Can the Major Speak? What Swirls Around Fort Hood
by Vijay Prashad, from CounterPunch, November 13-15, 2009.
Words have ensnarled the rampage at Fort Hood. Nothing more needs to be said. Thirteen dead, and thirty-one injured. What sets this massacre apart from the bombing at Oklahoma City (with 168 dead) and Columbine High (with 12 dead), is that the assailant here is a Muslim at a time when the United States is at war in two Muslim-majority countries (Iraq and Afghanistan). Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as well as Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold were all white. Their acts brought forth revulsion, but not condemnation of Christianity; that would have been ridiculous.
All these acts have indeed once more refreshed the necessary, but repetitive, debates over gun control and mental health care for war veterans. It is fitting to remember that the father of Columbine victim Daniel Mauser (age 15), Tom Mauser is a leading gun-control advocate. Traction has not come his way, as it has not for many of those parents and loved ones of those who were killed by assault rifles that do not belong where they find themselves (such as in places like Guns Galore, in Killeen, Texas, home to Fort Hood, and where Major Nidal Malik Hasan bought his FN Herstal tactical pistol, a standard issue gun used by NATO troops in Afghanistan).
Fort Hood, like other bases that send young people to ghastly wars, has seen a spate of suicides (ten in 2009, and seventy-six since 2003) and cases of violence against women (up by 75% since 2001). Post-traumatic stress disorder has become a routine problem. Multiple deployments don't help. Nor does recalcitrance to admit to mental illness as a real injury, as much as a physical one.
All this is on the table. Including the failure by the military to identify serious problems in the well-being of Major Hasan. He was obviously not suited to the military, and should have been discharged rather than be shunted from Walter Reed to Ft. Hood. Large bureaucracies are like this: rather than take action, the envelope is pushed down the counter. This envelope contained a letter bomb.
Major Hasan's own reasons for action will probably never be known. He has acted. The action has provoked analysis. Some of the ideas are useful, and hopefully productive, others are toxic. The deployment of the idea of "political correctness" and the shifting of the burden of explanation to Hasan's religion is a convenient way to avoid all else. Muslim Americans anticipated the backlash immediately (one might remember CBS's Connie Chung right after the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, "According to a government source, it has Middle East terrorism written all over it." It turned out to be an Iraq War veteran and his friend; that's the closest the attack came to the Middle East).
All the requisite Muslim American organizations hastily put together press releases to condemn Major Hasan's attack, even before the smell of cordite left the processing center where he went on his rampage. This was mete. After all, it was important to make the point against the kind of assumptions that would float out of the slime of FOX and its various friends. As it turned out, it didn't stop anything. Nor could President Obama's plea to keep religion out of it. Nor could General George Casey, who told CNN, that the backlash against Muslims and Muslim American soldiers "would be a shame as great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well." The Army has been particular about diversity (for more on this see George Baca's forthcoming book from Rutgers, Conjuring Crisis: Racism and the struggle for civil rights in a southern military town). This is why it joined the amicus brief against the end to affirmative action at the University of Michigan (Grutter v. Bollinger). The text is instructive: "[the case's] outcome could affect the diversity of our [N]ation's officer corps, and in turn, the military's ability to fulfill its missions." When asked about this support, Lt. General Becton told NPR, that diversity was a "combat multiplier. It brings about unit cohesiveness." The brief was signed by all the senior officers, each one battle-tested. Nothing pious here.
But here comes the easy bile. Published, no less, than by Forbes. The author, Tunku Vardarajan, is a professor at the well-named Stern School of Business, but also a luminary in the various financial pages (a regular columnist at Forbes). His essay on the Fort Hood massacre is called "Going Muslim" (November 9). You can close your eyes and imagine what he argues. It does not require much sophistication.
Vardarajan thinks that Muslims are an entity apart. They cannot integrate. Indeed, theirs is a "fake integration." Fine, most of the "hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our midst," he writes, might not want to kill others, but "there are a few (perhaps many more than a few) who are so radicalized that they would kill their fellow Americans." The bulk of Muslims are not so radicalized, but, to Varadarajan, they are still irreducible ("Muslims are the most difficult 'incomers' in the ongoing integration challenge"). They are Muslims first and last. Consider this: "Muslims may be more extreme because their religion is founded on bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels and an obligation for piety that is more extensive than in other schemes." Any Muslim, then, is a danger. It is nonsense, plagiarized from the paranoid notebooks kept by Daniel Pipes. I bet Vardarajan has not read the Quran, or listened to the Taqwacore bands or had an intense discussion with The Muslim Guy (Arslan Iftikhar).
