We’ve been here before. The killing of at least 16 Afghan civilians - nine of them children - in Kandahar province on Saturday night evokes memories of another atrocity committed by US troops some 44 years ago.
On 16 March 1968, 150 US soldiers in a unit called Charlie Company, led by 24 year-old Lieutenant William Calley, marched into a hamlet called My Lai in Vietnam and massacred 500 unarmed civilians.
Charlie Company’s murder binge was witnessed by US helicopter crew circling above who tried to stop the killings and rescue survivors. Calley was eventually brought to justice and found guilty of murder. But his life sentence was reduced to three years and he was paroled in 1974. He was pardoned by President Nixon.
Therefore the US authorities’ promise of “a rapid and thorough investigation” into the Kandahar killings must be taken with a huge pinch of salt – let alone the notion that serious punishment will follow.
US officials claim that only one soldier was involved, but several survivors have given conflicting accounts. Residents heard aircraft and helicopters were overhead after midnight on Sunday morning. And 20-year-old Jan Agha, who survived the murder spree by pretending to be dead, said that more than one soldier entered his home.
In February US troops burned copies of the Koran and in January videos of Marines urinating on the bodies of Taliban were circulated. Similar incidents are well-known from Iraq. So is this really the case of a demented rogue? The truth is that holding civilians in contempt and losing all sense of humanity is what happens to the young men trained to be killing machines in countries whose culture, religion and traditions are totally alien to them.
The mother of one of the 404 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan said she only realised this when visiting the country after her son’s death.
The US-British-NATO operations are being conducted by governments who have increasingly lost legitimacy in the eyes of their electorates. Everyone knows they have no solution to the economic and financial crises except to impose intolerable burdens on ordinary people.
It’s not by chance that the six young British soldiers killed in last week’s attack were from unemployment black spots in Yorkshire.
The claims in parliament by David Cameron and Ed Miliband that the British are in Afghanistan to keep the streets of London safe are risible. Al Qaeda is no longer a force in Afghanistan and the Taliban have no intention of coming to Britain any time soon. British troops are no more than cannon fodder for other interests which include protecting the oil pipelines that criss-cross the region.
Journalist and author Simon Jenkins is on the button when he denounces military and political leaders as having lost all contact with reality. Jenkins is hardly a revolutionary, but could be accused of giving solace to the enemy when he writes: “The war the Taliban fighters are waging with vigour and success is to regain the integrity of Afghanistan, no more or less”.
Eventually, seven years after the My Lai massacre, the United States had to pull out of Vietnam, having spent around $770 billion and killed and maimed countless Vietnamese as well as losing nearly 60,000 US troops. The decade-long conflict left a trail of long-term devastation in its wake.
It’s the same in Afghanistan. Service widow Wendy Rayner has noted that after the war in Afghanistan is over, "the poor people who are left will go back to the same crappy lifestyle that they had before our lot went in".
With the US and Britain now turning their attentions towards Iran, the challenge of ending Nato-led wars is an urgent one. That means facing up to the historical fact that war, profits and capitalism are tied in to each other. Ending atrocities like those visited on the people of Afghanistan at the weekend surely means terminating a social system for which war is an extension of its rotten politics.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Al Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Qaeda. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Spooks muscle in
The result of the toner cartridge bomb plot, as with all such individual acts of terrorism, will be to further strengthen, rather than weaken, the anti-democratic arm of the state to use against its own citizens.
Whatever the true nature of the plot, said to originate from an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen, its exposure will be useful for MI5 chief, Jonathan Evans. Evans wants anti-terror legislation introduced by New Labour – 28-day detention without charge and “control orders” in particular - to remain on the statute books.
Before last May’s election, both Conservatives and LibDems attacked New Labour for this open breach of civil liberties. Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg was particularly outspoken, condemning the “control order regime” and calling for its abolition. Now that Cameron is in office, the spooks have told him they need these laws and apparently he says that if Clegg objects, the coalition is “heading for a fucking car crash".
Cameron yesterday chaired an emergency meeting of COBRA, the committee that takes over in the face of major terrorist or health threats. In parliament he spoke of the need to “cut out the terrorist cancer that lurks in the Arabian Peninsula”.
Evans, along with his fellow spooks in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism based in the Home Office, are lobbying the government hard to keep the laws on the books so that they can do what they want with terror suspects.
The intelligence agencies are already virtually the only area of government spending not facing cuts – in fact MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have been awarded an extra £65m on top of their existing £2.4 billion budget to run their 5,700-or so agents, much to the chagrin of Defence chiefs. Counter-terrorism and spying on the population is a greater priority than the armed services, apparently.
The reality is that however much they spend, countries across Europe, and the US, are still vulnerable to terror attacks. The toner cartridge bomb exercise demonstrates that it is relatively simple to construct such devices. As long as there are individuals prepared to risk their lives – and terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda to fund and organise global networks – this cat and mouse war will continue.
