Pentagon buys all satellite war images
The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to prevent western media from seeing highly accurate civilian satellite pictures of the effects of bombing in Afghanistan. The US military does not need the pictures for its own purposes because it already has six imaging satellites in orbit, augmented by a seventh launched recently. Four of the satellites, called Keyholes, take photographic images estimated to be six to ten times better than the 1 metre resolution available from IKONOS. Since images of the bombed Afghan bases would not have shown the position of US forces or compromised US military security, the ban could have been challenged by news media as being a breach of the First Amendment, which guarantees press freedom.

French Defence Ministry bars sales of satellite pictures of Afghanistan
The French company SPOT Image, had stopped selling pictures of Afghanistan under instructions from the ministry of defence. There only customer for the pictures of Afghanistan was the French Defence Ministry.

Arguably the world’s best map of Tora Bora, the epicentre of the current U.S. and allied effort to find and destroy forces loyal to Osama bin Laden, was published on the front page of New York Times. The map data was sourced and produced by East View Cartographic, which gave the NYT the hands-down “visual scoop” on the Tora Bora story. The Tora Bora graphic represents a 3-D digital terrain model has been published as a front-page graphic in the US premier newspaper of record, The New York Times, according to William McNulty, who runs the Times’ GIS section. The Tora Bora map DEM was produced by East View Cartographic for the New York Times; the final graphic also contained information provided by NYT field reporters. EVC, based in Minneapolis, MN, has been the leader in supplying the mass media high-resolution of GIS and other map and imagery data throughout the Afghanistan operation. Other major customers include the Washington Post, Time magazine, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and US News and World Report. According to Kent D. Lee, President/CEO of East View Cartographic, “This map data was produced from a Russian-language 1:50,000-scale topographic map and other sources, including Russian 2-metre imagery.” The topo map was originally produced by Soviet military authorities during their war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Even so, the meticulous detail and precision work of Soviet cartographers makes this map, almost 20 years later, still the best such map of this area. In fact the best mapping of Afghanistan is generally acknowledged to be that produced under Soviet rule.“ Even experts often do not realise what a gold mine Russian/Soviet topographic maps and imagery represent,” said Lee. “But the stunning Tora Bora graphic speaks for itself”.

Source: www.eastview.com

The National Geographic Society now provides up-to-date maps of Afghanistan for all who are eager to follow development work in the area. The two-sided map is titled “Land in Crisis.” One side is a political map, showing Afghan cities and towns, rivers, mountains, passes and airports, as well as other details. The other side shows a satellite image of Afghanistan and includes a timeline of the country’s history from the first Anglo-Afghan war in 1838-1842 to the present conflict, as well as mini-maps of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, droughts and earthquakes, Taliban and Northern Alliance strongholds, and refugee camps in the country. In addition to the maps distributed with the magazine, more than 50,000 copies of the map will be provided free to teachers around the United States. There is also an online version of the map, which the magazine will update to reflect developments in the region.

Source : www.nationalgeographic.com

The Indian narcotics control officials say that contrary to claims by the UN and some western countries that the Taliban ensured “zero cultivation” of opium this year, it is business as usual in Afghanistan as far as this drug trade is concerned. In fact, analysis based on processing commercially available satellite imagery has shown that the Taliban had done little to block cultivation and the decline that occurred in the Helmand province was a consequence of a drought this summer.