A Call for Clarity on the Afghanistan War
by Sonali Kolhatkar, from Foreign Policy in Focus, November 2, 2009.
While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war. The only thing being debated is how to continue the war.
Similarly, there's little debate among progressives about how this is a bad war, and at the very least we need an exit strategy. Paralysis has set in on the particular manner of ending the war: whether to wait for some sort of "peace process," to pull out troops now versus later, to preserve troop levels until Afghanistan's women are safe, or some variation of these questions. We're in a bizarre situation: As Obama waffles on how to continue the war in Afghanistan, progressives are waffling on how to end the war.
Despite some major differences between the Afghan and Iraq wars, U.S. military operations and their consequences in both countries are the same. Similar to Iraq, this war kills civilians and soldiers causing misery on all sides. Similar to Iraq, this war has made women less safe. Similar to Iraq, this occupation has become unpopular on the ground. Similar to Iraq, our actions are leading to greater instability. And similar to Iraq, our tax dollars are being disappeared into a sinkhole of destruction rather than human needs. Yet, unlike Iraq, where progressives were clear right from the start on ending the war, Afghanistan seems to confuse our moral compass.
Our actions in Afghanistan have caused a perfect storm of untold numbers of civilian deaths, fundamentalist resurgence, and women's oppression. We're protecting a corrupt government with a puppet president and criminal warlords, and our deadly bombing raids have led to a devastated and rightly bitter population and a stronger Taliban. There's no promising indication that our military operations can improve the situation, no matter how many troops are added. If ever the Afghanistan war ever had any legitimacy, it's irreversibly gone.
Enabling Women's Oppression
One of the original justifications for the war in 2001 that seemed to resonate most with liberal Americans was the liberation of Afghan women from a misogynist regime. This is now being resurrected as the following: If the U.S. forces withdraw, any gains made by Afghan women will be reversed and they'll be at the mercy of fundamentalist forces. In fact, the fear of abandoning Afghan women seems to have caused the greatest confusion and paralysis in the antiwar movement.
What this logic misses is that the United States chose right from the start to sell out Afghan women to its misogynist fundamentalist allies on the ground. The U.S. armed the Mujahadeen leaders in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation, opening the door to successive fundamentalist governments including the Taliban. In 2001, the United States then armed the same men, now called the Northern Alliance, to fight the Taliban and then welcomed them into the newly formed government as a reward. The American puppet president Hamid Karzai, in concert with a cabinet and parliament of thugs and criminals, passed one misogynist law after another, appointed one fundamentalist zealot after another to the judiciary, and literally enabled the downfall of Afghan women's rights over eight long years.
Any token gains have been countered by setbacks. For example, while women are considered equal to men in Afghanistan's constitution, there have been vicious and deadly attacks against women's rights activists, the legalization of rape within marriage in the Shia community, and a shockingly high rate of women's imprisonment for so-called honor crimes — all under the watch of the U.S. occupation and the government we are protecting against the Taliban. Add to this the unacceptably high number of innocent women and children killed in U.S. bombing raids, which has also increased the Taliban's numbers and clout, and it makes the case that for eight years the United States has enabled the oppression of Afghan women and only added to their miseries.
This is why grassroots political and feminist activists have called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from their country. After eight years of American-enabled oppression, they would rather fight for their liberation without our help. The anti-fundamentalist progressive organization, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), has called for an immediate end to the war. Echoing their call is independent dissident member of Parliament Malalai Joya, who tells her story in her new political memoir, A Woman Among Warlords. The members of RAWA and women like Joya are openly targeted by the U.S.-backed Afghan government for their feminism and political activism. RAWA and Joya have worked on the ground, risking their lives for political change and echo the vast majority of poor and ordinary Afghan women. It's they whom we ought to listen to and express solidarity with. If American progressives think they know better than Afghanistan's brave feminist activists on how liberation can be achieved, we're just as guilty as the U.S. government for subjecting them to the mercy of women-hating criminals.
No Negotiations with Fundamentalist Criminals
Some on the left have made the case that the Afghanistan war can come to an end through a negotiated peace process where everyone has a seat at the table, including women. But this ensures that only those within the corrupt clique of Afghan politics remain involved in the future of Afghanistan — such as a few female allies of the fundamentalists who are plentiful in the current government.
Joya struggled her way into getting a "seat at the table" through the 2005 elections. For representing her people's views that war criminals ought to be brought to justice, she has been rewarded with death threats, assassination attempts, and the loss of her electoral title. Asking ordinary women and men to have a seat at a negotiating table with war criminals is akin to asking them to silence themselves or mark their foreheads with a target.
The reason why democratic forces in Afghanistan are completely underground and constantly living in fear of being killed is that time and again the U.S. government has insisted on bringing warlords and even Taliban leaders to the negotiating table. Asking the Obama administration to sponsor a "peace process" between civilian representatives and our warlord allies whose private militias we have armed, is the same as asking for exactly what President George W. Bush did eight years ago in Bonn, Germany after the fall of the Taliban. That process predictably led to the establishment of today's corrupt government. In fact, the Obama administration is very likely to patch up the recent failed presidential elections in the same way: by creating a power-sharing deal between two corrupt sides and their proxies and claiming that all sides were represented at the negotiating table.
Given our violent role in Afghanistan over the past three decades, the United States has scant credibility in sponsoring any kind of "peace" process. The most responsible action the U.S. can take is to end its occupation immediately, and clean up its mess.
Let's Call for an Immediate End to the U.S. Occupation
Those who make the case that withdrawing U.S. troops will unleash another bloody civil war where Afghan women and men will be at the mercy of the Taliban and warlords, are raising the exact same justification made for the war in 2001: that it's our moral duty to protect Afghans from fundamentalist violence. This logic ignores the fact that we have nurtured and created the very fundamentalist violence that targets Afghans as explained above. By empowering war criminals and protecting a corrupt government that has forgiven the crimes of all sides including the Taliban, and that even includes some Taliban leaders, all we have done is complicate a war that was on-going. "A member of RAWA who goes by the pseudonym Zoya in a U.S. speaking tour last month made it clear that it's hard to imagine things getting worse if the U.S. does pull out immediately. The damage isn't being prevented by the United States — it's being carried out by the United States.
Instead of subjecting Afghans to the three oppressive forces of a stronger Taliban, a corrupt and criminal government, and a deadly foreign occupation, the first thing we Americans can control most directly is to end our occupation immediately. This alone won't address the Taliban and Northern Alliance. But it will reduce the oppressive forces at work, and potentially reduce the legitimacy of the warlords and the motives driving the Taliban.
