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October
6, 2001
Kevin
Gray
The
Trap:
Blacks and 9/11
October
5, 2001
Ronnie
Gilbert
Déjà
Vu: The FBI's War
on Civil Liberties
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban
Cluster Bombs
Dave
Marsh
John
Brown, Woody Guthrie
and the Secret Music of 9/11
Babak
Nahid
A
Suspect's Perspective
October
4, 2001
David
Vest
Send
in the Cons
Robin
Blackburn
Road
to Armageddon
Noam
Chomsky
Chatting
with Chomsky
Tony
Blair
The
Dossier on bin Laden
Norman
Madarasz
Canada
Kow-Tows to US
Lorenzo Ervin
No Palestinian
Ever
Called Me Nigger
October
3, 2001
Peter Bell
Hitchens
and Coulter:
Love at Last?
Patrick
Cockburn
Waiting
Is the Hardest Part
Jeff
Chang
Clear
Channel Fires
Davey D!
John Chuckman
War
on Terror:
Crusade Without a Definition
Mahajan/Jensen
Tough
Talk Won't Solve
Problems of Terrorism
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
Carl
Estabrook:
Stop Bush's Killing
Mahajan/Jensen:
Food,
Fear and War
Patrick
Cockburn:
Ready
to Strike
Cockburn/St.
Clair:
Things
Could Be Worse
Terry
Allen:
Early
Profit-taking and 9/11
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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Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on
Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
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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
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
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Valentine
Al
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October 6,
2001
Forward Into the
Past:
US War Aims
By Vijay Prashad
The US State Department-Pentagon has
a bad record on war aims. During the lead-up to the Gulf War,
the Bush administration, Part 1, argued that the US was needed
to liberate Kuwait. The invasion of a state of 2.2 million people,
in which only 28% earned the right to citizenship and a part
of the oil wealth, was to be liberated by the full force of the
US military. As ships and aircraft went toward the Gulf, those
of us in the peace movement wondered about the size of the deployment
and the war aims of Bush I: will it really take so much firepower
to dispatch the Iraqi army from Kuwait, and does the US really
need to amass such a broad coalition for this purpose?
Indeed, the war aims of Bush
I transmuted from the liberation of Kuwait to the overthrow of
the Ba'athist regime led by Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Even as
he addressed the nation two hours after US planes unloaded their
payloads on the Iraqi people, Bush I did not talk of the removal
of Hussein from power. "We are determined to knock out Saddam
Hussein's nuclear bomb potential," he said on 16 January
1991. "We will destroy his chemical weapons facilities.
Much of Saddam's artillery and tanks will be destroyed."
On 26 February, the Iraqi forces left Kuwait; on 6 March, Bush
I told Congress that "the war in Iraq is over"; by
7 April the Alliance established the northern no-fly zone and
began the intermittent bombardment of Iraq (and the major bombing
of December 1998), in effect continuing the war till this day.
The war aim now is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The war aims in retaliation
to 9/11 transmuted faster than they did in 1991, but in a most
expected fashion. With no firm proof, and reminiscent of the
1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the Bush administration, Part 2,
put its finger on Osama bin Laden. In 1998, the Clinton administration
bombed Sudan and Afghanistan without warning for the bombings
at the eastern African embassies by a network that may be linked
directly to bin Laden. This time, Bush II was interested in a
comprehensive solution and not a symbolic bombardment. "Infinite
Justice" was the first name of the campaign (since renamed
to "Enduring Peace" after criticism from the oil sheikhs
who said that only the divinity can be infinitely just).
The White House approached
Pakistan and offered the false choice of being part of the bombardment
or being a recipient of it. Pervez Musharraf agreed to join the
alliance, but only for bin Laden to be brought to book, and not
to threaten the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After all, the
Taliban are an old Pakistani ally and Pakistan was then only
one of three countries to recognize their rule (it is now the
only one, as Saudi Arabia and the UAE abandoned ship). Within
days it became apparent that the war aims have shifted: the US
government will not be content with bin Laden, but it now seems
to want the demise of the Taliban. The New York Times reports
(3 October) that the Pentagon is rethinking its Pakistan strategy,
mainly because the shift in war aims has compromised Musharraf
and set the stage for a coup there.
