Stop the War in Afghanistan!: August 2010

Looking Back:
U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan;
First Year, 2001-2002;
War on Terrorism;
Implications and Alternatives
March 2002
Bob Sheak

Introduction

Was there another way?

The September 11th, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon occurred almost six months ago (as I write in early March, 2002). In initial negotiations with the Taliban regime in the few weeks after the attacks back in September, the Taliban refused to meet the U.S. government’s demands to turn over Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda members to U.S. authorities, those who were identified by the U.S. government without documented evidence at the time, as the force behind the attacks. It is still not clear whether the Taliban leaders knew the whereabouts of bin Laden and his lieutenants or whether it had the capacity to apprehend them. Nonetheless, the U.S. government assumed that the Taliban regime had such power and, therefore, deserved to be punished for “harboring” terrorists. The U.S. government did not believe that the Taliban regime itself was implicated in the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. Nonetheless, the Bush administration decided that, by providing a safe haven for some of the Al-Qaeda participants, the Taliban had to be punished. Ironically, almost five months into the “war” on Afghanistan, the U.S. forces, with all of their resources and sources of information, have still not apprehended bin Laden or the overwhelming majority of the Al-Qaeda “terrorists” who were located in Afghanistan over the last year or so.

There is no quarrel with the position that says the Taliban produced a highly repressive regime and was particularly ruthless with respect to females and was linked to Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda groups in Afghanistan. At the same time, there are at least three points that make it difficult for many of us simply to accept the U.S. government’s position that it unilaterally commence a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. First, the U.S. government played a opportunistically major role in helping to create and support the Taliban. David Gibbs notes:
“The current war in Afghanistan is increasingly presented as a war for the human rights of the Afghan people, to liberate them from their oppressive Taliban rulers. The Taliban’s severely regressive policies toward women have received particular attention, with even First Lady Laura Bush issuing condemnations of this repression. And the press has overwhelmingly followed suit, portraying the war as an ideological struggle against the evils of Islamic extremism.”

“But the U.S. government and the American press have not always opposed Afghan extremists. During the 1980s, the Mujahiddin guerrilla groups battling Soviet occupation had key features in common with the Taliban. In many ways, the Mujahiddin groups acted as an incubator for the later rise of the Taliban in the 1990s.

“The senior members of the Taliban had Mujahiddin combat roles; Taliban leader Mohammed Omar fought with the Mujahiddin and lost an eye in combat. Many of the Taliban members who were too young to participate in that struggle grew up in Mujahiddin-controlled refugee camps in Pakistan. The religious schools from which many Taliban emerged were steeped in the zealous, politicized form of Islam that the Mujahiddin did so much to foster. Many of the Taliban’s ugliest features--notably their mistreatment of women--had clear precedents in the conduct of the Mujahiddin forces.”

Second, throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the U.S. government expressed little or no concern about the effects of the ongoing war, in which the U.S. played a major and decisive though indirect role, on Afghan civilians or females in particular, or on the nature of the highly repressive government that preceded the Taliban. In his book Afghanistan’s Endless War, Larry P. Goodson reports that, from 1979 until the early 1990s, the war, fueled significantly by the U.S. support of extremist mujahideen, “totally destroyed the progress toward nation building [in Afghanistan] of more than two centuries.” He continues:

“Nearly two million Afghans were killed, perhaps as many as two million more were injured, more than six million were driven out of the country as refugees, and an additional two million became internally displaced. Massive destruction was wrought on the nation’s infrastructure, with more than half of Afghanistan’s twenty-four thousand villages destroyed, large sections of the major cities reduced to rubble, roads turned into dirt tracks, and farms made unsafe after being sown with mines instead of seed. Social and political institutions were destroyed or irrevocably altered, especially governmental institutions, the armed forces, political organizations, universities, the religious hierarchy, and the media” (92).

Third, the U.S. government has supported and is supporting (indeed increasing support of) repressive, authoritarian, non-democratic governments in this region, the former Soviet Republicans of South Asia (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc.), and in other parts of the world (e.g., today: Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia; e.g., in the recent past: Iraq, Iran, Chile, Haiti, El Salvador). Hence, there are some questions about whether the U.S. bombing war should have been launched so expeditiously and with such destructiveness. It is difficult to believe that the principal motives of the Bush administration and the current Congress have much to do with the desire to advance humanitarian goals. The human and environmental costs of the bombing campaign in Afghanistan raise serious doubts about this.

Noam Chomsky’s position – there was an alternative

Chomsky wonders why, prior to its bombing campaign, the U.S. government did not pursue the matter through the United Nations. He comments as follows in an interview with Stephen Shalom (Jan. 2002):

“There's little doubt that the Security Council would have authorized U.S. actions, had the U.S. not preferred to act without any such authorization, presumably in order to establish firmly that there is no outside authority to which it must defer -- a very natural stance for a system of overwhelming power. But that would not have made the actions right and just; only legal, a different matter, as you point out. Were there actions that would have been right and just? Here's one possibility, so far from a radical stance that it was proposed by the Vatican and many others, and even in the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs (Jan 2002), by the preeminent Anglo-American military historian, the very conservative Michael Howard: "a police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations...against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and brought before an international court, where they would receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriate sentence" (I'm putting aside his remarkable judgments about other matters, here irrelevant). That seems a reasonable procedure, though it was never so much as contemplated. If so… it would be reasonable if applied to the U.S. as well -- though that cannot happen short of substantial changes internal to the U.S.; our responsibility” (Shalom, Jan. 2002).
U.S. hypocrisies

John Pilger also reminds us of the hypocrisies in the U.S. government’s position that the Taliban are guilty, the scum of the earth, for harboring terrorists like bin Laden. Perhaps, we in this country should pause, however, as Pilger reminds us of just a few examples of the terrorists who the U.S. harbors and our on-going efforts to train yet more terrorists right here on U.S. soil. He writes:

“During the 1980s, thousands of people were murdered by death squads connected to the army of El Salvador, whose former chief now lives comfortably in Florida.”

“The Former Haitian dictator, General Prosper Avril, liked to display the bloodied victims of his torture on television…. When he was overthrown, he was flown to Florida by the US government, and granted political asylum”

“A leading member of the Chilean military during the reign of General Pinochet, whose special responsibility was executions and torture, lives in Miami.”

“The Iranian general who ran Iran’s notorious prisons, is a wealthy exile in the US.”

“One of Pol Pot’s senior henchmen, who enticed Cambodian exiles back to their certain death, lives in Mount Vernon, New York.”

“What all these people have in common, apart from their history of terrorism, is that they either worked directly for the US government or carried out the dirty work of US policies.”

School of the Americas – “its graduates include almost half the cabinet ministers of the genocidal regimes in Guatemala, two thirds of the El Salvadorean army officers who committed, according to the United Nations, the worst atrocities of the century’s civil war, and the head of Pinochet’s secret police, who ran Chile’s concentration camps.”

Bombing Afghanistan

The U.S. began its bombing “war” of Afghanistan on October 7th last year. The bombing war was, to some extent, linked to the battles on the ground of the anti-Taliban forces (known at the time as the Northern Alliance). There were U.S. military advisers “assisting” the opposition very early on in this process and helping to identify enemy targets for the U.S. bombers. It was a war designed by U.S. military planners to minimize U.S. casualties. This is a laudatory goal, but, in the context of this war, suggests that the value of American lives are considered to be far more precious than the lives of the Afghan people. Don’t forget the principal initial reason for going to war was to capture and punish or kill bin Laden and his al-Qaeda compadres in retribution for the September 11 attacks and the related deaths of U.S. citizens and others in NYC and Washington D.C. For the most part through February, U.S. military forces were responsible for the airwar and the Northern Alliance, anti-Taliban, forces for the groundwar. The two together proved to be a potent force and, in a matter of weeks, routed the Taliban forces from their stationary positions, but, as we are now learning, many of them remain in the country. In whatever terms, it is a military “triumph” that rings far less praiseworthy or as an accomplishment than government officials and many in the media consider it to be. In this regard, consider Chomsky’s observations.

“The success of violence evidently has no bearing on moral judgment with regard to its goals. In the present case, it seemed clear from the outset that the reigning superpower could easily demolish any Afghan resistance. My own view, for what it is worth, was the U.S. campaigns should not be too casually compared to the failed Russian invasion of the 1980s. The Russians were facing a ragtag force in a country that has already been virtually destroyed by 20 years of horror, for which we bear no slight share of responsibility. The Taliban forces, such as they are, might quickly collapse except for a small hardened core.”

…. “When Taliban forces did finally succumb…, opinion shifted to triumphalist proclamations and exultation over the justice of our cause, now demonstrated by the success of overwhelming force against defenseless opponents.”

Anticipated extension of the “war”

While the military action has been focused on Afghanistan in these first six months, the initial targets of this war were not limited to the Al-Qaeda networks and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was said to “harbor” these networks, but also to “an international terrorist network” (including but not limited to Al-Qaeda). Over time, it has become increasingly clear that there are no identifiable boundaries to this war. The U.S. government pledged to use its military forces, and other diplomatic, financial, and intelligence capabilities, to subdue, and, with the support of its allies, destroy “terrorists” and their support structures wherever they existed. The Al-Qaeda network is said to extend into 60 or so countries, although, according to U.S. government officials, there are terrorists or terrorist networks that operate independently of the Al-Qaeda in some unspecified number of other countries. Bush warned the world’s nations that they would have to make a simple choice, either to join the U.S. in this war or be considered a supporter of international terrorism, even though, as in the case of Switzerland, some nations insisted on remaining “neutral.” If they fall into the non-support category, then they risk being labeled a “rogue” state and stand the chance of suffering some sort of U.S. reprisals. Most nations “signed on,” at least nominally, to support this war, and may have at a minimum shared information about terrorists in their own nations. It is still not clear what the nature of this coalition is. What is clear is that the U.S. took unilateral action in Afghanistan and determined the conduct of this multifaceted “war” before there was a “coalition.” The die was cast, with or without allied support. In addition to Afghanistan, the war-planners in Washington and at the Pentagon, have themselves identified a number of “rogue” states, or states that are identified as providing support for terrorist groups abroad, including, for example, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Cuba. U.S. planners have also begun to shore up support for “allied” states in the Philippines, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and in Columbia to support their efforts to squelch indigenous “terrorists.”

Concerns about the humanitarian efforts

There has been concern in many aid organizations and among some observers and critics of the U.S. bombing campaign that the bombing would disrupt and curtail humanitarian efforts to keep over 7 million (out of 26 million) Afghans from starving to death. After some delay in the first two or three months of the bombing campaign, reports from the World Food Organization and other aid agencies present in the country indicated that by December or early January there was enough food in the country to feed most, if not all, of these vulnerable people. The problem, elaborated below, is that in some cases the food did not reached the people in need because the food was stolen by bandits, controlled by tribal leaders who don’t always allocate the food to all ethnic groups in their vicinity, or because the villages in which some people lived were remote and not accessible. Aid organizations have called for a much greater “security” force of foreign peacekeepers than now exists to protect the distribution of food and other supplies. Reports indicate, at this point, that the humanitarian efforts will be insufficient to prevent many Afghans from suffering malnutrition, starving, and/or dying. Many of the supporters of the Bush administration’s Afghanistan policy have been impressed by its alleged humanitarian dimensions. But the evidence clearly establishes that, in the first five months, the humanitarian efforts have been subordinated to U.S. military objectives and bombing.
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What has the U.S.-led “war” accomplished?

There are two parts of an answer to this question. One part is about what, so far, the U.S.- led war has accomplished in Afghanistan. The other part is about how the September 11 attacks and the declaration of a war on international terrorism, its initial focus being on Afghanistan, has influenced and legitimated other U.S. policies and developments: (1) in the Central Asian region around Afghanistan, (2) in planning for an extension of the anti-terrorist campaign into other countries (e.g., the Philippines, Columbia), (3) in major shifts in budgetary policies, not the least of which is a dramatic increase in planned military spending and the apparent rejuvenation and acceleration of the U.S. nuclear capacity, and (4) in policies aimed at beefing up homeland “security” that, in some ways, seem to threaten the basic constitutional protections of U.S. citizens.
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PART I

What (so far) has been accomplished as a result of the war in Afghanistan?

There are at least three prominent and multi-dimensional claims made by U.S. government officials and their supporters that serve to justify the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. First, the air war is said to have been a major factor in the defeat of the Taliban military forces and in the toppling of the Taliban regime, and in the destruction of al-Qaeda bases and disruption of the al-Qaeda network in the country. And that, with the use of “smart bombs” and accurate bombing targets, this triumph was achieved with a minimum impact on the country and with a minimum number of civilian casualties. There is substantial evidence that refutes this latter claim. Second, and related to the contention that the U.S. has been sensitive to the needs of civilians, U.S. officials and their supporters claim that the “humanitarian crisis” that loomed in the last months of 2001 has been averted by the delivery of ample food aid supplies to the country, a claim which requires significant qualification, as I indicated earlier. Third, there are self-congratulations in the fact that an interim government has been created. Located in Kabul, it is hoped that this government will be the precursor of a stable government that will bring “order” to Afghanistan in the near future, that repression in the country is being diminished and that opportunities for girls and women appear to be increasing in the capital, and that reconstruction in the country will be spurred by $4.5 billion pledged by various nations in a Tokyo meeting toward the re-building of Afghanistan. There are many reports that indicate the interim government under Hamid Karzai in Kabul is not supported by many powerful regional leaders, or warlords. There are questions about whether the construction of a viable central government is feasible and, if one is constructed, whether it will be dominated by U.S. interests. If this were to be the case, then the interests of the majority of the Afghan people would be subordinated to the interests of the corporate economic designs and U.S. geopolitical concerns.

I. Bombing and the issue of civilian deaths – and casualties

There are reports from Afghan-based news media correspondents and aid officials and workers, based on observations of the aftermath of bombing and/or on media correspondent interviews with Afghan victims or witnesses, that the bombing has wreaked considerable harm on civilians. These reports indicate that there have been numerous incidents in which civilians have been harmed by the U.S. air war, and that the number of civilians who have been killed by the bombing may be well into the thousands. This is a number that Pentagon officials reject or ignore. We must bear in mind, that the harm stemming from the air war generates injuries as well as deaths, and sometimes has indirect as well as direct impacts. That is, it includes not only civilians who are directly injured or killed by the bombing but also civilians who flee from the bombing or anticipated bombing and the lengthy and widespread disruptions of food delivery into the country and then is subsequent distribution. Given the lack of good information, much of the discussion from the media has focused on the death count stemming from U.S. bombing.

Official Avoidance of Civilian Casualties

Chomsky’s judgment is that we may never know the full extent of the civilian casualties of this war, but there are indications that suggest they are substantial.

