As is readily apparent to anyone who can read, the Taliban is growing stronger on a daily basis, vis a vis Pakistan and now firmly controls most of that country's Northwest Provinces. As this is effectively blocking U.S. aid to its Afghanistan-based units (two UN supply convoys were recently attacked and destroyed by the Taliban) alternate supply routes have been planned for resupply.

Of course, some supplies could be brought into the Nato-controlled areas of northern Afghanistan by air, this has been seen as too little and too late. Also, the Taliban are being equipped with surface-to-air missiles thanks to the Russians.

What an interesting historical situation this is.

The CIA initially organized the Taliban to fight the Russians. The Taliban was then equipped with American surface-to-air missiles which did terrible damage to Russian helicopters and other aircraft. Then, the Taliban was our friend and now it is our bitter enemy.

The CIA apparently knows nothing of the regional history and never realized that the Afghani tribes will make war on anyone for very little reason and have done so for thousands of years. They beat Alexander the Great, the British raj and the Soviet Union. Now, they are going to beat the United States and if you think our military losses in Iraq were horrific, watch the developing situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

At any rate, my Russian publisher has a brother who is a general officer in the Russian MVD (military intelligence) and from him obtained a great deal of fascinating current material. I got much of this because after my stories I published about Georgia, the MVD views me as ‘objective’ and so this new data is coming forth.

The country of interest here is Turkmenistan, which borders on northern Afghanistan. Its current government, headed by the usual benevolent dictator, one Gurbanguly Berdimuhamediw (since February 14, 2007), has been bought and paid for by the U.S., not only because of its strategic location but also because of the promise of much oil. The country's first leader, following its separation from the former Soviet Union, was one Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow, an eccentric hardline Communist, who became neutral in his foreign policy, refusing to consider a membership in NATO that the U.S. was pushing forward.

There was a situation in 2006 when the eccentric Niyazov ordered the old-age pensions of one-third of the country's elderly discontinued, while another 200,000 had theirs reduced. Pensions received during the prior two years were ordered paid back to the state. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan strongly denied allegations that the cut in pensions resulted in the deaths of many elderly Turkmen, accusing foreign media outlets of spreading "deliberately perverted" information on the issue.

Because of the growing dissatisfaction with Niyazov’s rule, coupled with Washington’s desires to establish an American presence in the oil-rich area, the CIA fomented a plan to remove him by the usual means and on December 21, 2006, Turkmen state television announced that President Niyazov had died of ‘sudden cardiac arrest.’ He was replaced by the current president, known to be friendly to American interests.

Although the CIA has its hooks into the leadership of the country, the Russians have their own people working there (4% of the national population is Russian) and have thoroughly infiltrated various circles to the point where they have pinpointed not only all the CIA personnel now operating in Turkmenistan but their cooperative locals as well.

The usual lists have been prepared in Moscow and the Russians, who now see that impoverished former member of the Soviet Union as an Area of Interest (they do not want our CIA and/or military intelligence agents so close to their borders or, more important, controlling natural resources they could use) and are planning a gleichschaltung program similar to the one now being completed for the Ukraine.

The idea is to let the Americans build up big supply bases in Turkmenistan and also allow a supply pipeline to Afghanistan to be developed and then strike, using domestic dissidents led by local former Communists and Russian agents. One suggestion has been made that when the Night of Long Knives comes, the drill would be to round up all the CIA agents using special forces, and after extensively waterboarding them (and photographing the process) to take them up in an aircraft and shove them out, still alive, over some area where their landing will serve as a strong warning to others. It won’t be the long free fall that will injure them but that sudden short stop at the bottom...

The local stool pigeons will have their throats cut and left outside for the local dogs to munch on.

The MVD people apparently have inside information gleaned from a high-level CIA mole (as I understand it, someone who saw their extensive field work trashed by Bush himself as ‘crap’) and once they hook someone, they never let them go.

Moscow was well aware of the pending Georgian attacks in August and took advantage of them to get into that country, being used as a developing U.S. military forward base, to lay their hands on billions of dollars of military equipment in addition to huge amounts of highly sensitive intelligence data left behind by the rapidly departing American troops. In the present case, if Turkmenistan-based forward supply depots are overrun, the U.S. taxpayers lose again and Moscow gains. And the Taliban? It is predicted that they will eventually take over control of Pakistan and at least parts of adjacent Afghanistan with devastating results. Pakistan has 32 atomic weapons and if even one of these fell into Taliban hands, rest assured they would use it on an American target, either domestic or foreign.

And so it goes.

Of course one cannot expect anything logical to emanate from the usual morons currently running things at Langley. The Russians apparently have broken some of the CIA codes and have been intercepting and reading some of their highest level communications. I understand that their success was due, in part, to the unnamed high-level dissatisfied CIA mole.