By Myint Zan
WITH THE formation of the new interim administration of Afghanistan one can say that the five year (mis)rule of Afghanistan by the Taleban has now truly come to an end. If the Taleban have not been consigned to the "dustbin of history" they have at least been "seriously marginalised".
The downfall of the most theocratic and rigid regime in modern history brings forth a recollection of the overthrow of an even more brutal and perhaps one of the most ?ideological regime? in post World War II. It was on Christmas Day 1978 that Vietnam invaded "Democratic Kampuchea", which led to the overthrow of the despicable Khmer Rouge regime, on Jan. 7, 1979, as Phnom Penh fell to the invading (at lest a few would say ?liberating?) Vietnamese forces.
Much has been written of the brutalities of the Taleban. It is not fair to compare the sufferings of people, but even a superficial analysis would perhaps reveal that the ?damage? done to their own fellow country people by the Khmer Rouge in Democratic Kampuchea during their 3 years and 8 month rule was much worse than the deprivations the Taleban had inflicted on the Afghan people in their 5 year rule of what the Taleban called ?Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan?. It is now generally accepted that during their 44 month rule of ?Democratic Kampuchea? up to about 1.6 million Cambodians (roughly one in six Cambodians) died as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies and practices.
I say that the Taleban regime was ?theocratic? and the Khmer Rouge ?ideological?. The Taleban are ?theocratic? in that they used the name of a great religion to force their own version of Islam upon people. The Khmer Rouge used a Maoist political ideology to justify and commit what at least one international lawyer called ?auto-genocide?. It was called ?auto-genocide? because the Cambodian genocide which occurred in the mid-1970s was a case of Khmer leadership killing mainly ? though not exclusively ? ethnic Khmers, that is their own race.
Foreign powers have a role in the rise to power of both the Taleban and the Khmer Rouge. In the case of the Taleban, most commentators agreed that Pakistan was until several months ago the ?sponsor? and supporter of the Taleban whose rise to power in 1996 was as stunning as their recent denouement was swift. In Cambodia too, the secret carpet-bombing of parts of the country attracted the rural populace's support of what was a ragtag army of Maoist guerrillas in the early 1970s, making it into a formidable force which overthrew the US-supported right-wing regime of Lon Nol on April 17, 1975.
If foreign powers (the US indirectly through its secret bombing and China openly by its support) had a role in the Khmer Rouge's rise to power, then a foreign power had a more direct role in overthrowing it. It was the Vietnamese invasion that toppled the Khmer Rouge from power in early 1979, just as the US bombing of Taleban positions enormously assisted the ?Northern Alliance? and their partners to reassert control of Afghanistan, which ultimately led to the newly formed interim administration in Kabul.
There may be some similarities in the way foreign powers directly or indirectly helped the Taleban and the Khmer Rouge rise to power, but the attitudes of the ?international community? or at least of the world's governments towards the Khmer Rouge and the Taleban both when they were in and out of power are starkly different. After its overthrow, the Khmer Rouge coalesced on the Thai-Cambodia border and continued to fight what it called the ?Vietnamese puppet regime?. And the United Nations, for three consecutive years from 1979 to 1981, continued to recognise the Khmer Rouge which controlled less than 10 per cent of Cambodian territory as the ?legitimate government? of Cambodia and accepted ?Democratic Kampuchea? as the seat representing the country in the United Nations. And this despite the human rights record of the Khmer Rouge which, a 1979 United Nations report, called the ?worst since the end of World War II?.
In contrast, the Taleban were never recognised by the United Nations, even though at the height of its power it, like the Vietnamese-installed government in Cambodia, controlled more than 90 per cent of Afghan territory. The Northern Alliance held Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations even though the alliance controlled less than 10 per cent of territory (i.e., until its recent victory over the Taleban). One of the ostensible reasons for the nonrecognition of the Taleban by the United Nations was its appalling human rights record and especially its treatment of women. Unlike the representatives of the Khmer Rouge who ?graced? the halls of the United Nations as ?legitimate representatives? of the Cambodian people the Taleban were shunned, long before Sept. 11, by the UN and indeed the international community. Even in their heyday, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognised the Taleban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Second only to Osama Ben Laden, the Taleban's ?one-eyed? leader Mullah Omar is on the United States' most wanted list. Mullah Omar's alleged crimes are no doubt grave, but they almost pale in comparison to those of the Khmer Rouge's top leaders, such as Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary (both of them Khmer Rouge UN representatives) and Nuon Chea (the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue). All three still live in relative comfort in the Cambodian province of Pai Lin. And there are no rewards, running in the millions of dollars, for their capture, arrest or trial.
