Victime of sham 'war on terrorism'
Afghan poverty deepens, fighting grows
By Leslie Feinberg
The Bush administration is using the second
anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to squeeze billions
of dollars more out of U.S. taxpayers, to pay for the
Pentagon's ongoing military occupation of Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The White House had used the Sept. 11 attacks as a
justification to launch a bloody, high-tech war against the
impoverished people of Afghanistan in the name of a supposed
"war on terrorism."
On Sept. 6--the day before President George W. Bush
delivered a televised speech asking the U.S. Congress to
authorize an additional $87 billion for the occupation of both
Iraq and Afghanistan--the Guardian of London published an
article by Michael Meacher, a senior Labor Party member of
Parliament and until June a member of British Prime Minister
Tony Blair's cabinet. The piece was headlined, "This war on
terrorism is bogus."
Referring to Afghanistan, the first country to be hit in the
"endless war," Meacher wrote: "Until July 2001 the U.S.
government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in
Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon
pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to
the Indian Ocean. But confronted with the Taliban's refusal to
accept U.S. conditions, the U.S. representatives told them
'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury
you under a carpet of bombs.'"
The day after Meacher's article appeared, a London Mail
article recalled that "the BBC reported (Sept. 18, 2001) that
Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by
senior American officials at a meeting in mid-July 2001 that
'military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the
middle of October.'"
All that was needed was an excuse to unleash the war--which
the White House got on Sept. 11. Congress immediately fell into
line.
The might of the Pentagon military machine delivered the
threatened carpet of ordnance. But two years later, the
military occupation and recolonization of Afghanistan is not
going well for the Pentagon brass, or for Wall Street.
Resistance rockets
Since the end of August--four months after U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared the war was "over"--U.S.
Special Forces have been carrying out the biggest military
offensives in Afghanistan since the original Pentagon onslaught
in late 2001.
The military campaigns are concentrated in the southern and
southeastern regions of the country, where resistance to
occupation is strong and reportedly gaining momentum. The
Pentagon has 15,000 troops deployed in the entire country--not
enough to effectively act as a boot heel on the necks of some
25 million people who do not want to be colonial
"possessions."
The weekend that Bush delivered his speech demanding more
"aid," resistance fighters wounded two U.S. soldiers and killed
six proxy Afghan troops.
Within a two-week period at the end of August, about 150
people--including Afghani troops and police--were killed in
fighting in southern Afghanistan. Some 400 Taliban militia
troops briefly captured one of the districts of Zabul
province.
Taliban recruit Habibullah told journalists: "We've the
strength, guts and force to take even Kabul any time, but we
know our limitations and we wouldn't be able to sustain that
control. We don't have the technology to withstand B-52 air
strikes. What we are trying to do is inflict maximum damage to
the U.S. troops and their allies so that they get fed up and
leave our country."
Money earmarked for bullets, not bread
Mohammed Hasan, a villager in a remote valley near the
Afghani border with Pakistan, told reporters, "We supported the
coalition because we thought that they would change our life,
but so far nothing has changed."
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on the planet. A
progressive revolution in 1978 promised land reform and freedom
for women, but was soon under attack by landlord armies
financed and armed by the CIA. In December 1979, when the
Soviet Union sent troops in to rescue the besieged
revolutionary government, Washington called it a "Soviet
invasion" and began openly spending billions of dollars on the
war, hiring not only Afghanis but fundamentalists from other
countries, including Osama bin Laden.
These reactionary forces overthrew the revolutionary
government in 1996, only to themselves become targets of
Washington five years later.
The U.S.-led bombardment of the country since then has
further ravaged the population and the countryside.
Most Afghanis have no access to health care. Rates of infant
and maternal mortality are among the highest in the world.
Cholera, typhoid and other diseases are rampant. (The
Economist, Aug. 16)
Today, in the provinces, people have little or no access to
education or even to wells for drinking water. Few landlords
allow girls to go to school or women to work. Women are still
regarded as chattel to be traded for debt or profit.
The bullet-scarred capital of Kabul, a city that can barely
support 600,000 people, is now reportedly home to more than 3
million--most living in desperate poverty in densely populated
slums.
Yet while the United States officially forks over almost $1
billion a month on continued military expenditures in
Afghanistan, it spends less than $1 billion per year in
aid.
On Sept. 6, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in a
major speech at George Washington University in the U.S.
capital that his administration would soon unveil an
"accelerated" assistance package which could perhaps double
this to $1.8 billion a year. However, Afghani Finance Minister
Ashraf Ghani said in June that his country needs $30 billion in
aid and investment over the next five years to escape dire
poverty.
The lion's share of U.S. aid to "rebuild" the country is not
earmarked for food or medicine. It's to create an Afghani army
and police.
Both Rumsfeld and Powell stress the need to create a
domestic repressive force to take over policing from U.S. and
NATO occupation forces--and to take the casualties
involved.
Rumsfeld visited Afghanistan on Sept. 7 to meet with Hamid
Karzai--Washington's hand-picked president of the country and a
former consultant for the U.S. oil company Unocal. Rumsfeld's
trip was intended to strengthen Karzai before presidential
elections next June. On Sept. 7 the French Press Agency
explained that Washington is trying to keep Karzai from paying
a political price for the dearth of aid coming from the United
States.
