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War Against the Planet
By Vijay Prashad
President George W. Bush of the United
States appeared on television sets across the world on the 11th
of September and declared war against the planet. Not only will
those who committed the dreadful crimes of the morning be brought
to justice, he declared, but so too will those who once harbored
and now continue to harbor them.
Supply ships have started their
way to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and toward Spain. A
large part of the $40 billion designated by the US Congress will
go toward the preparations that have already begun within the
US military establishment, in close contact with its allies.
The Taliban, in Afghanistan,
quickly pleaded that the suffering of its poor should not be
increased with the wrath of the cruise missiles. So did Libya's
Gaddafi.
Others, such as Pakistan, hastily
declared their fealty to the US strike back, and pledged to allow
planes to fly over its territory. India was not far behind, eager
to allow its land for what may be the largest assault since the
bombardment of Cambodia and Iraq.
One commentator on the US television
networks lamented that the US lost its virginity at 845am on
9/11 when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.
But the war did not begin at
that time. This was not Pearl Harbor. The war has been ongoing
for quite some time now, at least for five decades.
Indeed, five decades ago the
United States assumed charge of that band of nations that stretches
from Libya to Afghanistan, most of whom are oil rich and therefore
immensely important for global capitalism. The civilizational
mandate held by France and Britain came to a close when World
War II devastated Europe, and it fell to the US to adopt the
white man's burden. It did so with glee, indeed on behalf, for
the most part, of the Seven Sisters, the largest oil conglomerates
in the world (most of them US-based transnational corporations).
Alliances forged with right-wing
forces in these regions found fellowship from the US, just as
the Left fashioned relations with the USSR. The United States
participated in the decimation of the Left in north Africa and
west Asia, from the destruction of the Egyptian Communist Party,
the largest in the region, to the rise of people like Saddam
Hussein to take out the vibrant Iraqi Communist Party, and of
the Saudi financier Osama bin Laden to take down the Communist
Afghan regime.
We hear that 9/11 was the "worst
terrorist attack in history," but this ignores the vast
history of bombardment, in general, tracked by Sven Lindquist
in his new book (for the New Press), and it certainly ignores
the many terrorist massacres conducted in the name of the United
States, for instance, such as at Hallabja in Iraq or else in
South America by Operation Condor. These are just a few examples.
But what is that history before 845am on 9/11, and will it show
us that "retaliation" misses out the fact that the
US has been at war for many decades already?
I. The Afghan
Concession.
In 1930, a US State Department
"expert" on Afghanistan offered an assessment which
forms the backbone of US social attitudes and state policy towards
the region: "Afghanistan is doubtless the most fanatic hostile
country in the world today." Given this, the US saw Afghanistan
simply as a tool in foreign policy terms and as a mine in economic
terms. When the Taliban (lit. "religious students")
entered Kabul on 27 September 1996, the US state welcomed the
development with the hope that the new rulers might bring stability
to the region despite the fact that they are notoriously illiberal
in social terms. The US media offered a muted and clichéd
sense of horror at the social decay of the Taliban, but without
any sense of the US hand in the manufacture of such theocratic
fascists for its own hegemonic ends. In thirty years,
Afghanistan has been reduced to a "concession" in which
corporations and states vie for control over commodities and
markets without concern for the dignity and destiny of the people
of the region. Oil, guns, landmines and heroin are the coordinates
for policy-makers, not the shadowy bodies that hang from the
scaffolds like paper-flags of a nation without sovereignty.
Shortly after the Taliban took
power in Kabul, the US State Department offered the following
assessment: "Taliban leaders have announced that Afghans
can return to Kabul without fear, and that Afghanistan is the
common home of all Afghans," announced spokesperson Glyn
Davies. The US felt that the Taliban's assertion in Kabul would
allow "an opportunity for a process of reconciliation to
begin." Reconciliation was a distant dream as the troops
led by the Tajik warlord, Ahmed Shah Masood and the troops led
by General Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Hazara-dominated Hezb-e-Wahdat
party disturbed the vales of Afghanistan with warfare. Citizens
of the advanced industrial states mouthed clichés about
"timeless ethnic warfare" and "tribal blood-feuds"
without any appreciation of the history of Afghanistan that produced
these political conflicts (in much the same way as the media
speaks of the Tutsi-Hutu turmoil without a sense of colonial
Belgium's role in the production of these politico-ethnic conflicts).