For the past three years or so, the United Nations and the Cambodian government have been negotiating to establish a UN-sponsored tribunal which would be composed of Cambodian and international judges. If and when the tribunal is established, top and middle-ranging Khmer Rouge officials might be tried for the crimes against humanity that they committed on their own people. But the wheels of Cambodian and international justice spin very slowly indeed. Even if such a tribunal is established, it is by no means certain that these septuagenarian mass-murderers would ever appear before it.
Still, some solace can be taken from the ?Taleban? and especially from the ?Khmer Rouge? phenomenon ?of old?. The Taleban may have been defeated but there are still thousands if not hundreds of thousands of supporters and sympathisers throughout the world. They are supportive of and sympathetic to if not directly the Taleban, then at least its ?guest?, Osama Ben Laden and his ?cause?. This is evident in those hundreds, if not thousands, of ?Osama? T-shirts that are still popular in a few places. A ?Khieu Samphan? or a ?Khmer Rouge supporter? T-shirt perhaps do not exist.
The particular brand of communism or Maoism practised by the Khmer Rouge has now been destroyed. Its doctrines and practices has been discredited not the least by its erstwhile protagonists, though they did so for obvious reasons, to escape prosecution. The particular ?brand? or interpretation of Islam as espoused and practised by the Taleban, Mullah Omar and Osama Ben Laden has been disavowed explicitly or implicitly by many Muslim governments, scholars and perhaps an overwhelming majority of Muslims throughout the world. Yet even optimists are likely to conceded that this particular interpretation of Islam still has its followers throughout the world and that they would number, at the very least, in the scores of thousands. A similar assertion cannot be made about Khmer Rouge ideology.
Second, if the current trend of ratification continues, the Permanent International Criminal Court could perhaps be established some time in 2002. We should hold no illusions that the establishment of the Permanent International Criminal Court would somehow significantly reduce genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that are committed throughout the world ? over which the court can, with limitations and qualifications, exercise jurisdiction. But now there is a distinct possibility that a few of the ?future international criminals? who would commit these crimes after the court came into existence might have to answer for their misdeeds before it.
The writer is a lecturer at the School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji Islands. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
Reflections on the Taliban's performance as an Islamic movement
by Zafar Bangash
In the two-month period from October 7 to December 7, the Taliban?s world has been turned upside down; from controlling more than 90 percent of Afghanistan?s territory they were forced to surrender their last stronghold of Qandahar to tribal elders on December 7. Whether the Taliban survive in any form at all is not critical; what is important from the Islamic movement?s point of view is to examine the Taliban phenomenon and what lessons can be derived from their experience.
It would not serve much purpose to go over details of the military conflict; these are well known and incidental to our discussion. What we need to consider are the circumstances leading to the emergence of the Taliban, why they appealed to some Muslims ? at home and abroad ? and what lessons can be derived from their experience as they went about trying to build a state structure. First, we must be clear about one basic point: regardless of the events of September 11, the US attack on Afghanistan was expected. Enough information has emerged to establish that the US had planned much earlier to attack Afghanistan; only a pretext had been lacking. It has more to do with US geostrategic and economic objectives than the alleged crimes of Usama bin Ladin or his Taliban hosts. A recent book (Bin Ladin: La Verite Interdite; ?Bin Ladin: The Forbidden Truth?), by two French writers with close links with French intelligence, sheds light on this.
While the US has not provided convincing evidence of Usama bin Ladin?s involvement in the attacks on September 11, it continues to act as if its self-serving allegations constitute proof of his guilt. The Taliban were even more removed from the event, since not one of the alleged perpetrators of the September 11 attacks was an Afghan: so there is and was no justification under any law ? western or other - for the US to attack Afghanistan. The US-led attacks constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, in the words of Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US. Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT has also given a similar opinion.
Theoretically all this sounds good, but the world obviously does not really operate on the basis of legality; as far as the US government is concerned, only might is right. Who is going to pursue America?s rulers to bring them to justice, and which court of law in the world will entertain a case against them? In 1984, when Nicaragua won a case at the World Court against the US mining of its harbours, Washington simply refused to accept the court?s authority. With no warships or cruise missiles at its disposal, the court could not enforce its verdict. So, regardless of the merit of the Taliban?s case against the US, there is little they can do under the present world order. Similarly Israel, India and Russia continue to brutalize the Palestinians, Kashmiris and Chechens respectively without any constraints ? legal, moral or military. All this is well known. East Timor gained "independence" from Indonesia because it is a Christian majority area and the West wanted to cut Indonesia down to size.
