AFGHANISTAN
U.S. terror tactics deepen
By Leslie Feinberg
Afghan police have fired on protesting students in Kabul,
killing as many as six and seriously wounding dozens more. The
clashes came as thousands were protesting because electricity
and water had been cut off to their dormitory for a week.
The demonstrations began on Nov. 11, when the students
marched to the palace of Hamid Karzai, the president installed
by Washington after it attacked Afghan istan and ousted the
Taliban regime. Students said the police attack was unprovoked
and that four died in the hail of bullets. The government
claims students had thrown rocks--certainly no excuse for
firing on them--and admits to only one death.
The next day the protests continued. A report from Kabul by
the Irish RTE News says students reported two more deaths when
the protests resumed the next morning, bringing the total to
six.
This bloody suppression of the students gives the lie to the
rosy public relations effort to prettify life in Afghanistan
under U.S. occupation.
Bush, his generals, and the media establishment that
amplifies their message around the world have tried to market
their military onslaught as a battle "against terrorism." The
bonus was supposed to be the liberation of the Afghani
people.
However, the Pentagon's actions in this war, toward
civilians and prisoners alike, are those of imperialist
occupation troops, not a liberation army.
The people of Naray recall the recent raid by U.S. soldiers
in their mountain village. (Associated Press, Nov. 4) It began
at twilight with the terrifying thunder of Blackhawk
helicopters setting down in a tornado of dust. Troops from the
82 nd Airborne Division of the Army piled out.
U.S. troops had passed through Naray before; they had never
been attacked and the people put up no resistance. Yet the
soldiers rounded up the villagers and separated the women and
men in compounds of the local mosque. When an entire wedding
party in festive clothes arrived at the mosque, they were
ordered to sit down. All were threatened that if they moved,
the helicopter gunships would kill them.
To terrify the population, mortar teams discharged
illumination artillery rounds into the night sky and fired
explosive shells into the mountainside.
The soldiers tore up people's humble homes, upending trunks
of clothing, overturning bins of flour and chopping up the
plaster walls. According to the AP report, "Cash, passports and
pictures of anyone with a gun were collected in a trash
bag."
Cash. Now there's a dangerous weapon that needs to be
impounded for security reasons.
Five people, including the village elder, were interrogated
throughout the night. Col. David Gerard boasted, "They talk a
lot better after some sleep deprivation; makes them feel sorry
for themselves." Later the five were loaded into helicopters
with bags over their heads and taken away. No reason given.
Nothing was found except a few AK-47s, which many, many
Afghani people have in their homes.
As the warships lifted up, chopping the air with their roar,
they left anger below. "They came rushing into our homes, they
kept us prisoner all night, and we were cold and hungry," said
Noorbad Shah. "We had no bad will against the Americans, but
now how are we supposed to feel?"
Where the real terror awaits
Prisoners are transported 8,000 miles across the Atlantic
Ocean from Afghanistan to Camp X-Ray, a U.S. naval base in the
Caribbean. Several electronic images of the detainees strapped
into a half-sitting, half-prone position on the floor of a
C-130 plane were leaked to news organizations the week of Nov.
8. The men's hands are bound behind their backs, legs chained,
heads hooded.
Earlier photos showed prisoners on their knees on the tarmac
at Guantanamo, Cuba. They were deprived of sensory input, their
eyes and ears covered by hoods and earphones.
In a stunning display of sophistry, Defense Department
officials have ordered the media to censor photos of prisoners,
arguing that it is the photographs themselves, not the brutal
treatment they document, that violate the Geneva Convention on
treatment of prisoners.
As of Oct. 23, reports the Washington Times, about 70
percent of the 598 prisoners are Afghani, Saudi and Yemeni; a
small number are Pakistani. The newspaper adds that even more
cells are being constructed "to house suspected terrorists from
43 countries."
Suspected. This is Bush's endless war.
The brass at the Pentagon vow to imprison the great majority
"indefinitely."
"House" is a diplomatic word to describe conditions. U.S.
journalist Jeffrey Kofman described the tiny chain link cells
open to the elements, with just a foam mat, two towels and a
chamber pot. "It was a far more bare-bones facility than
frankly I expected to see. They say they will be holding the
detainees in cells, but really they are cages." (BBC News, Jan.
16)
The tropical camp, bordered by bales of razor wire, is cold
at night, lit up with halogen floodlights, and swarming with
mosquitoes in the day.
Marines and military police run the facility. CIA and
military intelligence officers conduct repeated intense
interrogations. Leaks about torture can't be confirmed because
the military exerts iron control without civilian scrutiny.
Military officers told journalists they wouldn't even be
allowed to bring tape-recording devices to record the sound of
a plane landing. (Fox News, Jan. 11)
A limbo where no law exists
Even bourgeois law, whose main purpose is to protect the
property-owning classes, is a casualty in this untrammeled
military aggression.
The U.S. high command refuses to grant prisoner-of-war
status to the prisoners it takes in this war. The Pentagon
labels the detained with the military double-speak "unlawful
combatants," and thereby strips them of the limited protections
established by the Geneva Convention.
A panel of three British judges delivered a surprisingly
strong ruling the week of Nov. 8. They stated that the
detention of prisoners at Camp X-Ray "appears" to be a
violation of international law as well as the right of habeas
corpus won centuries ago in England with the Magna Carta. The
panel, roughly similar to a federal appeals court in the United
States, ruled in the case of a 23-year-old detainee who has
been held at Guantanamo for 10 months.
Geoffrey Robertson, a prominent British attorney and
human-rights expert, told the New York Times in a phone
interview that the court was trying to send a message to
influence a case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia. That court is scheduled to hear
arguments on Dec. 2 in an appeal of a July ruling that was an
important legal victory for the Bush administration.
In the July ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly decided
that the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo is formally outside this
country's sovereign territory, so the prisoners can be denied
rights under the U.S. Constitution and have no right of appeal
to federal courts.
Not U.S. territory? The base was established in 1903 after
Marines hit the shores of Guantanamo during the 1898
Spanish-American war at the birth of U.S. imperialist
expansion.
After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the new government demanded
the U.S. relinquish the base and respect Cuba's sovereignty.
But President Dwight Eisenhower refused. Washington continues
to pay annual "rent," set a century ago at 2,000 gold
coins--about $4,000. The Cubans refuse to cash the insulting
check.
Setting up a military prison on the tiny portion of land the
United States claims as its own on the island of Cuba is also a
Yankee imperialist threat to the population trying to build
socialism there as the U.S. attempts to re-colonize the
planet.
Reprinted from the Nov. 21, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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