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June 11, 2002
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
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Cockburn
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The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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June 11,
2002
Democracy
in Afghanistan:
Gangsters, Murderers and Stooges Endorse the Bush "Vision"
by Robert Fisk
The Independent
Washington wants the loya jirga to succeed. True,
far too many of its pliant warlords--the Pashtun and Tajik gangsters
whom the Americans paid in thousands of dollars for their sometimes
loyal alliance against Osama bin Laden--have been trying to bribe
and bamboozle their own candidates into power once they realized
that the "grand assembly" of Afghans would actually
be held today. And true, there has been intimidation and delegates
murdered.
But a successful interim government--whatever
its chances of producing fair parliamentary elections--is vital
for the United States. Firstly, it will allow President Bush,
despite his failure to capture either Mr bin Laden or the Pimpernel-like
Mullah Omar, to claim that America has fulfilled its promise
to bring "democracy" to Afghanistan. Secondly--and
more importantly--because it is America's ticket out of the country.
As an article in the Wall Street Journal, the President's best
friend in his "war on terror", put it last week, nation-building
"certainly beats keeping crack [sic] US troops on the Afghan-Pakistan
border for the next 10 to 15 years".
But even if the democrats and the killers
and murderers of Afghanistan--let us not be squeamish about some
of the "delegates"--bring off their tribal rites today,
it's by no means certain that Afghanistan's central authority
will be able to do any more than they have already: rule the
streets of Kabul while regional warlords--including one of their
own vice-ministers--battle with rival mafiosi in the rest of
the country.
Hamid Karzai, the head of the present
interim government, has only one popular mandate in Afghanistan.
It doesn't come from the thugs of the Northern Alliance who "liberated"
Kabul from the Taliban last November.
Nor does it come from his own Pashtun
people, with whom his prestige has rested only upon his personal
integrity. It comes from his friends in the West, those who advised
him, dressed him in his stunning green robes and paid for his
advancement. It comes from those Western nations--stand up, all
of us--who have promised to fund, through him, the regeneration
of Afghanistan.
The gang leaders of Afghanistan have
agreed to let Mr Karzai remain leader of the next interim government.
But at present, those same mafia bosses are running many of the
major cities of Afghanistan. Humanitarian organizations and charities
are, in many cases, still forced to funnel their aid through
these ruthless men, in Mazar-i-Sharif, in Nangahar province,
in Khost. Voters in the forthcoming elections know that their
humanitarian aid comes via the warlords.
So who will they vote for in parliamentary
elections? Mr Karzai is trying to form the country's first non-sectarian
political group--allegedly with the brother of Ahmed Shah Masood,
the Tajik leader murdered two days before the 11 September atrocities
in the United States. And loya jirgas have their uses. While
by no means pliant, the British used them to maintain their control
of Afghanistan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The
wretched President Nadjibullah--he who was emasculated and then
strangled by the Taliban in 1996--persuaded two loya jirgas to
keep him in power.
So with American money behind him, Mr
Karzai may have a good chance to go on leading Afghanistan--at
least for the moment.
Today's
Features
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys
of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping a Nuclear War
in South Asia
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