Vardarajan used to write for the Wall Street Journal. In 2005, its editorial page described American Muslims as "role models both as Americans and as Muslims" ("Stars, Stripes, Crescent," August 24, 2005). The impetus for that statement was the imputed danger of Muslims in Europe (the so-called idea of Eurabia, the Fifth Column of Muslims). The WSJ decided that on balance Muslim Americans were ideal citizens, well-educated, professionals, with a voting pattern balanced between the two major parties, and, importantly for the paper, with a plurality in favor of a lower tax rate. Nothing of this kind comes out in Vardarajan's essay, which is far closer to the kind of reaction from Rush Limbaugh and Joe Lieberman (Calling Joe Biden, whose best line so far was used against Guiliani, that he can't say a sentence without a noun, a verb and 9/11).
If Muslims can be reduced to their religion, and if their religion is indeed extremist, then the pabulum of political correctness, Vardarajan believes, should go. "President Obama," he writes, "was as craven as a community college diversity vice-president when he said that no one should jump to conclusions." It "flies in the face of common sense" to be considerate to Muslims, who might "go Muslim" at any moment. Racial profiling is therefore good; it is not far to the internment camps.
Fort Hood Three
Not far from the gates of Fort Hood sits the Under the Hood Café. Run by Codepink member Cynthia Thomas whose husband has been on three tours of Iraq, the Café provides a safe place for veterans to come talk frankly about the things that the culture of the military forbids, such as how to deal with trauma and the loneliness of the post-battlefield condition. The Café recalls an earlier time, when Fort Hood was home to a coffeehouse, Oleo Strut (named for an aircraft shock absorber), which was the base of anti-war activity. In those days of the draft for the Vietnam War, the soldiers had a much clearer sense of disgruntlement and did not labor under the immense ideological feint of the war on terror. Everyone was familiar with the notion that Vietnam was not threat to the United States, and that the conflict in South-East Asia was absurd. That is not so clear these days.
In 1966, three soldiers refused to go to Vietnam. Pfc. James Johnson, Pvt. Dennis Mora and Pvt. David Samas joined together to form the Fort Hood Three. They were court-martialed and sentenced to two and a half years in Leavenworth Penitentiary. When they came of out jail, all three went to work in the Du Bois' clubs, affiliated to the Communist Party. In their Statement (June 30, 1966), the three pointed out that they refused to fight in the "immoral, illegal and unjust" war, which was being fought against an enemy that "had the moral and physical support of most of the peasantry who were fighting for their independence." They rejected the imputation of racism ("We were told that you couldn't tell [the Vietnamese rebels] apart - that they looked like any other skinny peasant").
The war was aimless. "No one used the word 'winning' anymore," they wrote, "because in Vietnam it has no meaning. Our officers just talk about five and ten more years of war with at least one half million of our boys thrown into the grinder. We have been told that many times we may face a Vietnamese woman or child and that we will have to kill them. We will never go there - to do that."
Substitute Afghanistan for Vietnam, and things are updated.
Major Hasan was obviously strained in many ways. He needed counseling. But he also needed to be part of a public discussion about the futility of these wars. There is not much of that on offer. He rather fell into discussion with a cleric in Virginia who was equally bilious, the mirror image of the war planners. There is too much blood in these conversations. There is insufficient courage to talk about peace and justice.
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Remembering: the Day After
Remembering: the Day After
by Harsha Walia, from The Vancouver Sun, November 13, 2009.
When we launched life/ on the river of grief / how vital were our arms, how ruby our blood / With a few strokes, it seemed, / we would cross all pain, / we would soon disembark. / That didn’t happen. / In the stillness of each wave we found invisible currents. / The boatmen, too, were unskilled, / their oars untested. / Investigate the matter as you will, / blame whomever, as much as you want, / but the river hasn’t changed, / the raft is still the same. / Now you suggest what’s to be done, / you tell us how to come ashore. - Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Translation by Agha Shahid Ali)
This is not about Remembrance Day, this is about the day after, and the day after. A journal of sorts, this is about all the remaining days of the year. An invocation to memorialize all those who have suffered and died due to human and corporate greed, military wars and foreign occupations, man-made poverty and environmental devastation. A Remembrance to the Horrors of the World, if you will, to jar us from our collective amnesia that seems to set in on certain days.
