|
August 7, 2002
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies of the US Part 5: the Call of Democracy?
August 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Signs
of the Elites
Bruce Gagnon
We Must
Come Alive
David Krieger
From
Hiroshima to Hope
Jerre Skog
Global
Reach of Corporate Crime or What the Hell are
They Teaching at Harvard?
Robert Fisk
Return to
Afghanistan:
Collateral Damage
Alexander Cockburn
The
Fox in the Pension Fund
August 5, 2002
Rahul Mahajan
Iraq
and the New Great Game
Jordy Cummings
The
Last Frontier of
Israel and Palestine
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Saddam's Diary
Mike Leon
US Mute
to Israeli Brutality
Norman Madarasz
Brazil:
the Most Important Election of 2002?
August 4, 2002
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
August 3, 2002
David Krieger
Nuclear
Apartheid
Gilad Atzmon
The End
of Innocence
Gavin Keeney
Everybody's
a Critic
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
August 2, 2002
Ralph Nader
The Labor
Party
Chris Floyd
Moral Maze:
Bankruptcy Made Easy
Jeremy Scahill
Saddam,
Chemical Weapons and Donald Rumsfeld
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
August 1, 2002
Steven Higgs
Activists
Under Siege
Anthony Gancarski
Draft
Picks:
Staffing the Latest War
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
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
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
August
7, 2002
Karzai's
Bodyguard
by Gary Leupp
One often hears that Afghanistan is the most ferociously
independent of countries, the graveyard of invaders. So the news
that Hamid Karzai has been fitted with a battery of American
bodyguards must give us pause. Why, one might ask, in this battle-hardened
country brimming with warriors, in which Kalashnikovs outnumber
men, should its head of state require this foreign guardianship?
The Pope in the Vatican has his Swiss
Guards; but the mini-state has no competent armed population
to draw on, and there's a long history behind that quaint convention.
Why should Karzai, or his American handlers, opt to surround
him with gun-toting aliens, when there ought to be so many local,
loyal troops?
We have been told that Karzai received
overwhelming support at the Loya Jirga in June. If that were
the case, why can't he muster a trustworthy Afghan entourage?
(First of all, it isn't the case, actually; former king Zahir
Shah enjoyed wide support but was forced to withdraw his bid
to become head of state by Defense Minister and warlord Mohammed
Fahim, whom a Western official quoted by the Washington Post
has likened to a "street thug," and U.S. special
envoy and kingmaker Zalmay Khalilzad). The fact is that Karzai,
having been placed in power by the U.S. as next-best-thing to
the late CIA operative Abdul Haq, has reason to fear his own
people. His "political base remains weak," notes the
Washington Post (August 5), and his "authority barely
extends beyond Kabul."
Two members of Karzai's administration
have been assassinated, cases still unresolved. On February 14,
Transport and Tourism Minister Abdul Rahman was assassinated
at Kabul Airport. Karzai and Foreign Minister Abdullah gave entirely
different accounts of the incident. On July 6, Abdul Qadir, one
of the vice presidents, was also assassinated for reasons that
remain unclear. (Karzai blamed "terrorists," George
Bush suggested that opium interests might have been involved,
and others blamed Northern Alliance forces for slaying a rising
Pashtun leader.)
More significant than these acts of political
violence is the emergence of a political opposition movement
rooted among the common people. There have been ongoing protests
in Kabul about that July 1 wedding party raid, in which according
to the official Afghan government report, 48 civilians were killed
by U.S. bombs; and demonstrators have targeted both the U.S.
military and the president so intimately associated with it.
Antigovernment demonstrations have occurred in Gardez and Khost
as well.
Fahim, sometimes at loggerheads with
Karzai (and should the two part ways, he will command far greater
native military support) has long expressed the view that there
should be minimal foreign military presence in the country. (His
line since December has been, "Thanks for the bombs that
broke the Taliban, but we Northern Alliances forces can handle
things from here.") He is furious about Karzai's Yankee
bodyguard. Those defenders are an admission of Karzai's vulnerable
position, in the lawless environment the bombing has produced,
and of the well-founded fear that tends to encompass puppets
making Faustian pacts.
An AP article and accompanying photo
published August 3 said it all. It reported that Karzai "dismissed
allegations yesterday that the United States tried to cover up
a deadly airstrike [which Afghan officials claimed occurred south
of Kabul August 1] and said a continued American presence was
crucial to Afghanistan's future. Flanked by U.S. special forces
bodyguards, Karzai said he visited one of the villages attacked
in the July 1 air raid and when asked if he believed there had
been a cover-up, said, 'I don't think so. People would have told
me.'"
Reporters were asking about a UN report
leaked to the Times of London stating that U.S. forces
may have removed evidence after the attack and violated human
rights. Now, the UN, once a site of contestation between the
U.S. bloc and the Third World (and frequently the object of Washington's
scorn) has since the collapse of the Soviet Union been more or
less tucked under Washington's armpit. The New World Order in
international diplomacy has been especially evident since December
1991, when the Security Council revoked Resolution 3379 (passed
in November 1975) describing Zionism as a form of racism. Many
nations' delegates changed their votes under extreme pressure
from the Bush administration. In December 1996 the U.S. vetoed
a second term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali (of Egypt) as United
Nations Secretary General; the 14 to 1 vote in the Security Council
outraged the Arab world. Under the leadership of Kofi Annan,
the UN has avoided confrontation with the U.S. (and with Israel),
as indicated by Annan's report on the Israeli invasion of Jenin
in April, which Human Rights Watch has called "fundamentally
flawed."
That even this lapdog UN general secretary
alleges U.S. misconduct in the Uruzgan province incident of July
1 lends particular credence to the allegation. And for President
of Afghanistan to dismiss the report out of hand is to confirm
that he is a lapdog of even more abject status than Mr. Annan.
The AP photo shows Karzai walking towards a shrine, fingering
prayer-beads, with (as the caption states) "U.S. bodyguards
clearing the way." There are well-armed U.S. forces to the
fore, one peering forward, the other walking sideways, gun in
hand, scrutinizing the rear.
Way back in 1857, Friedrich Engels (who
made some very interesting observations about Afghanistan, then
central to "the Great Game" played out in Central Asia
between Britain and Russia) described "the attempt of the
British to set up a prince of their own making in Afghanistan"
in 1842, linking its failure to the Afghans' "indomitable
hatred of rule, and their love of independence." (This was
published in the New American Cyclopedia in 1858). Like
most of Marx and Engels' stuff, its probably on the net now;
in his leisure time, in his Kabul office, surrounded by his Swiss
Guard, Mr. Karzai might want to peruse it.
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
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 5: the Call of Democracy?
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|