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June 27, 2002
Rahual Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership; Calls for Fair Elections
June 26, 2002
Robert Fisk
Sharon as
Bush Speechwriter
Mokhiber / Weissman
Brokerman
June 25, 2002
Dave Marsh
The RIAA,
Library of Congress and the Web Pirates
Uri Avnery
Reform
Now!
Bahour / Dahan
Bush:
Off with Arafat's Head
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
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
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
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
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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June 27,
2002
The Loya Jirga
Joke
by Gary Leupp
From the outset, the Bush Administration made
clear its distaste for "nation-building." The U.S.
had not fared well in past nation-building exercises (in Lebanon
in 1983, or Somalia in 1993); they left a very bad taste in the
imperialist mouth. It had excelled, however, in nation-destroying;
reducing relatively progressive, secular Iraq to a feeble shadow
of its former self, through bombing and sanctions, during the
first Bush presidency. Bush II's bombing destroyed the Taliban's
apparatus in Afghanistan within two months. The U.S. government's
really good at that sort of thing. But when it comes to crafting
institutions, supporting genuine democracy, empowering the oppressed,
dealing with social complexity, it just don't want to get involved.
("Hey, if those Rwandans and other uncivilized folks can't
get their act together, who really gives a shit so long as U.S.
vital interests aren't involved?" That's their attitude.)
Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting
that they should undertake nation-building, any more than
I'd suggest the Mafia oversee public schools. I'm not advocating
a U.S "peacekeeping" force throughout Afghanistan,
as some have suggested, and I'm not upset that Rumsfeld has ruled
this out. Global oppressors can't build nations that deliver
justice to their citizens, so if they want to bag out, that's
fine with me. Unfortunately in Afghanistan, the U.S. government
has undertaken what journalists are calling "nation-building"
(see John Donnelly's piece in the June 26 Boston Globe)---or
what may be termed more accurately, the establishment of another
puppet regime, another client state doomed from its inception
to meet with popular contempt.
On November 12, barely a month since
the U.S. started its bombing campaign, the Northern Alliance
took Kabul. By all indications, the U.S. power structure was
genuinely surprised at the lightening success of "Operation
Enduring Freedom" and the weakness of the Taliban resistance.
While the U.S. (and Pakistan) had opposed the Alliance forces'
entry into Kabul before a nationwide conference could determine
the nature of the post-Taliban government, the Tajik-dominated
militia forces occupied the city, to the dismay of most of its
inhabitants, and reestablished the hated Burhanuddin Rabbani
regime. The Russians and Iranians immediately embraced the warlord
clique, but the Bush regime withheld diplomatic recognition,
in part to avoid antagonizing the Pakistanis who have, since
November 1994 (when they broke ties to CIA Frankenstein Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, blamed for some 50,000 civilian deaths, in favor of
the Taliban), been on hostile terms with the Northern Alliance.
With some help from Russia and Iran, the U.S. orchestrated the
meeting in Bonn (November 27-December 4) that produced a bogus
new government dominated by the Panjshiri Valley thugs. (18 out
of the 30 government members were from the Northern Alliance.)
The chairman of the interim administration, Hamid Karzai, was
an English-speaking, longtime U.S. resident, a Pashtun who had
been a deputy foreign minister in Rabbani's government in the
mid-90s. (By the way, although it's probably impolite to bring
it up now, he was briefly foreign minister under the Taliban
too in 1996.)
The Bonn meeting resulted in an agreement
that a Loya Jirga (Grand Council) would be held in June
to determine the composition of a more permanent government structure.
"Loya Jirga:" it has such an exotic sound to it. There
have been loya jirgas for centuries---gatherings involving wise
and powerful men from all the tribes and clans, engaged (or at
least this has been the mainstream press spin) in crude, New
England Town Meeting-style, democratic debate about the future
of the Afghan nation. So this particular Loya Jirga (the mother
of Loya Jirgas, closely followed by western news agencies from
beginning to end, June 11-19)---this Loya Jirga, designed to
legitimatize Karzai's administration, was itself accorded in
western reportage the legitimacy of native tradition.