The weak reach of the puppet Karzai government hardly
stretches beyond Kabul, the only part of the country patrolled
by foreign forces. Karzai barely survived an assassination
attempt in the southern city of Kandahar in September. Pentagon
bodyguards saved his life. Keeping him alive is now the
full-time job of pistol-packing mercenaries employed by the
infamous U.S. private military contractor, DynCorp.
Squeezing profits from misery
Much of the almost $1 billion a month being spent on U.S.
military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan goes as
"humanitarian aid" to the military-industrial complex.
"A good chunk of the money being spent for the war goes into
the pockets of companies like the Kellog, Brown & Root
subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former
company," noted the July 12 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Aug. 11 Financial Times of London wrote: "Companies such
as Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of oil service giant
Halliburton, carry out a vast range of services that once were
performed by military personnel. They have supported U.S.
forces in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s
and have had a huge role in the recent U.S. invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq."
This summer, for example, KBR received an open-ended $300
million contract to build more cells for some 680 prisoners
from 42 countries, captured by the Pentagon in Afghanistan in
late 2001. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 12) They are being
caged without formal charges or trials at the Guantanamo naval
base, which the U.S. illegally occupies in Cuba.
While Afghanistan is not like oil-rich Iraq, imperialist oil
cartels are eager to use this strategically located country to
exploit fossil-fuel reserves in central Asia.
Bush's appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad as special envoy to
Afghanistan illuminates this greedy goal. Like Karzai,
Khalilzad is a former Unocal consultant.
Khalilzad, whom some speculate will be named the next U.S.
ambassador to Kabul, is positioned to play an important role in
shaping the post-war Afghani administration, according to the
April 8 Financial Times of London.
"Before coming to office, he was working to help Unocal
secure a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan,
cutting out Iran and Russia. The project involved seeking the
Clinton administration's support for the Taliban regime, which
Khalilzad backed before changing his mind."
Khalilzad worked closely with his former boss--Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz--in urging the United
States to invade Iraq. (The Herald of April 13) Khalilzad is a
founding member of the Project for the New American Century,
whose September 2000 report stated, "The need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the
regime of Saddam Hussein."
Since then, the May 12 New Statesman noted, "The U.S. has
established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of
fossil fuels, especially in central Asia."
Khalilzad wants to put up to 100 senior U.S. personnel into
the core of Afghan government ministries. Washington is
attempting a similar accomplishment in Iraq. (Christian Science
Monitor, Sept. 8)
Some in the U.S. establishment fear the move could backfire
by highlighting the colonial character of the occupation. One
official complained to the Aug. 26 French Press Agency that
Khalilzad "wants to build an empire. He wants to 'Bremerize'
the operation"--a reference to the role of the U.S. civilian
administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
The article reported that "debate over the shape of the U.S.
effort to rebuild Afghanistan--taking place as officials also
wrestle with how to subdue resistance and build institutions in
Iraq--has unleashed a turf war between the State Department and
White House, sources said." Khalilzad reports directly to
Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, bypassing
both the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the State Department.
Khalilzad worked under Rice when she served as a director of
Chevron.
Easier said than done
Yet while Unocal is well placed in Afghanistan, resistance
to the occupation has blocked its plans to construct a
1,500-kilometer, $3.5-billion trans-Afghan natural gas
pipeline.
Even attempts by German and other European powers to reopen
sections of the legendary "Silk Road" trade route between Asia
and Europe are proving difficult.
At this point, bankers, investors, technical advisors and
aid agencies are holed up in Kabul, afraid to travel outside
the capital.
Washington, which had earlier balked at letting its
imperialist rivals deploy troops in Afghanistan, is now eager
to use multinational forces. But one State Department official
admitted that by the time the United States had changed its
mind, everyone else had lost interest.
Whether Unocal can ultimately pipe the gas out of Central
Asia through Afghanistan or has to find another route, the
Afghani economy is not operating in a void in the meantime.
The country's economy grew by more than 30 percent last
year. The boom is largely due to a bumper poppy crop.
After the Taliban banned opium cultivation in 1999, poppy
production plummeted for a three-year period. Now Afghanistan
is once again the world's number one exporter, noted World Bank
president James Wolfensohn. Some 70 percent of the world's
heroin--75 percent of Europe's and 90 percent of
Britain's--comes from Afghanistan. (The Guardian, Aug. 7)
Financial experts in Kabul estimate that fully one-third of
Afghanistan's economy--roughly $1.2 billion a year--is now
drawn from opium cultivation. Once refined into heroin, the
value skyrockets to up to $14 billion. And by the time it hits
urban centers around the world, cut and diluted, the street
value shoots up to more than $25 billion.
When Rumsfeld was asked at an Aug. 14 Pentagon news
conference what U.S. occupation forces are going to do about
the soaring opium production, he demurred: "I don't really
know. It's a whale of a tough problem."
Afghani peasants and townspeople say the drug landlords,
their private armies and the Pentagon occupation forces work
hand in hand.
"We Afghans know who these people are and what they are
doing," said low-level poppy grower Mohammed Jan. He pointed to
a line of mansions in a poor, rural area of eastern
Afghanistan. "They belong to the commanders. Their money is
from drugs, from smuggling." (Associated Press, Sept. 8)
He added, "We know that without the Americans, they would be
nobody."
Abdul Raouf, a car dealer in the eastern city of Jalalabad,
told AP journalists: "Everybody says warlords, but who are
these warlords? They are commanders, they are government
ministers."
Reprinted from the Sept. 18, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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