How do we undo the damage we have subjected innocent Afghans to? Afghans themselves have the answers to that. Surveys have shown that a majority of Afghans want a complete disarmament of our warlord allies — essentially that the U.S. needs to take back the guns we put into the hands of the Northern Alliance and their private militias. Surveys have also shown that Afghans want war crimes tribunals to hold all the corrupt and criminal fundamentalists accountable in some sort of court, perhaps even the International Criminal Court (U.S. government officials shouldn't be exempt from this type of accountability either). With weapons, warlords, and U.S. troops gone, real democracy could potentially take root and pro-democracy forces could someday operate freely. Many have also called for a massive Marshall Plan for poverty-stricken Afghanistan, to flood the country with money in the hands of small groups, organizations, and civil society, and eventually to help rebuild the country with a strong, non-drug-based economy. With all the money freed up from military operations that would be fairly feasible.
As for the Taliban, even the U.S. government publicly admits that the Pakistani government's own agencies have long supported the renegade army as a tool for national and regional stability. With the U.S. troops gone, the Taliban's raison d'être inside Afghanistan would be greatly weakened. If the United States were to take the lead in regional talks between Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, and China to address the Pakistani government's fears of a hostile regime in Afghanistan, it would go a very long way toward undermining the Taliban.
These measures are necessary but may not guarantee stability for Afghanistan. Still the current occupation only guarantees instability, so at the very least the time for a non-military solution is now. In other words, we can choose to repeat a failed experiment with predictably negative results by extending the war in any number of ways. Or we can implement the complex, constructive measures that could potentially help stabilize Afghanistan, undermine the fundamentalist misogynist criminals, help the Afghan people take back their country, and undermine the conditions for violence.
These are complex demands to make of the Obama administration. But it has taken a complex set of destructive American policies and many years to destroy Afghanistan. It will take a similar amount of time and complexity, as well as trial and error, to help rebuild Afghanistan for ordinary Afghans, and by extension make Americans safer. We can make these demands as secondary points in our call for an end to the war. But the primary demand easily fits on a protest placard: "End the U.S. War in Afghanistan NOW." Let's make that call loudly, clearly, and ubiquitously, as soon as possible, so that Obama and Congress can't ignore us any longer.
Sonali Kolhatkar, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission and co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. She has worked in solidarity with RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) for nearly 10 years. For more information about Afghan Women's Mission, RAWA, and how to support Afghan activists, visit www.afghanwomensmission.org.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The Delegitimization of Karzai
The Delegitimization of Karzai: A Long-Term Disaster for Obama and the US
by Patrick Cockburn, from CounterPunch, November 3, 2009.
The election in Afghanistan has turned into a disaster for all who promoted it. Hamid Karzai has been declared re-elected as president of the country for the next five years though his allies inside and outside Afghanistan know that he owes his success to open fraud. Instead of increasing his government’s legitimacy, the poll has further de-legitimized it.
From Mr Karzai’s point of view he won through at the end and showed that nobody is strong enough to get rid of him. For President Obama the election has no silver lining. It has left him poised to send tens of thousands US troops to fight a war in defense of one of world’s most crooked and discredited governments. “It is not that the Taliban is so strong, but the government is so weak,” was a common saying among Afghans before the election, and one which will be even truer in future.
The US and its allies may now push for a national unity government between Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah, his main rival for the presidency. This might look good on paper, or at least better than the alternative of Mr Karzai ruling alone. But enforced unity between men who detest each other will institutionalize divisions. Its value will largely be in terms of propaganda for external consumption.
When Mr Obama won election on November 4 last year he must have believed he had been right to take a soft line on Iraq and a hard one on Afghanistan. The former looked much the more dangerous place. Just twelve months later he is discovering that the reverse is true and Afghanistan is the biggest foreign policy problem facing the US. It is a more dangerous place for the US and its allies than Iraq ever was.
In Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, the government was democratically elected by a huge majority in 2005. There was a savage civil war because the fifth of the population, who are Sunni Arabs, did not accept that victory of four fifths who are Shia Arabs and Kurds. The Shia did not relish US occupation, but they were prepared to cooperate with it while they took power. Only the Kurds were long term US allies.
In Iraq the state was previously strong and can be made strong again. Above all the Iraqi government had money. Its oil revenues were $62 billion last year. The Afghan government has in the past had limited authority outside the cities and it has no money apart from foreign aid hand outs.
Another important difference between the two countries is geography. Iraq is flat outside Kurdistan and the great majority live in cities and towns on the Tigris and Euphrates. It is not good terrain for guerrilla fighters in contrast to Afghanistan with its high mountains, broken hills and isolated villages.
The Taliban have been able in the past to use safe havens and bases in the Pashtun belt, north-west Pakistan where they can rest, train and store weapons and ammunition. These areas are now under attack from US drones and the Pakistani army. But the suicide bomber which killed 35 people in Rawalpindi yesterday shows that the cost to Pakistan of attacking an insurgency firmly rooted in its Pashtun community will be high.
One of the few benefits of the Afghan election might be a more realistic understanding in the US and Europe – particularly in Britain – of the mechanics of Afghan politics. These are eloquently and ably summariezed in his resignation letter to the US State Department by Matthew P. Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul province which lies just to the east of Kandahar in south Afghanistan. He was previously a US Marine officer in Iraq.
Mr Hoh makes the important point that the US has joined one side in what is effectively a 35-year-long civil war in Afghanistan. He sees this as being between the urban, educated, secular, modern Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional Pashtun. “The US and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified,” concludes Mr Hoh. “I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.”
Mr Hoh’s observations are confirmed by opinion polls in Afghanistan. The majority of Afghans do not want more foreign troops. They think their arrival will mean more dead Afghans not less and in this they are certainly right. The areas of Afghanistan where the Taliban is most acceptable is where US and allies planes and artillery have killed civilians. The idea that the US army is going to turn into a glorified Peace Corps, building bridges and roads is romantic and unrealistic.
Washington and London should really wonder after Afghanistan’s farcical election if their political and military investment in the country is worth it. Their policy of propping up and strengthening the central government looks more ludicrous than before. There is something sickening about propaganda claims from Whitehall that British troops has their legs blown off securing polling stations where Afghans could vote, when the British-supported government in Kabul was busily fabricating the vote so the presence or absence of polling booths was entirely irrelevant.
The US and Britain have joined somebody else’s civil war. It is not one that the Taliban are likely to win because they rely on the Pashtun community which makes up only 42 per cent of the population. By the same token they are not likely to lose either. American troop reinforcements would give the anti-Taliban forces control over more of the country but would also intensify the war. The context of greater US involvement will be, thanks to the election, a weaker Karzai government so Americans not Afghans will take the vital political and military decisions. To Afghans this means that the foreign presence will look like even more like an imperial occupation.
Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."
by Patrick Cockburn, from CounterPunch, November 3, 2009.
The election in Afghanistan has turned into a disaster for all who promoted it. Hamid Karzai has been declared re-elected as president of the country for the next five years though his allies inside and outside Afghanistan know that he owes his success to open fraud. Instead of increasing his government’s legitimacy, the poll has further de-legitimized it.
