“The main emphasis in the new strategy, which was announced by Washington, is made on settlement through use of force,” Lavrov said at a press conference on Thursday. “We believe that it’s a dead-end approach.”

Apart from that, the new strategy allows negotiations with the Taliban without any preconditions, which is also a significant flaw, Lavrov added, saying that it jeopardizes the joint international stance formed in the UN Security Council.

No end in sight: US leaders’ broken promises on Afghanistanhttps://t.co/YLV01TdRlDpic.twitter.com/7h1zVNTnf5

“If I’ve got the new US strategy right, it allows contacts with the Taliban without them fulfilling any conditions at all,” Lavrov said.

“I don’t think that it goes in line with our joint interest to follow the negotiated, coordinated line which is approved by the UN Security Council. But I hope that within the framework of the expert-level contacts we have with our American colleagues, we will be able to clarify this apparent contradiction.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/400756-us-afghanistan-dead-end-lavrov/

The US is alarmed Pakistan decided Russia has the best chance of being a stabilizing force for a peaceful outcome in Afghanistan: the US doesn’t want to end the war which is a cash cow, says Brian Becker from the anti-war ANSWER coalition.

During Donald Trump’s speech on Monday, where he presented the new Afghanistan strategy, the US leader criticized Pakistan by calling it a “haven” for terrorists.

The US president threatened to change America’s stance on Pakistan if it’s “continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.”

Pakistan hit back at Donald Trump's claim responding that the country is being singled out as a “scapegoat” for US failures.

"They should not make Pakistan a scapegoat for their failures in Afghanistan," Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said on Tuesday in an interview with Geo TV, as cited by Reuters. He added that its “commitment to the war against terrorism is unmatched and unshaken."

RT talked about Donald Trump's strategy in Afghanistan and his accusations against Pakistan with Brian Becker from the anti-war ANSWER coalition.

In his view, the reason President Trump “announced animosity toward Pakistan… is that Pakistan has been reaching out to Russia in the last few months and drawing Russia in, and asking Russia to be the primary stabilizing force in a possible peaceful outcome in Afghanistan."

“The US has become alarmed that Pakistan, even though Pakistan-Russian relations had been historically strained, has shifted. The Pakistanis have now decided it is Russia, not the US, that has the best hope as an international player bringing others to the table and possibly bringing together a government of national unity in Afghanistan, which of course will be the only way this war could end. The Pentagon doesn’t want to end the war. They are perfectly happy with the stalemate as it is. It is a cash cow for the Pentagon and for the US contractors,” Becker said.

Becker agrees the US is scapegoating Pakistan.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/400760-us-afghanistan-war-pentagon/

After having played hypocritical games within the region (Afghanistan, Pakistan, US support for the Mujehadeens who became "the Taliban"), how come the US "now?" wakes up to the fact that some countries in the region are hypocritically making deals away from the US?... The US has always been the elephant walking on eggshells there — and the various games played by this cumbersome elephant are mostly designed to contain Russia's influence and making cash for its arm manufacturers in the process. 

The Mini-Skirt Deception: How McMaster Got His Afghan ‘Surge’

A photo of Soviet era Afghanistan won Trump over

According to reports, Gen. H. R. McMaster convinced President Trump to give up his longstanding opposition to the Afghan war by showing him this photograph, below, of Afghan women in what the media are describing as “miniskirts.” As the Washington Post put it:

“One of the ways McMaster tried to persuade Trump to recommit to the effort was by convincing him that Afghanistan was not a hopeless place. He presented Trump with a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul, to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return.”

The irony is that, in 1972, when this photo was taken on the grounds of Kabul University, Afghanistan was firmly in the orbit of the Soviet Union, as it had been since 1953, when Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan rose to power and instituted a series of progressive reforms, including equal rights for women. The next year, Khan deposed King Mohammed Zahir Shah, and Soviet aid poured in, alongside the Red Army.

More irony: it was the United States, alongside Washington’s then-ally Osama bin Laden, that overthrew the communist regime, and conducted a guerrilla war against the Afghan government and their Soviet sponsors. The last Soviet troops left in 1989 — and there were no more miniskirts to be seen anywhere in Afghanistan.

Gen. McMaster knows all this: our President does not. Does McMaster think he can bring communism back to Afghanistan? I jest, but with serious intent. Because the commies attempted what our President has vowed not to do in Afghanistan: they sought to create a nation out of a collection of mountain-guarded valleys, isolated bastions untouched by time or the vaunted ambitions of their many would-be conquerors.

read more:

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/08/22/mini-skirt-deception-mcmaster-got-afghan-surge/

The FBI has conducted searches at Russian diplomatic compounds in the US, which the Russian Foreign Ministry calls “meaningless clownery.” Russian diplomats have posted photo and video evidence of what they call a “travesty of justice.”

“I am watching the footage of the FBI searches of Russian foreign missions and I think that this is some kind of hellish clownery [which is] stupid, illegal [and] meaningless,” Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page. 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/401842-trade-mission-dc-closed/