“The costs to Afghan civilians can only be guessed, but we do know the projections on which policy decisions and commentary were based, a matter of utmost significance. As a matter of simple logic, it is these projections that provide the grounds for any moral evaluation of planning and commentary, or any judgment of appeals to ‘just war’ arguments; and crucially, for any rational assessment of what may lie ahead.”

September 16 – “the national press reported that Washington had ‘demanded [from Pakistan] the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population.”

Then the threat of military strikes forced international aid workers to leave – increased number of refugees going to Pakistan

“The UN World Food Program and others were able to resume some food shipments in early October, but were forced to suspend deliveries and distribution when the bombing began on October 7, resuming them later at a much lower pace.”

“A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate by the UN that ‘7.5 million Afghans will need for over the winter – 2.5 million more than on September 11,’ a 50 percent increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality.”

“By year’s end, there were hopes that unprecedented deliveries of food in December might ‘dramatically’ revise the expectations at the time when planning was undertaken and implemented, and evaluated in commentary: that these actions were likely to drive millions over the edge of starvation. Very likely, the facts will never be known, by virtue of a guiding principle of intellectual culture: We must devote enormous energy to exposing the crimes of official enemies, properly counting not only those literally killed but also those who die as a consequence of policy choices; but we must take scrupulous care to avoid this practice in the case of our own crimes, on the rare occasions when they are investigated at all” (Z Magazine, Feb. 2002).

Whether to count civilian deaths – a political judgment

Edward Herman notes that the U.S. government has political reasons to avoid a careful enumeration of the Afghan civilian injuries and deaths caused by U.S. bombing and other military actions. In some cases, the U.S. government is enthusiastic about such enumeration, but not so in Afghanistan. Herman writes:

“Where there is an official and imperial demand for a high body count and great indignation, as in the case of Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 (earlier in Bosnia in the years, 1992-1995, Kuwait in 1990-1991, still earlier in the case of Cambodia under Pol Pot, 1975-1978), the collective will be deeply concerned with civilian casualties, will pursue refugees relentlessly to get details of their suffering and will search eagerly for dead bodies.”

“On the other hand, where the imperial power and/or its proxies are doing the killing, as in Afghanistan from October 7, 2001 onward, or in Panama in 1989, or in Iraq from January 1991 to the present; or where client states like Israel, Turkey, and Indonesia in East Timor are doing the killing, the establishment collective has little interest in civilian casualties [exception: Israeli civilians], fails to pursue refugees to get their stories of suffering, and does not engage in any search for dead bodies” (Z Magazine, Feb. 2002: 49).

The issue is not that the U.S. government and military intend to harm civilians, rather it is an inevitable consequence of modern warfare – isn’t it?

Shalom writes: “Surely, it will be said, the U.S. does not intend to kill civilians. But it is morally unacceptable to kill civilians through reckless indifference, even without any specific intent, and the United States’ indifference to the fate of innocent Afghan civilians has manifested in a variety of ways.” He points out that U.S. “smart bombs often miss; they hit villages, hospitals, UN offices, the Red Cross (twice).” The U.S. continues to use cluster bombs, “weapons which scatter hundreds of bomblets over a wide area; most of these explode on impact, but at least five percent of them do not, becoming in effect anti-personnel mines, threatening all who later come in contact with them, including civilians.” In the first months of the bombing war, humanitarian efforts to feed the starving Afghans was significantly disrupted and delayed by U.S. bombing. It appears now, as a result of the disruption and delay, that it is too late to get food to Afghans who live in remote areas, many of whom will starve to death or die from illnesses brought on the severe malnutrition.

How many bombing victims?
The most comprehensive tally of Afghan civilian deaths has been compiled by Marc W. Herold (see his two Dec. 2001 articles in the References), an economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. He estimated from careful analysis of press reports that “at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10 ... an average of 62 innocent deaths a day.” In a subsequent report for the Indian newspaper The Hindu on January 5, 2002, Herold comments on his sources (as he does in the original reports) as follows:
“In tabulating the totals I have relied upon Indian daily newspapers (especially The Times of India), three Pakistani dailies, The Singapore News, British, Canadian, and Australian (Sydney Morning Press and Herald Sun) newspapers, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) based in Peshawar, the Agence France Press (AFP), Pakistan News Service (PNS), Reuters, BBC News Online, Al-Jazeera, and a variety of other reputable sources.”

He notes that the mainstream U.S. press only take casualty (death) reports as authentic when they “are either issued by a Western enterprise or organizationn, or ‘independently verified’ by Western individuals and/or organizations.” He continues: “In other words, the high levels of civilian casualties reported elsewhere (for example, reports by Robert Fisk, Justin Huggler and Richard Lloyd Parry of The Independent and Tayseer Allouni of Al-Jazeera) are written off as ‘enemy propaganda’. Furthermore, he writes, “When faced with the indisputable ‘fact’ of a civilian hit, the Bush team’s standard response was that a nearby military facility was the real target. In almost every case we can document, this turned out to be a long-abandoned military facility. For instance, in the incident where four night watchmen were killed at the offices of a United Nations de-mining agency in Kabul, the Pentagon claimed it was near a military radio tower. U.N. officials, however, say that the tower was a defunct medium- and short-wave radio station, situated 900 feet (270 metres) away from the bombed building, and had not been in operation for over a decade.”

In recent weeks (in February), some mainstream sources have raised questions about the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. In a report for the New York Times, Barry Bearak refers to Herold’s calculations of 3,767 civilian deaths for October 7th through December 10th. He also refers to estimates by Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, whose review of media accounts let him to estimate there had been 1,000 to 1,300 deaths. Bearak then writes: “Most often, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military spokesmen have dismissed accusations of mistakes as enemy propaganda. They express confidence in their targeting and regret any ‘collateral damage.’ They maintain that extraordinary efforts have been taken to minimize civilian losses, something that even most critics of the war effort would not dispute.” Be that as it may, Rumsfeld and other administration officials apparently refuse to acknowledge, typically without any independent verification on their part, that even hundreds, let alone thousands, of Afghan civilians have been killed and injured by U.S. bombing.

Indeed, Herold’s estimates may be on the low side. Jensen and Mahajan (Dec. 21) emphasize that Herold’s estimate of 3,767 Afghan civilian deaths in the first 8 ½ weeks of the “war” is “conservative.” They provide more detail about his methodology, and its limits, as follows:

“…he relied on reports from official news agencies, major newspapers around the world, and first-hand accounts, seeking cross-corroboration whenever possible. When precise figures weren’t available, he did not arbitrarily plug in numbers, and he also did not use estimates of the indirect deaths that result when, for example, bombing shuts down a hospital. As a result, Herold’s number likely is an undercount; he estimates 5,000 civilian deaths in those weeks is probably closer to the truth.”

Ian Traynor (Feb. 12, 2002) refers to other estimates that also suggest that Herold’s estimates are low.

“’You can probably double Herold’s figure because so much goes unreported here,’ the demining expert says. ‘Most Muslims are buried within six hours of death. There’s no need to report births or deaths here and the hospitals do not have anything on the dead.’

“Not included in the professor’s statistics, for example, because it has not been reported until now, is the attack on the village of Moshkhil in the south-eastern province of Paktika. Three air strikes within 12 hours on December 5 and 6 left 16 people dead. The villagers insist there were no Taliban in the vicinity and no military targets.

On the afternoon of December 5, recounts a man from the village who gives his name as Rashid, a US plane bombed two cars, killing two brothers and a sister. An hour later an armed stranger on a motorbike sped through Moshkhil asking the locals where ‘the guests’ [meaning Taliban or al-Qaida] were staying. There were no guests, he was told. Within an hour another US plane bombed an empty car. Then at half past three the next morning the planes returned, bombing a mosque and destroying it as well as seven adjacent houses. Thirteen people died as they slept.
“’Why did they bomb my village?’” asks Rashid, who lost two relatives. ‘It could not have been stray bombs since they bombed three times. It must have been a blunder.’”

The numbers continue to go up

Herold (Jan. 6, 2002) has updated his initial calculations of Afghan civilian casualties. In a report, “Recent ‘Success’ Tally of U.S. Bombs: Over 200 Civilians are Killed to Get 1.5 Taliban Leaders,” that was posted on the Cursor website on January 6, 2002, he writes: “The bombing and missile attacks have slaughtered an additional 194 – 269 Afghan civilians between December 10 – 29th according to newswire reports and newspaper accounts citing first-hand accounts.” He summarizes his findings as follows:

November 16
Khost, Paktia
24+ raveling killed
December 10
Mashkhel, Paktika
16 civilians killed
December 10
Mashkhel, Paktia
10 civilians killed
December 20
Asmani Kilai, Paktia
20-65 civilians killed
December 26/27
Naka, Paktika
25-40 people killed*
December 28/29
Shekhan, Paktia
15+ civilians killed
December 29/30
Qalaye Niazi, Paktia
(52)-92-120 civilians killed
January 3
Zhawar area, Paktia
32+

As one example, here is what Herold writes about the bombing of Qalaye Niazi on December 29/30:

“In one of the most serious bombing attacks upon civilians in the Afghan War, a B-52, a strike jet, and two helicopters carried out a night-time strike on December 29th against the village of Niazi Qalaye, 20 kms north of Gardez, near the Terah Pass, on the highway linking Gardez with Kabul.8 The attack killed 92 – 107 civilians, destroyed 12 homes, and injured 10 people. Janat Gul recounted how the 24 members of her family perished. Huge craters littered the area and human remains were scattered in the craters.8 Craters are not caused by secondary explosions of ammunition dumps. A resident, Qismat Khan, said the attacks began around 11 p.m. and an ammunition dump of the ousted Taliban had previously existed in the village. By Sunday night, over fifty graves had already been dug, and other victims who were semi-nomadic farmers had been returned to the mountainous region of Khost. Villagers on the spot vehemently deny any presence of Taliban or foreign troops in the area. Even the United Nations confirmed that “all of the injured and dead were civilians,” though the U.N figure is 52 – 17 men, 10 women and 25 children [which presumably omits the bodies of the semi-nomads].”

Reports from the mainstream media also refer to bombing incidents in December that caused Afghan civilian deaths. For example, Marc Kaufman and Peter Baker, correspondents for the Washington Post, report on the comments of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan interim leader, on two incidents. They write:

“U.S. military forces killed innocent people in two controversial operations in southern Afghanistan recently, and in one case were intentionally deceived into believing a targeted convoy of vehicles included Taliban officials, according to the Afghan interim leader, Hamid Karzai.”

“Karzai described a predawn raid by U.S. Special Forces that left at least 18 dead in the village of Hazar Qadam last month as ‘a mistake of sorts,’ resulting from ‘an unfortunate movement of people at the wrong time.He said he also had concluded that vehicles attacked by U.S. warplanes near the city of Khost in December were carrying ‘tribal elders’ to his inauguration in Kabul, not Taliban leaders as U.S. commanders were told.”

Not all Afghan civilian deaths attributable to U.S. military activities stem from bombing
David Corn (Feb. 13, 2002) reports on how the Pentagon has recently admitted that some of its ground operations are responsible for the deaths of innocent Afghan civilians. Corn writes:
“Over the past week, two US military operations originally touted as successes have turned into PR nightmares for the Defense Department and the CIA. First, the Pentagon had to acknowledge (sort of) that a January 24 commando raid that attacked two small compounds in Hazar Qadam – resulting in the deaths of 21 or so Afghans and the capture of 27 others – had been a mistake. Those people killed or grabbed were not, as the Pentagon first announced, Taiban or Al Qaeda fighters, but troops and local officials loyal to the current government….

Then ‘The Washington Post” reported on Monday that the three men killed on February 4 in the remote village of Shawar by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone were not Al Qaeda leaders, as the Pentagon had suggested. They were Afghan peasants foraging for scrape metal, and the group did not include Osama bin Laden.”
Some official U.S. acknowledgement and even compensation

In the case of the “mistaken” attack on Hazar Qadam, the CIA has offered compensation to the families of the victims. David Corn’s (Feb. 7, 2002) full account of the whole episode is worth repeating.

“Two months ago, I wrote a piece for the ‘The Los Angeles Times’ proposing that Afghan civilians who had lost relatives, limbs, homes and businesses due to errantly-targeted US bombs receive compensation from Washington. The article was reprinted; I talked up the idea on television and radio. And never have I received more hate mail, with my assailants virulently accusing me of being anti-American and pro-terrorists.” – “Now, I am happy to note, the CIA is on my side, for the Agency in the past few days has been handing out cash to relatives of Afghan soldiers mistakenly slaughtered by the US”

“On January 2, US Special Operations troops attacked two small compounds in Haraz Qadam, a town 100 miles north of Kandahar. At least eighteen people were killed. Twenty-seven were captured, and the Pentagon announced its prisoners were Taliban and al Qaeda fighters…. About a week later, CIA officers were in the field working with tribal leaders to pay $1000 to the family of each Afghan wrongfully killed.”

“What is interesting is how the Pentagon at first tried to deny a tragedy had taken place. When Craig Smith of “The New York Times’ wrote a story questioning the raids on January 28 – after interviewing dozens of local folks whose testimony was compelling – the Pentagon, in automatic-pilot fashion, defended the operation. ‘We take great care to ensure we are engaging confirmed Taliban or Al Qaeda facilities,’ Maj. Bill Harrison, a US Central Command spokesman, told the newspaper. ‘As a result of this mission, we detained 27 individuals, and believe that our forces engaged the intended target.’”

“Three days later, after Afghan officials kept insisting innocent troops had been killed, the Pentagon announced it was reviewing the episode.”…. “On February 4, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld finally acknowledged that ‘friendly’ Afghan forces might have been killed during the raid. Forty-eight hours later, the Americans released the 27 Afghans it had grabbed at the compounds, and the Pentagon announced that not one was a Taliban or al Qaeda fighter. By now, US officials were confirming the CIA was arranging compensation payments. Still, Maj. Ralph Mills, a spokesman for Central Command, maintained, ‘The release of the detainees isn’t an admission that we made a mistake.’ He asserted that during the raid the US forces had been shot at by ‘people’ who weren’t in uniform.’”

There is no independent verification of any shot and some evidence that there was no shooting from the civilians. “Craig Smith reported that a farmer who claimed to have witnessed the attack said he heard people in one compound screaming, ‘For God’s sake, do not kill us. We surrender.’ And an AP report quoted Afghan witnesses who maintained that no one fired back during the raid.” Corn (Feb. 7) continues:

“It is worth noting that it took a lot of pressure – from media reports and Afghan officials – to force the Pentagon to concede there may have been a problem with this raid.”
“…the Bush administration should build upon the CIA’s latest program in Afghanistan and compensate all civilians who have been the victims of Pentagon errors. If the CIA supports restitution, how unpatriotic can it be?”

The Question of Cluster bombs: particularly “savage” weapons
What are they?

The Federation of American Scientists identifies and describes different types of cluster bombs.