I am reminded of scholars such as Reinhart Koselleck and Gilbert Achcar who describe war commemorations as sites of political and national mobilization, conceptualizing past memories of warfare and the fallen as powerful political tools directed primarily towards building support for current and future military operations. Within this context, it is revealing that the institutions that most vehemently uphold the symbolism of Remembrance Day are the ones that are most eager to create a steady flow of the dead to remember. Mark Steel sardonically writes, “Maybe this is why the Government is so keen on the current war – it is convenient to have another one in a place full of poppies.”
Never Again seems to have been rebranded into an affirmation of death, rather than life. Ironically, a day where – according to Veterans Affairs itself – we are to remember “our responsibility to work for peace”, we are bombarded with messages of militaristic glory. In the words of US combat veteran and renowned historian Howard Zinn, “Instead of an occasion for denouncing war, it has become an occasion for bringing out the flags, the uniforms, the martial music, the patriotic speeches...Those who name holidays, playing on our genuine feeling for veterans, have turned a day that celebrated the end of a horror into a day to honor militarism.” Indeed, should Remembrance Day stories not emphasize those soldiers who oppose wars, whether as conscientious objectors or war resisters? While many would like to cast them as cowards, refusing to blindly and obediently act on unjust, illegal, or immoral military orders are acts of heroism.
But again this is not about Remembrance Day. Today, I am haunted by the faces of those who are being slaughtered and murdered by ‘our boys’ in Afghanistan. The day after Remembrance Day, after we underscore the seemingly unique sacrifice of veterans and selectively grieve for them, where is the indignation and sorrow for the daily dead of Afghanistan? Where is our recognition – let alone remembrance – of the soaring number of deaths in a country where, just in the past six months alone, over 2000 people have been killed. According to figures by the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, civilian death in Afghanistan have soared by 24% during the first half of 2009 compared with same period last year.
I am curious whether former Afghani MP Malalai Joya will be wearing a red poppy during her book launch in Vancouver, and whether she will feel obliged to express her sympathy for dead Canadian soldiers. Joya is a women’s rights and anti-war activist - dubbed the bravest woman in Afghanistan by the BBC - who has repeatedly offered her condolences to mothers in NATO countries who have lost children due to their government’s eight-year occupation of her land. How must it feel to always validate the grief of an occupying country for its losses, while those responsible find greater fervour - and find applause amongst many of us - in perpetuating policies of death, violence, and destruction?
I ponder the future, February 2010 to be exact, and whether Vancouverites will awaken to the reality of state-sanctioned repression by over 16,500 military, police, and security personnel in the largest security operation in Canadian history. Vancouver will be occupied by more Canadian Armed Force troops than Afghanistan has been; bringing $1 billion worth of closed circuit TV cameras, electronic fencing and monitoring, armoured vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and now LRAD sonic guns, to our streets. “Operation Podium”, with regular and reserve forces, JTF2 commandos, and NORAD fighter planes, will become the priority mission in 2010. How will we respond to these extraordinarily high levels of surveillance and, unless we are naïve, undoubtedly violence? We only have to look at recent episodes, such as Gustafsen Lake or Oka, where Indigenous people bore the force of the Canadian military and police – including surviving over 77,000 rounds of ammunition in the 1995 standoff in BC’s interior – for defense of their land and people.
Have we become so engrossed in our own narcissistic narrative of self-righteous freedom-lovers and democracy-promoters that we take offense to those who wear the white poppy (as if the values of peace and justice are any more politically biased than the glorification of war). To find out whether WWII was indeed a Good War that safeguarded us from fascism, ask a Japanese-Canadian who was declared an enemy alien, stripped of all their property, and forcibly interned.
Why do we find it improper when it is pointed out that we are in fact residing in a state and society that continues to marginalize dissent as unpatriotic, that illegally expropriates Indigenous lands and resources, that subjugates and stigmatizes those who are poor, that prioritizes bailing out and protecting the biggest thieves of public money, that excludes and expels thousands of immigrants and refugees, and that perpetuates its racist civilizing presumptions to advance wars and occupations?