Hyping their ability to prevent further attacks through big-power co-operation and more cash for spooks, is just whistling in the dark. Innocent civilians in cities like New York, London, Madrid, Mumbai and Nairobi will be the ones to suffer. And the threat is not only in the west – yesterday 52 worshippers lost their lives in yet another Baghdad bombing.
Governments who continue to fight disastrous and hopeless wars like that in Afghanistan, supposedly to root out terrorism, will never succeed in protecting their citizens from terrorist attacks. Quite the opposite.
But will they listen to the advice of former Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev who said last week that victory in Afghanistan was impossible and that the same militants terrorising Afghanistan and Pakistan today were trained by the US? Of course not.
Fighting the so called “war on terror” and protecting populations from terror attacks – real or imaginary, actual or contrived - is one of few important roles that today’s political leaders can lay claim to – as they set about deconstructing the welfare state.
And the spooks lobby will continue to enjoy government support as long as that is the case, not only for the so-called “war on terror” but also to rapidly resurrect the role they played so enthusiastically in the 1980s, of targeting trade unionists and others fighting the actions of the government. For example trade unionists like the firefighters. many of whose personal details including home addresses, were this week mysteriously leaked to the Sunday Mail.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Whatever the true nature of the plot, said to originate from an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen, its exposure will be useful for MI5 chief, Jonathan Evans. Evans wants anti-terror legislation introduced by New Labour – 28-day detention without charge and “control orders” in particular - to remain on the statute books.
Before last May’s election, both Conservatives and LibDems attacked New Labour for this open breach of civil liberties. Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg was particularly outspoken, condemning the “control order regime” and calling for its abolition. Now that Cameron is in office, the spooks have told him they need these laws and apparently he says that if Clegg objects, the coalition is “heading for a fucking car crash".
Cameron yesterday chaired an emergency meeting of COBRA, the committee that takes over in the face of major terrorist or health threats. In parliament he spoke of the need to “cut out the terrorist cancer that lurks in the Arabian Peninsula”.
Evans, along with his fellow spooks in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism based in the Home Office, are lobbying the government hard to keep the laws on the books so that they can do what they want with terror suspects.
The intelligence agencies are already virtually the only area of government spending not facing cuts – in fact MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have been awarded an extra £65m on top of their existing £2.4 billion budget to run their 5,700-or so agents, much to the chagrin of Defence chiefs. Counter-terrorism and spying on the population is a greater priority than the armed services, apparently.
The reality is that however much they spend, countries across Europe, and the US, are still vulnerable to terror attacks. The toner cartridge bomb exercise demonstrates that it is relatively simple to construct such devices. As long as there are individuals prepared to risk their lives – and terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda to fund and organise global networks – this cat and mouse war will continue.
Hyping their ability to prevent further attacks through big-power co-operation and more cash for spooks, is just whistling in the dark. Innocent civilians in cities like New York, London, Madrid, Mumbai and Nairobi will be the ones to suffer. And the threat is not only in the west – yesterday 52 worshippers lost their lives in yet another Baghdad bombing.
Governments who continue to fight disastrous and hopeless wars like that in Afghanistan, supposedly to root out terrorism, will never succeed in protecting their citizens from terrorist attacks. Quite the opposite.
But will they listen to the advice of former Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev who said last week that victory in Afghanistan was impossible and that the same militants terrorising Afghanistan and Pakistan today were trained by the US? Of course not.
Fighting the so called “war on terror” and protecting populations from terror attacks – real or imaginary, actual or contrived - is one of few important roles that today’s political leaders can lay claim to – as they set about deconstructing the welfare state.
And the spooks lobby will continue to enjoy government support as long as that is the case, not only for the so-called “war on terror” but also to rapidly resurrect the role they played so enthusiastically in the 1980s, of targeting trade unionists and others fighting the actions of the government. For example trade unionists like the firefighters. many of whose personal details including home addresses, were this week mysteriously leaked to the Sunday Mail.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Monday, January 04, 2010
Ending the 'war on terror'
So now air passengers will be subjected to the equivalent of a strip search as the futile “war on terror” enters its second decade. The next step, surely, is to get travellers to leave all their clothes in a bag and fly in a bathrobe. This is how absurd the world has become, with no solution in sight.
Gordon Brown’s plan to call an international conference on Yemen – where the Christmas Day bomb-in-the-pants former Nigerian student received his training – and fund a “counter-terrorism unit” in the country won’t make blind bit of difference. Yemen is facing an insurrection in the north and a secessionist movement in the south and the government is widely seen as a stooge of major Western powers.
It is not as if Britain is unaware of what happens in Yemen. The port of Aden was seized by Britain in 1839 and a colony established in the same year. Considered strategically important as an outpost on the Arabian peninsula, Britain brutally resisted independence demands and South Yemen only won its freedom in 1967, uniting with the north in 1990.
Terrorism, whatever its shape or form, is an extreme reaction to injustices, perceived or real. Islamic-inspired individual terrorism is no different in this respect. And, because it plays into the hands of the oppressor by targeting ordinary people, terrorism is profoundly reactionary. The Al Qaeda brand is in its own league, spurning political “solutions” in favour of annihilation of the enemies of its view of Islam, including other Muslims.