In 1964, King Zahir Shah responded
to popular pressure from his subjects with a constitution and
initiated a process known as "New Democracy." Three
main forces grew after this phase: (1) the communists (who split
into two factions in 1967, Khalq [the masses] and Parcham [the
flag]); (2) the Islamic populists, among whom Burhanuddin Rabbani's
Jamiat-i-Islami from 1973 was the main organization (whose youth
leader was the engineering student, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar); (3)
constitutional reformers (such as Muhammad Daoud, cousin of Zahir
Shah, whose coup of July 1973 abolished the monarchy). Daoud's
consequent repression against the theocratic elements pushed
them into exile from
where they began, along with the Pakistani Jamaat-I-Islami and
the Saudi Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami, to plot against the secular
regime in Afghanistan. In 1975, for instance, the theocratic
elements, led by Hikmatyar in Paktia, attempted an uprising with
Pakistani assistance, but the "Panjsher Valley incident"
was promptly squashed. The first split amongst the theocratic
elements occurred in the aftermath of this incident. Instability
in Afghanistan led to the communist coup in 1978 and the eventual
Soviet military presence in the region from 1979. The valiant
attempts to create a democratic state
failed as a result of the inability of hegemonic states to allow
the nation to come into its own.
From 1979, Afghanistan became
home to violence and heroin production. Money from the most unlikely
sources poured into the band of mujahidin forces located in Pakistan:
the US, the Saudis (notably their general intelligence service,
al-Istakhbara al-'Ama), the Kuwaitis, the Iraqis, the Libyans
and the Iranians paid the theocratic elements over $1 billion
per year during the 1980s. The US-Saudi dominance in funding
enabled them to choose amongst the various exiled forces -- they,
along with the Pakistanis, chose seven parties in 1981 that leaned
more towards theocratic fascism than toward
secular nationalism. One of the main financiers was the Saudi
businessman, Osama bin Laden. Five years later, these seven parties
joined the Union of Mujahidin of Afghanistan. Its monopoly over
access to the US-Saudi link emboldened it to assassinate Professor
Sayd Bahauddin Majrooh in Peshawar in 1988 when he reported that
70% of the Afghan refugees wanted a return to the monarchism
of Zahir Shah (who waited in a Roman suburb playing chess). Further,
the Interim
Islamic Government of Afghanistan called a shura (council) in
1989; the seven parties nominated all the representatives to
the body. All liberal and left wing elements came under systematic
attack from the shura and its armed representatives. The US-Saudi
axis anointed the theocratic fascists as the heirs to Afghanistan.
With over $1 billion per year,
the mujahidin and its Army of Sacrifice (Lashkar-i Isar) led
by Hikmatyar (who was
considered the main "factor of stability" until 1988)
built up ferocious arsenals. In 1986, they received shoulder-fired
Stinger missiles that they began to fire indiscriminately into
civilian areas of Afghanistan. Asia Watch, in 1991, reported
that Hikmatyar paid his commanders for each rocket fired into
Kabul. Claymore mines and other US-made anti-personnel directional
fragmentation mines became a staple of the countryside. Today,
about 10 million mines still litter the vales of
Afghanistan (placed there by the Soviets and by the US-Saudi
backed mujahidin). In 1993, the US State Department noted that
landmines "may be the most toxic and widespread pollution
facing mankind." Nevertheless, the US continues to sell
mines at $3/mine (mines cost about $300-$1000/mine to detect
and dismantle). Motorola manufactures many of the plastic components
inside the mines, which makes the device undetectable by metal-detectors.
The CIA learnt to extend its
resources during the Southeast Asian campaigns in the 1970s by
sale of heroin from the Golden Triangle. In Afghanistan, the
Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) [Pakistan's CIA], the Pakistani
military and civilian authorities (notably Governor Fazle Huq)
and the mujahidin became active cultivators, processors and sellers
of heroin (a commodity which made its Southern Asian appearance
in large numbers only after 1975, and whose devastation can be
gleaned in Mohsin Hamid's wonderful novel, Moth Smoke). The opium
harvest at the Pakistan-Afghan border doubled
between 1982 and 1983 (575 tons), but by the end of the decade
it would grow to 800 tons. On 18 June 1986, the New York Times
reported that the mujahidin "have been involved in narcotics
activities as a matter of policy to finance their operations."
The opium warlords worked under cover of the US-Saudi-Pakistani
axis that funded their arms sales and aided the conveyance of
the drugs into the European and North American markets where
they account for 50% of heroin sales.
Heroin is not the only commodity flogged by the mujahidin. They
are the front-line troops of an ensemble that wants "commercial
freedom" in Afghanistan so that the Afghan people and land
can be utilized for "peaceful" exploitation. The California-based
oil company Unocal (76), then busy killing the Karens and other
ethnic groups in alliance with the Burmese junta and with the
French oil company Total, had its eyes on a pipeline from Central
Asia to the Indian Ocean, through Afghanistan. Only with an end
to hostilities, at any cost, will the international corporations
be able to benefit from
the minerals and cheap labor of the Afghans. So far, the corporations
have reaped a profit from sales of arms to the Afghans; now they
want to use the arms of the Afghans for sweatshops and mines.
