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 Taliban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Pakistan's misery made worse by political failure
The Pakistan floods underline the impossibility of dealing separately with the three interconnected and interdependent ecological, financial and political crises now affecting every country.
Climate change is obviously implicated in the tremendous levels of rainfall, but the impact of the floods has been exacerbated by economic and political failure and corruption at local and national level.
A study conducted by the Pakistan Forest Institute reported on Al Jazeera shows a 0.85°C increase in temperatures in Peshawar between 1985 and 2009 - an increase of 0.034°C each year.
The seasons have changed, with spring starting 15.6 days earlier and becoming 17.8 days shorter. The extreme summer season, with a mean maximum temperature of 35°C, has grown longer, running for five months, from May to September.
There was a 30 per cent decrease in rainfall, with a shift towards a dry tropical climate where for eight months of the year less than 25mm of rain fell. This year’s unprecedented monsoon rains are a further indicator of climate change, according to Bashir Khan, the director-general of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency.
The people in the Swat Valley have been most cruelly hit. Last year the Pakistan army, urged on by the Obama administration, launched a punitive assault on the Taliban, who were getting above themselves in the area, and hundreds of thousands of civilians were forced to flee.
They returned in recent months, only to have the floods and timber wreck more than 50 villages completely. Many people have died, and will die as they are cut off from aid, medicine and clean water. The government has failed to show as much vigour mobilising the army to get aid to the area now.
The Taliban were working with, or indeed WERE the “timber mafia” in the Malakand region where they were allowed to stay in control from 2007 to 2009. During that time more than 70 per cent of forests were cut down, contribuing the present disaster.
But everywhere, local politicians, police and military are either powerless to stop the loggers and big landowners, or are in their pay – or both. Bribery, corruption, and complicity with terror go hand-in-hand to undermine any environmental protection.
The loss of forests transforms even a normal monsoon from a benefit to a curse. Forests absorbs water, and help refill aquifers. Without trees, flash floods run off into rivers, with no benefit for next year’s crops and without replenishing wells and springs. Fertile top soil is washed away.
Controlling illegal logging and promoting reforestation are G8 Millennium Goal priorities, yet the regulatory regime fails to prevent illegally logged timber being laundered into the official world market. A report published by Chatham House in 2002 warned that regulation of the trade was problematic as it might be subject to challenge at the World Trade Organisation.
The promise of Pakistan independence has been realised only for the rich. In a country which invests vast resources in nuclear weapons to sustain a nationalist, sectarian dispute with India, almost half the population are getting by on just one meal a day according to the United Nations.
Pakistan’s failed state system, exempified by the huge wealth amassed by the president Asif Ali Zardari, with his banks accounts and properties in a number of countries, cannot deliver rights, food and ecological protection. The same state and security services works hand in glove with the reactionary madrasas and the Taliban, when it suits both parties. It cannot be reformed to serve ordinary people’s interests.
The way forward must be to develop a new kind of revolutionary organisation to represent the interests of the masses, replacing those like the Pakistan People’s Party who merely manipulate them to gain power. A new organisation will have to think globally, becoming part of an international movement, and act locally and to put ordinary people in control of their own lives, their local economies and ecology.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Climate change is obviously implicated in the tremendous levels of rainfall, but the impact of the floods has been exacerbated by economic and political failure and corruption at local and national level.
A study conducted by the Pakistan Forest Institute reported on Al Jazeera shows a 0.85°C increase in temperatures in Peshawar between 1985 and 2009 - an increase of 0.034°C each year.
The seasons have changed, with spring starting 15.6 days earlier and becoming 17.8 days shorter. The extreme summer season, with a mean maximum temperature of 35°C, has grown longer, running for five months, from May to September.
There was a 30 per cent decrease in rainfall, with a shift towards a dry tropical climate where for eight months of the year less than 25mm of rain fell. This year’s unprecedented monsoon rains are a further indicator of climate change, according to Bashir Khan, the director-general of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency.
The people in the Swat Valley have been most cruelly hit. Last year the Pakistan army, urged on by the Obama administration, launched a punitive assault on the Taliban, who were getting above themselves in the area, and hundreds of thousands of civilians were forced to flee.