“The CBU-87 is a 1,000 bomb, Combined Effects Munition (CEM) for attacking soft target areas with detonating bomblets. The CBU-87 CEM, an all-purpose, air-delivered cluster weapons system, consists of a SW-65 Tactical Munitions Dispenser (TMD) with an optional FZU-39 proximity sensor. The BLU-97/B Combined Effects Bomb (CEB), effective against armor, personnel and material, contains a shaped charge, scored steel casing and zirconium ring for anti-armor, fragmentation and incendiary capability. The bomblet case is made of scored steel designed to break into approximately 300 preformed ingrain fragments for defeating light armor and personnel. A total of 202 of these bomblets are loaded in each dispenser enabling a single payload attack against a variety and wide area coverage. The footprint for the CBU-87 is approximately 200 meters by 400 meters.”

“The CBU-89 Gator Mine, a 1,000 pound cluster munition containing antitank and antipersonnel mines, consists of a SUU-64 Tactical Munitions dispenser with 72 antitank mines, 22 antipersonnel mines, and an optional FZU-39 proximity sensor. Mine arming begins when the dispenser opens. Mine detonation is initiated by target detection, mine disturbance, low battery voltage, and a self-destruct time-out. The antitank mine is a magnetic sensing submunition effective against tanks and armored vehicles. The antipersonnel mine has a fragmenting case warhead triggers by trip wirers. The US Air Force employed 1,105 CBU-89s during the Gulf War.

“The Gator mine system provides a means to emplace minefields on the ground rapidly using high-speed tactical aircraft. The minefields are used for area denial, diversion of moving ground forces, or to immobilize targets to supplement other direct attack weapons.”

Marc W. Herold (Feb. 1, 2002) reports:

“A favorite U.S. weapon used in Afghanistan has been the 1,000 lb CBU-87 cluster bomb with its 202 BLU-97 bomblets. The BLU-97 cluster bomblet is one of the cheapest air-delivered weapons available, costing only ~$60 per unit. Unlike most American mines, cluster bomblets are not designed to break down over time as this would raise their low cost. A single BLU-97 bomblet kills anyone within a 50 meter radius and severely injures a person within 100 meters. It is considered more dangerous than a conventional land mine. Peter Le Sueur, technical adviser to the UN’s Mine Action Program Afghanistan [MAPA] describes this weapon,
… “the BLU 97 had three purposes – to destroy armoured vehicles, kill people with shrapnel fragments and ignite fires in military targets such as munition dumps or oil depots.”
“According to Le Sueur, one of its most savage features is its six-millimetre diamond-patterned steel jacket. “When the bomb explodes, the steel splits so you get hundreds of high-velocity steel fragments raveling at the speed of a rifle bullet. “They can kill or injure people from over 100 metres (330 feet) from the point of detonation”.

How many cluster bombs have been dropped on Afghanistan – and how many did not explode?

Human Rights Watch (Oct. 2001) reports that, according to U.S. military sources, “the Air Force began dropping cluster bombs within a matter of days” of the U.S. bombing camptain in Afghanistan. The report states: “During the first week of the campaign, it is believed that Air Force B-1 bombers dropped 50 CBU-87 cluster bombs in some five missions. CBU-87 cluster bomb use has continued after the first week.”

By the middle of December, according to The Frontier Post (Dec. 27, 2001), “The Pentagon has not said how many bombs it has dropped on Afghanistan, but experts on unexploded ordnance estimate that besides the array of dumb bombs and bunker-busters, coalition forces have dropped 600 cluster bombs.” Each of these bombs contains 202 mini-bomblets “designed to pierce light-armored vehicles, start fires and send shrapnel flying in all directions.” This means that over 120,000 bomblets intended to explode in the air or on impact have dropped during the U.S. air war. These cluster bombs do not include the CBU-89 Gator cluster bomb, which contain bomblets that are designed not to explode on impact, but rather to become a kind of landmine. There are no reported estimates of how many CBU-89 bomblets have been dropped.

Of the cluster-bomb bomblets intended to explode, as many as 30% did not. Marc. W. Herold (Jan. 5, 2002) writes: ““Officials of the United Nations’ mine-clearing unit in the region have noted that 10 to 30 per cent of the missiles and bombs dropped on Afghanistan have not exploded, posing a lasting danger (Pakistan News Service, October 20, 2001; and Amy Waldman, “Bomb Remnants Increase War Toll,” The New York Times, November 23, 2001).” According to a report from Denar Kheil, Afghanistan, Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe correspondent, refers to de-mining specialists who told her in the second week of January that “nearly 20 percent of the ‘bomblets’ they’ve seen in Afghanistan had failed to explode on impact.” She notes that the “Pentagon puts the failure rate at about 10 percent.” Hence, given over 120,000 cluster bomb bomblets intended to explode, somewhere between 12,000 and 24,000 failed to explode and become part of the vast array of unexploded ordnance that already mars the Afghanistan landscape. The Frontier Post cites Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghanistan and Pakistan for Save the Children, who “said 10 million land mines and pieces of unexploded ordnance still need to be cleared from Afghanistan, roughly one for each of the 10 million children who live there.” The cluster bomblets dropped in recent months by the U.S. air force add to this horror and terror for millions of Afghan civilians.

Where were the cluster bombs dropped?
Marc W. Herold (Feb. 1, 2002) writes: “On New Year’s Day, 2002, the United Nations’ UNIC Director Eric Falt disclosed that U.S. planes had dropped cluster bombs in 103 cities of Afghanistan and possibly in another 25. The areas around the Shomali Plain and Tora Bora were particularly hard hit with cluster bombs. More than 600 cluster-bombs were dropped by U.S. planes in the Shomali plain region alone during the five weeks the U.S. planes pounded Taliban positions.”
Reporting from Media Lens, David Edwards and David Cromwell cite reports from Medecins Sans Frontieres (Physicians Without Borders).

“Many bombs were dropped in residential and other populated areas and the Mine Action Centre is doing their best to deal with all the emergency cases. However, they do not have enough human, logistical and other necessary resources to clear the region effectively within an acceptable period of time.”

“In its field operations in Herat, Médecins Sans Frontières comes across many civilians who have been injured by mines or UXOs (including cluster bombs). During the recent US air raids over Herat, western Afghanistan, several cluster bombs have been mistakenly dropped on residential areas causing a large number of civilian deaths and casualties... According to official data of local de-mining organizations and the Regional Hospital in Herat, 38 deaths and an unknown number of injured people due to cluster bombs have been registered so far. However, some doctors in Herat Regional Hospital believe this number is much higher. In the village of Qala Shaker near Herat city alone, 12 people died and more than 20 were injured due to cluster bombs.”
How many Afghans have been killed or injured by cluster bombs?

There is no systematic and conclusive evidence yet available to answer this question. However, in a report of February 1, included on the Cursor website, Marc W. Herold (Feb 1, 2002) summarizes what he has been able to find from his wide-ranging review of media reports from Afghanistan. His sources can be found in the article. This evidence does not answer the question of how many people have been killed or injured by U.S. cluster bombs. But it suggests that the number is not insubstantial. What follows is his description of some of the instances of injury and death due to cluster bombs.

“Nazeer Ahmad, de-miner for the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation [OMAR] based in Jalalabad, says,

“We completely forgot about the Russian bombs and mines when we saw American cluster bombs. They are horrible things. Nobody knows how to detect them and nobody knows how to destroy them. In Herat when Americans dropped cluster bombs, there were little bomblets that were yellow color. Children thought they might be food. Thirty have been killed and 25 wounded by cluster bombs.” Suzanne Goldenberg reports from Herat that at least 41 persons have been killed and 46 injured by cluster bombs in the area since the bombing ceased. Farnaz Fassihi reported for the Newhouse News Service in late December how “at the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital in Kabul, all the beds in the children’s ward are occupied by youngsters injured by cluster bomblets.”

“As Mark Baker writes, the terror began just after midnight on October 22nd in Shaker Qala when villagers were awakened from their sleep by the sound of aircraft . Moments later bombs were raining down. Two hours later, eight people had perished, dozens were wounded. Villagers scrambled from their homes, putting the wounded on carts to take them to Herat’s hospital four kilometers away. A new danger lurked in the guise of yellow soda cans scattered through the village’s narrow lanes and adjacent fields.”

Herold’s review found that the first victims of an exploded cluster bomb was blown up in Shakar Qala, outside Herat, where the “UN confirmed that eight people had been killed immediately in the attack on Shakar Qala, and a ninth had died after picking up the parachutes attached to the bombs.” He continues with other examples.

“On Wednesday, November 21st, twelve-year old Mohibollah was out collecting firewood in a shabby neighborhood on the edge of Herat. Minutes later, he was running down the street screaming, his face splattered with blood. A stump of flesh, smashed bones and mangled fingers dangled from his left arm. He was a victim of the legacy of a Monday night bombing attack on October 22nd, when U.S. planes dropped cluster bombs upon the village of Qali-e-Shater [Shakar Qala], two miles northeast of Herat.

“The attack itself killed eight immediately with a ninth dying from an unexploded bomblet the next day. The U.S. attack also destroyed 30 of the hamlet’s 45 homes. The intended target was a Taliban base two kilometers away. A resident, Abodolahad, recounted how eight bomblets landed on his house, peppering the walls with shrapnel and killing his brother. But four of the bomblets failed to explode, forcing the family out to live with neighbors. Another recent report describes the cluster-bombing of Qala Shater village:

“At least six of the bomblets parachuted to earth in the narrow passageway linking the Farid family compound to the road, bursting through a mudwall and gouging out chunks of plaster from the main home. One family member died, two teen-aged neighbors were killed, and two unexploded bomblets remained behind.

“At first, the family waited, and then they decided to try their luck. A friend of Ahmed Farid, 26, after trying defusing techniques, decided to hurl a bomblet into the courtyard of an abandoned home next door. Unfortunately, Ahmed was crossing the courtyard. Fiery bits of shrapnel burnt a series of almond-sized scars from right shoulder to calf, and put the iron worker in the hospital for two days…”

…. “On December 7th, in Sakhsalmun, a village about four kilometers outside Herat, it was a family’s visit to a relative’s home. The kids didn’t want to stay inside listening to grown-up talk and raced outside. Abdul Nasir, 14, and others scrambled up the hillside next to the hamlet. They came across the little yellow soda can with a parachute attached to it. One boy picked it up and it went off. His body was shredded. Abdul Nasir was comparatively lucky: his jaw was badly broken and one of his hands sliced between his two middle fingers. In early December, he sat in the surgical ward at the Herat Red Cross Hospital. U.S. planes had cluster-bombed Sakhsalmun earlier, close to a former Taliban garrison, and four civilians had been killed by U.S. bombs which missed their target.

“According to official data of the local de-mining organizations and the regional hospital in Herat, 38 deaths and an unknown number of injured people due to cluster bombs have been registered. However, some doctors at the Herat regional hospital in January 2002, believe this number is much higher. In the village of Qala Shakar near Herat city alone, 12 people died and more than 20 were injured due to cluster bombs. In the village of Rabat, ½ hour west of Herat, 10 civilians have died since U.S. bombing ceased in early November.”

Further examples from Herold’s report.

Tuesday, October 30th Day after heavy cluster bomb raid upon village of Jebrael in western Herat which killed 12 persons, a child picks up a bomblet and is killed.21
Thursday, November 1st , One killed and one injured in Ishaq Sulaiman village near Herat.
Tuesday, November 6th, in the Kharam border district of Pakistan, a shepherd, Mohammed Esa, picks up a strange object which explodes, injuring him.

Wednesday, November 7th, One civilian is killed and another injured by an unexploded cluster bomblet in the village of Ishaq Sulaiman Zai, near Herat22.

Saturday, November 17th, village of Charikari, near Khanabad/Kunduz heavily cluster-bombed.23

Wednesday,November 21st, Twelve year old Mohibollah was seriously maimed – his face splattered in blood and a stump of flesh, smashed bones and mangled fingers dangling from his left arm---when a cluster bomblet [dropped on October 22nd ] exploded as he was gathering firewood in the poor neighborhood of Qali-e-Shater on the outskirts of Herat.24

Sunday, November 25th, Kalakhan village 12 miles north of Kabul. A farmer, Gholam Khader, 45, returns to his village at 7 a.m. and is killed as he walks on one of the CBU-87’s 202 bomblets. Another is injured.25 A de-mining crew found 40 BLU-97 bomblets there on November 26th.
Sunday, November 25th, One killed and one injured in Qarabagh, a front-line town heavily bombed by B-52s on November 9-10. The village of Denar Kheil was heavily cluster-bombed too.

Tuesday, November 27th, village of Qala Shatar near Herat, a 12-year-old boy picks up the bright yellow soda-can sized bomblet, loses his arm. A second 8-year-old boy is injured. The boys were walking to school. Earlier, one civilian was killed and another injured in the village of Ishaq Sulaiman after picking up a cluster bomblet.

Tuesday, November 27th, village of Zar Karez north of the Kandahar-Pakistan highway. A cluster bomb falls upon a semi-nomadic village, injuring two severely.
Tuesday, November 27th, Shamshad village in Nangarhar province. Three children were killed and seven were injured when a cluster bomblet exploded as the children were scavenging through heaps of scrap iron to sell to vendors.26 Shamshad had been heavily hit by U.S. planes on November 18-19th, killing ~40 villagers.

December 3rd, village of Mengchuqur in northern Tokhar province. Islamudin, 20, is blown up when he picks up an unexploded cluster bomb. He had just returned, having fled in 1998. On his first day home, he had gone out to look at what remained of his sister’s house and spotted a bright metal object.27

December 7th, village of Sakhsalmun, 4 kms. Outside Herat. One boy was killed and one injured, Abul Nasir aged 14, when they played with a cluster bomb.28

December, village of Rabat west of Herat. The bomblets dropped in early November scattered in an area more than 1.6 kms away from a Taliban base. Three children injured when picking up cluster bomb, on their way to a wedding. Farmers are killed in areas they try to begin planting wheat and tending to vineyards.29

Late December. In a refugee camp in Herat, two children [aged 9 and 10] are killed and 2 others injured when they are collecting firewood and a BLU-97 bomblet explodes.
Jan. 1-21. Mazar-e-Sharif area. The Halo Trust reports that seven children have been killed while playing with bomblets in a village near Mazar.30

In conclusion, Herold writes: “Widely decried by over 50 humanitarian and medical groups across the world, the U.S. defends its use of cluster bombs as an appropriate response to the killings at the World Trade Center. The French Nobel-prize [1999] winning organization, Doctors Without Borders, finds cluster bombs being indiscriminate weapons and based upon the provisions in the Geneva Protocol their use is thus prohibited [Additional Protocol I, Art. 51, 4 and 5b]. The International Red Cross called for an international ban on cluster bombs in September 2000.” There is one further extremely disturbing point. In a report for Z Magazine (March 2002), Anthony Arnove writes:

“But the United States is contributing only $7 million for current demining efforts. More importantly, ‘the United States has not provided a list of areas where it dropped cluster bombs,’ the [New York] Times reported.”