From Mr Karzai’s point of view he won through at the end and showed that nobody is strong enough to get rid of him. For President Obama the election has no silver lining. It has left him poised to send tens of thousands US troops to fight a war in defense of one of world’s most crooked and discredited governments. “It is not that the Taliban is so strong, but the government is so weak,” was a common saying among Afghans before the election, and one which will be even truer in future.
The US and its allies may now push for a national unity government between Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah, his main rival for the presidency. This might look good on paper, or at least better than the alternative of Mr Karzai ruling alone. But enforced unity between men who detest each other will institutionalize divisions. Its value will largely be in terms of propaganda for external consumption.
When Mr Obama won election on November 4 last year he must have believed he had been right to take a soft line on Iraq and a hard one on Afghanistan. The former looked much the more dangerous place. Just twelve months later he is discovering that the reverse is true and Afghanistan is the biggest foreign policy problem facing the US. It is a more dangerous place for the US and its allies than Iraq ever was.
In Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, the government was democratically elected by a huge majority in 2005. There was a savage civil war because the fifth of the population, who are Sunni Arabs, did not accept that victory of four fifths who are Shia Arabs and Kurds. The Shia did not relish US occupation, but they were prepared to cooperate with it while they took power. Only the Kurds were long term US allies.
In Iraq the state was previously strong and can be made strong again. Above all the Iraqi government had money. Its oil revenues were $62 billion last year. The Afghan government has in the past had limited authority outside the cities and it has no money apart from foreign aid hand outs.
Another important difference between the two countries is geography. Iraq is flat outside Kurdistan and the great majority live in cities and towns on the Tigris and Euphrates. It is not good terrain for guerrilla fighters in contrast to Afghanistan with its high mountains, broken hills and isolated villages.
The Taliban have been able in the past to use safe havens and bases in the Pashtun belt, north-west Pakistan where they can rest, train and store weapons and ammunition. These areas are now under attack from US drones and the Pakistani army. But the suicide bomber which killed 35 people in Rawalpindi yesterday shows that the cost to Pakistan of attacking an insurgency firmly rooted in its Pashtun community will be high.
One of the few benefits of the Afghan election might be a more realistic understanding in the US and Europe – particularly in Britain – of the mechanics of Afghan politics. These are eloquently and ably summariezed in his resignation letter to the US State Department by Matthew P. Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul province which lies just to the east of Kandahar in south Afghanistan. He was previously a US Marine officer in Iraq.
Mr Hoh makes the important point that the US has joined one side in what is effectively a 35-year-long civil war in Afghanistan. He sees this as being between the urban, educated, secular, modern Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional Pashtun. “The US and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified,” concludes Mr Hoh. “I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.”
Mr Hoh’s observations are confirmed by opinion polls in Afghanistan. The majority of Afghans do not want more foreign troops. They think their arrival will mean more dead Afghans not less and in this they are certainly right. The areas of Afghanistan where the Taliban is most acceptable is where US and allies planes and artillery have killed civilians. The idea that the US army is going to turn into a glorified Peace Corps, building bridges and roads is romantic and unrealistic.
Washington and London should really wonder after Afghanistan’s farcical election if their political and military investment in the country is worth it. Their policy of propping up and strengthening the central government looks more ludicrous than before. There is something sickening about propaganda claims from Whitehall that British troops has their legs blown off securing polling stations where Afghans could vote, when the British-supported government in Kabul was busily fabricating the vote so the presence or absence of polling booths was entirely irrelevant.
The US and Britain have joined somebody else’s civil war. It is not one that the Taliban are likely to win because they rely on the Pashtun community which makes up only 42 per cent of the population. By the same token they are not likely to lose either. American troop reinforcements would give the anti-Taliban forces control over more of the country but would also intensify the war. The context of greater US involvement will be, thanks to the election, a weaker Karzai government so Americans not Afghans will take the vital political and military decisions. To Afghans this means that the foreign presence will look like even more like an imperial occupation.
Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."
Monday, October 26, 2009
UN Article 32 is the Standard for Mining Act to Meet
NAN -- UN Article 32 is the Standard for Mining Act to Meet
by James Murray, from NetNewsledger.com, October 22, 2009. (Link via RDO.)
THUNDER BAY - Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Stan Beardy today acknowledged the Government of Ontario’s efforts to address First Nations concerns through the Mining Act amendment bill passed by the legislature Wednesday, but remains adamant that NAN First Nations must have the right to decide on mining activity in NAN territory.
"We recognize Ontario’s effort to make the revised Mining Act the first legislation to recognize Aboriginal and treaty rights," said Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Stan Beardy. "Our primary concern remains that NAN First Nations must have free, prior and informed consent before any activity can take place in their homelands".
The Grand Chief acknowledged that progress has been made in addressing some concerns of NAN First Nations since the introduction of the Mining Act amendment bill in April 2009, but said more work needs to be done.
"We are pleased that Ontario has incorporated a dispute resolution process but we need to ensure that it works for First Nations," said Beardy. The Grand Chief remains concerned that the legislation does not fully recognize the rights of First Nations to decide on mining in NAN territory.
"Free, prior and informed consent means that no prospecting, staking, exploration or mine development can proceed without a written agreement in place with the First Nation," said Beardy. "That is the standard expressed in Article 32 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That is the standard we expect Ontario to meet".
Article 32 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.
2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain
their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to mitigate adverse
environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual impact.
www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp
by James Murray, from NetNewsledger.com, October 22, 2009. (Link via RDO.)
THUNDER BAY - Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Stan Beardy today acknowledged the Government of Ontario’s efforts to address First Nations concerns through the Mining Act amendment bill passed by the legislature Wednesday, but remains adamant that NAN First Nations must have the right to decide on mining activity in NAN territory.
"We recognize Ontario’s effort to make the revised Mining Act the first legislation to recognize Aboriginal and treaty rights," said Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Stan Beardy. "Our primary concern remains that NAN First Nations must have free, prior and informed consent before any activity can take place in their homelands".
The Grand Chief acknowledged that progress has been made in addressing some concerns of NAN First Nations since the introduction of the Mining Act amendment bill in April 2009, but said more work needs to be done.
"We are pleased that Ontario has incorporated a dispute resolution process but we need to ensure that it works for First Nations," said Beardy. The Grand Chief remains concerned that the legislation does not fully recognize the rights of First Nations to decide on mining in NAN territory.
"Free, prior and informed consent means that no prospecting, staking, exploration or mine development can proceed without a written agreement in place with the First Nation," said Beardy. "That is the standard expressed in Article 32 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That is the standard we expect Ontario to meet".
Article 32 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.
2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain
their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to mitigate adverse
environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual impact.
www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp
Friday, October 23, 2009
Ottawa students plan Moore documentary
Ottawa students plan Moore documentary
by Bob Vaillancourt, from The Sudbury Star, October 23, 2009.
A group of University of Ottawa students is making a documentary on Sudburian John Moore's struggle to clear himself of what he says is a wrongful murder conviction.