In fact there was little traditional
or legitimate about it. The warlords currently enjoying U.S.
support largely determined the selection of delegates. Lakhdar
Brahimi, UN envoy to Afghanistan, told reporters, "Voting
for the Loya Jirga has been plagued by violence and vote-buyingThere
were attempts at violence, manipulation, unfortunately. Money
was used, threats were used" (ABC, June 12). Disproportionate
representation was given Uzbek and Tajik regions controlled by
the Northern Alliance (The Nation, May 11). At the meeting,
the U.S.---the reluctant nation-builder---was much in evidence,
and calling all the shots. Afghan-American, Donald Rumsfeld intimate
and Big Oil man Zalmay Khalilizad, the State Department's chief
envoy to Kabul, was on the ground coaching Karzai throughout.
Zalmay Khalilizad. This is the gentleman
who, while employed by Unocal and involved in oil pipeline negotiations
with the Taliban, argued as recently as 1998 in an op-ed piece
in the Washington Post that, "The Taliban does not
practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by
Iran We should ... be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian
assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction.
It is time for the United States to reengage" the Afghan
regime. Then he went on to write a boiok about Afghanistan as
a "rogue state." A real man of principle, here. So,
what were his contributions to Afghan nation-building? (1) He
pronounced a U.S. veto on the appointment of Zahir Shah, the
former king, as head of state; and (2) he obliged Karzai to seek
Loya Jirga approval of at least some of his cabinet appointments.
On June 9, between 800 and 900 of the
1600 delegates assembled in Kabul signed a petition asking that
Zahir Shah serve as head of state. As two delegates, Omar Zakhilwal
and Adeena Niazi, later wrote in the New York Times:
Within a day we had developed
a common wish list focused on national unity, peace and security.
We also emphasized access to food, education and health services
in neglected rural areas. But the one issue that united the delegates
above all others was the urgency of reducing the power of warlords
and establishing a truly representative government. This sentiment
quickly grew into a grass-roots movement supporting the former
king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, as head of state. The vast majority
of us viewed him as the only leader with enough popular support
and independence to stand up to the warlords. But our democratic
effort to nominate Zahir Shah did not please the powers that
be.
Specifically, Mohammed Fahim, an ethnic
Tajik and the defense minister, fearing that a major role for
the Pashtun former king would undercut his own faction's position,
warned Karzai late that day that delegates representing the Northern
Alliance would withdraw from the Loya Jirga unless Zahir Shah
agreed to seek no political post. He also threatened to place
his troops on alert (New York Times, June 12). Since the
Alliance is the dominant military presence in the capital, these
were serious threats.
Now, the U.S. position in Afghanistan
is thoroughly dependent on its alliance with the Northern Alliance.
So one-time Taliban apologist Khalilizad resolved the situation,
pressuring the aging one time monarch to bow out, while softening
the blow by persuading the interior minister, Tajik warlord Yanis
Qanooni, to step down in favor of the Pashtun, Taji Mohammed
Wardak. As the meeting opened belatedly, under a grand tent on
June 11, delegates learning of the backdoor deal expressed outrage.
"This is a rubber stamp," declared Minister of Women's
Affairs Sima Samar. "Everything has already been decided
by the powerful ones." Another delegate, Asella Wardak,
protested, "Everything seems to have been decided. But we
don't need anyone to decide for us. We have had enough of foreign
interference in our country."
Confusion reigned as Karzai misinterpreted
his nomination as president as confirmation (the Americans, after
all, had already told him he was president), prematurely seeking
the crowd's accolade. He was indeed elected on the 13th, overwhelmingly,
challenged only by two little-known candidates, one of them a
woman ridiculed and threatened by the fundamentalists. The puppet's
legitimacy was thus assured. We will probably be told time and
again in future that he was the clear choice of the Afghan people
in this Grand Council; even so, his position is shaky. "If
the president does not follow the Islamic values, " warned
warlord Abdulrab Rassoul Sayyaf, "then the Prophet advises
us to follow him anywhere, to oppose, protest, and strike against
him."