They returned in recent months, only to have the floods and timber wreck more than 50 villages completely. Many people have died, and will die as they are cut off from aid, medicine and clean water. The government has failed to show as much vigour mobilising the army to get aid to the area now.
The Taliban were working with, or indeed WERE the “timber mafia” in the Malakand region where they were allowed to stay in control from 2007 to 2009. During that time more than 70 per cent of forests were cut down, contribuing the present disaster.
But everywhere, local politicians, police and military are either powerless to stop the loggers and big landowners, or are in their pay – or both. Bribery, corruption, and complicity with terror go hand-in-hand to undermine any environmental protection.
The loss of forests transforms even a normal monsoon from a benefit to a curse. Forests absorbs water, and help refill aquifers. Without trees, flash floods run off into rivers, with no benefit for next year’s crops and without replenishing wells and springs. Fertile top soil is washed away.
Controlling illegal logging and promoting reforestation are G8 Millennium Goal priorities, yet the regulatory regime fails to prevent illegally logged timber being laundered into the official world market. A report published by Chatham House in 2002 warned that regulation of the trade was problematic as it might be subject to challenge at the World Trade Organisation.
The promise of Pakistan independence has been realised only for the rich. In a country which invests vast resources in nuclear weapons to sustain a nationalist, sectarian dispute with India, almost half the population are getting by on just one meal a day according to the United Nations.
Pakistan’s failed state system, exempified by the huge wealth amassed by the president Asif Ali Zardari, with his banks accounts and properties in a number of countries, cannot deliver rights, food and ecological protection. The same state and security services works hand in glove with the reactionary madrasas and the Taliban, when it suits both parties. It cannot be reformed to serve ordinary people’s interests.
The way forward must be to develop a new kind of revolutionary organisation to represent the interests of the masses, replacing those like the Pakistan People’s Party who merely manipulate them to gain power. A new organisation will have to think globally, becoming part of an international movement, and act locally and to put ordinary people in control of their own lives, their local economies and ecology.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Monday, August 16, 2010
Petraeus deepens Obama's problems
Only a month after taking charge of US troops in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, commander of US and NATO forces, has openly challenged President Obama. Coming amidst increasing political turmoil, it is a dangerous moment for his presidency.
In an NBC television interview, Petraeus said that Obama’s 2011 target date for withdrawal was dependent on conditions permitting. The general’s open defiance comes as the US occupation is suffering its the highest level of casualties since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
But it is not only the Afghan people and the US troops killed on the battlefield or on the roads of Afghanistan who are bearing the brunt of the war. When combat troops return home, increasing numbers cannot cope with the psychological after-effects of seeing the carnage inflicted not only by the Taliban but by their own side.
In descriptions of mental trauma reminiscent of the long-term effects on US veterans from the Vietnam war, Time reporter Mark Thompson says that the US army faces a “third front” – trying to rescue its own soldiers from insanity. Soldiers are seeking mental health support more than 100,000 times a month.
One in every 10 soldiers who has completed a single combat deployment has a mental ailment, Thompson has found. The rate rises each time a soldier is redeployed. “More than 500,000 troops have returned home to the US in the last decade with a mental illness,” Thompson estimates.
The result is that suicide rates in the army have been rising. Despite a $7 million expenditure on hi-tech facilities like Fort Campbell, near Nashville, Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, suicides there have continued to rise.
Not only do they suffer mental breakdowns, but soldiers - and even more significantly – their carers, have turned their weapons on themselves and their superiors. Last November, after a killing spree at the Fort Hood military facility in Texas, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan was accused of killing 13 people. Hasan, who received medals for service in the Gulf war, had specialist training in the treating traumatic stress at the US armed forces University of the Health Sciences.
But the physical and psychological fall-out amongst his troops, will not deter Petraeus who shows typical disdain for the poor bloody infantry who do the dirty work, and pay the price, while the generals screw up on a consistent basis. Speaking in his Kabul headquarters, he said that he would resist any large-scale or rapid withdrawal of American forces.
Petraeus let the cat out of the bag about the real reason for the continuing US-UK occupation of Afghanistan. He said the country had the potential to become a "new Silk Road", a crossroads for trade, especially in minerals: "Afghanistan is blessed with the presence of what are... trillions of dollars' worth of minerals”.
