Afghan lives and freedom sucked into U.S. quagmire

Afghanistan: 30 years of war; a decade of drought; a fraudulent election and government rife with corruption; a murderous Taliban army growing in technical sophistication and strength; eight years of a U.S. occupying army whose purpose has always been U.S. self-interest. This is the reality that is the daily life of Afghans.

Yet those Afghan lives are the last thing considered in all the wrangling in the U.S. around the fraud-ridden election, and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's much anticipated assessment of the U.S. war effort there. Rather, all are concerned with the popularity--or non-popularity--of the war, not only with the U.S. electorate, but even within the Democratic Party. The main concern is damage control.

The Taliban's purposeful targeting of allied troops from Germany, Italy and Canada has strengthened internal opposition in each of those countries, scaring allied leaders, fearful only of not being reelected.

In the face of McChrystal's devastating assessment calling for at least 40,000 more U.S. troops and years of commitment to keep from losing the war, President Obama, who appears reluctant to commit more troops, said, "The first question is: Are we doing the right thing?" What does he mean by "the right thing"? The U.S. has never done "the right thing" when it comes to the people of Afghanistan. The exact opposite is the case.

The latest failure of the U.S.'s supposed initial aim in 2001 of "bringing democracy to Afghanistan" was U.S.-sponsored leader Hamid Karzai's complete disdain for the right of his own people to choose their leaders. Karzai has revealed himself as a gross opportunist who has fostered incompetence, cronyism, and extreme corruption in his own government. He has sold women's deep desire for freedom for the most paltry gains and appointed misogynists, hard-line Islamic fundamentalists, criminal warlords and drug profiteers to his cabinet.

So corrupt was the election that up to one third of the votes cast for Karzai need to be examined for fraud according to European Union election monitors, while the UN Electoral Complaints Commission ordered a recount of ballots in 10% of polling places. That 10% involves 1.35 million of the 5.66 million of the total votes cast or 24%. There were reports of "phantom polling centers"; of people showing up to vote and all the ballots being already marked and cast; of districts where every single ballot was marked for Karzai; of polling places closing early, opening late, or not at all.

Women were severely disenfranchised. Although much was made of the fact that a few women ran for office and two for president, their faces were banned from the ballots, posters torn down, travel restricted, their very lives threatened. The turnout of women voters was much lower than the last election. Many polling stations for women, which are separate from where men vote, never opened. Furthermore, a woman's husband can vote for her, thus stealing her vote at his whim. Tribal chiefs, or warlords, boasted of casting votes for whole villages. If a runoff election happens, at the earliest in October and perhaps not until April, it leaves a leadership vacuum that the Taliban are already filling.

As we go to press, Obama is reported to be mulling over his alternatives. While claiming he only wants to do "the right thing," his overwhelming pragmatism only asks, "will it work?" He has said, "There is no immediate decision pending on resources, because one of the things I'm absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right." When the question is only what will work, and the bottom line is fighting al-Qaeda, then the "right" strategy is not about the freedom and self-determination of the people of Afghanistan. For the Afghan population equally abhorrent as a troop increase is the strategy for more Predator drones that bomb civilians along with the Taliban, cruise missiles that massacre even more civilians, raids by Special Operations commandos, and payment to warlords to do things the way the U.S. wants. This strategy in Pakistan has created hatred of the U.S.

AFGHAN DEMOCRACY IN HISTORY: MYTH AND REALITY

The disregard of the Afghan people's deep desire for freedom is unseparated from the racist myth that Afghans don't understand democracy, that they have a tribal mentality, and are not ready for modernity. History reveals a very different reality.

As long ago as 1959, purdah--the banning of women from public life--stopped being mandatory and women began to enroll in universities, which became co-educational. Women also began to enter the paid workforce and the government.

Afghanistan could have experienced a new beginning after the bloody coup of 1978. As the Marxist-Humanist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya wrote in 1980: "The coup which brought the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to power had popular support. It established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, confiscated all the royalist lands and holdings, announced land reforms and the abolition of all feudal and pre-feudal relations. The party had won power in a single day of fighting because there had been great unrest in that poverty-stricken land, directed against [then President] Daoud..." This new beginning was not to be. Dunayevskaya continues: "...within a short year--the fratricidal factionalism within the PDPA...saw the revolution devouring itself. Land reform lagged behind; women's liberation was hardly begun; disease and poverty were still rampant. And not too far in the background stood Russia, ready with aid and arms and wanting, above all, not to see a genuine social revolution anywhere."[1]

Russia's invasion plunged the country into war that did not end with their departure in 1989 or even with the fall of the Russian puppets in 1992, and the establishment of an Islamic State with an Islamic Jihad Council. Burhanuddin Rabbani--later the titular head of the Northern Alliance, a loose conglomeration of warlords--was proclaimed President, while warring factions continued to slaughter civilians. In opposition to the brutal Rabbani regime and other warlords, the Taliban was born in 1994 with Pakistani support, and advanced rapidly, promising to unite the country under one leadership and to end crime and corruption. Many accepted them as a better alternative than the horrible conditions under Northern Alliance warlords.