But we need to consider the Taliban from another perspective. Were they a government or a movement, or both? They were certainly not a political party in the conventional sense, as many Islamic parties in the Muslim world are; their "backwardness" had made them immune to such divisive constructs of the West. The Taliban emerged at a peculiar time in Afghan history: the failure of various Afghan factions to establish even a modicum of stability in the country after the defeat and retreat of the Red Army from Afghanistan. They fought bloody feuds against each other until the Taliban emerged to sweep them away. The much-touted Northern Alliance was bottled up in the North, from where they shelled the outskirts of Kabul but posed no serious threat to the Taliban?s hold on power. The Alliance?s disparate groups are also not united by anything but their hatred of the Taliban. Along came the US in search of mercenaries; the Northern Alliance were more than willing to oblige.
When they first emerged from their base in Qandahar in late 1994, the Taliban made impressive territorial gains, but much of their success was owed to their ability to appeal to various commanders, rather than fighting them. But it must be said that, not being a political party, the Taliban also enjoyed a certain degree of flexibility. As a government they were not very successful, concentrating on the small things (beards and burqas) rather than understanding issues of good governance by providing relief to their traumatized people, but such failures did not cause their misfortune directly. For instance, it would have made not an iota of difference how they treated women, provided they had been willing to become pawns in America?s geostrategic and economic plans. After all, Saudi Arabia treats women just as harshly, yet it is a trusted US ally (or was until recently ).
The Taliban had other qualities as well; their simple down-to-earth lifestyle appealed to many Muslims around the world. As a movement, they were open, hence willing to accommodate others in their midst. Since the Taliban had little to offer materially except hospitality, those who came from outside, especially from the Middle East, Pakistan and as far afield as Indonesia, did not do so for a free ride; rather, they were motivated by ideals of Islamic brotherhood and defending an "Islamic Emirate". In fact many of them, especially from the Middle East, had gone there during the war against the Soviets. Their own governments (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc.) were glad to get rid of these troublesome young Muslims and thought most of them would get killed there; they also believed that the war in Afghanistan would never end, at least not with the defeat of the Soviet Union.
Depending on how much the Taliban have maintained themselves as a movement ? their leader, Mullah Omar, did not abandon his base in Qandahar throughout the Taliban?s five-year rule ? they may yet emerge from the coils of their current predicament. This depends partly upon their ability to exercise influence on a significant number of people. If this happens, they will be a source of trouble for any future government installed by outsiders. Few Afghans take kindly to outside meddling in their affairs. Nor would the disparate groups, brought together under US prodding to form an interim government, last very long. They have been bribed into agreeing to a future arrangement that is tenuous at best.
But the Taliban phenomenon can only be properly understood with reference to their origins in the Pakistani madrassas and their links with the Pakistani military establishment. While trained in madrassas, their activities were financed by the Saudis and Kuwaitis, and blessed by America and Britain. Pakistan?s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) acted as coordinators for this enterprise. The Americans had despaired of the various mujahideen groups because they failed to restore peace and stability in Afghanistan, not because the Americans cared for the Afghans but because it frustrated their designs to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea/Central Asia to bring oil and gas to South Asia. At first the Taliban were not only welcomed, but US congressional records for 1997 and 1998 show that Washington actively cultivated them, hoping that Afghanistan under the Taliban would become another Saudi Arabia. It was only after the Americans realized that the Taliban were not so pliant that they decided to destroy them.
The Taliban?s madrassa upbringing gave them a degree of independence lacking in western-educated Muslims, yet they suffered from a major weakness: sectarianism. True, all Muslims are the product of sectarianism of one form or another, but not everyone remains its prisoner; some are able to transcend these barriers to see a larger vision of Islam. The madrassas of Pakistan are not equipped to provide that kind of enlightenment. It is not only their outlook on women, but also their attitude towards other Muslims who do not share their particular interpretation of Islam, that is at the root of this problem. The narrow mindset nurtured in Saudi Arabia, with rigid interpretations of Islamic principles, have led to their denunciation of other Muslims as kafirs (unbelievers, infidels). It is not surprising, therefore, that a nexus developed between the Saudis and the Taliban through the madrassa system in Pakistan.