The environmental impact

There is an additional point that needs to be made, that is, the U.S. bombing has further contributed to the devastation of the Afghanistan environment – and hence created long-term problems for the possible recovery of this war-torn and conflicted country. In an article for New Science, Fred Pearce (Jan. 2, 2002) contends that “the U.S. bombing campaign is conspiring with years of civil conflict and drought to create an environmental crisis.” Pearce writes:

“Much of the south-east Afghanistan was once lush forest watered by monsoon rains. Forests now cover less than two per cent of the country. ‘The worst deforestation occurred during Taliban rule, when its timber mafia denuded forests to sell to Pakistani markets,’ says Usman Qazi, an environmental consultant based in Quetta, Pakistan.”

“And the intense bombing intended to flush out the last of the Taliban troops is destroying or burning much of what remains.”

…. “Bombing will also leave its mark beyond the obvious craters. Defence analysts say that while depleted uranium has been used less in Afghanistan than in the Kosovo conflict, conventional explosives will litter the country with pollutants. They contain toxic compounds such as cyclonite, a carcinogen, and rocket propellants contain percholorates, which damage thyroid glands.”

II. The “humanitarian crisis”: How many Afghans are starving or dying from hunger-related disease?
In an earlier report on events up to the middle of December, I commented on what appeared to be a looming humanitarian catastrophe.

“There are concerns that there will not be enough food to feed up to 7 million Afghan people [in a population of about 26 million] through the winter of 2001-2002 or that, if there is enough food, it will not reach all of the people who are in danger of hunger or starvation. At least 2.5 million of these people have been pushed into this desperate position since the bombing began in early October. Traynor (Dec. 4) reports that: “The immediate priority is to feed, clothe and shelter millions through the winter. UN experts believe,” he writes, “7m [million] people are at risk, a humanitarian challenge that dwarfs other recent refugee emergencies such as Kosovo.” In a report for the Washington Post on December 11, Pamela Constable writes that “The World Food Program is [making an effort at] feeding 7 million Afghans nationwide, bringing more than 55,000 tons of food a month into the country.” But there is evidence that this food is not reaching large numbers of people who are in desperate need of it, in major cities as well as in the countryside. There are a number of problems. Roving bandits and other armed groups attack the truck convoys and food-distribution sites. Keena (Dec. 4) reports: “Highway robberies by armed gunmen appear to have increased, judging from anecdotal evidence and the refusal of aid groups and others to travel.” And, additionally: “Critical supply routes are still cut off from Pakistan and Uzbekistan, and the threat of violence is so high that truckers won’t move aid supplies at night.” The continued U.S. bombing has also exacerbated the problem, as it has driven people away from cities and villages, sometimes into areas that are not easily accessible.

According to Ridgeway (Dec. 6), “A current UN report says ‘aid workers in the east near Jalalabad were forced to leave their posts following intense U.S.-led bombing in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.’”

More recent reports since December indicate that the problems of distribution continue into the first two months of 2002. A report on the BBC website (January 9, 2002) states: “International aid agencies have been battling to overcome endless logistical and other obstacles in their effort to get emergency aid to tens of thousands of starving Afghans.” The BBC report also notes that the U.S. based International Rescue Committee “said that an estimated 50,000 people in the remote mountainous region of Abdullah Gan are surviving on grass, a mixture of water and straw and roots of wild vegetables.” An Associated Press news story from Ravi Nessman on January 8, 2002, reports on the village of Bonavash in the remote region of Abdullah Gan, where about 10,000 people live. Here are some of the highlights of that report.

“Besieged by the Taliban and crushed by years of drought, people on this remote mountain have resorted to eating bread made from grass and trace amounts of barley flour.”

“Babies whose mothers’ milk has dried up are fed grass porridge. The toothless elderly crush grass into almost a powder. Many have died. Nearly everyone has diarrhea or a hacking cough. When the children’s pain becomes unbearable, their mothers tie rags around their stomachs to try to alleviate the pressure.

“’We are waiting to die. If food does not come, if the situation does not change, we will eat it [grass]… until we die,’ said Ghalam Raza, 42, a man with a hacking cough, pain in his stomach and bleeding bowels.”

“Bonavash is the most accessible village in the remote mountain region of Abdullah Gan, where about 10,000 people live. People in more distant reaches are even worse off, according to aid workers.”

“Thousands of bags of wheat flour meant to save the people of Abdullah Gan sit stacked in a compound in the small town of Zari, 4 ½ hours away by donkey along mountain trails and the nearest outpost accessible by road. The World Food Program spent two weeks trucking 1,000 tons of flour to Zari but never told the aid organizations that were to distribute it, residents said. When aid workers learned the flour was there, they rushed to the area to try to figure eout the logistics of distribution. The wheat is improperly stored. If it rains or snows much will be damaged.”

“UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York that the World Food Program has ‘managed to get record amounts of food into Afghanistan, but then getting it from depots to remote villages where is it most needed has not been easy’ …. ’With different warlords controlling different roads, there are some areas where we just can’t go,’ said program spokeswoman Abby Spring. ‘We have the food, the cash, the trucks, but what we don’t have is the security, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to provide food to some communities’”

The French organization, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres [MSF]) has conducted a number of investigations into the food situation of the Afghan people. On January 18, the organization reported on its following investigative efforts.

“A nutritional survey conducted by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) over the past two weeks in the Karai valley, in Faryab province, northern Afghanistan, shows that 1 out of 7 children under five is malnourished. The nutritional screening of 2,706 children resulted in figures of 4.5 % of severe and 10.4 % of moderate acute malnutrition (equaling 14.9% global malnutrition). It also found that, on average, families only have wheat left for another 5 days, and that only 23% of the families received food during the last distribution. At the same time, MSF sees a substantial increase in the number of severely malnourished children coming to the feeding centers in Faryab province. This is an alarming sign of a deteriorating food crisis. An MSF nutritional survey conducted in August of 2001 already showed a global malnutrition rate of 10%. Since then, the situation has only worsened. A recent mortality survey also carried out by MSF showed that the mortality rate has doubled.”

“The humanitarian situation in remote areas is rapidly worsening since the quality and quantity of the current general food distribution is insufficient and not reaching the most vulnerable population. The south of Faryab province is one of the areas most affected by years of drought. According to an assessment of the World Food Program (WFP), the population can only meet less than half of their food requirements.”

On January 23, 2002, MSF reported: “More than 80 international staff and over 400 national staff from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontierès (MSF) are now operating relief programs throughout Afghanistan from bases in six cities—Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Taloqan, Faizabad, Kabul, and Jalalabad.” Their staff found serious nutritional problems in all of these cities and surrounding areas. For example:

“In Mazar-i-Sharif and Sar-i-Pol, the nutritional situation has deteriorated. A recent MSF study found that nearly 1 out of 7 children under five is malnourished. MSF opened four more feeding centers in the area, while still seeing a substantial increase in the number of severely malnourished children coming to the feeding centers in Faryab province. Further east, in and around Taloqan, MSF is providing the regional hospital with medicines and personnel, runs mobile clinics in Bangi, and supports clinics in Khanabad. Medical assessment teams also travel to Kunduz.”

“In Faizabad, MSF teams are providing vital support to the main hospital. They are also working in health clinics in the towns of Baharak and Ishkashim. In Kabul, MSF supports another hospital and three clinics, as they do in Gulbuhar in the Panjsher Valley. Teams are also assisting the displaced population in Jalalabad deal with the onset of winter.”

…. “Situated in a mountain-ringed valley just west of the ancient city of Herat, Mazlakh is the country’s largest camp for internally displaced persons (IDP), with a population topping 150,000. People fleeing months of bombings and years of drought continued streaming in. In the last week of December, MSF provided basic health care to more than 10,000 new arrivals, vaccinated over 4,000 children for measles, and started therapeutic feeding centers for 1,500 acutely malnourished children.”

“Serious safety concerns have arisen in the camps, with armed factions making indiscriminate arrests and committing robberies. MSF worries that this atmosphere of heightened insecurity and fear is preventing women from taking their children to feeding centers. While MSF is trying to adapt its programs to be more effective in responding to the situation, they are also pressing officials to establish a more secure environment.”

On February 6, 2002, MSF reports information about a dire situation in the huge Mazlakh camp located near the Western Afghan city of Heart. Their staff conducted a nutritional survey based on a representative sample of 1,869 children and found “a global malnutrition rate of 26.4 percent and a severe acute malnutrition of 6.6 percent.” The report continues: “These findings show an unacceptable rise compared to the global malnutrition of less than 10 percent among new arrivals looking for humanitarian assistance in Mazlakh. ‘Here you have the absurd situation that the longer people stay in the camp, the more malnourished they get,’ says Stefano Savi, head of the MSF project in Heart. ‘It is very clear that being in Mazlakh presents a serious risk of malnutrition and hence of disease and death.” Other highlights of the report include the following:

“The camp hosts an estimated 160,000 people fleeing from drought and insecurity. Since food for up to 300,000 people is being distributed to the camp, the findings of the survey demonstrate that unequal access to food is the underlying cause of the increasing malnutrition. Crime, corruption, and ethnic tensions inside the camp result in the effective food distribution as well as fear among big parts of the population to seek any kind of assistance.”

…. “The example of Mazlakh clearly shows that despite international optimism and the millions of US dollars of aid being promised for reconstruction of Afghanistan, the people are still facing huge problems in terms of immediate humanitarian needs. The international aid response must focus on meeting these immediate needs next to the attention for state building and reconstruction.”

Then on February 21, 2002, MSF released a report on the zmag.org website entitled “Alarming food crisis in northern Afghanistan.” The thrust of the report is that there are many places in Afghanistan where people are going hungry and a great risk of severe malnutrition or death.

“A recent assessment of the population in the Sar-e-Pol camp in Afghanistan shows a dramatic situation. There are more children in feeding centers than ever before. The number of severely malnourished have increased. Mortality rates have doubled and the numbers of displaced have increased. Of all the families surveyed, almost half have not received food aid over the past year.”

“The food crisis in northern Afghanistan is reaching alarming proportions. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has assessed the condition of populations in Sar-e-Pol displaced camp and in southern Faryab province (in January, 1,290 families were interviewed, representing 8,680 people) and found a dramatic situation.”

“MSF has repeatedly asked donor countries and international organizations to set up adequate general food distribution…. Only a fraction of the needed food has been supplied as promised…. Says MSF’s Operational Director, Christopher Stokes: ‘We do not know where the problems lies. All we know is that the food that is needed to pull people through is hardly arriving in remote parts of the north, and when it is it’s often distributed poorly. We urgently need donors and international organizations to pull together and act upon their commitment to the people of Afghanistan.’”

…. “By mid February, no general food distribution has started in three southern districts of Sar-e-Pol and in other areas distribution has been minimal. Last year, southern Sar-e-Pol was already identified as being particularly in need of food aid and nutritional aid. Of all the families assessed by MSF in Sar-e-Pol and Faryab, 42 percent did not receive food assistance over the past year. In Almar district, only one in ten families had received food aid since last winter.

…. “Those who have food are often on a poor diet. A resurgence of scurvy in southern Faryab in January illustrates the lack of balanced micro-nutrients in the diet of the population. Scurvy results from a lack of Vitamin C. Instead of solely distributing wheat, people should be offered a more balanced diet to reduce the risk and impact of scurvy during the current hunger gap period.”

What’s the upshot?

The claims by the Bush administration and its representatives and supporters that the bombing has produced a minimum of “collateral damage” (read: civilian deaths and injuries) may not hold up when the evidence is systematically compiled, which, given the lack of official interest, may never happen. In the meantime, there are scattered but numerous reports (only a handful of which have been mentioned above) of deaths from bombing and severe hunger and malnutrition. This evidence is largely ignored by the Bush administration, the U.S. Congress, most of the mainstream media, and the major pundits and “experts.” It conflicts with the preferred images proffered by these sources of a benevolent U.S. Afghanistan campaign that is engaging not only in retribution and the hunt for terrorists but also that is genuinely concerned with not compounding the already profound miseries of the Afghan people.

Perhaps George Monbiot, correspondent for the U.K. Guardian, sums it up best in a report of February 12, 2002.

“In the meantime, seven million remain at risk of starvation. Some regions have been made safer for aid workers; others have become more dangerous, as looting and banditry fill the vacuum left by the Taliban’s collapse. Already, some refugees are looking back with nostalgia to the comparative order and stability of life under that brutal government. For the Afghan people, the only certain and irreversible outcome of the war so far is that some thousands of civilians have been killed.”

III. A New Social “Order”?
In its triumphal and self-congratulatory mode, the U.S. government and its supporters also point to the creation of an interim Afghan government in Kabul. According to this position, the interim government under the appointed leadership of Hamid Karzai, 44, all the result of a December international conclave in Bonn, Germany, is the first meaningful step toward the achievement of social order in this devastated society. This unelected government has been given the mandate of preparing the groundwork for a second phase of establishing a central Afghan government in six months. According to John Burns (Jan. 31, 2002), a New York Times reporter:

“The agreement that established the Karzai government gave it only six months to prepare for a loya jirga, or grand council, whose task will be to draw the country’s contending ethnic, tribal and political groups into agreement on a two-year transition to elections. Many Afghans see this as an almost chimerical task, given the deep rifts that have emerged since the defeat of the Taliban and that have grown over the last 23 years of war.”

Indeed, Burns ominous report appears to be validated by recent events. Pamela Constable (Feb. 25, 2002), correspondent for the Washington Post, notes that “two months into his tenure Karzai is governing largely by illusion.” Her report continues:

“Karzai has few domestic allies beyond a small group of technocrats who returned from abroad to join his administration. His cabinet is a U.N.-brokered hodgepodge, dominated by political and ethnic rivals who command the loyalty of thousands of fighters and growing ministerial bureaucracies.”

“He appears to enjoy substantial public goodwill, but he has no army to quell continuing conflicts among regional warlords, and the much-reported respect he commands abroad has yet to deliver the substantive financial aid he needs to shore up his government, reassure the populace and turn the country’s countless freelance gunmen into pacified workers.”

“So far Karzai, a polished former deputy foreign minister, practicing Muslim and leader of an ethnic Pashtun tribe in southern Afghanistan, has employed diplomatic finesse and pragmatic dealmaking to stave off serious domestic threats to his authority.”

…. “But several aides close to Karzai painted a portrait of an administration in virtual thrall to its enemies. They described cabinet meetings in which Northern Alliance demands prevailed without dissent, and ministries where jobs were doled out to unqualified ‘jihadis’ – Islamic militia members who fought against Taliban forces in the 1990s.”

“The Northern Alliance ministers ‘have a lot of arms, and Karzai has none, so he has a very difficult balancing act,’ said one aide. ‘We are trying to rebuild the country, establish a government and win the world’s support, but we can’t do it when officials are being appointed simply because they were in the jihad.”