By September 1996 the Taliban captured Kabul, made an alliance with the extreme anti-woman fundamentalist party Hezbi Wahdat, and the warlord Dostum, who was recently invited by Karzai back into the country and government. The Taliban imposed horrendous conditions on the entire population, but especially on women. In 1998 they captured Mazar-i-Sharif and massacred thousands of civilians.

SQUANDERED NEW BEGINNINGS

Afghanistan had other chances to become a place where its citizens could enjoy some freedom, but the U.S. smothered every recent opportunity. One was the July 2002 loya jirga, a traditional political meeting of tribal leaders and representatives. It met to set up the government structure.

The U.S. decreed the forces responsible for countless brutalities under the former Rabbani government as the decision-makers at this loya jirga. It did not start that way. As loya jirga delegates Omar Zakhilwal and Adeena Niazi tell us: "Men and women mingled openly and comfortably. In tolerant and lively exchanges, we discussed the compatibility of women's rights with our Islamic traditions. Women played a leading role at these meetings....The one issue that united the delegates above all others was the urgency of reducing the power of warlords and establishing a truly representative government."

There was a grassroots movement to nominate the former king, Zahir Shah, as head of state as a counterbalance to the Northern Alliance. Then the U.S. stepped in and postponed the loya jirga for close to two days while it strong-armed the king into renouncing any role in the government-to-be.

After any semblance of democracy was destroyed by the U.S., Zakhilwal and Niazi report, "the atmosphere at the loya jirga changed radically. The gathering was now teeming with intelligence agents who openly threatened reform-minded delegates, especially women. Fundamentalist leaders branded critics of the warlords as traitors to Islam and circulated a petition denouncing the Women's Affairs Minister Sima Samar as 'Afghanistan's Salman Rushdie,'" implying she should be murdered as a heretic. Terrorizing their critics, the warlords came out in control of the country.

Another possible new beginning came with the process of ratifying the Afghan Constitution. That loya jirga on Jan. 4, 2004, was touted by the U.S. government and press as a breakthrough for human rights--particularly women's rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course a constitution can't make women free, but the Afghan Constitution is so flawed that it created a framework for the strengthening of warlords and the further Islamicization of the state.

The intimidation, silencing of differing views, undemocratic and sexist nature of the proceedings were made public by a 25-year-old social worker. Malalai Joya took the floor and demanded to know: "Why have you again selected as committee chairmen those criminals who have brought disasters for the Afghan people? In my opinion they should be taken to the World Court."

The assembly chairman, Sebaghatullah Mojeddidi, tried to have her thrown out. Abdur Rasul Sayyaf, the Northern Alliance deputy prime minister, gave a 15-minute tirade against Joya, slandering her as a communist and "criminal." In addition, Mojeddidi refused to allow a vote on a petition with over 151 signatures from loya jirga members to change the country's name from the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" to the "Republic of Afghanistan." He publicly called them "infidels," thus placing them in danger of assassination.

The Constitution says that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." This opened the judiciary to people like the then chief justice, Fazl Hadi Shinwari, who told representatives of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that he accepted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights with three exceptions: freedom of expression, freedom of religion and equality of the sexes. "This is the only law," the chief justice told them, pointing to the Koran.

The U.S. and its minions did nothing to democratize the Afghan Constitution. Rather it was women, ethnic Hazaras, ethnic Uzbeks and others who put their lives in jeopardy as they tried to make the Constitution a document that represents their aspirations for a free multiethnic Afghanistan.

In all the scenarios spun out of the heads of U.S. leaders, none of them consider either the desire or the ability of Afghan people to govern their own lives and nation. Yet that is the only solution.

Here is how Shazia, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) who spoke recently in the U.S., put it: "If the troops leave Afghanistan, of course for a few years there will be wars… Years and years of struggle is needed.…We will give sacrifices. But we will do that ourselves. Because history has shown that no country can grant peace and security to another country as a gift. That is the responsibility of that country, that people, to gain those values…by their resistance and by their struggle."

And this is part of what Malalai Joya said on the day of the Afghan election: "Democracy will never come to Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun, or from the cluster bombs dropped by foreign forces. The struggle will be long and difficult, but the values of real democracy, human rights and women's rights will only be won by the Afghan people themselves…."

As we put it in our Editorial in the last issue of News & Letters: "The truly decisive division is that between the rulers and the ruled in each country. The only genuine opposition to war comes from the revolt and resistance of the people, whether that be the uprising in Iran sparked by the stolen election or the mass resistance against the coup in Honduras. As News and Letters Committees has asked since our founding. 'Are you with the people struggling for a totally new way of life, or with capitalism fighting to perpetuate itself?'

"Our opposition to war must therefore spell out not only what we are against but what we are for: a world of new human relations, beginning at the point of production, and encompassing all the dimensions opened up by humanity's many-faceted struggles for freedom."

NOTES:

1. "Carter's Drive to War," News & Letters, March 1980.

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