Why is it inappropriate to suggest – on any day of the year - that freedom for the world’s majority is still an aspiration, though in reality nothing more than magnetic poetry and the shallow rhetoric of politicians?
This, then, is an invocation not just for Remembrance Day, but one to ritualize grief in response to all the violence in and around our daily lives. As Noam Chomsky writes, “silence is often more eloquent than loud clamor, so let us attend to what is unspoken”. In contrast to the tyranny of complicity, desensitization, and historical amnesia, with remembrance comes responsibility - so let us act accordingly.
by Harsha Walia, from The Vancouver Sun, November 13, 2009.
When we launched life/ on the river of grief / how vital were our arms, how ruby our blood / With a few strokes, it seemed, / we would cross all pain, / we would soon disembark. / That didn’t happen. / In the stillness of each wave we found invisible currents. / The boatmen, too, were unskilled, / their oars untested. / Investigate the matter as you will, / blame whomever, as much as you want, / but the river hasn’t changed, / the raft is still the same. / Now you suggest what’s to be done, / you tell us how to come ashore. - Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Translation by Agha Shahid Ali)
This is not about Remembrance Day, this is about the day after, and the day after. A journal of sorts, this is about all the remaining days of the year. An invocation to memorialize all those who have suffered and died due to human and corporate greed, military wars and foreign occupations, man-made poverty and environmental devastation. A Remembrance to the Horrors of the World, if you will, to jar us from our collective amnesia that seems to set in on certain days.
I am reminded of scholars such as Reinhart Koselleck and Gilbert Achcar who describe war commemorations as sites of political and national mobilization, conceptualizing past memories of warfare and the fallen as powerful political tools directed primarily towards building support for current and future military operations. Within this context, it is revealing that the institutions that most vehemently uphold the symbolism of Remembrance Day are the ones that are most eager to create a steady flow of the dead to remember. Mark Steel sardonically writes, “Maybe this is why the Government is so keen on the current war – it is convenient to have another one in a place full of poppies.”
Never Again seems to have been rebranded into an affirmation of death, rather than life. Ironically, a day where – according to Veterans Affairs itself – we are to remember “our responsibility to work for peace”, we are bombarded with messages of militaristic glory. In the words of US combat veteran and renowned historian Howard Zinn, “Instead of an occasion for denouncing war, it has become an occasion for bringing out the flags, the uniforms, the martial music, the patriotic speeches...Those who name holidays, playing on our genuine feeling for veterans, have turned a day that celebrated the end of a horror into a day to honor militarism.” Indeed, should Remembrance Day stories not emphasize those soldiers who oppose wars, whether as conscientious objectors or war resisters? While many would like to cast them as cowards, refusing to blindly and obediently act on unjust, illegal, or immoral military orders are acts of heroism.
But again this is not about Remembrance Day. Today, I am haunted by the faces of those who are being slaughtered and murdered by ‘our boys’ in Afghanistan. The day after Remembrance Day, after we underscore the seemingly unique sacrifice of veterans and selectively grieve for them, where is the indignation and sorrow for the daily dead of Afghanistan? Where is our recognition – let alone remembrance – of the soaring number of deaths in a country where, just in the past six months alone, over 2000 people have been killed. According to figures by the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, civilian death in Afghanistan have soared by 24% during the first half of 2009 compared with same period last year.
I am curious whether former Afghani MP Malalai Joya will be wearing a red poppy during her book launch in Vancouver, and whether she will feel obliged to express her sympathy for dead Canadian soldiers. Joya is a women’s rights and anti-war activist - dubbed the bravest woman in Afghanistan by the BBC - who has repeatedly offered her condolences to mothers in NATO countries who have lost children due to their government’s eight-year occupation of her land. How must it feel to always validate the grief of an occupying country for its losses, while those responsible find greater fervour - and find applause amongst many of us - in perpetuating policies of death, violence, and destruction?
