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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 16, 2001
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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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The
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November 16,
2001
It Ain't Over Til It's Over:
What to watch
for in Afghanistan
By Zoltan Grossman
The fall of Kabul and other Afghan cities has
led many Americans to believe that the war is swiftly drawing
to a close. The U.S. media is creating the impression that the
takeover has brought 23 years of war, instability and oppression
to an end. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Paraphrasing
Yogi Berra, the war ain't over 'till it's over.
First, in a country that traditionally
has lacked centralized authority, the takeover of the capital
city does not yet mean the conquest of all of Afghanistan. Taliban
forces are regrouping in and around their de facto capital of
Kandahar, where some factions plan to wage a guerrilla war.
Afghans did not beat the British and Russian invaders by holding
the cities, but by waging ferocious resistance from mountain
strongholds. If Taliban or other Pashtun fighters launch a Chechen-style
hit-and-run defense, the war could drag on for years. The result
of a new guerrilla war would be the complete ethnic partition
of Afghanistan into a Pashtun south and non-Pashtun north. The
media has highlighted the renewed food aid shipments into Afghanistan,
but without noting that food has been used by all sides as a
weapon, with militias seizing aid shipments for their supporters,
and blocking food from their enemy's territory.
Second, the Northern Alliance rebels'
seizure of Kabul merely resets the clock back to 1992, when as
the mujahadin they took the city from Najibullah's Communists.
Not only did the non-Pashtun mujahadin execute Pashtuns, and
legislate the first limits on women's rights, but they quickly
turned on each other. Their four years of in-fighting left 50,000
dead, and led Afghans and the West to welcome the Taliban as
stabilizing "liberators" in 1996. Since then, Northern
Alliance rebels have had a reputation as corrupt "looters
and rapists," according to a recent statement by the Revolutionary
Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), and have taken control
of up to 80 percent of Afghanistan's opium trade. The returning
Northern Alliance rebels are again executing Pashtuns in the
city, much as returning Albanians attacked Serbs in Kosovo two
years ago. But the Northern Alliance seizure of Kabul gives it
a central role in any new Afghan "coalition" government,
because possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Third, even if the U.S. or U.N. manages
to form a shaky "coalition" government, the conflict
may only restart, as it did in 1992 and in 1996. All Afghan
ethnic and political factions will assume their claim to power
will be recognized by the U.S. powerbrokers. When they realize
that Washington intends to split the difference, some of them
may quickly turn on their former allies. Washington attempted
to build a multiethnic coalition under the aging King Zahir Shah
in 1992, and failed miserably. It tried to build a similar coalition
that same year in Somalia. One of the fundamental errors made
by the U.S. in Somalia was an assumption that its unifying intentions
would magically satisfy all militia factions. The other mistake
it made was to only recognize militia warlords as legitimate
political players, and ignore civil society and clan elders.
An Afghan regime that only patches together the guys with the
guns, and leaves out the vast majority of Afghan women and men,
will merely reward the past two decades of violence, and set
up another U.N. "peacekeeping" force for failure.
The West supported the mujahadin takeover
of Kabul in 1992, the Taliban takeover in 1996, and now the Northern
Alliance takeover in 2001. Its aims were usually to "liberate"
Afghanistan from the last regime it supported. Washington's initial
support for militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan (like Israel's
support of Hamas, and Egypt's support of the Muslim Brotherhood)
ultimately blew up in its face. Yet because the militant Islamists
are today virtually the force exploiting public opposition to
poverty, corruption, and foreign occupation in the Muslim world,
repressing them only legitimizes their growing popularity. Instead
of backing or repressing far-right Islamic populist groups, the
West and its client governments could be posing popular alternatives
to draw frustrated citizens away from them. Instead, the U.S.
is merely repeating old mistakes by crushing the Taliban, while
hailing new Islamist militant groups such as the Northern Alliance.
But there is a method to this madness,
more to U.S. aims in the region than is readily apparent. Afghanistan
has historically been in an extremely strategic location straddling
South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Will the U.S.
attempt to use the current crisis to establish a permanent presence
in the region? Each recent large U.S. intervention has left behind
a string of new military bases in a region where they had never
before had a foothold The Gulf War left behind large U.S. bases
in Saudi Arabia and three other Gulf states--the main Bin Laden
grievance that fueled the September 11 attacks. Military interventions
in former Yugoslavia resulted in U.S. bases in four countries,
including the sprawling Camp Bondsteel complex in Kosovo. Were
the military bases merely built to aid the interventions, or
did the interventions occur partly in order to station the bases?
The U.S. military is inserting itself
into strategic areas of the world, and anchoring U.S. geopolitical
influence in these areas, at a very critical time in history.
With the rise of a new European economic superpower, and increased
economic competition from East Asia, U.S. economic power is perhaps
on the wane. But in military affairs, the U.S. is still the
unquestioned superpower. Why not project that military dominance
into new strategic regions as a future counterweight to its competitors?
French President Jacques Chirac correctly viewed the U.S. role
in the Persian Gulf as securing control over oil sources for
Europe and Japan. Afghanistan lies along a proposed Unocal pipeline
route from new Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean. Allied
checkpoints are now being set up along the Afghan highways that
would serve as potential routes for the pipeline.
Major tests for U.S. policy lie in the
days and weeks ahead. Will special forces switch to fighting
against guerrillas in Afghani or Pakistani mountains? Will Bush
flatten Kandahar like Putin flattened the Chechen capital of
Grozny last year? Will the Northern Alliance be allowed to dominate
Kabul (like the Kosovo Liberation Army became the UN "police
force" in Kosovo)? Will a new "coalition" government
stay together, or only give a seat at the table to anyone carrying
a Kalashnikov or RPG launcher?
Will Bin Laden really be captured, or
(like Saddam) be allowed to live in order to justify a permanent
stationing of U.S. troops? Will anthrax be used as a new excuse
to bomb and invade Iraq? Finally, will the new U.S. military
bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan become
permanent outposts guarding a new oil infrastructure? A failure
of the U.S. to pull out of the region after the war, to leave
behind a government that truly represents Afghani civilians,
or to lure Muslims away from militant groups, will only give
impetus to new Bin Ladens, and to future September 11s.
Zoltan Grossman
is a doctoral candidate in Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and a member of the South-West Asia Information Group.
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