For corporations and for corporatized
states (such as the US), an unprincipled peace allows them to
extract their needs without the bother of political dissent.
The Taliban briefly offered the possibility of such a peace.
Formed in 1994 under the tutelage of the ISI and General Naseerullah
Khan (Pakistan's Interior Minister), the Taliban comprises southern
Pashtun tribes who are united by a vision of a society under
Wahhabism which extols a form of Islam (Tariqa Muhammadiya) based
on its interpretation of the Quran without the benefit of the
centuries of elaboration of the complexities of the Islamic tradition.
In late September 1996, Radio
Kabul broadcast a statement from Mullah Agha Gulabi: "God
says that those committing adultery should be stoned to death.
Anybody who drinks and says that that is not against the Koran,
you have to kill him and hang his body for three days until people
say this is the body of the drinker
who did not obey the Koran and Allah's order." The Taliban
announced that women must be veiled and that education would
cease to be available for women. Najmussahar Bangash, editor
of Tole Pashtun, pointed out shortly thereafter that there are
40, 000 war widows in Kabul alone and their children will have
a hard time with their subsistence. Further, she wrote, "if
girls are not allowed to study, this will affect a whole generation."
For the US-Saudi-Unocal-Pakistan axis, geo-politics and economics
make the Taliban a worthy regime for Afghanistan. Drugs, weapons
and social brutalities will
continue, but Washington extended a warm hand towards Mullah
Mohammed Omar and the Taliban. US foreign policy is driven by
the dual modalities of containment (of rebellion inspired by
egalitarianism) and concession (of goods which will bring profit
to corporate entities). Constrained by these parameters, the
US government was able to state, in 1996, "there's
on the face of it nothing objectionable at this stage."
Certainly, on 10 October 1996,
the State Department revised its analysis of the Taliban on the
basis of sustained pressure from Human Rights and women's groups
in the advanced industrial states as well as pressure from the
conferences held by Iran (at which numerous regional nations,
such as India participated). In conflict with its earlier statement,
the US declared "we do not see the Taliban as the savior
of Afghanistan. We never really welcomed them." The main
reason offered for this was the Taliban's "uniquely discriminatory
manner" with women. The US state department would have
done well to mention the heroic attempt made by the communist
regime to tackle the "woman question."
In late 1978, the regime of
Nur Mohammad Taraki, President of the Revolutionary Council of
Afghanistan, promulgated Decree no. 7 which aimed at a transformation
of the marriage institution by attacking its monetary basis and
which promoted equality
between men and women. Women took leadership positions in the
regime and fought social conservatives and theological fascists
on various issues. Anahita Ratebzad was a major Marxist leader
who sat on the Revolutionary Council; other notable leaders included
Sultana Umayd, Suraya, Ruhafza Kamyar, Firouza, Dilara Mark,
Professor R. S. Siddiqui, Fawjiyah Shahsawari, Dr. Aziza, Shirin
Afzal and Alamat Tolqun. Ratebzad wrote the famous Kabul Times
editorial (28 May 1978) which declared that "Privileges
which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security,
health
services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building
the future of the country....Educating and enlightening women
is now the subject of close government attention." The hope
of 1978 is now lost and the pessimism must not be laid at the
feet of the Taliban alone, but also of those who funded and supported
the Taliban-like theocratic fascists, states such as the US,
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The real reason for the US
frustration with the Taliban was its recalcitrance toward global
capitalism (as an example, the Unocal scheme fell apart). The
Taliban, created by many social forces, but funded by the Saudis
(such as bin Laden) and the CIA, was now in the saddle in the
center of Asia, and it soon became a haven for disgruntled and
alienated young men who wanted to take out their wrath on the
US rather than fight against the contradictions of global capital.
Bin Laden, the CIA asset, became the fulcrum of many of their
inchoate fears and angers.
II. Oil,
Guns and Saddam
During the Gulf War of 1991,
a decade ago, the US-Europe discovered the Kurds for a few years.
The Kurds and the Kuwaitis provided the war aims for the Alliance,
since we kept hearing how Saddam Hussein's armies had exploited
both.
Oil is not the reason, we were
repeatedly told; we are only concerned for the ordinary people
of the region oppressed by these madmen, such as Saddam Hussein,
Hafez al-Assad and the Ayatollahs. We heard little about the
recently closed Iran-Iraq war, about the various contradictions
in the region, indeed about the role of the US-Europe for several
decades in the fabrication of the regimes that ruled here. As
the cruise missiles fell on Iraq, we did not then hear that the
first major aerial bombardment in modern times took place in
December 1923 when the Royal Air Force pummeled the rebellious
Kurds (they felt the wrath of the guns again in March 1924, not
being disciplined firmly enough by Headmaster Britain).