Moore, 53, was convicted in the June 30, 1978, death of taxi driver Donald Lanthier in Sault Ste. Marie and was sentenced to prison for life.
He is on parole after being released from prison in 1987 after nearly a decade behind bars in a federal prison.
Moore was in Ottawa last week participating in a panel conference on indigenous struggles against racism when he met Samantha Pollock and two other students from the university, who became interested in his case. They decided to make the documentary as part of their journalism studies.
Pollock will be in town this weekend shooting scenes for the documentary. She and her colleagues have already shot Moore in various locales in Ottawa, including the Parliament building, the Supreme Court of Canada building and the offices of the federal justice minister.
Moore has started a blog at justiceandfreedomforjohnmoore. blogs pot.comin which he invites people to sign a petition calling on the federal government to review his case.
Already, the campaign has garnered dozens of signatures, some as far away as San Francisco.
"When we get enough people to sign up, then we can send it to the justice minister and say, 'look. The people that signed up for this blog, they want you to do something and do something fast and stop stonewalling.' "
Reading "all those people's names is just kind a cool," Moore said.
As a result of his presentation in Ottawa last week, Moore was invited back to Ottawa next week to speak at the "Celebration of First Peoples in Canada" event at Saint Paul University.
Moore's conviction was based on the fact that he was with the two men who killed Lanthier hours before the slaying.
The prosecuting attorney argued that, as a result, he must have known what was going to happen and did nothing to stop the killing.
In 1987, the same year that Moore made day parole, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down that section of the law as being unconstitutional.
Moore said he began his campaign to clear his name in 1983 with a letter to then Justice minister Mark McGuigan.
"I got a 10-minute meeting," but no results, said Moore.
He didn't stop there. Moore has dealt with justice ministers and their staff through two governing parties.
And even though the law under which he was convicted was ruled unconstitutional, he has been unsuccessful in having his conviction overturned.
"They (justice department officials) keep telling me there is nothing new" to warrant intervention in his conviction, he said.
Moore said he gets the feeling from his dealings with just ice department officials that they feel any relief granted him would have to be applied to anyone else who was convicted under the unconstitutional law.
by Bob Vaillancourt, from The Sudbury Star, October 23, 2009.
A group of University of Ottawa students is making a documentary on Sudburian John Moore's struggle to clear himself of what he says is a wrongful murder conviction.
Moore, 53, was convicted in the June 30, 1978, death of taxi driver Donald Lanthier in Sault Ste. Marie and was sentenced to prison for life.
He is on parole after being released from prison in 1987 after nearly a decade behind bars in a federal prison.
Moore was in Ottawa last week participating in a panel conference on indigenous struggles against racism when he met Samantha Pollock and two other students from the university, who became interested in his case. They decided to make the documentary as part of their journalism studies.
Pollock will be in town this weekend shooting scenes for the documentary. She and her colleagues have already shot Moore in various locales in Ottawa, including the Parliament building, the Supreme Court of Canada building and the offices of the federal justice minister.
Moore has started a blog at justiceandfreedomforjohnmoore. blogs pot.comin which he invites people to sign a petition calling on the federal government to review his case.
Already, the campaign has garnered dozens of signatures, some as far away as San Francisco.
"When we get enough people to sign up, then we can send it to the justice minister and say, 'look. The people that signed up for this blog, they want you to do something and do something fast and stop stonewalling.' "
Reading "all those people's names is just kind a cool," Moore said.
As a result of his presentation in Ottawa last week, Moore was invited back to Ottawa next week to speak at the "Celebration of First Peoples in Canada" event at Saint Paul University.
Moore's conviction was based on the fact that he was with the two men who killed Lanthier hours before the slaying.
The prosecuting attorney argued that, as a result, he must have known what was going to happen and did nothing to stop the killing.
In 1987, the same year that Moore made day parole, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down that section of the law as being unconstitutional.
Moore said he began his campaign to clear his name in 1983 with a letter to then Justice minister Mark McGuigan.
"I got a 10-minute meeting," but no results, said Moore.
He didn't stop there. Moore has dealt with justice ministers and their staff through two governing parties.
And even though the law under which he was convicted was ruled unconstitutional, he has been unsuccessful in having his conviction overturned.
"They (justice department officials) keep telling me there is nothing new" to warrant intervention in his conviction, he said.
Moore said he gets the feeling from his dealings with just ice department officials that they feel any relief granted him would have to be applied to anyone else who was convicted under the unconstitutional law.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sanctuary for war resister
Sanctuary for war resister: Rodney Watson takes refuge in Vancouver church
by Krystalline Kraus, from Rabble, October 22, 2009.
The battle to keep U.S. Iraq war resisters in Canada has been ongoing since January 2004 when Jeremy Hinzman first arrived in Canada and filed a refugee claim as a conscientious objector.
Hinzman was the first U.S. Iraq resister to seek sanctuary in Canada as he and others face punishment under a charge of being Absent Without Official Leave (“going AWOL”) or for desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for refusing to participate in the Iraq war for moral reasons.
As of July 2009, there are at least 28 public cases of US Iraq War resisters in Canada, some of whom have either brought their families or started new ones in Canada. They live legally as refugee claimants awaiting legal decisions from Immigration Canada from, for example, Humanitarian and Compassionate Grounds (H + C) applications. An unknown number -- the War Resister Support Campaign (WRSC) estimate the number to be around 200-- have also come to Canada but have remained underground.
They have been embraced kindly by the Canadian public and the current opposition parties in Parliament, who have united twice on motions voting to support resisters, on both June 3, 2008 and March 30, 2009.
These motions were supported by the Canadian public, as proven through an Angus Reid Strategies poll taken on June 6 and 7, 2008 which showed that 64 per cent of Canadians agreed with the premise of the motion, which would allow soldiers of conscience objecting to any non-United Nation sanctioned war to seek refugee status here in Canada and to stop all pending deportation cases. While both motions passed, their recommendations were non-binding and never implemented by the minority Conservative government under the leadership of Stephen Harper.
Commenting on the resister’s immigration situation in Canada, on January 7, 2009, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, referred to Iraq war resisters as, "bogus refugee claimants" and later commented that “war resistance is futile.”
Opposition to allowing U.S. war resisters to seek sanctuary in Canada has also come from the United States. For example, in 2004, the BBC analysis of the situation reported that U.S. political pundit commentators such as Bill O'Reilly of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News TV network, “... seized on the case [of Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey], even calling for a boycott of Canadian goods if the pair [were] not extradited quickly.”
It also reported on the types of comments resisters were receiving from their fellow Americans. “‘I'm coming for you,’ reads one threatening e-mail, laced with racism and obscenities. ‘Desserters [sic] should get shot in the back especially at war time,’ reads another.”