Equally worrying was the Taliban?s reliance on the ISI. Within Pakistan, there is great reluctance to address this issue openly. The ISI and the military establishment as a whole are treated as sacred cows. No discussion of their role, or of the great influence the US exerts on Pakistani affairs through them, is allowed. Even when Pakistan-US relations were at an all-time low, contacts between their militaries continued almost normally. There were frequent visits by senior US Central Command officers to Pakistan. It is important to note that upon assuming power in Pakistan, one of the first persons general Pervez Musharraf contacted was general Anthony Zinni, then chief of the US Central Command.
As a creation of the ISI, the Taliban could only operate at their pleasure. There is something to be said for the Afghans? spirit of independence, but their close links with the ISI, and therefore the US, have been primarily responsible for their present plight. Indeed, one could go a little deeper into history: the mujahideen?s close involvement with and reliance upon the US during their struggle against the Soviets was ultimately responsible for their undoing as well. The Northern Alliance and the southern Pashtoon tribal leaders currently doing America?s dirty work in Afghanistan will also soon discover that Washington cannot be trusted as a friend or ally. In fact, US policy is predicated on the extreme cynicism with which it uses others as cannon-fodder to advance its own agenda, and then abandons them. Unfortunately, many Afghans are not averse to being bought and used by outsiders.
For the Islamic movement, the Taliban experiment yields important lessons. First, a movement must transcend sectarian, tribal and nationalist barriers in order to be called Islamic. Some of the opposition the Taliban faced within Afghanistan from the disparate groups could have been neutralized if the minorities ? Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmen ? had been accommodated in some kind of a dispensation. This the Taliban failed to do. More counterproductive was their sectarian outlook. This is something their friends and supporters in Pakistan must also share the blame for. Sectarianism is a scourge like tribalism and nationalism: it is easily exploited by outsiders. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the most heartening examples of non-sectarian behaviour are demonstrated by Hizbullah in Lebanon and by Islamic Iran. Both have won praise from Muslims worldwide for this quality.
And now to the more touchy subject of getting involved with military establishments in the Muslim world. One must distinguish between being a Muslim and being committed to Islam; the two are not necessarily the same thing. The rank and file of all the armies in the Muslim world are Muslim, but it is simplistic to assume that they are automatically committed to the goals of Islam. The military establishments are in fact the most pernicious purveyors of secular values in Muslim societies because of their greater contact with the outside world and their need for western-manufactured weapons. The Muslims? experience with their armies is grim: in Egypt, for instance, the Ikhwan were used by the Free Officers to seize power, but then decimated once they (the Free Officers) had achieved their objective. The armies in Turkey and Algeria have been used to crush the legitimate aspirations of Muslims. In Sudan, Muslims have had a similarly unfortunate experience. The list goes on.
In Pakistan, the higher echelons of the army are staffed by officers who invariably have Washington?s approval. If an Islamically-inclined officer reaches anywhere near the top, he is soon isolated and weeded out before he can influence the thinking of the military establishment. The Afghans in general and the Taliban in particular have found this out at great cost. The Taliban experience is particularly instructive: they were abandoned at the most critical juncture by those whose policies they had advanced since their emergence on the scene. And this was done for the sake of a country, the US, whose policies have caused great harm to Muslims in the last 50 years.
The most crucial test for the Taliban will be whether they are able to survive as a movement now that they have been eliminated as a government. Muslims are required to live in an Islamic state, but if it is destroyed then their Islamic identity must find expression in the movement. The Taliban may be able to appeal to a core group of supporters, but this may no longer be on the basis of Islam; rather, tribal affiliation is likely to be the motivating factor. This is clearly a weakness, as it will divide them from the non-Pashtoons. Even among the Pashtoons, however, there are tribes that have been bribed by Washington to fight against the Taliban. Equally powerful will be the desire of the Pashtoons in Pakistan to avenge the Taliban?s defeat, for they will see this as a personal slight. The rebirth of tribal nationalism will surely prove costly for Pakistan once Washington washes its hands of Afghanistan and its quarrelsome tribal leaders.
Source:by courtesy & © 2001 Crescent International & Zafar Bangash
It is Wrong To Impose Our Values on Afghans
By Mona Charen
Originally published January 8, 2002
WASHINGTON - While the images of men shaving their long beards and women uncovering their faces after the rout of the Taliban were gratifying, we now seem in danger of edging into cultural imperialism.