…. “At home, Karzai could receive a major boost when the exiled king Mohammed Zahir Shar, 87, arrives from Rome next month to preside of the loya jirga, a national conclave scheduled for June to select a two-year transitional government. Karzai is close to the kin, who is revered by many Afghans as a unifying figure above the political fray.

“For now, however, Karzai’s greatest weapon against anti-democratic saboteurs appears to be a uniquely un-Afghan trait: his respected statements that he has no political ambitions and seeks only to steer the country safely toward the loya jirga, a traditional form of democratic decision-making that Karzai promoted from exile for years.”

In a Nation magazine editorial (Feb. 11, 2002) the sad state of the Karzai interim government is captured as follows:

“The interim government desperately needs immediate infusions of cash to pay civil servants, who have gone unpaid for months, and to recruit more teachers and police. Kabul has only 100 trained policemen, and the rate of murder and theft is on the rise. Daily life in the capital has returned to a semblance of normality, but armed Northern Alliance fighters commit theft and extortion, while others cities and large stretches of the countryside are rule by bandits and warlords. Some 700,000 fighters are at large.”

Warlords, or regional “leaders,” retain their power

One part of the problem is that the agreement made in Bonn for the establishment of the interim government limits international peacekeepers to Kabul. As Bushnell (Jan. 24, 2002) reports for The Washington Times:

“Because the agreement establishing the interim administration for Afghanistan contains no provisions for the deployment of peacekeepers beyond 4,500 troops in Kabul, the projection of federal power has been left to be negotiated with warlords controlling the other cities.”

However, as Constable’s report (Feb. 25, 2002) emphasizes, one of the more serious threats to Karzai’s government “lies in the hinterlands, where disputes among regional warlords and tribal leaders continue to produce periodic armed clashes, well beyond range of the 4,500 international peacekeepers, who are confined to Kabul.”

An end to the warlords?

Hamid Karzai (Jan. 5, 2002) is reported in the Time of India to have called for an end to the regional warlords that control up to 80 percent of the population – in a country, as mentioned above, in which an estimated 700,000 fighters are armed. But, given the absence of a national army, the small international peacekeeping force that is confined to Kabul, and virtually no funds, Karzai is virtually powerless to challenge the authority of regional warlords. The situation is further complicated by the fact that U.S. military units on the ground are still cooperating with the forces of the warlords in their attempts to apprehend the Osama bin Laden, leaders of the al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, and the militias associated with them. A Washington Post editorial of February 25, 2002, provides some background and details on this facet of the complex factors that keep Karzai’s interim government from gaining some solidity.

“The combined strength of U.S. Special Forces, U.S. air power and Afghan militia commanders worked wonders when the goal was to drive the Taliban regime from power. Three months later, however, the strategy is proving increasingly problematic. U.S. units still are working closely with local military commanders – that is warlords – in towns around the country, hoping to exploit their intelligence and manpower in the continuing effort to kill or capture Taliban and al Qaeda leaders. But as the terrorists have melted into the countryside or civilian population, and faction feuding among the Afghans has increased, U.S. forces several times have been drawn into attacks on their allies’ rivals – enemies who may not have any connection to al Qaeda or to the former Afghan regime.”

“Increasingly, U.S. support for the warlords is serving to undermine the efforts of the Afghan government to establish its political authority. In the eastern city of Jalalabad, the Post’s Susan Glasser reported, the chose U.S. warlord effectively controls the area, neutralizing the more senior – and more civilized – governor appointed by intermim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. In the nearby town of Gardez, a U.S. ally named Bacha Khan has sought to impose his rule on unwilling local residents by force; he may have prompted U.S. air strikes on a convoy of local leaders that Mr. Karzai insists were his allies. The government’s problems are compounded by the unwillingness of U.S. forces to help it enforce its authority even over militias that are not American allies, though they contribute to growing lawlessness in the country. Ministers in Mr. Karzai’s administration complain that U.S. commanders regularly fail to check their intelligence with the government, or consult about military operations until after the fact.”

Conflict among warlords – undermines the “social order” U.S. hopes for

In various parts of Afghanistan, warlords are now fighting to establish control over territory. The Times of India (Feb. 5, 2002) reports: “At least 50 people were killed in a battle between rival warlords in eastern Gardez last week….” A BBC News report (Jan. 31, 2002) found: “As many as 60 people have been killed in two days of heavy fighting over control of the town of Gardez in Paktia province.” According to the BBC report, the fighting in Gardez is between the forces of Saif Ullah [Saifullah], an elderly but powerful local tribesman chosen by local people after the collapse of the Taliban, and Badshah Khan Zadran who was appointed by Kabul.” Khan is a warlord from a neighboring province.

Khan’s troops rocketed the city from outside positions and stood poised with 800 troops to attack. Burns (Jan. 31, 2002) describes “heavy fighting that continued into the night with bursts of mortar, rocket and rifle fire, flashes and smoke from exploding ammunition. There were unconfirmed reports of civilian as well as military casualties.”

However, despite the rocketing, the ground assault, circling U.S. warplanes overhead, and U.S. special forces stationed nearby (which refrained from taking any action), “the local shura or council remained in control of the majority of the town.” Khan’s forces made another failed effort to take control of Gardez a couple of days later. Reporting for the Associated Press on February 2nd, Jim Heintz filed the following description of what happened.

“A warlord rearmed his men Saturday to mount another assault on a provincial capital where residents don’t want him as governor and are dismayed that U.S. forces operating in the area won’t come to their rescue.

…. “Warriors of the Gardez local council forced fighters loyal to Karzai’s newly appointed governor for Paktia, warlord Bacha Khan, to retreat into the surrounding mountains Friday.”
There have, subsequently, been attempts to bring the fighting to an end, but the situation remains unresolved and ripe for continuing conflict. BBC News (Feb. 3, 2002) describes these efforts and the tense situation as follows.

“Mediators appointed by the interim leader in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, have begun efforts to resolve a bloody dispute between rival warlords in the eastern town of Gardez.

“The commission began holding loya jirga, or tribal council, in Gardez a day after flying there by helicopter, Border Affairs ministry official Marza Ali Khan said.

“The United Nations is also involved through the presence of Ashraf Rafi Ahmedzai, a close aide to the UN envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi.

“US aircraft have been dropping leaflets over Gardez urging an end to the clashes – the worst in Afghanistan since the Taleban were ousted in December.

“Speaking in Kabul, Mr Karzai stressed that Afghanistan must rid itself of “warlordism” if tensions in the country were to be calmed.

“But reports from Gardez say there has been little co-operation from the combatants, who said they were ready to fight on.

“Before the meeting, Bacha Khan appeared to be in no mood for compromise.

“”I am officially the governor of Gardez. I am ready for more fighting,” he told reporters, gesturing towards 200 of his soldiers standing near a mudwalled fort outside of Gardez.”You can see my fighters.”

“After meeting the delegation, Gardez council leader Haji Saifullah reiterated that Bacha Khan was “unacceptable”.

The battle for control of Gardez, is a vivid example of the inability of the Karzai government to extend its authority outside of Kabul, further evidence of the tenacity of local or regional political structures and leaders, and an example of how difficult conflict resolution is going to be.

Fighting also erupted in early February between ethnic rivals in northern Mazar-I-Sharif. David Filipov (Feb. 4, 2002) reports for the Boston Globe: “In Sholgara, a mountain town 70 kilometers south-east of Mazar-e-Sharif and one of several places where there was heavy fighting last week, authorities fear the worst.” Filipov quotes a local official and elaborates on what is involved.

“’This is the beginning of civil war, like 10 years ago,’ said Haji Gul Ahmad, deputy security commander of Sholgara, whose underfunded and outmanned polic force of 30 men watched helplessly as armed gangs shot it out in the town center.”

…. “The stand-off in Sholgara, like others across much of the north, is a battle between the group of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek warlord who is now deputy Defence Minister, and that led by the Defence Minister, Mohammad Fahim, and commanded in the north by Ustad Mohammed Atta, both Tajiks.”

“In November General Distum’s and Ustad Atta’s troops combined with a third militia of ethnic Hazaras to capture Mazar-e-Sharif from the Taliban. Relations among all three have been tense as each group has since sought to take control of areas lost to the Taliban.”

There were also reports of even earlier fighting in and around the western city of Herat. Mark MacKinnon (Jan. 22, 2002) describes the events for Foreign Policy

“Forces loyal to Kandahar governor Gul Agha Shirzai said they have 20,000 Pashtun fighters ready to attack the western city of Herat, which is held by Tajiks loyal to warlord Ismail Khan.

“God willing, we will clear all the area from Kandahar to Herat. We have 20,000 soldiers ready,” Haji Gullalai, intelligence chief to Mr. Shirzai, told Reuters.

“Mr. Gullalai accused Mr. Khan’s men of preying on Pashtuns traveling the dangerous road between the two cities. He also accused Iran of giving military aid to Mr. Khan, a former Northern Alliance commander.

…. “There was talk in Kandahar yesterday that Mr. Shirzai had given Mr. Khan an ultimatum to stop his anti-Pashtun practices or face unknown consequences. Mr. Gullalai suggested that the American forces who routed the Taliban may also be involved in any strike on Herat.
“The Herat area, one of the most heavily mined parts of the world, has seen Tajik-Pashtun battles before. Mr. Khan took over the region after the Soviet withdrawal, and held it until the city was captured by the Taliban in 1995. He returned to the city in November, when the hard-line Islamic regime fell.

Lastly, there are reports of regional warlords arming Afghans who are sympathetic to their power in refugee camps around the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. In a report for The Washington Times, Andrew Bushnell (Jan. 24, 2002) provides the following information.
“Warlords in several Afghan cities have begun arming refugee camps since the arrival of international peacekeepers in Kabul, international aid agencies say.

“Their goal is to maintain the power vacuum caused by the fall of the Taliban and maintain profits from drug sales and smuggling, according to officials of the interim government in Kabul.”

“U.N. security officials believe the warlords aim to check the influence of the Kabul government headed by Hamid Karzai. The officials say the warlords would see deployment of the peacekeepers in any other cities as an extension of Kabul’s power. At present, the international force operates only in Kabul and surrounding areas.

“Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Northern Alliance commander, began the trend of arming refugees in the areas surrounding the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, according to Haneef Ata of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a private organization helping refugees around the world. The practice quickly spread to other cities throughout Afghanistan.

“Often the gift of a rifle and a few pounds of grain is enough to ensure loyalty from a dispossessed farmer. The vast majority of camps surrounding cities house people who have been driven from their homes by the recent war and by feuding between warlords eager to consolidate power.

“The United Nations estimates there could be as many as 1.5 million such people in Afghanistan.
…. “The most prominent example is the Sakhi camp outside Mazar-e-Sharif. It is one of 25 camps surrounding the city formed seven months ago by IRC.

“Things were peaceful in Sakhi, according to Mr. Ata, until Gen. Dostum began to arm displaced Uzbeks in the 15,000-person camp.

“Other warlords quickly followed suit. With three factions competing for power in Mazar-e-Sharif, the nights now are punctuated with the sound of small-arms fire as groups battle each other over territory.

…. “Mazar-e-Sharif is divided among three competing warlords whose rivalry dates from the early 1990s: Gen. Dostum, who represents the Uzbeks; Commander Mohaqaq, representing the Hazara tribes; and Commander Uftad Ata, who represents the Tajiks and supports the faction led by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

…. “In Mazar-e-Sharif, Gen. Dostum continues to run printing presses issuing counterfeit money despite government protests. No fewer than 20 local administrations in Afghanistan bicker over land and the right to tax commerce.

“Gen. Ghulam Nassery, Afghan minister in charge of peacekeeping, said that unless the camps are disarmed, Afghanistan could devolve once again into civil war.

“He said that in addition to the financial aid promised by Western nations, his country needs the right kind of people to secure the streets. “I am ashamed to say, we need men who are not Afghans. We need the blue helmets — we need more than a hundred thousand of them,” he said.”

In short, there are significant indications of the unwillingness of regional or local leaders, or ostensibly many of the Afghan citizens they represent, to submit to the authority of the interim Karzai government in Kabul. In addition, the warlords themselves appear to have little interest in giving up power or territory to their opponents. The conditions for the kind of “civil war” that emerged in the early 1990s after the overthrow of the last Soviet-connected government appear to be in the offing again. On top of it all, apparently few Taliban supporters were killed in the campaign that overthrew this regime. A Washington Post editorial on February 25, 2002, stated: “Both Afghan and U.S. officials say that significant numbers of Taliban and al Qaeda forces remain in the country, and some may be trying to regroup.” Similarly, Alexander Cockburn (Jan. 8, 2002) writes:

“… just how extinct the Taliban is. Fudge the numbers as you many, not too many of them ended up dead, aside from those prisoners killed at Mazar e Sharif or suffocated on their way to other prisons. Presumably they dispersed to their homes, awaiting further instructions from their Pakistani supervisors.”

Further complicating the situation from the perspective of the millions of Afghan citizens is whether, even if he should prevail, Karzai himself can be trusted to advance their interests in coming months. George Monboit (Feb. 12, 2002) raises the question of whether Karzai will be willing to reign in U.S. oil interests sufficiently to benefit the majority of Afghanistan’s people. He writes:

“Both Hamid Karzai, the interim president, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy, were formerly employed as consultants to Unocal, the US oil company which spent much of the 1990s seeking to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. Unocal appears to have dropped the scheme, but smaller companies (such as Chase Energy and Caspian Energy Consulting) are now lobbying for its revival.”

What are the options?

Karzai seems to assume that current humanitarian efforts to feed the population, to provide some medical care, to resettle people in their villages, and to provide farmers with seeds for cultivation of crops will continue, if not increase. While this aid has been substantial, there have been obstacles preventing it reaching some unknown number of needy Afghan people. There are questions about whether emergency aid will continue at current levels and whether distribution obstacles can be overcome. There are also risks that regional warlords will have some significant influence over how the aid, at whatever level, is allocated.

Beyond this international aid, the Karzai interim government would like see international support for a large international peacekeeping force to enable the government to extend its authority beyond Kabul. For example, David Filipov (Feb. 4, 2002) notes: “The interim Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, has suggested the United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping force that patrols only the capital, Kabul, should be allowed to work throughout the country and should be expanded from 5000 troops to 20,000.” The Karzai government would also like a massive infusion of at least $45 billion over the next decade in international funds to allow it to commence the re-building of the devastated country.

Given recent developments, there are no guarantees that aid (e.g., food aid) will continue at current levels. Neither the U.N. nor any major Western country have been willing to make a commitment to send a large peacekeeping force to Afghanistan. This reluctance is suggested by the following New York Times editorial of February 16, 2002:

“Only 4,500 international peacekeepers are currently authorized, and many have not yet arrived. In all, 18 countries have promised contingents, with the largest numbers coming from Britain, France and Germany. The United States is not sending peacekeepers, but has promised logistical and intelligence support, and help in evacuating international forces should they become endangered. Meanwhile America, Britain and others are training a new Afghan army, while Germany will train a new national police force. Security responsibilities should be taken over by these new Afghan forces as quickly as possible, but they will not be fully ready before late next year.