The case of Rodney Watson
The latest flashpoint in the battle has been the case of Rodney Watson who on Monday October 19, 2009, decided to seek sanctuary in a B.C. church rather than face deportation to the United States to face desertion charges. Watson, who is originally from Kansas City, Kansas, enlisted in the US Army in 2004 for a three-year contract with the intentions of becoming a cook since he wanted to serve the troops in a non-combat capacity.
In 2005, he was deployed to Iraq just north of Mosul, where he was put in charge of searching vehicles and Iraqi civilians for explosives, contraband and weapons before they entered the base. He was also expected to “keep the peace” by monitoring Iraqi civilians who worked on the base and fire his weapon at Iraqi children who approached the perimeter.
After his first tour was over, Watson was informed that he was instead being Stop-Lossed as the Army intended to have his serve beyond the date of his contractual obligation with the military. On two-week leave, he decided not to return to his base at Fort Hood, Texas, and instead fled to Vancouver, B.C. in 2006, where he lives with his Canadian born partner and their infant son.
In a September 2009 press conference, Watson -- who is African-American -- described his experience in Iraq, “I witnessed racism and the physical abuse from soldiers towards the civilians. On one occasion, a soldier was beating an Iraqi civilian, calling him a sand-nigger and threw his Qur’an on the ground and spit on it. The man was unarmed and he was just looking for work on the base. He posed no type of threat. He was beaten because soldiers brought their personal racist hatred to Iraq.”
It was experiences like these -- plus coming to understand that the motivation behind going to war was based on lies -- that led to his decision to come to Canada. He has been living in refuge at the First United Church in Vancouver, B.C., since September 18, 2009. He was welcomed with open arms and publicly declared sanctuary on Monday. Sarah Bjorknas from the Vancouver arm of the WRSC notes that Watson was issued his deportation order before his H + C case could be resolved through the courts.
Watson wishes to remain in Canada because of his objection to the Iraq War but his passion for his infant son remains the strongest pull -- two heartbeats desperate to remain as one.
At the press conference, Watson’s voice trembled, “I don’t want to be torn away from him. I want to be there for him during his first steps, every waking moment, I want to be there. And I know if I’m deported, it is to prison and I will not be able to see any of those moments for who knows how long, for God knows how long.” If convicted of desertion as a felony charge he will not be able to cross the border to visit his son.
While Watson made the decision to seek sanctuary on his own, he has been receiving support from across the country. Bjorknas defended his choice. “Rodney was Stop-Lossed, he had served his time, he fulfilled his contractual obligation, and the fact that he is being sent back to the United States to stand trial is outrageous.”
'Stop Loss'
In the U.S. military, the Stop Loss policy allows for the involuntary extension of a service member’s active duty service under their enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date.
The policy remains in effect despite numerous court challenges from military service members challenging their extension and affects 12, 000 personnel, though in March 2009, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates ordered deep reductions in its enactment against service personnel by fifty per cent by June 2010.
In 2005 during the presidential election, Democrat John Kerry accused President Bush of creating a "backdoor draft” through the use of Stop Loss.
Commenting on Watson’s case of seeking sanctuary in Canada to resist a Stop Loss order, Michelle Robidoux from Toronto’s WRSC said, “Rodney’s case is a clear example of how the notion that the U.S. military is an all volunteer army is actually false. Rodney completed his contractual obligations and was facing redeployment to Iraq despite this and his objections to the war.”
Now Watson sits and waits in a B.C. Church, hoping the government will intervene or enact Parliament’s motion to stop him from being deported and separated from his partner and newborn son.
by Krystalline Kraus, from Rabble, October 22, 2009.
The battle to keep U.S. Iraq war resisters in Canada has been ongoing since January 2004 when Jeremy Hinzman first arrived in Canada and filed a refugee claim as a conscientious objector.
Hinzman was the first U.S. Iraq resister to seek sanctuary in Canada as he and others face punishment under a charge of being Absent Without Official Leave (“going AWOL”) or for desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for refusing to participate in the Iraq war for moral reasons.
As of July 2009, there are at least 28 public cases of US Iraq War resisters in Canada, some of whom have either brought their families or started new ones in Canada. They live legally as refugee claimants awaiting legal decisions from Immigration Canada from, for example, Humanitarian and Compassionate Grounds (H + C) applications. An unknown number -- the War Resister Support Campaign (WRSC) estimate the number to be around 200-- have also come to Canada but have remained underground.
They have been embraced kindly by the Canadian public and the current opposition parties in Parliament, who have united twice on motions voting to support resisters, on both June 3, 2008 and March 30, 2009.
These motions were supported by the Canadian public, as proven through an Angus Reid Strategies poll taken on June 6 and 7, 2008 which showed that 64 per cent of Canadians agreed with the premise of the motion, which would allow soldiers of conscience objecting to any non-United Nation sanctioned war to seek refugee status here in Canada and to stop all pending deportation cases. While both motions passed, their recommendations were non-binding and never implemented by the minority Conservative government under the leadership of Stephen Harper.
Commenting on the resister’s immigration situation in Canada, on January 7, 2009, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, referred to Iraq war resisters as, "bogus refugee claimants" and later commented that “war resistance is futile.”
Opposition to allowing U.S. war resisters to seek sanctuary in Canada has also come from the United States. For example, in 2004, the BBC analysis of the situation reported that U.S. political pundit commentators such as Bill O'Reilly of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News TV network, “... seized on the case [of Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey], even calling for a boycott of Canadian goods if the pair [were] not extradited quickly.”
It also reported on the types of comments resisters were receiving from their fellow Americans. “‘I'm coming for you,’ reads one threatening e-mail, laced with racism and obscenities. ‘Desserters [sic] should get shot in the back especially at war time,’ reads another.”
The case of Rodney Watson
The latest flashpoint in the battle has been the case of Rodney Watson who on Monday October 19, 2009, decided to seek sanctuary in a B.C. church rather than face deportation to the United States to face desertion charges. Watson, who is originally from Kansas City, Kansas, enlisted in the US Army in 2004 for a three-year contract with the intentions of becoming a cook since he wanted to serve the troops in a non-combat capacity.
In 2005, he was deployed to Iraq just north of Mosul, where he was put in charge of searching vehicles and Iraqi civilians for explosives, contraband and weapons before they entered the base. He was also expected to “keep the peace” by monitoring Iraqi civilians who worked on the base and fire his weapon at Iraqi children who approached the perimeter.
After his first tour was over, Watson was informed that he was instead being Stop-Lossed as the Army intended to have his serve beyond the date of his contractual obligation with the military. On two-week leave, he decided not to return to his base at Fort Hood, Texas, and instead fled to Vancouver, B.C. in 2006, where he lives with his Canadian born partner and their infant son.
In a September 2009 press conference, Watson -- who is African-American -- described his experience in Iraq, “I witnessed racism and the physical abuse from soldiers towards the civilians. On one occasion, a soldier was beating an Iraqi civilian, calling him a sand-nigger and threw his Qur’an on the ground and spit on it. The man was unarmed and he was just looking for work on the base. He posed no type of threat. He was beaten because soldiers brought their personal racist hatred to Iraq.”