Too many reporters from Afghanistan are sneering when a woman appears in public swathed in the burqa. They explain to viewers that some women are still apparently "too fearful" to show themselves in public.
Perhaps. But surely an alternative explanation is possible: Some women in Afghanistan may share the Taliban's extreme views on the matter of female comportment.
And if they do, this is none of our business, is it?
There is no doubt that the Taliban regime was among the worst in the world. One million Afghans fled rather than live with its cruelty. Starvation was rampant. Religious fanaticism proscribed everything from education for girls to music and movies. Any number of Afghans had limbs lopped off for stealing - though many stole because they had nothing to eat.
Still, we didn't start dropping bombs on Afghanistan because the Taliban oppressed women and enforced a radical interpretation of Islam on their people - as tempting as that might be.
Our quarrel with them was that they harbored terrorists. It was the good fortune of the Afghan people that we liberated them in the process of eliminating a threat to ourselves.
But in our triumphalism about freeing Afghanistan's women from the medieval burqa, we are losing sight of the point. The point was coercion, not belief. The Taliban were oppressors not because they believed in the burqa, but rather because they gave Afghan women no choice.
Many religious restrictions that people voluntarily undertake would be considered barbaric if imposed by the state. What if Catholic states denied their people meat on Fridays, or required some women to become celibate nuns? What if Israel forced all Jews to observe the dietary laws and to refrain from travel, work and even use of electricity on the Sabbath?
But all of these restrictions and many more are cheerfully shouldered voluntarily by the devout. Surely it is no more our business to tell Muslim women that they should doff the burqa than we should tell Catholic nuns to shed their habits?
It happens to be the case that most Muslims are not so extreme as to require women to walk around looking like little tents. But most Muslims do believe - along with traditionalists of other faiths, including Judaism and Christianity - that female immodesty is incompatible with piety. Most Muslim women wear headscarves to conceal their hair and refrain from wanton displays of flesh.
The subject of female modesty is a delicate one, and we are certainly free to express our opinion that the Wahabi practice of shrouding women from head to toe goes too far. And certainly we should express our disgust at a system that forbids women to be educated and enforces dress codes with public beatings and even executions.
At the same time, religious people of all faiths have a point when they recoil from our popular culture that sends images of an undulating Britney Spears and a scarcely covered Jennifer Lopez all over the globe. Other cultures would be correct to believe that we've drawn the line way too far in the other direction.
But they see the worst of us. Our popular entertainment and many aspects of our culture have become vulgar and degraded, but in other ways we have resolved the "woman question" far better than other societies. Despite lip service about women's equality, most of the former communist countries treated women very shabbily. In parts of Asia and Africa, young girls are forced into prostitution while governments look the other way.
And in the Islamic world, well, Bernard Lewis - one of the foremost scholars of that region - believes that the woman question may lie at the heart of Islamic backwardness. The Islamic world, he reports, has been wondering for four centuries how the infidels managed to surge ahead of it. One answer may well be that Muslim countries deny themselves the energy, imagination and skills of half the population.
It may well be a secret of the West's success that it liberated women. But let's not indulge the idea that 1,000 years of women's progress was achieved so that Jennifer Lopez could display her breasts.
Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist.
Oil company adviser named US representative to Afghanistan
By Patrick Martin
3 January 2002
President Bush has appointed a former aide to the American oil company Unocal, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to Afghanistan. The nomination was announced December 31, nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul.
The nomination underscores the real economic and financial interests at stake in the US military intervention in Central Asia. Khalilzad is intimately involved in the long-running US efforts to obtain direct access to the oil and gas resources of the region, largely unexploited but believed to be the second largest in the world after the Persian Gulf.
As an adviser for Unocal, Khalilzad drew up a risk analysis of a proposed gas pipeline from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. He participated in talks between the oil company and Taliban officials in 1997, which were aimed at implementing a 1995 agreement to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan.
Unocal was the lead company in the formation of the Centgas consortium, whose purpose was to bring to market natural gas from the Dauletabad Field in southeastern Turkmenistan, one of the world?s largest. The $2 billion project involved a 48-inch diameter pipeline from the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border, passing near the cities of Herat and Kandahar, crossing into Pakistan near Quetta and linking with existing pipelines at Multan. An additional $600 million extension to India was also under consideration.