And the international community has only been willing to “commit” $4 billion or so in funds for the rebuilding of Afghanistan’s war-torn country.

At the same time, it is unlikely that the U.S. and all of its allies will abandon Afghanistan. In the case of the U.S., there is a significant economic interest in the large oil reserves of the region that will keep it tied to the region in one way or another. In addition, the U.S. government has an interest in ensuring that the Taliban or any government that would be supportive of al-Qaeda does not resurface.

What to do?

An Editorial from The Nation (Feb. 11, 2002)

This editorial embodies a series of proposals on how to begin the process of rebuilding Afghanistan and achieving “the peace.” It implicitly supports the need for a much larger peacekeeping force, along with a much more comprehensive and substantial economic, or nation-building, effort, than are currently anticipated or committed.

1) Provide adequate “security” or peacekeeping force so that emergency food aid reaches all those in need.
2) Launch a “massive cleanup effort” of the mine- and unexploded ordinance that is so pervasive across the country.
3) Ensure that immediate infusions of cash are channeled to the Karzai government so that it can pay civil servants and recruit more teachers and police.
4) “Aid funds pledged must be delivered quickly; beyond that, a rich country like America should be providing leadership in the financial arena. A dependable flow of money and technical assistance must last for the next decade.”
5) Priority should be given to efforts to ensure security for the Afghan people. (a) There is a need for an international security force that is extended across the whole country. (b) A strong Afghan army and police force must also be created. In this regard, idle armed fighters should be integrated “into a national army and disarming and providing work for the rest of the 700,000 armed men who have not jobs and who are rapidly become part of the security problem.” (c) The U.S. should help in reducing the number of guns awash in the country “by supplying money to buy these weapons.” (d) If necessary, warlords and drug lords should be “bribed” into supporting the government.

A more modest proposal

In an article published for the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in January, 2002, Marina Ottaway and Anatol Lieven take a position that disagrees with that of the Nation editors. Ottaway and Lieven dispute the notion that a viable central, democratic Afghan government is plausible. They contend: “The chances of successfully imposing effective modern democratic state structures on Afghanistan thus are negligible. Even with a massive Western military presence on the ground….” Rather, they continue,“Afghanistan needs a modest reconstruction program that does not require full-fledged military occupation and is tailored to the reality of the country.” The obstacles for creating an “effective modern democratic state” include the following:

…. “Heavily armed tribal groups will not surrender their arms, or their local power unless they are forced to so by a national government with a powerful army of its own or by an overwhelming outside force. Because the international community is not prepared to produce an occupying force on the same scale as that deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo – thus, many times larger in absolute terms – the democratic-reconstruction model cannot be implemented.

“The chances of successfully imposing effective modern democratic state structures on Afghanistan thus are negligible. Even with a massive Western military presence on the ground….”

Therefore, they argue, the “right choice” is to channel most Western aid not through the Afghan government in Kabul, but rather directly to Afghanistan’s regions and also directly to the local level, to villages and local organizations. They recognize that it is not possible to completely bypass warlords and tribal leaders, but a system can be put in place that uses their authority to benefit the majority of Afghan people. They write:

“What the people of Afghanistan need most urgently, and the international community can help them obtain, is the cessation of war and the possibility of pursuing basic economic activities free from brutal oppression, ethnic harassment, and armed conflict. They need to be able to cultivate their fields, sell their products, go to market, send their children to school, receive basic medical care, and move freely around the country.”

In order to achieve this outcome, they offer the following series of proposals.

1) “Work directly with regional leaders whose power is well established. Assign liaison officials to work with these leaders, monitoring their behavior (especially their treatment of local ethnic minorities and their elations with other regions and ethnic groups), and make sure that they provide no shelter to terrorist groups.”
2) “Instruct these liaison officials to work with international and domestic NGOs, to ensure not only that they can work unhindered, but also that they do not become dangerously entangled in local politics.
3) “Create a corps of international civil servants to serve as these liaison officials and otherwise assist Afghanistan. These officials should be paid generously in return for devoting a substantial term of service to this difficult and dangerous task and for investing in learning local languages, history, and customs….”
4) “Give serious consideration to the standards that need to be met by local leaders in exchange for aid. Resist the temptation to impose unrealistic standards. Pick only a few battles to fight at one time. For example, make aid initially contingent on education for girls, but not on a comprehensive reform of legal or social codes governing the position of women in the family or major participation of women in administration. Incremental change is more likely to be sustainable.”
5) Accept that corruption is inevitable – “Use aid quite consciously as a political tool to maintain peace.”
6) “Establish certain basic national institutions in Kabul, but leave the question of a real national administration for Afghanistan to the distant future. Instead, treat the central government as a form of national mediation committee.”
7) Create a substantial UN-mandated international force to ensure the security and neutrality of the city of Kabul as a place where representatives of different areas can meet and negotiate, and where basic national institutions can be created. Be prepared to maintain this force for a period of several years, at least.”
8) “Do not pursue democratic measures, such as organizing elections, that would increase competition at the center among different warlords or ethno-religious groups”

Whatever the relative merits of these two somewhat disparate proposals, they both call for commitments that appear at the moment farfetched on the basis of what the U.S. government is willing to do. The U.S. government has (so far) ruled out a strong U.S. peacekeeping force, has little discussed a massive de-mining effort (indeed continues to add to the problem), has been reluctant to make a major commitment of financial support, has not seriously considered how to help create jobs for hundreds of thousands of fighters, has done nothing to redirect the re-growth of poppy cultivation to other crops, and seems opposed to any efforts to work with and support the regional warlords. With respect to the opium poppy crop, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair write in Counterpunch on March 6, 2002:

“A couple of weeks ago the London Guardian reported in a headline that ‘MI5 [Britain’s counter-intelligence agency] fears flood of Afghan heroin.’ The ensuring story by Nick Hopkins and Richard Norton Taylor led with the news that ‘Police and intelligence agencies have been warned that Britain is facing a potentially huge increase in heroin trafficking because of a massive and unchecked replanting of the opium crop in Afghanistan. The expectation is that the 2002 crop will be equivalent to the bumper one of three years ago, which yielded 4,600 tonnes of raw opium.’”

…. “In political terms, it’s a safe forecast to say that no serious effort will be made to interfere with the opium crop. To do so would be to deal the Karzai regime as a serious a blow as did Mullah Omar to loyalty to the Taliban when he banned opium cultivation (an act variously explained as a last-ditch attempt to get recognition from the West, or a price support tactic, restricting supply).”

…. “to buy heroin and morphine is to provide a sure market for Afghanistan’s farm sector, which employs as many as 200,000 in the fields harvesting the opium from the poppy heads. A sure income to the opium farmers means a cut for the rural barons whose support is essential for the future well-being of America’s selected government, headed by Karzai.”

…. “The only possible way to curb the trade is to offer farmers enough income to grow something else, at a reasonable level of profit.”

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PART II
Beyond Afghanistan:
Policies and Developments stemming from the
The “war” on Terrorism

The September 11 attacks and the declaration of a war on international terrorism, its initial focus being on Afghanistan, have influenced other U.S. policies and developments: (1) in the South Asian region around Afghanistan, (2) in planning for an extension of the anti-terrorist campaign, or vaguely related wars, into other countries (e.g., Iraq, Iran, the Philippines), (3) in major shifts in budgetary policies, not the least of which is a dramatic increase in planned military spending and the apparent rejuvenation and acceleration of the modernization of U.S. nuclear capacity, and (4) in policies aimed at beefing up homeland “security” that, in some ways, seem to threaten some basic constitutional protections of U.S. citizens.

I. In the Central Asian Region

In his new book Jihad, Ahmad Rashid analyzes the growth of radical Muslim groups in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan – and how they are dominated by oppressive governments and beset by extreme poverty. Some of these countries have extensive oil and gas resources. The US government is extending relations with these countries, setting up military bases and increasing military aid. The U.S. policy for this region seems to be to (1) contain and diminish the influence of Muslim extremists and shore up sympathetic governments, however un-democratic and oppressive; (2) extend US influence so as to simultaneously diminish Russian and potential Chinese, European, and Japanese influence; (3) be positioned to take advantage of the oil and gas resources of the region – and have an major influence on the disposition of oil and gas pipelines. There is also little indication that the US government is much concerned about the impoverished people in these countries. And while the “war on terrorism” is a factor, it is intricately connected with, if not overshadowed by, the geopolitical and “oil” interests of the U.S.

Setting Up Military Bases in Central Asia: oil and geopolitical interests take precedence over “democracy” and the interests of ordinary human beings

Simon Tisdall, in an article for Guardin Newspapers on January 16, 2002, points out that the war in Afghanistan “has presented regional political, economic and defence opportunities that the US has long sought and which are now within its grasp.” These are opportunities that coincide with the U.S. bombing campaign and that were earlier thwarted by the absence of a compelling justification. To illustrate his point, Tisdall writes: “In September 2000, for example, General Tommy Franks – the man who made his name running the Afghan war – was already touring central Asia, waving a military aid chequebook. But on the whole, during the Clinton years, keen US interest in beating a path to central Asia’s oil and gas riches remained largely stymied….”

U.S. interests were restrained by the long-standing Russian influence in the region and Russian interest in reasserting its power over its former Soviet territories. But, according to Tisdall, after September 11, the US-Russian dynamic changed, and “…Putin agreed (against the advice of some senior generals) to allow the US to negotiate the first, limited base and operational facilities within Afghanistan’s neighbours.” China also became more willing to accommodate to U.S. penetration of the region, given the U.S. government’s willingness to support China’s WTO membership and play down China’s human rights violations.

Now, according to Tisdall’s report, the U.S. has set up a permanent base at Khanabad in Uzbekistan, housing 1,500 personnel. It has also established other bases:

“Manas, near Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, is described as a future ‘transportation hub’ housing 3,000 soldiers, warplanes and surveillance aircraft; more airfields are under US control in Tajikistan and Pakistan; and the Pentagon has begun regular replacement and rotation of troops, thereby institutionalizing what were at the outset temporary, emergency deployments.”

The U.S. government is paying these governments for the right to locate military bases on their soil. As Tisdall puts it: “Military cooperation typically works both ways. With the bases comes US agreement to provide training and equipment for local forces. Economic aid packages and trade agreements then follow. Thus previously neglected Uzbekistan received $64m in US assistance and $136m to Kazakhastan, some partly for military equipment. The US security umbrella provides shelter from other predatory powers and effectively entrenches a group of mostly unpopular incumbent regimes.”

It does not matter to U.S. government leaders that the countries in question are led by un-democratic regimes that oppress their own people and line their own pockets. Tisdall refers to a Human Rights Watch annual report published in January that “these deals have been cut despite well-documented concern about authoritarian governance, a chronic lack of democracy and respect for human rights – torture of political prisoners is endemic in Tajikistan, for example – and often non-existent press freedoms across central Asia.”

In an article for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting on February 8, 2002, Jakpypova, Chinara and Vladimir Davlatov elaborate on the detrimental effects of the new U.S. relations and bases in Central Asia on the “civil society” in these countries. He gives the following examples.

Emil Aliev, leader of the Kyrgyz opposition party Ar-Namys “claims the prosecution of opposition politicians Felix Kulov and Azimbek Beknazarov is directly linked to Washington’s new willingness to turn a blind eye to political oppression.”

“In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov has taken steps to extend his term of office from five to seven years via a referendum on constitutional reform. It is the second time Karimov has used such a device. The January 27 vote was carried out in the worst traditions of the Soviet era and secured a predictably favourable result.”

“… in a remarkable turn-around the International Monetary Fund, IMF, which closed down its Uzbek operation in 2001, is to return…. In 2002, US aid to reform Uzbekistan’s law enforcement bodies, health system and education systems is to treble to some 160 million US dollars. Further aid has been given to the Uzbek military. Three rapid response battalions have been created for special operations…. The US has also assured Karimov it will encourage European Union countries to step up their cooperation with Uzbekistan.”

Zoltan Grossman (Feb. 2, 2002) sees significant links between the expanding U.S. military presence in the region and U.S. oil interests. He writes: “The new string of US military bases are becoming permanent outposts guarding a new Caspian Sea oil infrastructure.” This is but one part of a larger U.S. strategy to exert control over the oil and gas resources of South Asia and the Middle East as well as Central Asia. Why? Grossman thinks that the “long-term goal is to increase US corporate control over the oil needed by Europe and East Asia,” whether the oil is in and around the Caspian or in other Asian and Middle East regions. “The ultimate goal,” he writes, “is to establish new American spheres of influence, and eliminate obstacles – religious militants, secular nationalists, enemy governments, or even allies – who stand in the way.”

“Since 1990, each large-scale US intervention has left behind a string of new US military bases in a region where the US had never before had a foothold.” After the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. “left behind large military based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and basing rights in the other Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.” Tisdall continues: “The war also heightened the profile of existing US air bases in Turkey.” While the US only imports 5 percent of its oil from the Gulf, Europe and East Asia need this oil. In addition, the U.S. military bases support the continued bombing against Iraq and are situated “to quell potential internal dissent in the oil-rich monarchies.” At the end of the failed U.S. intervention in Somalia in 1992-1993, the U.S. “eventually gained naval basing rights in the port of Aden, just across the Red Sea in Yemen, where Bin Laden launched his attack on the USS Cole in 2000.” And, the U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia has resulted in “new US military bases in five countries: Hungary, Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, and the sprawling Camp Bondsteel complex in southeastern Kosovo.” Tisdall notes: “The US stationing of huge bases along the eastern edge of the E.U., which can be used to project forces into the Middle East, was carried out partly in anticipation of European militaries one day going their own way.”

In a news report for the Guardian on March 8, 2002, Ewen MacAskill lists (partially) the places in the Central Asian and Middle East where the U.S. has a military presence. In some cases, “base” refers to more than one U.S. military base.

Afghanistan – combat role
Pakistan – bases
Uzbekistan – base
Tajikistan – base
Kyrgystan – base
Georgia – military advisers and base
Philippines – military advisers
Red Sea – naval patrols
Yemen – military advisers
Sudan – military advisers in preparation for action in Somalia
Saudi Arabia – base
Kuwait – US will need to beef up presence if action is taken against Iraq
Turkey – US will need big bases in the country if action it take against Iraq

The US military is inserting itself into strategic areas of the world, and anchoring US geopolitical influence in these areas, at a very critical time in history. Grossman argues credibly:

“It has been projecting that military dominance into new strategic regions as a future counterweight to its economic competitors, to create a military-backed ‘dollar bloc’ as a wedge geographically situated between its major competitors.” Thus, the “war” on international “terrorism” is serving as a launching pad for the expansion and consolidation of U.S. imperialism.