I ponder the future, February 2010 to be exact, and whether Vancouverites will awaken to the reality of state-sanctioned repression by over 16,500 military, police, and security personnel in the largest security operation in Canadian history. Vancouver will be occupied by more Canadian Armed Force troops than Afghanistan has been; bringing $1 billion worth of closed circuit TV cameras, electronic fencing and monitoring, armoured vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and now LRAD sonic guns, to our streets. “Operation Podium”, with regular and reserve forces, JTF2 commandos, and NORAD fighter planes, will become the priority mission in 2010. How will we respond to these extraordinarily high levels of surveillance and, unless we are naïve, undoubtedly violence? We only have to look at recent episodes, such as Gustafsen Lake or Oka, where Indigenous people bore the force of the Canadian military and police – including surviving over 77,000 rounds of ammunition in the 1995 standoff in BC’s interior – for defense of their land and people.
Have we become so engrossed in our own narcissistic narrative of self-righteous freedom-lovers and democracy-promoters that we take offense to those who wear the white poppy (as if the values of peace and justice are any more politically biased than the glorification of war). To find out whether WWII was indeed a Good War that safeguarded us from fascism, ask a Japanese-Canadian who was declared an enemy alien, stripped of all their property, and forcibly interned.
Why do we find it improper when it is pointed out that we are in fact residing in a state and society that continues to marginalize dissent as unpatriotic, that illegally expropriates Indigenous lands and resources, that subjugates and stigmatizes those who are poor, that prioritizes bailing out and protecting the biggest thieves of public money, that excludes and expels thousands of immigrants and refugees, and that perpetuates its racist civilizing presumptions to advance wars and occupations?
Why is it inappropriate to suggest – on any day of the year - that freedom for the world’s majority is still an aspiration, though in reality nothing more than magnetic poetry and the shallow rhetoric of politicians?
This, then, is an invocation not just for Remembrance Day, but one to ritualize grief in response to all the violence in and around our daily lives. As Noam Chomsky writes, “silence is often more eloquent than loud clamor, so let us attend to what is unspoken”. In contrast to the tyranny of complicity, desensitization, and historical amnesia, with remembrance comes responsibility - so let us act accordingly.
Monday, November 9, 2009
If CSIS comes knocking...
If CSIS comes knocking...
A community advisory from the People's Commission Network based in Montreal, November 10, 2009.
There have recently been visits by members of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to various local social justice organizers and activists. This community advisory is in response to those visits.
Visits by CSIS to activists in Montreal are nothing new; they have taken place before around specific events or projects. CSIS has recently conducted over 60 visits to about 40 activists in the Vancouver-area, related to opposition to the 2010 Olympics. In general, CSIS visits can have different purposes: they are not only about information-gathering but can also be attempts to create or exploit divisions between activists, plant misinformation, intimidate, develop psychological profiles, and recruit informers.
If CSIS comes knocking, we strongly encourage total and complete non-cooperation. A CSIS visit to your home or workplace will be a surprise, but we encourage you to be ready to not cooperate with them in any way.
If you are in a precarious position -- due to your immigration status, pending criminal charges, probation, parole, or any other reason -- we strongly encourage you to NEVER EVER talk to CSIS alone. Instead, tell them to contact a trusted lawyer that you have chosen, and then refuse to say anything else. You can contact the People's Commission Network for references to lawyers who can act diligently against CSIS intimidation tactics.
If you are comfortable doing so, ask for the names, telephone numbers and cards of the CSIS agents who want to talk to you. Insist they provide their names, and don't say anything else. You are under no legal obligation, ever, to confirm your identity with CSIS.
Sometimes CSIS agents might begin speaking to you and only later identify themselves. In that case, if you are taken by surprise, we encourage you to refuse to continue speaking with CSIS. You can always default back to being silent. In dealing with security services, silence is the golden rule.
In all cases, you are encouraged to tell CSIS to leave your home or workplace or cease following you. Tell CSIS clearly to leave, in whatever fashion you feel is appropriate. You can insist they leave, to the point of closing doors in their face.
Remember, although CSIS can act in very ugly ways, it has no arrest or policing powers.
We encourage you to get in touch with the People's Commission Network to report any CSIS visits or related incidents. Your correspondence with the People's Commission Network will be considered confidential. Consider any unannounced CSIS visit to be harassment against you. If possible, we encourage you to write down your experience so that you have the facts clearly noted.
CSIS' job is to gather information for the state and to disrupt movements of social justice. Their broad mandate includes monitoring any activities they deem to threaten the current political and economic order. Their intimidation focuses on indigenous peoples, immigrants, racialized communities, radical political organizations, labour unions, as well as the allies of these groups. CSIS' actions, which show clear evidence of gross incompetence, racism, as well as complicity in torture, are just even more reason why they deserve no cooperation whatsoever by anyone involved in movements for social justice.