Behind Petraeus stands the military-industrial complex – the US and global corporations anxious to exploit the lithium and oil resources. The oil corporations’ appetites will have been whetted by an announcement by the Karzai regime that a survey has found a rich new oil field in the north of the country.
The military top brass are deepening the crisis for Obama, whose approval ratings continue to slide. In advance of the November mid-term elections, around half the country disapproves strongly of the government.
Obama appointed Petraeus after sacking Commander General Stanley McChrystal in June. This was after McChrystal had openly attacked the administration in an interview published by Rolling Stone magazine. To have one general defy your government may be regarded as a misfortune; but to have two in quick succession ready to counter the commander-in-chief in public looks like carelessness.
To have all this happen while the US economy continues to tank and a series of rabid right-wingers in and around the notorious Tea Party challenge the authority of the state itself, might be considered to be a dangerous cocktail.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
In an NBC television interview, Petraeus said that Obama’s 2011 target date for withdrawal was dependent on conditions permitting. The general’s open defiance comes as the US occupation is suffering its the highest level of casualties since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
But it is not only the Afghan people and the US troops killed on the battlefield or on the roads of Afghanistan who are bearing the brunt of the war. When combat troops return home, increasing numbers cannot cope with the psychological after-effects of seeing the carnage inflicted not only by the Taliban but by their own side.
In descriptions of mental trauma reminiscent of the long-term effects on US veterans from the Vietnam war, Time reporter Mark Thompson says that the US army faces a “third front” – trying to rescue its own soldiers from insanity. Soldiers are seeking mental health support more than 100,000 times a month.
One in every 10 soldiers who has completed a single combat deployment has a mental ailment, Thompson has found. The rate rises each time a soldier is redeployed. “More than 500,000 troops have returned home to the US in the last decade with a mental illness,” Thompson estimates.
The result is that suicide rates in the army have been rising. Despite a $7 million expenditure on hi-tech facilities like Fort Campbell, near Nashville, Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, suicides there have continued to rise.
Not only do they suffer mental breakdowns, but soldiers - and even more significantly – their carers, have turned their weapons on themselves and their superiors. Last November, after a killing spree at the Fort Hood military facility in Texas, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan was accused of killing 13 people. Hasan, who received medals for service in the Gulf war, had specialist training in the treating traumatic stress at the US armed forces University of the Health Sciences.
But the physical and psychological fall-out amongst his troops, will not deter Petraeus who shows typical disdain for the poor bloody infantry who do the dirty work, and pay the price, while the generals screw up on a consistent basis. Speaking in his Kabul headquarters, he said that he would resist any large-scale or rapid withdrawal of American forces.
Petraeus let the cat out of the bag about the real reason for the continuing US-UK occupation of Afghanistan. He said the country had the potential to become a "new Silk Road", a crossroads for trade, especially in minerals: "Afghanistan is blessed with the presence of what are... trillions of dollars' worth of minerals”.
Behind Petraeus stands the military-industrial complex – the US and global corporations anxious to exploit the lithium and oil resources. The oil corporations’ appetites will have been whetted by an announcement by the Karzai regime that a survey has found a rich new oil field in the north of the country.
The military top brass are deepening the crisis for Obama, whose approval ratings continue to slide. In advance of the November mid-term elections, around half the country disapproves strongly of the government.
Obama appointed Petraeus after sacking Commander General Stanley McChrystal in June. This was after McChrystal had openly attacked the administration in an interview published by Rolling Stone magazine. To have one general defy your government may be regarded as a misfortune; but to have two in quick succession ready to counter the commander-in-chief in public looks like carelessness.
To have all this happen while the US economy continues to tank and a series of rabid right-wingers in and around the notorious Tea Party challenge the authority of the state itself, might be considered to be a dangerous cocktail.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Extrajudicial murder by CIA drones
The slap on the wrist delivered to Israel yesterday by foreign secretary David Miliband over the use of fake British passport in the murder of a leading member of Hamas in Dubai should not obscure the fact that “targeted assassination” is a policy that Washington carries out in Afghanistan and Pakistan with London’s blessing.