It was experiences like these -- plus coming to understand that the motivation behind going to war was based on lies -- that led to his decision to come to Canada. He has been living in refuge at the First United Church in Vancouver, B.C., since September 18, 2009. He was welcomed with open arms and publicly declared sanctuary on Monday. Sarah Bjorknas from the Vancouver arm of the WRSC notes that Watson was issued his deportation order before his H + C case could be resolved through the courts.
Watson wishes to remain in Canada because of his objection to the Iraq War but his passion for his infant son remains the strongest pull -- two heartbeats desperate to remain as one.
At the press conference, Watson’s voice trembled, “I don’t want to be torn away from him. I want to be there for him during his first steps, every waking moment, I want to be there. And I know if I’m deported, it is to prison and I will not be able to see any of those moments for who knows how long, for God knows how long.” If convicted of desertion as a felony charge he will not be able to cross the border to visit his son.
While Watson made the decision to seek sanctuary on his own, he has been receiving support from across the country. Bjorknas defended his choice. “Rodney was Stop-Lossed, he had served his time, he fulfilled his contractual obligation, and the fact that he is being sent back to the United States to stand trial is outrageous.”
'Stop Loss'
In the U.S. military, the Stop Loss policy allows for the involuntary extension of a service member’s active duty service under their enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date.
The policy remains in effect despite numerous court challenges from military service members challenging their extension and affects 12, 000 personnel, though in March 2009, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates ordered deep reductions in its enactment against service personnel by fifty per cent by June 2010.
In 2005 during the presidential election, Democrat John Kerry accused President Bush of creating a "backdoor draft” through the use of Stop Loss.
Commenting on Watson’s case of seeking sanctuary in Canada to resist a Stop Loss order, Michelle Robidoux from Toronto’s WRSC said, “Rodney’s case is a clear example of how the notion that the U.S. military is an all volunteer army is actually false. Rodney completed his contractual obligations and was facing redeployment to Iraq despite this and his objections to the war.”
Now Watson sits and waits in a B.C. Church, hoping the government will intervene or enact Parliament’s motion to stop him from being deported and separated from his partner and newborn son.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
A Limited, Modified Pullout From Afghanistan?
A Limited, Modified Pullout From Afghanistan: Et Tu, CodePink?
By Sharon Smith, from CounterPunch, October 20, 2009.
Eight years into the war on Afghanistan -- and with no end in sight -- seems a peculiar time for antiwar activists to claim that U.S. forces need to stay there even longer for the sake of the Afghan people.
Yet Yifat Susskind, Communications Director for the human rights organization MADRE, recently argued on CommonDreams.org, "’Bring the Troops Home’ is a bumper sticker, not a policy.”She continued, “For MADRE, U.S. obligations stem from the fact that Afghanistan's poverty, violence against women, and political corruption are, in part, results of U.S. policy over the past 30 years.”
CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans began arguing for a “responsible” withdrawal after their recent visit to Afghanistan, which focused on discovering Afghan women’s attitudes toward the U.S. occupation. While there, they met with a hand picked group of politically connected Afghan women that included President Karzai’s sister-in-law, Wazhma Karzai.
According to CodePink, many of these members of parliament and businesswomen opposed sending an additional 40,000 U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan but also said they rely on U.S. troops for their own personal safety. On October 6th, the Christian Science Monitor published an interview with Benjamin and reported on her change of heart based on conversations with some of the women she met in Kabul. For example, CSM reported, “Shinkai Karokhail, an Afghan member of Parliament and woman activist, told them. ‘International troop presence here is a guarantee for my safety.’”
Benjamin claimed she was misrepresented in the Christian Science Monitor. Yet she made similar comments in an interview with antiwar.com blogger Scott Horton, “[W]e certainly did hear some people say that they felt if the U.S. pulled out right now there would be a collapse and the Taliban might take over, there might be a civil war. But we also heard a lot of people say they didn't want more troops to be sent in and they wanted the U.S. to have a responsible exit strategy that included the training of Afghan troops, included being part of promoting a real reconciliation process and included economic development; that the United States shouldn't be allowed to just walk away from the problem. So that's really our position.” This reasoning assumes, of course, that the U.S. is capable of behaving responsibly toward the Afghan people. It is not.
The Obama administration feigned disappointment at the rampant corruption of the Karzai regime, now that the UN Election Complaints Commission has reported that widespread stuffing of ballot boxes and coercion by warlords helped Karzai “win” reelection by a margin of 54 percent this past summer. As many as one in every three votes was fraudulent, and most of them went to Karzai. But the Obama administration hasn’t yet lost faith in Karzai. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly told Karzai over the weekend "that this is an important moment where he can show statesmanship and actually strengthen his leadership position," according to administration officials.
To add to the embarrassment, Karzai appears ready to reject the Commission’s findings. Despite a flurry of phone calls and visits, including one from Senator John Kerry and another from former U.S. State Department envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, Karzai remains defiant. He indicated that he will only accept a decision from Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), a body dominated by his political allies, which was also accused of involvement in the massive election fraud this past summer.
***
Through blackmail, bribery and brute military force, the U.S. has determined the political landscape of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
U.S. conquerors installed Karzai as Afghanistan’s transitional head of state in December 2001. But Karzai was never meant to build a genuine democracy in Afghanistan. Nor was he expected to champion the rights of women. On the contrary, he was chosen not for his ethical credentials but rather for his close ties to the band of warlords with which the U.S. partnered to quickly overthrow the Taliban in November 2001.
Renamed the “Northern Alliance” for the purpose of casting these warlords as freedom fighters, in reality they were veterans of the National Islamic United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, an unstable coalition that ruled Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, when the Taliban overthrew it.
Together, they constituted seven separate Mujahideen political parties, each representing the fiefdom of a corrupt warlord. Their president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, suspended the constitution and issued a series of religious edicts banishing women from broadcasting and government jobs, and requiring women to wear veils. More severe repression soon followed.
Karzai served as Deputy Foreign Minister in Rabbani’s government, while the feuding Mujahideen parties unleashed a rein of terror against Afghanistan’s already war-torn population. Women were routinely abducted, beaten and raped, or sold into prostitution. According to human rights expert Patricia Gossman, “Between 1992 and 1995, fighting among the factions of the alliance reduced a third of Kabul to rubble and killed more than 50,000 civilians. The top commanders ordered massacres of rival ethnic groups, and their troops engaged in mass rape.”
In June 2002, in what the U.S. media depicted as a “flowering of democracy,” a Loya Jirga, or tribal council, elected Karzai as Afghanistan’s interim president. But most of the decisions were made behind the scenes, where then-U.S. envoy Khalilzad -- a former Unocal oil executive -- worked hand in glove with Karzai and the Northern Alliance to manipulate the votes. During the Loya Jurga, Karzai announced his own election as president before the vote had actually taken place, to the dismay of many delegates.