Yet they continue to recruit bright students like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because the grievances felt by Muslims around the world are deep. Moreover, the injustices are ignored by the major powers whose views are only modernised versions of their imperialist predecessors.
The greatest wrong is undoubtedly visited upon the Palestinians. Here double standards know no bounds. The Gazans hold an election and elect Hamas, so it is boycotted because it refuses to accept the state of Israel. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the client president is allowed to steal the election because he does what the Americans want.
Israel’s government is contemptuous of the Obama administration’s puny attempts to broker a deal with the Palestinians. Settlement building continues unchecked because the White House will always yield to the Israel lobby and do nothing. The United Nations may condemn war crimes in Gaza, but the US will vote against the report. Gaza will remain blockaded and half starved and the world’s governments turn a blind eye.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan remains occupied by American and British troops. And to add insult to injury, Iran is about to face US-led sanctions for allegedly attempting to build a nuclear bomb while Israel, which has dozens of nuclear weapons, once again escapes scot free.
The governments of the United States, Britain and other major powers are incapable of addressing the causes of modern terrorism and resort to ever more draconian “security” measures which, naturally, work only for a short period and are, therefore, no solution in any meaningful sense.
Yet there is another dimension to the growth of Islamic-inspired terrorism. A few generations ago, many young Muslims would have been drawn into national revolutionary struggles, where political programmes and solutions took precedence over religious outlook. Most if not all of these national movements degenerated over time for a variety of reasons. For example, in place of the revolutionary Nasser in Egypt you have the corrupt and repressive Mubarak, whose government helps the Israelis in their blockade of Gaza.
Radical Islam has in some respects stepped into the vacuum left by the failure of secular nationalism, which in turn was heavily influenced by reactionary Stalinism both locally and internationally. The development of fresh internationalist revolutionary thinking and practice which takes us beyond the discredited regimes of Cairo and London is key to finding a way forward from humanity’s present impasse.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
Gordon Brown’s plan to call an international conference on Yemen – where the Christmas Day bomb-in-the-pants former Nigerian student received his training – and fund a “counter-terrorism unit” in the country won’t make blind bit of difference. Yemen is facing an insurrection in the north and a secessionist movement in the south and the government is widely seen as a stooge of major Western powers.
It is not as if Britain is unaware of what happens in Yemen. The port of Aden was seized by Britain in 1839 and a colony established in the same year. Considered strategically important as an outpost on the Arabian peninsula, Britain brutally resisted independence demands and South Yemen only won its freedom in 1967, uniting with the north in 1990.
Terrorism, whatever its shape or form, is an extreme reaction to injustices, perceived or real. Islamic-inspired individual terrorism is no different in this respect. And, because it plays into the hands of the oppressor by targeting ordinary people, terrorism is profoundly reactionary. The Al Qaeda brand is in its own league, spurning political “solutions” in favour of annihilation of the enemies of its view of Islam, including other Muslims.
Yet they continue to recruit bright students like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because the grievances felt by Muslims around the world are deep. Moreover, the injustices are ignored by the major powers whose views are only modernised versions of their imperialist predecessors.
The greatest wrong is undoubtedly visited upon the Palestinians. Here double standards know no bounds. The Gazans hold an election and elect Hamas, so it is boycotted because it refuses to accept the state of Israel. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the client president is allowed to steal the election because he does what the Americans want.
Israel’s government is contemptuous of the Obama administration’s puny attempts to broker a deal with the Palestinians. Settlement building continues unchecked because the White House will always yield to the Israel lobby and do nothing. The United Nations may condemn war crimes in Gaza, but the US will vote against the report. Gaza will remain blockaded and half starved and the world’s governments turn a blind eye.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan remains occupied by American and British troops. And to add insult to injury, Iran is about to face US-led sanctions for allegedly attempting to build a nuclear bomb while Israel, which has dozens of nuclear weapons, once again escapes scot free.
The governments of the United States, Britain and other major powers are incapable of addressing the causes of modern terrorism and resort to ever more draconian “security” measures which, naturally, work only for a short period and are, therefore, no solution in any meaningful sense.
Yet there is another dimension to the growth of Islamic-inspired terrorism. A few generations ago, many young Muslims would have been drawn into national revolutionary struggles, where political programmes and solutions took precedence over religious outlook. Most if not all of these national movements degenerated over time for a variety of reasons. For example, in place of the revolutionary Nasser in Egypt you have the corrupt and repressive Mubarak, whose government helps the Israelis in their blockade of Gaza.
Radical Islam has in some respects stepped into the vacuum left by the failure of secular nationalism, which in turn was heavily influenced by reactionary Stalinism both locally and internationally. The development of fresh internationalist revolutionary thinking and practice which takes us beyond the discredited regimes of Cairo and London is key to finding a way forward from humanity’s present impasse.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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