Miliband had nothing to say about the actual killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad, not even in a roundabout way that covered all eventualities. That’s because in private, New Labour and the US government support so-called “targeted assassinations” themselves – a policy that clearly violates international laws and could be considered a war crime.
Most days, for example, pilotless drones unleash a deadly attack on targets in Pakistan which, it should be remembered, is a sovereign state that has not given permission for its airspace to be violated by the United States in this way. This morning the BBC reported that missiles fired by a suspected US drone killed at least five people in north-west Pakistan's tribal region.
The missiles hit an area near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district, bordering Afghanistan, officials said. The identity of those killed is not yet known. Hundreds of people, including a number of militants, have been killed in scores of drone strikes since August 2008.
For every Taliban fighter or Al-Qaeda leader killed, many more civilians perish as the missiles come out of a clear blue sky to hit their village. Earlier this year, Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn reported:
The drone attacks were sanctioned by George W. Bush in 2008 and have actually been stepped up by his successor. More attacks have occurred in the first year of the Obama presidency than all years of his predecessor.
The programme is operated by the CIA spy agency and the targets selected by agents in front of computer screens at the agency’s HQ in Langley, Virginia, half a world away. No doubt it’s like a video game for the operatives while the CIA officially denies the very existence of drone killings because it’s a “covert” operation. New York University law professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions since 2004, says his requests for US legal justification for what are effectively extrajudicial executions are always denied.
In August last year, Khaista Khan, saw 12 charred bodies after US missiles struck a small hamlet in North Waziristan. He said: “Americans are cowards. They are afraid of fighting man-to-man in a battlefield and that is why they hit from the sky and run away. Many people who did not support the Taliban previously support them now because the Americans are killing innocent people.”
Apparently, 44 countries have unmanned aircraft for surveillance. There are only two countries that use the drones for killing people. One is the United States. The other is, naturally enough, Israel.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
Miliband had nothing to say about the actual killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad, not even in a roundabout way that covered all eventualities. That’s because in private, New Labour and the US government support so-called “targeted assassinations” themselves – a policy that clearly violates international laws and could be considered a war crime.
Most days, for example, pilotless drones unleash a deadly attack on targets in Pakistan which, it should be remembered, is a sovereign state that has not given permission for its airspace to be violated by the United States in this way. This morning the BBC reported that missiles fired by a suspected US drone killed at least five people in north-west Pakistan's tribal region.
The missiles hit an area near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district, bordering Afghanistan, officials said. The identity of those killed is not yet known. Hundreds of people, including a number of militants, have been killed in scores of drone strikes since August 2008.
For every Taliban fighter or Al-Qaeda leader killed, many more civilians perish as the missiles come out of a clear blue sky to hit their village. Earlier this year, Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn reported:
“Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians. According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009. For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.”
The drone attacks were sanctioned by George W. Bush in 2008 and have actually been stepped up by his successor. More attacks have occurred in the first year of the Obama presidency than all years of his predecessor.
The programme is operated by the CIA spy agency and the targets selected by agents in front of computer screens at the agency’s HQ in Langley, Virginia, half a world away. No doubt it’s like a video game for the operatives while the CIA officially denies the very existence of drone killings because it’s a “covert” operation. New York University law professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions since 2004, says his requests for US legal justification for what are effectively extrajudicial executions are always denied.
In August last year, Khaista Khan, saw 12 charred bodies after US missiles struck a small hamlet in North Waziristan. He said: “Americans are cowards. They are afraid of fighting man-to-man in a battlefield and that is why they hit from the sky and run away. Many people who did not support the Taliban previously support them now because the Americans are killing innocent people.”
Apparently, 44 countries have unmanned aircraft for surveillance. There are only two countries that use the drones for killing people. One is the United States. The other is, naturally enough, Israel.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Afghanistan: Brown in Bush's pocket
The love-in between George W. Bush and Gordon Brown in Downing Street yesterday could not disguise the fact that events in Afghanistan are spiralling out of control. Brown’s decision to send more British soldiers to Afghanistan (while yielding to Bush over maintaining troop levels in Iraq) is a real sign that the occupying forces are losing it.