And to replace the Taliban
we are bringing out old Zahir Shah from his Roman suburb and
the remnants of the notorious Northern Alliance, the same cast
of characters who were fated to take office in 1980. Zahir Shah
has lived in Rome since 1973, and he has over the years, most
recently in November 1999, tried to convene a Loya Jirga, or
an elders meeting, which would include the brigands who remain
locked out of Kabul. Shah, a pensioner of an unnamed Gulf State,
is apparently an unwilling protagonist, but those who have funded
him for three decades are perhaps eager to see him back in power
- to give them title, perhaps, to the Turkmenistan-Pakistan natural
gas pipeline.
Just as the US joined hands
with and funded the unpleasant Iraqi National Congress, it now
appears that the Trojan horse for US imperialism will be the
Northern Alliance, a rag-tag bunch of fighters who have spent
most of their time fighting each other after the retreat of the
Soviet army, and whose short-lived reign in Kabul was well-known
for its ferocity.
The roots of the Northern Alliance
can be traced to the defection of General Abdul Rashid Dostam
with his Uzbek militia from Najibullah's side in March 1992 -
with this act the decimated People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan's
days were numbered. The mujahidin entered Kabul and, in mid-April,
they circumvented an immediate continuation of the war with a
Peshawar alliance headed by the Jamait-i-Islami boss Professor
Burhanuddin Rabbani (who is still the recognized head of the
country).
By August of 1992, the war
began again, as Gulbuddin Hikmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami took on the
Professor's regime, and the ensuing instability resulted in the
final demise of Najibullah's government in December. In March
1993, the factions conducted the Islamabad Accord so that Rabbani
continued as President, while Hikmatyar became Prime Minister.
But Hikmatyar was a poor ally,
because he continued his terror, in alliance with the Hezb-i-Wahdat
and in opposition to Rabbani (whose troops remained in the command
of the late Ahmed Shah Masood, but who worked in cooperation
with the ex-communist, Dostam). In January 1994, Hikmatyar formed
an alliance with Dostam, and so the musical chairs continue until
this day. Hikmatyar, with Dostam, then with Masood, then Rabbani
in the background - all the while the Taliban consolidated power,
took Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997 and then finally Kabul.
As the civil war unfolded the
Northern Alliance inflicted massive pain
on the Afghan population. In January 1997, Dostam's forces ruthlessly
bombed Kabul and Masood's forces continued to do so, even the
day after 9/11 in retaliation for his assassination three days
earlier. An interested reader may study Amnesty International's
reports published in 1995 on major abuses by Rabbani's Jamait-i-Islami,
Hikmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami, Dostam's Junbest-i-Melli Islami and
Hezb-i-Wahdat: (1) Afghanistan: International Responsibility
for Human Rights Disaster [AI Index ASA 11/09/95] and (2) Women
in Afghanistan: A Human Rights Catastrophe [AI Index ASA 11/03/95].
When the Taliban entered Kabul, this history was re-written by
the powers mainly because the Northern Alliance now appeared
as a reasonable alternative to the loss of control over the Taliban.
That many of the Northern Alliance cultivated Iran was not to
be a stumbling block, particularly after the slow, but steady
US-Iran rapprochement.
US war aims, then, are simultaneously
as brutal and unfocused in Afghanistan as they are in Iraq -
to overthrow one corrupt regime and put in place another, but
this time friendly with the US. The US Left needs to speak out
not only against the war, but also against the slowly formulated
war aims, and certainly against the restoration of "stability"
in the name of capital. The Northern Alliance is not "at
least better" than the Taliban, as liberals want to believe:
they are as bad for the people of Afghanistan.
What are the alternatives?
The mujahidin, mainly Hikmityar's crew, have killed much of the
intelligentsia during its reign of terror in the 1990s, and it
led to the exile of a huge number of reasonable Afghans, many
of whom took shelter in New Delhi (and do not wish to return
to a place that has given their families such nightmares). Organized
refugee groups, like RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women
of Afghanistan), the Afghan Women's Network, and other such people's
organizations have been at work for years trying to restart a
progressive dynamic among Afghan refugees, but also to spill
over into the besieged country. These groups will not be party
to the types of corrupt capitalist deals already being worked
out in Roman suburbs and in Uzbekistan: a moratorium on the exploitation
of Afghanistan is perhaps in order, with the profits from a potential
natural gas pipeline drawn into the redevelopment of the country's
productive base and democratic institutions rather than toward
Unocal or Bridas. These are our fights, against the war aims
of the US and their new, yet old, allies, but in support of those
popular agencies that oppose the Taliban from within the contradictions
of Afghan life, both in diaspora and at home. It is time to move
on the contradictions. CP
Vijay Prashad is an Associate Professor and Director
of the International Studies Program at Trinity College, Hartford,
CT.
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