The next item of business was to select
the new cabinet, and in this, the dreaded warlords had final
say. Sitting in the front seats, they weren't even supposed to
be there. "We were told that this loya jirga would
not include all the people who had blood on their hands,"
complained one delegate, Safar Mohammed, to his fellows, drawing
applause. "But we see these people everywhere. I don't know
whether this is a loya jirga or a commanders' council."
(Independent, June 13). Zakhilwal and Niazi write that
after the Karzai deal had been set, "the atmosphere at the
loya jirga changed radically. The gathering was now teeming with
intelligence agents who openly threatened reform-minded delegates,
especially women. Access to the microphone was controlled so
that supporters of the interim government dominated the proceedings.
Fundamentalist leaders branded critics of the warlords as traitors
to Islam and circulated a petition denouncing Women's Affairs
Minister Samar as 'Afghanistan's Salman Rushdie.'"
Even in the intimidating atmosphere,
Karzai was unable to win ready acceptance of his cabinet nominees,
and on June 17, fully half of the delegates walked out, some
protesting foreign manipulation of the proceedings as well as
warlord intimidation. Karzai announced his intention to select
a cabinet without Loya Jirga approval, but, outside the grand
tent Khalilizad informed him that the Bonn agreement of last
December specified that such approval was, in fact, required.
Two days later, the Loya Jirga concluded, its delegates having
approved Karzai's cabinet choices for most cabinet positions.
Fahim remains Defense Minister, and has also been appointed deputy
president. Warlords Haji Qadir (Pashtun) and Karim Khalili (Hazara)
have also been named deputy presidents. Qanooni after some hesitation
and a threat to form an opposition party has accepted the Minister
of Education portfolio and (perhaps more significantly) has agreed
to serve as internal security advisor. (His successor as Interior
Minister, Taji Mohammed Wardak, has met with violent opposition
from Qanooni's thugs while merely attempting to settle into his
office.) A son of Herat's warlord Ismail Khan has been brought
into the administration. The suave, English-speaking Tajik Dr.
Abdullah Abdullah remains Foreign Minister. Mulavi Fazal Hadi
Shinwari was appointed Chief Justice; an earnest proponent of
Shari'a punishments (including stoning and amputation), he's
a fan of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. (He says the latter "deserves
to be considered in the coming government. Neither Gulbuddin
nor any other body [in his group] committed crimes and hence
there is no reason to impose restrictions on them.")
In a word, the Loya Jirga has empowered
monsters, while excluding the more progressive forces; Sima Samar
has been intimidated into resigning as Minister of Women's Affairs
and at this writing the post remains unfilled. As Vikram Parekh
of Human Rights Watch put it on June 20, "Afghanistan's
warlords are stronger today than they were ten days ago before
the loya jirga started." Ahmed Rachid (Eurasia Insight,
June 24) agrees: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai's new
cabinet configuration should yield even greater political and
military powers to the already dominating faction of Tajiks from
the Panjshir Valley, as well as to other warlords." He predicts
that "ongoing Pashtun discontent with the Panjshiri domination
of the military and security establishments could create a serious
situation for US forces, which are largely based in eastern Pashtun
regions."
"By these appointments Karzai and
the Panjshiris have made more enemies than they had before,"
said an unnamed European diplomat in Kabul interviewed by Rashid.
"Karzai has only demonstrated his weakness and his inability
to take hard decisions, which will increase instability outside
Kabul and infuriate the Pashtuns." Saman Zia-Zarifi, senior
researcher for HRW, declares, "Short term political expediency
has clearly triumphed over human rights." Assadallah Wolwaliji,
member of the independent commission overseeing the conference
with UN assistance, explains fatalistically: "We cannot
say this was a democratic loya jirga. Maybe it was necessary
that it was an autocratic loya jirga." It was in any case
clearly a betrayal of the expectations of the Afghan people,
a joke of a jirga achieved under U.S. auspices, and probably
a prescription for "blowback."
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor, Department of History, Tufts University
and coordinator, Asian Studies Program
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
Today's
Features
Rahual Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership;
Calls for Fair Elections
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