II. Bush government is setting the stage for “the second phase” – of going after “international terrorism” or the governments that harbor it – wherever – no clear limits – no exit strategies -

Michael T. Klare considers the implications of President Bush’s references to an “axis of evil’ in his state of the union address in January, 2002. This is another official “line”that reveals the future intentions of the U.S. government to expand the war on international terrorism, unilaterally if necessary. It is targeting not only states that “harbor” or “support” “terrorists,” but also to states that are developing “weapons of mass destruction” that could at some vague, distant future pose a “direct” threat to significant U.S. interests abroad, if not to the U.S. homeland itself.

Klare attacks the chief implications of Bush’s concept of an axis of evil and the notion that these countries pose a significant danger to the U.S. First, the concept of “axis,” he writes, ““suggests an alliance or confederation of states that pose a significant danger precisely because of their common alignment – a menace greater than the sum of the parts.” He rejects this notion for three reasons.

“absolutely no indication that the three states in question have conspired together to fight the US or to cooperate militarily.”

These countries are more divided than united. “Iran and Iraq… have a long history of mutual hostility. Between 1980 and 1988 they fought a bloody war with one another, attacking each other’s cities with ballistic missiles and poisoning enemies today. Iran even has armed anti-government forces inside Iraq. The very idea of an ‘axis’ between these two states is preposterous.”

“North Korea is no ally to Iran or Iraq. So far as is known, North Korea’s only contact with the two has been as a purveyor of ballistic missile components” – in the pursuit of hard cash, not alliances.

Second, Klare argues that none of these nations individually pose significant threats to the U.S.

Iraq – “once the furthest along of the three in its development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological munitions and ballistic missile delivery systems. But the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, along with post-conflict arms destruction by the UN, eradicated all major Iraqi facilities for the production of these systems. All that remains, so far as can be surmised in the absence of UN inspections (which were suspended in 1998), are very small pilot facilities for continuing research in these areas. Any effort by Iraq to build anything larger – that is, anything capable of producing WMD on a large scale – would be detected by US satellites and surveillance aircraft and then destroyed by bombs and missiles.” – best approach
– “impose ‘smart sanctions’ of the sort proposed by Secretary of State Powell to compel Iraq to allow the re-entry of UN weapons inspectors.”

North Korea – next largest WMD capability – “has sought nuclear weapons in the past, but is nuclear program was dismantled in 1994 under an agreement with the US – and agreement that has been faithfully observed by the North Koreans, according to all US reports. Out biggest current worry is North Korea’s ballistic missile program, which had been making slow but steady progress in the 1990s.”

Iran – least developed WMD – “Economic hardship has forced the government to cut back on weapons spending, and its desire for foreign trade and investment has spurred it to open its major nuclear facilities to international inspection. This has not stopped Teheran from pursuing nuclear weapons on a limited, clandestine basis, but most experts believe that it will be many years (if ever) before Iran can acquire the wherewithal to mass-produce nuclear arms.” – divided between pro- and anti-reform forces – “the best way to diminish the Iranian threat is to support President Mohammed Khatami and other reformers in their drive to liberalize the country.”

Russell Feingold (D-Wis) urges President Bush to honor the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, the latter of which gave Bush the consent of Congress to order troops into Afghanistan, but not to start “wars” and commit military forces in any country the Bush administration should see fit to do so. Feingold emphasizes, “the Joint Resolution adopted by Congress and signed into law by the president last year provides the president with statutory authorization to use all necessary and appropriate force against those responsible for the September 11 atrocities. This includes authority to prevent future attacks by responding with force against any nations, organizations or persons responsible for planning, authorizing, aiding or harboring the terrorists who were responsible.” While this is extraordinarily broad in its construction and opens the door to some considerable extension of the war outside of Afghanistan, Feingold cautions that it is not a “blank check.” Military escalation must be clearly linked to the September 11 attacks. Otherwise, the President must return to Congress and request an additional resolution under the War Powers law. Feingold continues:

“The Resolution calls for more than a one-time authorization from Congress. By recognizing Congress as custodian of the authority to send our troops into battle, the War Powers Resolution demands regular – and meaningful – consultations between the two branches of government to sustain or expand our military engagements.”

…. “So to honor the War Powers Resolution, the president owes Congress a candid discussion about our long-term plans in the Philippines, and a more detailed explanation of his rationale for focusing America’s attention so pointedly on Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his State of the Union address.”

On March 8, 2002, the Senate did unanimously approve a resolution supporting U.S. military forces in Afghanistan (Boyer, March 9). In a report for The Washington Times, Dave Boyer that is a “nonbinding ‘sense of the Senate’ resolution. The result reads: “The Senate reaffirms that it stands united with the President in the ongoing effort to defeat terrorism.” The implication of the resolution is that the Senate is on record as giving the Bush administration a great deal of leeway in how they prosecute not only the war in Afghanistan but the war against international terrorism, wherever the administration may choose to identify it.

Bush’s reference to an axis of evil may open the door to military interventions that go beyond that which Congress originally consented to but that has been made very ambiguous by the March 8th Senate resolution. Beyond the constitutional questions over the role of the Congress in “war” related policies of the executive branch that emerge as the Bush administration identifies “evil” states and the possibility of military intervention against them, there is concern along these lines among some of the principal allies of the U.S. According to some reports, there is little support among European U.S. allies for Bush’s concept of “axis of evil.” For example, Jonathan Freedland (Feb. 9, 2002) reports for the Guardian that “Chris Patten, “the EU commissioner in charge of Europe’s international relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy.” He calls the policies of the Bush administration “absolutist and simplistic.” Freedland also reports that there is fear in Europe that the U.S. is going into “unilaterialist overdrive.” Freedland also notes that “the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, warned the US yesterday not to give in to ‘the strong temptation of unilateralism.’” Furthermore: “EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an ‘evil’ sponsor of terror.”

Alan Bock (January 31, 2002) reminds readers that, with respect to the apparent limitless ambitions of the Bush administration, and the willingness of a majority of representatives in the U.S. Congress to endorse them, potential U.S. military campaigns against the “axis of evil” represents only the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. military is already moving, or planning to move, on a host of fronts. He writes:

“We are already more deeply involved in a civil war in the Philippines. Mr. Bush discussed North Korea, Iran, Somalia, Bosnia, Pakistan, India, all places where money or troops might be sent. He didn't discuss the ongoing involvement in the civil war in Colombia, justified by the unwinnable War on Drugs. The evidence is that rather than giving that conflict a lower priority now that the war on terrorism has been proclaimed, the administration wants to intensify that one too.”There was no acknowledgment of any limitation to US taxpayer resources, no suggestion that making new commitments might involve reducing or eliminating prior commitments of troops where a reasonable person might argue they are no longer needed (Western Europe, South Korea) or haven't succeeded (Bosnia, Kosovo).”

III. The Bush Administration – State of the Union – budget proposals – fervent emphasis on “military” and “war”

Alan Bock (January 31, 2002) is stunned by the unapologetic militaristic emphasis in George Bush’s 2002 State of the Union message to the nation. He writes: “The most striking aspect of the speech was the open-ended, almost limitless ambition and scope of the promises and commitments. Not only are the U.S. military and government to be given the widest possible latitude in carrying out the war on evil whose battlefields could be anywhere and everywhere, but the government is to be trusted completely in this matter. And the people are to be grateful to be treated in such a cavalier fashion.” Bock notes that Bush “went on to promise virtually limitless future commitments, lamenting that ‘some governments may be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will.’ Bock wonders whether this means that “the United States is promulgating the doctrine that this country declares it has the right to send troops and bombs to any country in the world, anytime, on mere scraps of evidence that something is going on there that displeases us or has some tenuous connection to an organized international terrorist ring? The words imply it and the administration's actions reinforce the impression.” Indeed, George Bush asserted ‘My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades, because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high: whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay it’” (quoted in Mahajan, January 31, 2002).

Given the opportunity, it should not be surprising that the conservative Bush administration is proposing to expand military expenditures to near record levels. The Afghanistan war and the war on “terrorism” have created a political and budgetary climate that justifies virtually anything – increased spending on weapons that were going to be scrapped or phased down, a mythical (will never be effective) but profitable missile defense program, and the reemergence of “nuclear madness,” along with the expansion of the military throughout the world in which new military bases are added to already existing bases and military interventions and little “wars” proliferate. And, in the process, authoritarian regimes are buttressed and human rights and rational economic development are eclipsed, with increasingly dire consequences of billions of poor people across the globe. Shalom (Winter 2002) points out that the militarization of U.S. policy “serves the interest of the U.S. elites.” He continues:

“This is not to endorse the ludicrous and sickening claims that the CIA (or the Mossad) were behind the September 11 attacks. But war is quite functional to top U.S. officials. It boosts approval ratings, funnels money to the military, allows a clamp-down on civil liberties and dissent, permits the transfer of wealth to the rich, can be used to bludgeon environmentalists, delegitimates institutions of international law, bases U.S. troops in a region of growing competition over natural gas pipelines, and serves notice on the world that ‘what we say goes’ -- to use the words of George W. Bush's father.”

In an article for Counterpunch (January 31, 2002), John Pilger reports that U.S. military spending will rise to $379 billion in 2003, “of which $50 billion will pay for its ‘war on terrorism.” The threat of “terrorism” that justifies the gargantuan military budget is what the military-industrial complex has been looking for since the breakup of the Soviet Union. It functions as “the new Red Scare.” And government leaders see it as a war that could go on for fifty years, as indicated by Pilger’s reference to Vice President Dick Cheney, “the voice of Bush,” who “has said the US is considering military or other action against ’40 or 50 countries’ and warns that the new war may last 50 years or more.’” Pilger also illustrates this new and dramatically escalated militarism with a let-it-all-hang-out quote from Richard Perle’s (Bush advisor), “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there… If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”
James Dao captures further details of the proposed dramatic increase in military spending in an article of February 2, 2002, for the New York Times.

“In a military buildup rivaling that of the Reagan era, the Bush administration will call for increasing the Pentagon's yearly budget by $120 billion over the next five years, to $451 billion in 2007, according to Defense Department documents.”

“By the end of the five-year period, spending to buy weapons and other military supplies alone would swell to $99 billion a year from $61 billion this year. Spending on personnel, operations and research programs would also grow, but not as fast.”

“Mr. Bush's proposal would spend about a quarter of a trillion dollars more on the military over the next five years than if the Pentagon budget simply increased at the rate of inflation. That growth would come at the same time that Mr. Bush's tax cut, worth $1.35 trillion over 10 years, gradually phases in.”

“Mr. Bush has already said that he would propose a $48 billion increase in Pentagon spending for next year alone, pumping money into building new fighter jets and high-tech munitions, raising troop pay and expanding health care benefits. The increase over current Pentagon spending would be about 12 percent, the largest such increase in 20 years.”

…. “Indeed, Mr. Bush's plan would increase Pentagon spending by about 30 percent through 2007, a pace that is only somewhat slower than President Ronald Reagan's military buildup between 1981 and 1985, the largest ever during peace time.”

“"By historical standards, this is a big increase," said Steven Kosiak, a budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an organization in Washington that studies military policy.

The size of the U.S. military and its planned expansion are also revealed by viewing them globally and in relation to the major competitors of the U.S. Rupert Cornwell offers these perspectives:

“America now accounts for 36% [some say 40%] of global defence spending – a share the historian Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, has pointed out, is the largest portion of global defence spending seen by a single country. Not even the Roman Empire could claim so much.”

The gap in military spending with other countries is growing – “In recession-bound Europe the pressures are to cut, not expand, defence expenditures. Russia, traditionally the second-biggest spender, is desperate to divert resources into other areas. Many of the other big spenders, such as Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, are virtual client states of America, buying American weapons.”

Who needs a coalition – “On paper there was a ‘coalition’ [in Afghanistan]; in practice only Britain, Australia and Canada made any meaningful contribution. Washington drew two lessons from the Kosovo War: that air power can win wars; and that you do not run wars by committee.”

In a report for the Guardian, Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy provide other examples of the huge military advantage that the U.S. enjoyed internationally even before the recent Bush administration proposals for yet further military spending increases.

“A single US nuclear-powered carrier group – which forms around the USS Enterprise, for example, with a flight deck almost a mile in length and a superstructure 20 stories high – concentrates more military power in one naval group than most states can manage with all their armed forces. America has seven of these battle groups.”

The reach of US weapons – “When the USS Kitty Hawk was sent with its accompanying warships from Yokohama to the Gulf for the war against Afghanistan, it covered 6,000 miles in just 12 days to be transformed into a vast floating forward attack station for thousands of US special forces.” – “Its B-52 bombers can fly and refuel across the world armed with cruise missiles that can be fired hundreds of miles away from hostile skies, the missiles themselves directed to their targets by satellites in orbit.”

“And American supremacy in bombs, planes, satellites, tanks and real-time intelligence have made the prospect of US casualties remote, except in the event of cock-up or disaster. And, significantly, as the world’s only economic hyper-power, it can afford this level of militarisation.”

“Central Asia is splattered with new American fortresses; the Pacific and Indian oceans are patrolled by aircraft carriers and accompanying fleets of awesome size.”

“As a consequence, a new matrix of alliances exist of states beholden to the US in exchange for a blank cheque as regards their own internal human rights abuses – China, Pakistan, India, Russia and the former Soviet states.”

The unfolding scenario offered by the Bush administration and its supporters holds out a truly ominous prospect of plenty of “guns” and enough “butter” to keep people placated and/or confused enough to stay quiescent. This is not at all to suggest that military spending is good for the economy (see section below on this). Rather, it suggests that, given the size and wealth of the economy, U.S. officials can afford to waste huge resources on out-of-date weapons, missile defense, and military bases and wars around the world, without causing an economic collapse in the short-run. And it can do all this without significant political opposition, as the majority of people in the society are mesmerized and fearful of the mulitiplicity of ways that “international terrorism” can directly have an impact on the U.S. mainland. Thus, at least in the short run, the extension of an already huge U.S. international military presence can be advanced. This also implies, in the short run, that the interests of millions of U.S. citizens will be put on the back burner or undermined, as government spending on domestic programs is reduced, Social Security and Medicare are allowed to become financially weak, and rational environmental and energy programs are ignored – and all in the name of “national security” and “patriotic” appeals to rally around the flag when our soldiers are “in harm’s way.”

Funding for expensive weapons systems

Continued funding of the “baroque weapons” to which Cornwell refers reflect the tremendous power of the military –industrial complex to maintain funding for even the most expensive, inefficient, hardly relevant weapons. As Julian Borger (Feb. 6, 2002) stresses,

“…relatively little of the $379b… planned spending for 2003 is directly relevant to the requirements of combating shadowy terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.

