brazenly to scrap the Constitution and ram through new laws through illegal means, in order to stay in power. Philippines President Gloria Arroyo has used her control of the House of Representatives to pass a bill to constitute itself as a Constitutional Assembly, with the power to change the Constitution. This ignores the Senate, which, under the Philippines' Presidential system, must also approve any Constitutional changes, and the Senate is strongly opposed to the effort.

Everywhere in the Philippines today, one hears the cry: Why isn't our military defending the Constitution as did the Honduran military?

Arroyo has called on the House to convene a Constitutional Assembly soon after her State of the Nation address on July 27, flaunting the illegality in the face of opposition from the Senate, the military, and the population. The proposed changes are already written and ready to be rubber-stamped:

1. Dump the Presidential system in favor of a parliamentary system, thus eliminating the Senate altogether, while allowing Arroyo to become Prime Minister, bypassing the term limits on her Presidency;

2. Eliminate the constitutional restraints on foreign ownership of certain industries and raw materials, allowing the transfer of the nation's wealth to those holding the (illegitimate) foreign debts.

Although the Supreme Court could rule against this criminal ploy, it is a court stacked by Arroyo, and is widely expected to join in this coup against the Constitution. There are also reports that former President Gen. Fidel Ramos (ret.), the puppet of George Shultz in carrying out two earlier coups against constitutional governments in the Philippines, is trying to organize a military junta in support of the Arroyo coup, to preempt any action against it by the military.

H1N1 Flu Virus in Asia, Australasia

July 4 (EIRNS)—The H1N1 swine flu is hitting Australia and New Zealand, now in their Winter season. Australia now has just under 5,000 reported cases, with 10 deaths. As symptoms remain mild in most cases, the actual number of infections is expected to be many times greater.

The rate of spread of H1N1 in the Southern Hemisphere, has prompted yet another expert, Prof. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University, to add his voice to those who believe H1N1 will become the dominant strain in the next influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere this Fall.

Meanwhile, Japan and Hong Kong have identified cases of the H1N1 virus that are resistant to one of the widely produced anti-viral drugs, Tamiflu. Anti-viral drugs do not prevent infection, but can reduce the severity of symptoms, if applied early, and thus reduce the number of life-threatening cases.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reported July 3 that initial production of vaccines is way below the number projected. Health officials said doses likely would be available to 14-17 million people, instead of the 25 million covered by earlier projections.

Pro-Nuclear Campaign Takes Off in Malaysia

June 28 (EIRNS)—Malaysia's semi-official New Straits Times daily carried a strongly pro-nuclear pair of articles today. Nuclear power was put on the table earlier this month when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced in South Korea that Malaysia will develop a reactor.

In his article, "We have expertise to go nuclear," Atomic Energy Licensing Board chairman Prof. Datuk Dr. Noramly Muslim said that Malaysia has the expertise to build its own nuclear power plant, earlier than previously estimated. The country has around 80 PhDs with expertise in nuclear engineering technology and, according to Noramly, only about 10% to 15% of this expertise is required to operate a nuclear plant. (Detractors of nuclear power in the Philippines and elsewhere argue that their countries are not capable of handling nuclear power.)

Prof. Jong Hyun Kim of the Nuclear and Quantum Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who is in Malaysia, said in a second article, that while it took his country some 20 years to build a nuclear power plant, Malaysia would need only half that time. According to Kim, Korea had only three nuclear scientists with PhDs when it embarked on building its first nuclear power plant.

Noramly dealt with the question of "nuclear waste," saying the issue was not one of safety, but "of a political nature." In reality, Noramly said, "the waste can be recycled. It has more value than the original uranium."

Earlier in the week, the newspaper carried a debate between Dr. Nahrul Khair Alang Mohd Rashid, president of the Malaysian Nuclear Society, and Dr. Ronald McCoy, president of Physicians for Peace and Social Responsibility.

LaRouche associate Mohd Peter Davis in Malaysia has helped spark the new assertiveness by his friends in the nuclear community. Davis will be a speaker at the International Nuclear Conference 2009, to be held in Kuala Lumpur June 29-July 2.