President Hamid Karzai has threatened to take the fight against the Taliban beyond his country’s borders into Pakistan. Karzai’s sable-rattling outburst is not surprising. His always shaky control over his country has been dramatically challenged yet again. Since the weekend, Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, has been in a state of emergency following a highly successful jailbreak operation carried out by the Taliban. All 1,200 inmates were freed, including around 400 Taliban members. So powerful was the attack that nearby NATO troops took cover in their base and arrived too late to prevent any escapes.
In the last couple of days, the Taliban have taken over many villages near Kandahar. Yet only last week, the British commander of Helmand Task Force, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith announced that the Taliban insurgency had been beaten back and that its local leadership had been “decapitated”. Does he still believe that?
The truth is that neither continued reinforcements bringing NATO troop levels up to 53,000, nor shocking brutality against prisoners and fighters have advanced the fight against the Taliban and against the presumed presence of Al Qaeda fighters one iota. In fact, with 102 killed since 2001, British causalities are rising rapidly and US forces are sustaining increasingly heavy losses, with more Americans killed in Afghanistan last month than in Iraq.
Some optimists may be harbouring the illusion that with such reverses for NATO forces and with the Bush era drawing to a close, Brown and the next US president will re-think their options and withdraw from Afghanistan. But don’t hold your breath. Congress has voted $165 billion more funds for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, still believes that US forces are “on a path to victory”.
And Barack Obama’s view of the so-called war against terror differs little from that of Bush. Last August he proclaimed: “We will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared. And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan … It's a tough place. But that is no excuse. There must be no safe-haven for terrorists who threaten America. We cannot fail to act because action is hard.”
And, don’t forget Obama’s thinly-veiled threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty: ”I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”
The US and Britain are locked into destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have had the effect of dismembering both countries, plunging them into a worse state than before occupation. Soldiers are dying not in the cause of “freedom and democracy” or for the spurious “war on terror” but for strategic, big power political reasons. These are about access to precious resources like oil and reining in the ambitions of countries like Russia. This is the deadly course New Labour is locked into (with the support of the Tories). Ending these military adventures will require some fundamental political changes in both America and Britain.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
President Hamid Karzai has threatened to take the fight against the Taliban beyond his country’s borders into Pakistan. Karzai’s sable-rattling outburst is not surprising. His always shaky control over his country has been dramatically challenged yet again. Since the weekend, Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, has been in a state of emergency following a highly successful jailbreak operation carried out by the Taliban. All 1,200 inmates were freed, including around 400 Taliban members. So powerful was the attack that nearby NATO troops took cover in their base and arrived too late to prevent any escapes.
In the last couple of days, the Taliban have taken over many villages near Kandahar. Yet only last week, the British commander of Helmand Task Force, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith announced that the Taliban insurgency had been beaten back and that its local leadership had been “decapitated”. Does he still believe that?
The truth is that neither continued reinforcements bringing NATO troop levels up to 53,000, nor shocking brutality against prisoners and fighters have advanced the fight against the Taliban and against the presumed presence of Al Qaeda fighters one iota. In fact, with 102 killed since 2001, British causalities are rising rapidly and US forces are sustaining increasingly heavy losses, with more Americans killed in Afghanistan last month than in Iraq.
Some optimists may be harbouring the illusion that with such reverses for NATO forces and with the Bush era drawing to a close, Brown and the next US president will re-think their options and withdraw from Afghanistan. But don’t hold your breath. Congress has voted $165 billion more funds for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, still believes that US forces are “on a path to victory”.
And Barack Obama’s view of the so-called war against terror differs little from that of Bush. Last August he proclaimed: “We will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared. And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan … It's a tough place. But that is no excuse. There must be no safe-haven for terrorists who threaten America. We cannot fail to act because action is hard.”
And, don’t forget Obama’s thinly-veiled threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty: ”I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”
The US and Britain are locked into destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have had the effect of dismembering both countries, plunging them into a worse state than before occupation. Soldiers are dying not in the cause of “freedom and democracy” or for the spurious “war on terror” but for strategic, big power political reasons. These are about access to precious resources like oil and reining in the ambitions of countries like Russia. This is the deadly course New Labour is locked into (with the support of the Tories). Ending these military adventures will require some fundamental political changes in both America and Britain.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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