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October 26, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance Attacks
US Bombing Strategy
Richard Lloyd Parry
Terrible Images
of a "Just" War
October 25, 2001
Ghassan
Andoni
Raid
on Bethlehem
N.D.
Jayaprakash
From
Hiroshima to NYC
Evan
Schultz
Memo
to Ashcroft:
Read Marbury
The
Sunshine Project
Assault
on the BioWeapons
Convention
Sarah
Turner
Cashing
In on Patriotism
Latin American Colloquium
on Systemology
The Meridia Manifesto
Noam
Chomsky
The
New War on Terror
October 24, 2001
Michael Colby
Radioactive
Mail?
Lori
Allen
Life
in an Occupied Land
During Wartime
Peter
Swire
New
Anti-Terrorism Bill
Poses Old Risks
Irina
Malenko
A
Non-Western Voice
David
Vest
Welcome
to Web Hell
Patrick Cockburn
Battle
of Mazar Gets Nasty
October 23, 2001
Steve
Perry
Anthrax,
Cipro and the Bailout of Bayer
Carl
Estabrook
Just War
or
The Rule of Lawlessness?
Patrick
Cockburn
Errant
Bombs at Bagram
George
Monbiot
War
and Oil
Robert
Jensen
Crushing
Academic Dissent
October 22, 2001
Hamit
Dardagan
The
New Newspeak
Tom
Turnipseed
War
on the Poor
Patrick Cockburn
Killing
Mullah Omar's Child
David
Vest
The
War on Women
Shepherd
Bliss
Advice
from a Vietnam Vet
Hani
Shukrallah
Capital
Strikes Back
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October 26,
2001
Poisoning the
Well
Is the US Attempting
to Sabotage Humanitarian Aid to Afghans?
By Rahul Mahajan
The first principle of humanitarian
relief is that it be impartial, that aid be given on the basis
of need without any consideration of political agendas.
The United States government,
the same government that aroused international execration by
using Red Cross markings on planes used to smuggle arms to the
contras in Nicaragua, has once again made a mockery of that principle
with its conduct in Afghanistan.
Its conduct to this point was
bad enough causing the suspension of aid programs for weeks because
of threats of bombing; constructing a "humanitarian"
reason to bomb (air drops are required to feed people, the planes
will be endangered, so we must bomb to suppress air defenses);
causing renewed suspension because of the bombing; and the piece
de resistance, adding insult to injury by dropping 35000 meals
a day to replace programs that had fed millions. That last has
been repeatedly criticized by aid organizations as associating
humanitarian operations with military assault, thus making aid
work far more difficult and dangerous as a spokesperson for Doctors
Without Borders put it, "We do not want to be perceived
as a part of the U.S. military campaign."
At a Pentagon news briefing
on Wednesday, however, this politicization was taken to new heights
with the invocation of unnamed "sources" claiming that
"there are reports that the Taliban might poison the food
and try to blame the United States," according to Rear Adm.
John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. He went on to warn Afghans receiving aid, "If
it comes from Taliban control, they must be careful."
It scarcely needs mentioning
that poisoning one's own populace is senseless, and that there
is no reason to suppose the Taliban is planning anything of the
sort. In fact, it was reported yesterday that officials from
the World Food Program expressed "surprise" at the
allegations, with one saying "If they're talking about the
food we deliver, there's not been a single instance that we know
of in which the Taliban have tampered with it. Stolen, yes, but
not tampered."
When contacted, Sam Barratt
of Oxfam International, currently working out of Peshawar, Pakistan,
characterized the Pentagon statement as "deeply unhelpful,"
adding, "This claim further goes to undermine the position
of aid agencies in the country."
It's well known that our government
frequently uses "disinformation" in wartime. And we
find out long afterward. We know now that the story about Iraqi
soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators was a fabrication
created by a Washington PR firm and that the "nurse"
testifying about it was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador
to the United States, who wasn't even in the country at the time.
We found that out, but not before an Amnesty International report
about it was circulated to all the media and to all of Congress,
playing a major role in building support for the Gulf War.
In order to combat disinformation
effectively, however, we will have to learn how to recognize
it before the war is over, while it's still relevant to current
affairs. And, in fact, we've already seen open evidence of its
use in this crisis. Government officials were forced to admit
that reports that the terrorists targeted Air Force One were
untrue (presumably they were circulated to further anger the
American public).
If we do manage to have the
courage of our intellectual convictions, the question still remains,
"What is our government trying to do?"
A clue may be found in previous
statements by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who
expressed concern early on that humanitarian operations be conducted
''in a manner that does not allow this food to fall into the
hands of the Taliban." Since the Taliban, as the men with
guns, will always be fed while there is any food in the country,
this seems like a hint that the United States would consider
interfering with the supply of humanitarian aid in Taliban-controlled
areas, in order to erode public support for the Taliban. Further
hints come today, with the second bombing of a Red Cross warehouse
complex in Kabul. It was entirely plausible that the first strike
was accidental, but the second does make one wonder. Obviously,
there is no way to know, but some vigilance is definitely in
order.
Such tactics are not at all
foreign to the U.S. government. Making the Chilean economy and
later the Nicaraguan "scream" was an essential, deliberate
part of destabilizing the Allende and Sandinista governments.
UN agencies have warned that
7.5 million people are dependent on aid for their survival through
the coming winter. UNICEF has estimated that 100,000 children
may die. The U.S. government has continued its protracted bombing
campaign in the face of numerous concerted from private aid agencies
and from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right of Access to
Food for a bombing halt so that supplies can be trucked in. Simultaneously,
the noncombatant toll of the bombings continues to grow a bus
in Kandahar, a hospital in Herat, numerous private homes, and
more.
Notwithstanding its invocation
of humanitarian concerns, the U.S. government has shown a criminal
indifference to human life. It has sabotaged one of the few truly
noble, truly heroic efforts in the modern world humanitarian
aid. It has also severely tainted public discourse, to the point
where it is difficult to know what is true and what is not.
Among Afghans and other peoples
for whom water is scarce, poisoning a well is the deepest crime,
more powerfully symbolic even than taking a human life. The reason
is that it takes something vital, something necessary to preserving
life, and perverts it into a force of destruction.
That is what our government
has now done. CP
Rahul Mahajan serves on the National Board of Peace
Action and is a member of the Nowar
Collective. He is the author of the forthcoming "The
New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" (Monthly
Review Press). He can be contacted at rahul@tao.ca
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