Khalilzad also lobbied publicly for a more sympathetic US government policy towards the Taliban. Four years ago, in an op-ed article in the Washington Post, he defended the Taliban regime against accusations that it was a sponsor of terrorism, writing, ?The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran.?
?We should ... be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction,? he declared. ?It is time for the United States to reengage? the Afghan regime. This ?reengagement? would, of course, have been enormously profitable to Unocal, which was otherwise unable to bring gas and oil to market from landlocked Turkmenistan.
Khalilzad only shifted his position on the Taliban after the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at targets in Afghanistan in August 1998, claiming that terrorists under the direction of Afghan-based Osama bin Laden were responsible for bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One day after the attack, Unocal put Centgas on hold. Two months later it abandoned all plans for a trans-Afghan pipeline. The oil interests began to look towards a post-Taliban Afghanistan, and so did their representatives in the US national security establishment.
Liasion to Islamic guerrillas
Born in Mazar-e Sharif in 1951, Khalilzad hails from the old ruling elite of Afghanistan. His father was an aide to King Zahir Shah, who ruled the country until 1973. Khalilzad was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, an intellectual center for the American right-wing, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Khalilzad became an American citizen, while serving as a key link between US imperialism and the Islamic fundamentalist mujahedin fighting the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul?the milieu out of which both the Taliban and bin Laden?s Al Qaeda group arose. He was a special adviser to the State Department during the Reagan administration, lobbying successfully for accelerated US military aid to the mujahedin, including hand-held Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which played a key role in the war. He later became undersecretary of defense in the administration of Bush?s father, during the US war against Iraq, then went to the Rand Corporation, a top US military think tank.
After Bush was installed as president by a 5-4 vote of the US Supreme Court, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department and advised incoming Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Significantly, however, he was not named to a subcabinet position, which would have required Senate confirmation and might have provoked uncomfortable questions about his role as an oil company adviser in Central Asia and intermediary with the Taliban. Instead, he was named to the National Security Council, where no confirmation vote was needed.
At the NSC Khalilzad reports to Condoleeza Rice, the national security adviser, who also served as an oil company consultant on Central Asia. After serving in the first Bush administration from 1989 to 1992, Rice was placed on the board of directors of Chevron Corporation and served as its principal expert on Kazakhstan, where Chevron holds the largest concession of any of the international oil companies. The oil industry connections of Bush and Cheney are well known, but little has been said in the media about the prominent role being played in Afghan policy by officials who advised the oil industry on Central Asia.
One of the few commentaries in the America media about this aspect of the US military campaign appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle last September 26. Staff writer Frank Viviano observed: ?The hidden stakes in the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil. The map of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an extraordinary degree, a map of the world?s principal energy sources in the 21st century.... It is inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen by many as a war on behalf of America?s Chevron, Exxon, and Arco; France?s TotalFinaElf; British Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational giants, which have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the region.?
Silence in the media
This reality is well understood in official Washington, but the most important corporate-controlled media outlets?the television networks and major national daily newspapers?have maintained silence that amounts to deliberate, politically motivated self-censorship.
The sole recent exception is an article which appeared December 15 in the New York Times business section, headlined, ?As the War Shifts Alliances, Oil Deals Follow.? The Times reported, ?The State Department is exploring the potential for post-Taliban energy projects in the region, which has more than 6 percent of the world?s proven oil reserves and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves.?
The Times noted that during a visit in early December to Kazakhstan, ?Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was ?particularly impressed? with the money that American oil companies were investing there. He estimated that $200 billion could flow into Kazakhstan during the next 5 to 10 years.?
Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham also pushed US oil investments in the region during a November visit to Russia, on which he was accompanied by David J. O?Reilly, chairman of ChevronTexaco.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has also played a role in the ongoing oil pipeline maneuvers. During a December 14 visit to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, he assured officials of the oil-rich Caspian state that the administration would lift sanctions imposed in 1992 in the wake of the conflict with Armenia over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Both Azerbaijan and Armenia have aligned themselves with the US military thrust into Central Asia, offering the Pentagon transit rights and use of airfields. Rumsfeld?s visit and his conciliatory remarks were the reward. Rumsfeld told President Haydar Aliyev that the administration had reached agreement with congressional leaders to waive the sanctions.
On November 28 the White House released a statement hailing the official opening of the first new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a joint venture of Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and several other oil companies. The pipeline connects the huge Tengiz oilfield in northwestern Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, where tankers are loaded for the world market. US companies put up $1 billion of the $2.65 billion construction cost.