In 1932 the British put in
place the puppet royal dynasty, the al-Saud family to rule the
Arabian Peninsula as Saudi
Arabia. This regime was to protect the "interests"
of global capitalism, particularly after oil was discovered there
in the early 1930s. The British put King Faisal over the newly
created Iraq, a Sunni leader over a predominantly Shi'ite land.
Workers movements in the region
came under attack from these regimes, many of which violently
crushed democratic dissent in the name of the dollar. Henry Kissinger
was later to create political theory of a policy that had been
long in the works: that the US should lock arms with any political
leader who will resist the will of socialism, who will ensure
that international capitalism's dictates be maintained and who
can therefore be a "factor of stability." The rogue
gallery of this policy includes a host of CIA assets, such as
the Noreiga, Marcos, Pinochet, Suharto, the Shah of Iran, the
various Gulf
Sheikhs, and latterly such fundamentalist friends as the BJP
in India. Even when some of these leaders flirted with the Soviets
(Saddam and al-Assad), their usefulness to US policy prevented
a break in their links to the CIA, mainly to contain domestic
left-wing dissent.
The Ayatollah may have been
a natural asset, but his regime was stamped by a radical and
patriarchially egalitarian Shi'ism that terrified the Oil Kingdoms,
whose tenuous rule was now bolstered even further by the armies
of the imperial powers and their proxy state at this time, Iraq.
When the Iran-Iraq war broke out, people
spoke of it as a sectarian war between Shias and Sunnis, but
few pointed out that Iraq has a large Shia population and that
Iraq fought primarily with the backing of the US and its alliance
to "contain" the Iranian revolution and the rule of
the Mullahs. Saddam, then, was friend not foe.
During these years, no one
mentioned the Kurds. For decades the communist movement grew
amongst the Kurds, both in Turkey and in northern Iraq. But by
the early 1970s, the CIA entered the battlefield to cut down
the left and bolster the right. Between 1972 and 1975 the CIA
paid $16 million to the eccentric and untrustworthy Mullah Mustafa
Barzani as a "moral guarantee" of US support for this
activities. In 1959, Barzani had expelled the communists from
his mainly Iraqi
party and he had sent Iranian Kurds to their death in the camps
of the Shah. Barzani was an asset that the US cultivated, and
is now a close ally of Saddam Hussein, another US asset.
In 1975, Marxist-Leninists
within the Kurdish resistance formed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK), which pushed many Kurds to the Left, including those in
the Iraqi Kurdish Front formed in 1988. Saddam Hussein was given
the green light by Washington to take out the PUK, and he conducted
chemical bombing on them in 1983 (at Arbil) and most spectacularly
in 1988 (at Halabja, where five thousand died, and many thousand
continue to suffer). The outrage of Halabja created a momentary
stir in the Left media, but nothing was done then because Saddam
was a US ally and asset - it returned to do ideological work
during the Gulf War.
As many died at Halabja as on 9/11, but their death does not
factor in when NPR announces that 9/11 was the "worst terrorist
attack in history." When terror is conducted in our name,
then it is not terror but "retaliation."
III. Revenge
or Justice?
President Bush promises to
get those who did the bombings in New York and Washington, but
he also promises that those who harbor them will feel the wrath
of the US. This is the most dangerous statement so far. Not only
does it violate all manner of international laws, it ignores
the fact that the US has harbored these criminals for years,
mainly at the expense of the global Left.
Saddam and bin Laden are products
of the US, even as they, like Frankenstein's beast, turn against
their
master now. The lesson is not to continue the madness, to go
after the symptom with $40 billion of firepower. The lesson,
for all democratic minded people, is to undermine the basis of
our global insecurity.
First those people who did
the horrendous deed on 9/11 must be found, arrested and brought
to trial. The path of justice should not be short-circuited by
the emotions of the moment.
Second, our fight in the US
continues, as we continue to point out that US foreign policy
engenders these acts of
barbarism by its own desire to set-up strong-arm "factors
of stability" in those zones of raw materials and markets
that must be subservient to US corporate interests. Vast areas
of anger, zones of resentment will continue to emerge - this
is not the way forward. Another indiscriminate bombardment will
bring forth more body bags for the innocent.
History shows us that the US
was not innocent on 9/11, even as thousands of innocent people
died. We should not confuse these two things: the terrorists
made no distinction between those who conduct political and economic
terror over their lives, between a regime that they dislike,
corporate interests that they revile and innocent people who
live in the same spaces. The terror of the frustrated works alongside
the terror of the behemoth to undermine the powerful and democratic
urges of the people. Both of those terrors must be condemned.
CP
Vijay Prashad
Associate Professor and Director,
International Studies Program
Trinity College, Hartford, CT
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