In the run up to the 2002 Loya Jirga, eight delegates were murdered amid a general rise in political violence and intimidation by warlords guarding their own fiefdoms. Meanwhile, Karzai used a rumored plot to overthrow his government as an excuse to round up 700 of his political opponents in the weeks before the voting.
Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has long been flagged as a drug trafficker in Southern Afghanistan, but the allegations have never been investigated. He continues to head the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region. He also has played a role in passing information to international intelligence agencies. According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, writing in the Washington Post, while aware of information implicating Karzai in the drug trade, "U.S. and Canadian diplomats have not pressed the matter, in part because Ahmed Wali Karzai has given valuable intelligence to the U.S. military, and he also routinely provides assistance to Canadian forces, according to several officials familiar with the issue."
Under President Karzai’s watch, Afghanistan has returned to providing roughly 95 percent of the world’s heroin supplies while the U.S. military looks the other way. As Jeff Stein recently reported from the Huffington Post, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, explained bluntly why Karzai’s brother has never been charged: "We certainly need the president to be with us. That would be hard if we're hauling off his brother to a detention center."
***
The U.S. left has failed to effectively oppose the war in Afghanistan from its onset, when the population overwhelmingly supported the war on the pretext that “We were attacked.” That support has severely eroded, and polls show that a clear majority now wants to end the occupation. Yet many on the left have remained confused for the last eight years -- ardently opposing the war in Iraq while remaining silent about the equally immoral war in Afghanistan.
This confusion has apparently been compounded by the election of Barack Obama, who initially opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, however, he has since embraced the aims of U.S. imperialism with gusto. U.S. troops and, perhaps more importantly, U.S. military bases remain in Iraq with no deadline for complete withdrawal.
Obama authorized a surge of 21,000 additional U.S. troops soon after taking office and is now pondering whether to send at least 40,000 more. These are no longer George W. Bush’s wars. Obama has claimed them for himself. So far, the only consequence of the surge has been the resurgence of the Taliban resistance against U.S. occupation. Even his pledge to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay remains unfulfilled.
Yet Obama maintains a substantial following on the U.S. left, sowing yet more confusion among antiwar activists. For example, in response to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Juan Lopez wrote in the People's World on October 12th, “Now, don't get me wrong… Like other left and progressive folks, I advocate ending the Afghanistan military venture.” Yet he went on to praise the award: “Most of the nation and world embraced the choice as affirmation that, with President Obama at the helm, America has embarked on a new, far more constructive course.”
Likewise, CODEPINK’s Evans argued on womensmediacenter.com, “I left the states with a judgment about some of the women who were members of the Parliament: So many are sisters and wives of warlords or tribal leaders chosen merely to fill the required quota of women. But Member of Parliament Shinkai Karokhal, a radical feminist from Kabul, reminded me that just their existence, that they constitute 25 percent of the body, is inspiring to women throughout the country.”
Afghan women surely deserve better than parliamentary representation by the wives of warlords enforcing the lawless and repressive status quo. Those seeking alternative opinions among Afghan women can easily discover that there is no shortage of those with the courage to expose the rule of warlords and call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops.
Malalai Joya is a case in point. As a young woman, she denounced the participation of drug traffickers and warlords at the 2002 Loya Jirga. Soon after she was elected to parliament in 2005, she was suspended for her outspokenness. She now escapes violent retribution by wearing a burka as a disguise.
As she wrote in the Guardian on July 25th, “You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s. For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the ‘democracy’ backed by NATO troops.”
Likewise, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) has maintained its anti-occupation principles since the war began, risking their lives to organize an underground movement in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan.
In a recent post to the U.S. antiwar movement, RAWA stated, “The U.S. and allies occupied Afghanistan in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘women’s rights’ and ‘war on terror’, but after eight long years, everyone knows that the situation is as critical in Afghanistan as it was under the brutal regime of the Taliban. While they talk about democracy and women’s rights, on the other end they are supporting and nourishing the diehard enemies of these values and impose them on our people.”
Washington’s warmongers have been getting away with mass murder in Afghanistan for far too long. Obama is now at the helm of this disastrous imperial adventure. “Troops out now” is the only viable exit strategy, yet it can also easily fit onto a bumper sticker. Those who argue for prolonging the U.S. occupation until the U.S. transforms its mission into a benevolent one are likely to be kept waiting forever.
Sharon Smith is the author of Women and Socialism and Subterranean Fire: a History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States. She can be reached at: sharon@internationalsocialist.org
By Sharon Smith, from CounterPunch, October 20, 2009.
Eight years into the war on Afghanistan -- and with no end in sight -- seems a peculiar time for antiwar activists to claim that U.S. forces need to stay there even longer for the sake of the Afghan people.
Yet Yifat Susskind, Communications Director for the human rights organization MADRE, recently argued on CommonDreams.org, "’Bring the Troops Home’ is a bumper sticker, not a policy.”She continued, “For MADRE, U.S. obligations stem from the fact that Afghanistan's poverty, violence against women, and political corruption are, in part, results of U.S. policy over the past 30 years.”
CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans began arguing for a “responsible” withdrawal after their recent visit to Afghanistan, which focused on discovering Afghan women’s attitudes toward the U.S. occupation. While there, they met with a hand picked group of politically connected Afghan women that included President Karzai’s sister-in-law, Wazhma Karzai.
According to CodePink, many of these members of parliament and businesswomen opposed sending an additional 40,000 U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan but also said they rely on U.S. troops for their own personal safety. On October 6th, the Christian Science Monitor published an interview with Benjamin and reported on her change of heart based on conversations with some of the women she met in Kabul. For example, CSM reported, “Shinkai Karokhail, an Afghan member of Parliament and woman activist, told them. ‘International troop presence here is a guarantee for my safety.’”
Benjamin claimed she was misrepresented in the Christian Science Monitor. Yet she made similar comments in an interview with antiwar.com blogger Scott Horton, “[W]e certainly did hear some people say that they felt if the U.S. pulled out right now there would be a collapse and the Taliban might take over, there might be a civil war. But we also heard a lot of people say they didn't want more troops to be sent in and they wanted the U.S. to have a responsible exit strategy that included the training of Afghan troops, included being part of promoting a real reconciliation process and included economic development; that the United States shouldn't be allowed to just walk away from the problem. So that's really our position.” This reasoning assumes, of course, that the U.S. is capable of behaving responsibly toward the Afghan people. It is not.
The Obama administration feigned disappointment at the rampant corruption of the Karzai regime, now that the UN Election Complaints Commission has reported that widespread stuffing of ballot boxes and coercion by warlords helped Karzai “win” reelection by a margin of 54 percent this past summer. As many as one in every three votes was fraudulent, and most of them went to Karzai. But the Obama administration hasn’t yet lost faith in Karzai. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly told Karzai over the weekend "that this is an important moment where he can show statesmanship and actually strengthen his leadership position," according to administration officials.