The Bush statement declared, ?The CPC project also advances my Administration?s National Energy Policy by developing a network of multiple Caspian pipelines that also includes the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa, and Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipelines and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline.?
There was little US press coverage of this announcement. Nor did the media refer to the fact that the pipeline consortium involved in the Baku-Ceyhan plan, led by the British oil company BP, is represented by the law firm of Baker & Botts. The principal attorney at this firm is James Baker III, secretary of state under Bush?s father and chief spokesman for the 2000 Bush campaign during its successful effort to shut down the Florida vote recount.
(WSWS)
Open-ended US bombing campaign results in further Afghan casualties
By Peter Symonds
4 January 2002
Amid a rising toll of civilian casualties, pressure is mounting on the newly-installed interim Afghan administration, led by chairman Hamid Karzai, to call for an end to US bombing.
In the latest incident last weekend, more than 100 people, including women and children, are reported to have died in an attack on the village of Qalaye Niazi in Paktia province, just north of the provincial capital of Gardez. The US insisted that the attack was targetted against a compound housing members of the former Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden?s Al Qaeda network.
But angry locals have dismissed the US claims. Haji Saifullah, head of the area?s tribal council, told the Reuters news agency that the raid had killed 107 people, all of whom were civilians and not members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. ?The attacks must end. The Americans should stop bombing,? he said. A Reuters cameraman verified seeing huge bomb craters in the stricken village and scraps of flesh, pools of blood and clumps of what appeared to be human hair in the rubble.
Janat Gul, a villager, told the press that 24 members of his family had been killed. Describing the raid as a terrible mistake, he said: ?There are no Al Qaeda or Taliban people here. People are very upset about what is going on.? At the village cemetery, residents pointed out a fresh grave where 50 of the victims had been buried. They said that the remainder of those killed belonged to semi-nomadic families and their bodies had been returned to the mountainous region of Khost.
An on-the-spot report by international aid workers cited in the New York Times stated that the Taliban may have stashed weapons in the area after fleeing Kabul in November. But they had since moved on, leaving behind only unusable weaponry. The air raids, carried out around 3am, lasted for two hours and flattened five compounds. Villagers reported that after the first raid, some survivors including women and children attempted to flee but were tracked down by helicopter gunships and killed.
?The villagers, mostly the relatives of the victims and a number of other people from the neighbourhood were removing the rubble, using spades and tractors, to pull out the dead bodies,? the report stated. It noted that so far locals had found the remains of ?17 men, 10 women and 25 children.?
Initially, the US military flatly denied any civilian deaths. A spokesman Commander Matthew Klee confirmed that two B-1B bombers and a B-52 had struck ?a known Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership compound? not a village with precision guided munitions. ?All the bombs struck the intended target. We struck what we targetted and nothing else,? he said.
Klee claimed that surface-to-air missiles had been fired in the direction of the bombers and that secondary explosions had been observed indicating the presence of munitions or a fuel dump. But neither he nor other US spokesmen have offered any evidence to substantiate their claims. The US military had not visited the site and thus had no means of verifying who had been killed by the bombs.
Another spokesman Major Bill Harrison tried a different tack. ?It would be certainly a tragedy,? he said, if the reports of civilian deaths were true. But if innocent civilians were dead, Harrison added, ?it would be the direct cause of them [the Taliban] putting people at risk by living alongside civilians.? The stock-standard ?civilian shield? line offers a blanket exoneration for the US military without providing any explanation as to how or why the target was selected or whether any consideration at all was given to likely civilian casualties.
The air strike on Qalaye Niazi is the third incident in Paktia province in which substantial civilian casualties have been reported. On December 27, at least 40 people were killed in the village of Naka when it was attacked by US B-52 bombers and an AC-130 gunship. Just a week before, a convoy of about 100 people was attacked near the village of Asmani Kilai, killing over 60 people. In both cases, locals strongly denied the presence of senior Taliban or Al Qaeda figures.
At a press conference last week, Abdul Hakim Munib said that the Paktia tribal council, which he heads, ?urges the interim administration of Afghanistan and the world alliance against terrorism to stop bombarding... Paktia.? He said that 15 of those killed in the convoy were tribal leaders from the Khost region of Paktia who were en route to Kabul to witness the inauguration of the new regime. ?These were all white-bearded tribal elders who wanted to congratulate Karzai and were mistakenly bombed,? he said.