Total non-cooperation with CSIS and other security agencies by the entire social justice community - broadly and inclusively defined - is our best way of maintaining unity and solidarity, as well as keeping our focus on our important day-to-day organizing and activism.
To recap: Do not talk to CSIS or share any information with them, no matter how harmless you think it is. Do consider reporting the visit to the People's Commission Network.
Please share this community advisory within your networks, and with members of your organizations and groups, so we can encourage collective non-cooperation with CSIS.
In solidarity,
The People's Commission Network (Montreal) E-mail: abolissons@gmail.com Tel: 514-848-7583
Selected background information:
* Targeting of Anti-Olympics Movement: What To Do When Police & Spies Come Knocking
* Canada's spies: the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service
A community advisory from the People's Commission Network based in Montreal, November 10, 2009.
There have recently been visits by members of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to various local social justice organizers and activists. This community advisory is in response to those visits.
Visits by CSIS to activists in Montreal are nothing new; they have taken place before around specific events or projects. CSIS has recently conducted over 60 visits to about 40 activists in the Vancouver-area, related to opposition to the 2010 Olympics. In general, CSIS visits can have different purposes: they are not only about information-gathering but can also be attempts to create or exploit divisions between activists, plant misinformation, intimidate, develop psychological profiles, and recruit informers.
If CSIS comes knocking, we strongly encourage total and complete non-cooperation. A CSIS visit to your home or workplace will be a surprise, but we encourage you to be ready to not cooperate with them in any way.
If you are in a precarious position -- due to your immigration status, pending criminal charges, probation, parole, or any other reason -- we strongly encourage you to NEVER EVER talk to CSIS alone. Instead, tell them to contact a trusted lawyer that you have chosen, and then refuse to say anything else. You can contact the People's Commission Network for references to lawyers who can act diligently against CSIS intimidation tactics.
If you are comfortable doing so, ask for the names, telephone numbers and cards of the CSIS agents who want to talk to you. Insist they provide their names, and don't say anything else. You are under no legal obligation, ever, to confirm your identity with CSIS.
Sometimes CSIS agents might begin speaking to you and only later identify themselves. In that case, if you are taken by surprise, we encourage you to refuse to continue speaking with CSIS. You can always default back to being silent. In dealing with security services, silence is the golden rule.
In all cases, you are encouraged to tell CSIS to leave your home or workplace or cease following you. Tell CSIS clearly to leave, in whatever fashion you feel is appropriate. You can insist they leave, to the point of closing doors in their face.
Remember, although CSIS can act in very ugly ways, it has no arrest or policing powers.
We encourage you to get in touch with the People's Commission Network to report any CSIS visits or related incidents. Your correspondence with the People's Commission Network will be considered confidential. Consider any unannounced CSIS visit to be harassment against you. If possible, we encourage you to write down your experience so that you have the facts clearly noted.
CSIS' job is to gather information for the state and to disrupt movements of social justice. Their broad mandate includes monitoring any activities they deem to threaten the current political and economic order. Their intimidation focuses on indigenous peoples, immigrants, racialized communities, radical political organizations, labour unions, as well as the allies of these groups. CSIS' actions, which show clear evidence of gross incompetence, racism, as well as complicity in torture, are just even more reason why they deserve no cooperation whatsoever by anyone involved in movements for social justice.
Total non-cooperation with CSIS and other security agencies by the entire social justice community - broadly and inclusively defined - is our best way of maintaining unity and solidarity, as well as keeping our focus on our important day-to-day organizing and activism.
To recap: Do not talk to CSIS or share any information with them, no matter how harmless you think it is. Do consider reporting the visit to the People's Commission Network.
Please share this community advisory within your networks, and with members of your organizations and groups, so we can encourage collective non-cooperation with CSIS.
In solidarity,
The People's Commission Network (Montreal) E-mail: abolissons@gmail.com Tel: 514-848-7583
Selected background information:
* Targeting of Anti-Olympics Movement: What To Do When Police & Spies Come Knocking
* Canada's spies: the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
A Call for Clarity on the Afghanistan War
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.
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.
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.
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