International news in brief

AFGHANISTAN: Reluctant NATO buildup

A successful resistance to U.S.-NATO occupation troops in Afghanistan has apparently discouraged NATO’s big powers from sending more of their youths to die there. Despite U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s warning that Afghanistan could become a “failed state” if NATO failed to commit more troops, the big powers all took cover and kept quiet.

In recent months the battle in Afghanistan’s southern provinces has reached a new level since some 8,000 of the total 17,000 NATO troops in-country took control from the U.S. last Aug. 1. These troops started taking casualties at a rate higher than U.S. troops in Iraq.

Canadian troops were among the hardest hit. On Sept. 18 a resistance bomber killed four more Canadian soldiers and 18 other people in that region. NATO commanders, admitting they had “underestimated the Afghanistan resistance,” say they need another 2,500 troops plus greater air support.

So far no offers of new troops have come from France, Britain, Germany, Canada or Italy. Finally, Poland offered an additional 900 troops on Sept. 14, to arrive next February, and Romania some 200 more on Sept. 18, hiking its contribution to 500. It appears the entry price to the Western world for these new neocolonies involves offering their youths as cannon fodder for colonialist conquest.

Pope’s slanders provoke Islam

Pope Benedict, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, is in hot water. On Sept. 12 at a public speech in a church in Regensburg, Germany, he quoted a statement from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II in 1391 that slandered the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and Islam. The quote made it appear that Islam was especially guilty of using force to expand.

Coming from the head of the Catholic Church, this comment would always be provocative. At a time when the Bush administration is waging a political, military and propaganda offensive against the Muslim world, and even employs the insult “Islamo-fascism” to describe anti-colonial resistance, the pope’s comment is especially unwelcome.

It is no surprise the comment would arouse a strong reaction. It has the feel of an attempt by Ratzinger to line up the Vatican with U.S. imperialism’s offensive. Over the last five years this offensive included the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and open support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and assault on Lebanon.

The comment aroused both official protests from Muslim spokespeople all over the world and in some places direct action against symbols of Catholicism. Pope Benedict then retreated a little. Rather than retracting the comment, however, he regretted the reaction it provoked and claimed he didn’t really share Manuel II’s point of view.

The pontiff could easily have added that his own Catholic Church has used force to expand its religious influence. It marched into Mexico behind the conquistadors, even destroying the history of Mayan culture by burning that Indigenous people’s public written records. It forced conversion of Muslims and Jews in Spain after Muslim state power was driven out of the peninsula. Not to mention the crusades.

—John Catalinotto

Lethal waste dumped in Ivory Coast

Beginning in the middle of August, a foul, nauseating, choking smell spread through the poor neighborhoods of Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast. After seven people died, 24 more were admitted to the hospital and 36,000 people sought medical attention, the people lost patience.

According to Le Jour, a newspaper in Abidjan, some young people in Akouédo, a neighborhood in Cococy, one of the communes that make up Abidjan, set up a barricade of burning tires, planks and old refrigerators. Toxic wastes had been dumped in the area, releasing the odor. They pulled Minister of Transportation Innocent Anaky Kobeman out of his car, beat him up and dragged him off to a field where the toxic wastes had been dumped. An army helicopter had to rescue him.

The mansion of Marcel Gossio, director of the port of Abidjan, was burned and the prime minister had him arrested. Some other Ivoirian officials are also under arrest.

Laurent Gbagbo, the president, shook up the government but kept the same prime minister. A preliminary investigation established that the toxic wastes came from a Greek-owned ship, flagged in Panama, carrying waste from a Dutch refinery.

The real questions are who authorized the ship to dump its toxic load and what role did the French troops, who are occupying the southern half of the Ivory Coast under a UN mandate, have in allowing this assault on Ivoirian sovereignty and health to take place.

—G. Dunkel