To add to the embarrassment, Karzai appears ready to reject the Commission’s findings. Despite a flurry of phone calls and visits, including one from Senator John Kerry and another from former U.S. State Department envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, Karzai remains defiant. He indicated that he will only accept a decision from Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), a body dominated by his political allies, which was also accused of involvement in the massive election fraud this past summer.
***
Through blackmail, bribery and brute military force, the U.S. has determined the political landscape of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
U.S. conquerors installed Karzai as Afghanistan’s transitional head of state in December 2001. But Karzai was never meant to build a genuine democracy in Afghanistan. Nor was he expected to champion the rights of women. On the contrary, he was chosen not for his ethical credentials but rather for his close ties to the band of warlords with which the U.S. partnered to quickly overthrow the Taliban in November 2001.
Renamed the “Northern Alliance” for the purpose of casting these warlords as freedom fighters, in reality they were veterans of the National Islamic United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, an unstable coalition that ruled Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, when the Taliban overthrew it.
Together, they constituted seven separate Mujahideen political parties, each representing the fiefdom of a corrupt warlord. Their president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, suspended the constitution and issued a series of religious edicts banishing women from broadcasting and government jobs, and requiring women to wear veils. More severe repression soon followed.
Karzai served as Deputy Foreign Minister in Rabbani’s government, while the feuding Mujahideen parties unleashed a rein of terror against Afghanistan’s already war-torn population. Women were routinely abducted, beaten and raped, or sold into prostitution. According to human rights expert Patricia Gossman, “Between 1992 and 1995, fighting among the factions of the alliance reduced a third of Kabul to rubble and killed more than 50,000 civilians. The top commanders ordered massacres of rival ethnic groups, and their troops engaged in mass rape.”
In June 2002, in what the U.S. media depicted as a “flowering of democracy,” a Loya Jirga, or tribal council, elected Karzai as Afghanistan’s interim president. But most of the decisions were made behind the scenes, where then-U.S. envoy Khalilzad -- a former Unocal oil executive -- worked hand in glove with Karzai and the Northern Alliance to manipulate the votes. During the Loya Jurga, Karzai announced his own election as president before the vote had actually taken place, to the dismay of many delegates.
In the run up to the 2002 Loya Jirga, eight delegates were murdered amid a general rise in political violence and intimidation by warlords guarding their own fiefdoms. Meanwhile, Karzai used a rumored plot to overthrow his government as an excuse to round up 700 of his political opponents in the weeks before the voting.
Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has long been flagged as a drug trafficker in Southern Afghanistan, but the allegations have never been investigated. He continues to head the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region. He also has played a role in passing information to international intelligence agencies. According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, writing in the Washington Post, while aware of information implicating Karzai in the drug trade, "U.S. and Canadian diplomats have not pressed the matter, in part because Ahmed Wali Karzai has given valuable intelligence to the U.S. military, and he also routinely provides assistance to Canadian forces, according to several officials familiar with the issue."
Under President Karzai’s watch, Afghanistan has returned to providing roughly 95 percent of the world’s heroin supplies while the U.S. military looks the other way. As Jeff Stein recently reported from the Huffington Post, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, explained bluntly why Karzai’s brother has never been charged: "We certainly need the president to be with us. That would be hard if we're hauling off his brother to a detention center."
***
The U.S. left has failed to effectively oppose the war in Afghanistan from its onset, when the population overwhelmingly supported the war on the pretext that “We were attacked.” That support has severely eroded, and polls show that a clear majority now wants to end the occupation. Yet many on the left have remained confused for the last eight years -- ardently opposing the war in Iraq while remaining silent about the equally immoral war in Afghanistan.
This confusion has apparently been compounded by the election of Barack Obama, who initially opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, however, he has since embraced the aims of U.S. imperialism with gusto. U.S. troops and, perhaps more importantly, U.S. military bases remain in Iraq with no deadline for complete withdrawal.
Obama authorized a surge of 21,000 additional U.S. troops soon after taking office and is now pondering whether to send at least 40,000 more. These are no longer George W. Bush’s wars. Obama has claimed them for himself. So far, the only consequence of the surge has been the resurgence of the Taliban resistance against U.S. occupation. Even his pledge to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay remains unfulfilled.
Yet Obama maintains a substantial following on the U.S. left, sowing yet more confusion among antiwar activists. For example, in response to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Juan Lopez wrote in the People's World on October 12th, “Now, don't get me wrong… Like other left and progressive folks, I advocate ending the Afghanistan military venture.” Yet he went on to praise the award: “Most of the nation and world embraced the choice as affirmation that, with President Obama at the helm, America has embarked on a new, far more constructive course.”
Likewise, CODEPINK’s Evans argued on womensmediacenter.com, “I left the states with a judgment about some of the women who were members of the Parliament: So many are sisters and wives of warlords or tribal leaders chosen merely to fill the required quota of women. But Member of Parliament Shinkai Karokhal, a radical feminist from Kabul, reminded me that just their existence, that they constitute 25 percent of the body, is inspiring to women throughout the country.”
Afghan women surely deserve better than parliamentary representation by the wives of warlords enforcing the lawless and repressive status quo. Those seeking alternative opinions among Afghan women can easily discover that there is no shortage of those with the courage to expose the rule of warlords and call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops.
Malalai Joya is a case in point. As a young woman, she denounced the participation of drug traffickers and warlords at the 2002 Loya Jirga. Soon after she was elected to parliament in 2005, she was suspended for her outspokenness. She now escapes violent retribution by wearing a burka as a disguise.
As she wrote in the Guardian on July 25th, “You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s. For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the ‘democracy’ backed by NATO troops.”
Likewise, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) has maintained its anti-occupation principles since the war began, risking their lives to organize an underground movement in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan.
In a recent post to the U.S. antiwar movement, RAWA stated, “The U.S. and allies occupied Afghanistan in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘women’s rights’ and ‘war on terror’, but after eight long years, everyone knows that the situation is as critical in Afghanistan as it was under the brutal regime of the Taliban. While they talk about democracy and women’s rights, on the other end they are supporting and nourishing the diehard enemies of these values and impose them on our people.”
Washington’s warmongers have been getting away with mass murder in Afghanistan for far too long. Obama is now at the helm of this disastrous imperial adventure. “Troops out now” is the only viable exit strategy, yet it can also easily fit onto a bumper sticker. Those who argue for prolonging the U.S. occupation until the U.S. transforms its mission into a benevolent one are likely to be kept waiting forever.
Sharon Smith is the author of Women and Socialism and Subterranean Fire: a History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States. She can be reached at: sharon@internationalsocialist.org
Monday, October 12, 2009
Video: Canadian Rendition
Come and hear Abousfian Abdelrazik speak about his experiences. He will be speaking in Arts Building room A226, Laurentian University, at 7 pm on October 13, 2009.
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