Last Friday Defence Minister General Mohammad Fahim said there was no point in continuing the bombing as Al Qaeda and Taliban forces were on the verge of being eliminated and bin Laden had probably fled the country. A Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammad Habeel was even more direct in issuing a demand for the bombing to stop.
Washington, however, has emphatically rejected any limitation on its military operations in Afghanistan. As the US commander General Tommy Franks commented from President Bush?s ranch: ?We will not be pressed into doing something that does not represent our national objectives, and we will take as long as it takes.? He said that he expected US forces to remain in Afghanistan ?for quite a long period of time?.
Pressure is mounting on Karzai, who has close ties to the US, to call on Washington to halt its campaign. Last week he met with one of the survivors of the bombed convoy. According to Paktia tribal leader Munib, Karzai gave an undertaking that he would press for an end to the US bombardment. But in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, the Afghan head endorsed the ongoing US military operations. ?We want to finish the terrorists in Afghanistan?we want to finish them completely,? he said, adding the worthless proviso, ?But we must make sure our civilians do not suffer.?
Shifting loyalties
Just who are the targets of the US military is completely unclear. Different accounts have emerged of the December 20 bombing of the convoy that vary according to local loyalties and rivalries. When he described the US attack as a mistake, Paktia leader Munib was quite candid about his links to the Taliban. ?I myself was a deputy minister for communications, border and transport under the Taliban regime. They were with the Taliban. I was with the Taliban. All the people you are seeing here were with the Taliban.?
Munib?s involvement with the Taliban was not unusual. After years of internal conflict, there was considerable sympathy, though not necessarily active support, for the Taliban regime among the Pashtun tribes of the area. Moreover, the rapid expansion of the Taliban after its formation in 1994 was in part due to large bribes paid to local tribal leaders and militia commanders, who then became ?Taliban officials? in their areas. Now Munib and his supporters have seen which way the political wind is blowing and have changed their allegiances accordingly, as tribal leaders have often done in the past.
As an article in the New York Times noted: ?The convoy that came under American attack may have contained some former Taliban members, but it was clearly welcome in Kabul. When it was rerouted along the way by what some here called a rival tribal faction onto a dangerous back road, members of the convoy tried to reach Mr Karzai for assurances they would not be bombed, Mr Munib said. They also used their satellite phones to call American officials, he said, although he did not know which officials.?
Munib and others accuse a rival tribal leader Pacha Khan Zadran of instigating the attack by informing US officials that the convoy contained Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. His brother Ammanulah was one of the handpicked delegates to the UN-sponsored conference on Afghanistan in Bonn and is now the minister for borders and tribes in the new government. Pacha Khan is seeking to consolidate his local control by gaining the post of governor of Paktia, Paktika and Khost.
Pacha Khan denies having fed information to the US military, but is quite open in the denunciation of his rivals. The opposition, he said, were Al Qaeda supporters, adding that the leader of the tribal council was the ?No 1 Al Qaeda supporter?. ?They are with Al Qaeda people in Gardez. They are Arabs and Chechens.? As far as he was concerned, ?America has not made any mistake in its bombing.? Clearly the Zadran brothers have worked out that the surest way of dealing with their enemies in post-Taliban Afghanistan is to denounce them as ?Al Qaeda people? and let the US military do the rest.
The US continued last week to baldly deny making any mistake in bombing the convoy. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers stated on December 28: ?We have nothing to indicate anything other than what we said before, and that that convoy was, again, leadership that was involved in this war on terrorism.? As well as exhibiting a callous disregard for human life, Myers?s statement raises a more fundamental issue.
Just who are the ?terrorists? in a region where loyalties are notoriously changeable and the subject of financial inducement? Is every Pashtun leader and tribal chief who ever supported the Taliban or held a minor post in their administration to be held responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington? If that were the case then the US-backed Karzai could just as well be branded a terrorist for providing the Taliban with money and arms in the early years of its rule.
The very looseness with which the term ?terrorist? is applied underscores its political purpose?to provide the pretext for the unrestricted operation of the US military in a campaign which bears less and less relationship to even its own stated aim of ?rooting out? the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. Even if bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar are caught or killed, Washington can continue to use second or third rank Taliban officials as the excuse for a continuing military operation that is bound up with other objectives: US strategic and economic aims in Central Asia and the Bush administration's political needs at home.
Those who continue to bear the brunt of the US "war on terrorism" are the scores of Afghans who are killed, maimed or driven from their homes.