“A much greater proportion “will go towards ‘big ticket’ weapon systems designed for the large-scale conventional battles envisaged during the cold war. They had been facing the axe under the ‘military transformation’ initially planned by George Bush and Mr Rumsfeld.”

Three of the major weapons that were expected to suffer cuts include “three separate tactical warplanes with overlapping functions demanded by the armed forces: the navy’s super hornet, the air force’s F-22 raptor and the joint strike fighter (JSF) intended for all the services.”

Borger reminds readers that, in the presidential campaign, Bush said we could not afford all three. In addition, the crusader artillery system has been reinvigorated. It is “a hefty gun which critics said might have performed well in big land battles against Soviet tanks, but which is too heavy to be rapidly deployed in far-flung corners of the globe.” Borger quotes Loren Thompson, a senior analyst at the Lexington Institute, an independent defense think tank, says that the salvation of such inefficient or irrelevant weapons’ programs reflects “the staying power of a deeply entrenched bureauracy in terms of protecting programmes it values.”
Increased military spending is not good for the overall economy and hardly equitable – but who cares?

In a February 11th article for the New Yorker, James Surowiecki raises the question of whether war is really good for the economy. He argues that the “increased defense spending [will] take up resources that would otherwise be put to more productive uses.” Elaborating his point, Surowiecki makes the point that there “aren’t enough engineers and scientists to go around.” He continues: “The diversion of resources to military production wouldn’t hurt the economy if the Pentagon were efficient. A company like Intel has to make the most of every dollar it spends, or risk being surpassed by its competitors. But the Pentagon doesn’t really have competitors. It feels no outside pressure to be efficient.”

“In recent decades… military spending has created fewer spillovers. One reason is that American industry, pushed by tougher foreign competition, now invests and invents more on its own. But another reason is that the needs of the military are increasingly unconnected to the needs of everyone else. In the fifties, jet-engine innovations benefited not only the strategic bombers and military transports they were designed for but commercial planes as well. Today, the technology that allows a stealth bomber to evade enemy radar, or helps a Navy pilot handle an extra or two, hasn’t done much to improve the lot of civilians en rout to LAX. If anything, innovation tends to spill backward these days, with the military finding new uses for technologies developed by civilian
businesses.”

Increased Military spending means vital domestic programs will be cut, stagnate, or postponed
Beaumont and Vulliamy (Feb. 10, 2002) illustrate this point as follows: “The new defence expenditure will be paid for by a freshly dug deficit and cuts to every other federal spending programme – including social security, Medicare and urban renewal – apart from tax breaks loaded heavily in favour of the upper-income brackets.”

The National Priorities Project (February 4, 2002) offers some examples of the programs that will be negatively affected by the Bush administration priorities. Programs that are linked to strengthening “our communities” will be shortchanged. The Project refers to the following examples:

“At a time when unemployment is increasing, Job Training and Employment funding would be cut by almost $700 million. This is an 22% cut in real terms.

“…the President reduces funding for Vocational and Adult Education and Higher Education, among other education programs.”

“… a 28% cut in Community development, including a 7% cut in Community Development Block Grants.”

“Many programs targeted to help children and families such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, child care entitlements to states, and the Social Service Block Grant are level-funded. This means that after taking inflation into account, these programs will be cut.”

40 states are currently in fiscal crisis – states depend on the fed for 20-25% of their budgets

The “modernization” of U.S. nuclear capacity – a growing “nuclear madness”

When faced with “international terrorism” and rogue states, a major theme of the Bush Administration, supported by majorities in the Congress and in the general public, is that anything goes. This is dangerously reflected in incipient or actual policies with respect of nuclear weapons and related policies. In a report for The Nation on February 25, 2002, Jonathan Schell reconstructs some of the highlights of U.S. nuclear policy during the Cold War and through the much of the 1990s, and then examines the “radical’ departures from these earlier policies in the Republican-dominated Congress of the late 1990s, gaining further steam in the Bush administration. One central aspect of the policies that tended to prevail for almost 30 years, tenuous and dangerous as they were (e.g., “mutually assured destruction”), was the general agreement that the containment, avoidance, or reduction of nuclear danger had to be accomplished by political means, above all by international agreements. Schell refers to the following agreements:

“They include the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1974, the SALT and START treaties, under which the nuclear arsenals of the US and Soviet Union, and then Russia, have been cut by half, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.”

Beginning in the late 1990s, however, Schell sees the U.S. administration in a pattern of abandoning international agreements for unilateral action on the nuclear front. According to Schell, there has been a:

“…US exit from the entire structure of nuclear arms control treaties that were built over the past thirty years or so. In 1999 the Senate refused to ratify the test ban treaty. Late last year, the Bush Administration gave notice that its continuing reduction of strategic nuclear arms would occur outside any treaty, putting an end to START. A few weeks later, the Administration announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the better to build national missile defense. Only the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which the US belongs as a nuclear power, remains intact, and it is never managed to put any constraints on US behavior.”

Then, Bush has said that the U.S. will unilaterally do whatever it takes not only to protect the U.S. from international terrorism and dangerous regimes but also to destroy such enemies when the administration decided they pose an intolerable threat. For example, in his State of the Union address on January 29, Bush said he would not permit “the world’s dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons” and that, beginning perhaps with the “axis of evil,” mount a war to “stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.” Schell identifies the implications of abandoning international agreements and planning for a series of military interventions and wars, and the ongoing attempts to build a missile-defense shield.

“The US, safe behind its missile shield, will, at its sole discretion and unconstrained by treaties or even consultation with allies (there was no real consultation with the NATO countries on the new policy and no mention of NATO in Bush’s address), protect its territory and impose its will in the world by using its unmatched military power to coerce or destroy, if possible by pre-emptive attack, every challenger.”

Greenpeace flushes out the details of the Bush administration strategy on nuclear weapons in a report put on its website on June 1, 2001, in an examination of a report by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) “considered to be the best indicator of the Bush administration’s future direction on nuclear weapons policy. The report was co-authored by Ambassador Robert Joseph, now Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counter-proliferation and Homeland Defence at the White House, Stephen Cambone now Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Policy at the US Department of Defence and Stephen Hadley, now a Deputy National Security Advisor at the White House.” The proposals, along with policies already in place, represent a profile of a U.S. government that will use any means to advance its conceptions of national security, economic, and geopolitical interests.

First, the U.S. nuclear bomb and delivery capacity is large enough to destroy civilization many times over. This is hardly a new development. We have been hearing about “overkill” for decades. While the overall number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal has decline, though it looks as though it will be increasing again, U.S. “overkill” capacity remains immense. As of the summer of 2001, the nuclear weapons capability of the U.S. included:

5,000 operational warheads – 4,000 for strategic use (i.e., the START II agreed level of 3,500 plus 500 spares) and a further 1,000 warheads for tactical purposes

2,500 ‘augmentation’ or ‘hedge’ warheads – this is a contingency stockpile available for redeployment back onto delivery vehicles

3,000 in ‘inactive reserve status – warheads stored just in case there is a need to replace warheads in the active stockpile if they develop reliability or safety problems

“In addition, the US remains committed to forward deployment of US nuclear forces in seven NATO bases in the Netherlands, UK, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. It maintains a further 3,200 US nuclear warheads on constant alert, mainly at sea, ready to fire at an enemy; the same level of readiness as at the height of the Cold War. The US also retains a stockpile of 85,000 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium, most of which is contained in existing nuclear warheads.

“The operational stockpile is deployed on 500 single warhead Minuteman III missiles, 14 Trident submarines, air-lunched cruise missile carrying B2 aircraft capable of delivering 5,000 nuclear warheads.”

Second, “the nuclear arms reduction process is stalled.” The Greenpeace report illustrates this unfortunate reality as follows.

“From a peak of more than 32,000 nuclear weapons in the US arsenal in the mid-1960s, estimates for the year 2000 put the US active arsenal at 10,500 nuclear weapons.” – brought about by the bilateral Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – and unilateral initiatives including the destruction of some 3000 artillery shells and short range Lance missiles and the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons from US surface ships and attack submarines

Implementation of START II has stalled – “Republican Senators linked it to rejection of the ABM treaty” – “As a result, efforts to progress further cuts in the huge remaining arsenals of Russia and the US are stalled.”

“In 1997, the US and Russia signed a series of protocols in Helsinki which included an agreement that START III would be completed by the end of 2007, reducing strategic warhead levels on both sides to between 2,000 and 2,500 each…. US military action in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, combined with it s plans to deploy a National Missile Defence system have led to a freeze in US-Russian relations that appears unlikely to thaw in the near future. Most recently, the US rejected a Russian offer to reduce the number of operational strategic nuclear warhead numbers under START III to 1,500 on each side.”

“Even after START II is implemented and the strategic arsenal is cut to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads on each side, both the US and Russia will still have a nuclear force of Cold War proportions. For example, the US will still have up to seven nuclear warheads capable of annihilating each available Russian military target.”

Bush prepares to withdraw from international arms control and disarmament treaties
§ Has rejected the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty
§ Bush does not plan to ask the Senate to take up again the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Bush cuts funds for nuclear non-proliferation programs – budget has been cut by just under USD$123 million

Continued nuclear weapons testing – so-called “sub-critical tests” – “These tests are performed 300 metres underground at the Nevada Test Site with chemical high explosives and plutonium, the fissile material used in nuclear warheads. These tests combined with data from three dimensional computer simulations is intended to be an alternative to acquiring data through nuclear testing” – most recent test on December 2000

Following the example of the U.S., “India stated in May 1998 that it would use data from its underground tests to undertake sub-critical tests and Russia conducts up to half a dozen sub-critical tests a year.”

“The US argues that sub-critical tests are important to maintain the safety of the nuclear stockpile. In fact, a very small proportion of nuclear tests were ever for safety reasons, and several noted nuclear weapons scientists agree that sub-critical tests are not essential to maintain the safety of the US nuclear arsenal. Safety could instead be maintained by careful surveillance of the stockpile so that ageing material was removed when signs of deterioration occurred, rather than trying to extend warhead lives.”

Third, the Bush administration is supporting the development of “low-yield” nuclear warheads.

“According to the DOD’s ‘Defence Technology Area Plans,’ an annual internal review dated February 2000, the US is actively pursuing research to develop low yield nuclear weapons that would be effective against underground targets.” Stephen M. Younger, an associated director and head of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, “called for a ‘fundamental rethinking of the role of nuclear weapons” and ‘of the composition of our nuclear forces.’ He suggested that by 2020 advances in long-range conventional weapons technology could be such that conventional weapons could take over some of the roles nuclear weapons are currently assigned, such as the destruction of mobile nuclear weapons launch systems that could be anywhere in a vast area. Younger also argued that there were very few targets that require high-yield nuclear warheads anymore and that precision targeted lower yield nuclear bombs should form the bulk of any future US nuclear force…. If the US were to go down the path of producing low-yield, earth penetration nuclear warheads it would blur the barrier between using nuclear and conventional weapons…. Low-yield nuclear warheads could make the use of nuclear weapons militarily more acceptable and therefore more likely to be used in conventional conflicts such as Bosnia or the Gulf War…. It would also provide the US military with an ability to take out national leaders from so-called ‘rogue states’, hiding in their bunkers.”

Younger’s position that low-yield nuclear warheads are an appropriate weapon for some uses, and relatively benign as far as human casualties is concerned, is challenged by the Federation of American Scientists, who, according to Greenpeace, take the position that

“…the use of any nuclear weapon capable of destroying a buried target that is otherwise immune to conventional weapons will necessarily produce enormous numbers of civilian casualties. No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15-kilton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout.”

Fourth, the U.S. military is “also actively increasing its work in all areas of nuclear weapons design, development, production and deployment and has embarked on a multi-billion dollar programme to retain the capability to design, develop, produce and deploy new nuclear warheads at any point in the future.” This program is known as the Stockpile Stewardship Programme (SSP). Among its many projects, SSP designers “are now working on upgrading the arming, fusing and firing (AF&F mechanism) for the approximately three thousand W76 Trident warheads currently deployed. This will mean a significant qualitative improvement in the warhead’s capability, especially to destroy hardened targets.”

Fifth, the Bush administration is cutting funds for nuclear non-proliferation programs. The 2002 FY budget cut $123 million from these programs.

Sixth, nuclear weapons testing – the so-called “sub-critical tests” – continues. Greenpeace reports:

“These tests are performed 300 metres underground at the Nevada Test Site with chemical high explosives and plutonium, the fissile material used in nuclear warheads. These tests combined with data from three dimensional computer simulations is intended to be an alternative to acquiring data through nuclear testing” (most recent test on December 2000).

One consequence of these policies, particularly of the on-going U.S. nuclear weapons testing, is that other countries have begun or resumed their own underground nuclear weapons tests.

In short, the nuclear weapons’ policies of the Bush administration are “quickening” and have found a nurturing political climate in the international war on terrorism. In addition, the Bush administration has threatened to do whatever it takes to bring terrorists to “justice” and to stop states identified as “rogue states” from following our example and developing weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, there is even more “breaking news” on March 9, 2002. Paul Richter reports the following “news” on the further idiotic development on the nuclear weapons front in an article for the L.A. Times.

“The Bush administration has directed the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries and to build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations, according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

“The secret report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, says the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria. It says the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or ‘in the event of surprising military developments.’”

…. “Arms control advocates said the report’s directives on developing smaller nuclear weapons could signal that the Bush administration is more willing to overlook a long-standing taboo against the use of nuclear weapons except as a last resort. They warned that such moves could dangerously destabilize the world by encouraging countries to believe that they, too, should develop weapons.

“’They’re trying desperately to find new uses for nuclear weapons, when their uses are limited to deterrence,’ said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Living World…. Dr. Stranglove is clearly alive in the Pentagon.”

From the margins of the U.S. dominated global system, Greenpeace suggests a rational alternative.

“The only way President Bush and his administration can prove they are committed to one day bringing about a world free of nuclear weapons [seems they could care less about this] is to: (a) scrap the Star Wars programme; (b) halt all reviews of new nuclear warheads and delivery systems; (c) increase aid to Russia and the Newly Independent States to safeguard their nuclear weapons and materials; (d) resume talks with North Korea; (e) agree to begin immediate negotiations and implementation of a START III Treaty with Russia that will bring strategic nuclear warheads levels down to one thousand warheads on each side and ensure that those warheads removed under START III are irreversibly destroyed; (f) immediately send to the House and Senate for ratification of the global treaty that bans nuclear testing; (g) restore good relations with China.”

Continued development of the Missile Defense System is being funded – but the evidence indicates it does not and will not work

Greenpeace (in two reports – see references) provides some background information on the proposed missile defense system and identifies reasons for opposing the system. The National Missile Defense (NMD) system is frequently referred to as “Star Wars,” and continues a policy first proposed by former President Ronald Reagan. Both the earlier Reagan proposal and the current Bush proposal are based on systems that “use radar and satellites to detect enemy missiles as they are fired, and US-based missiles or lasers in space to destroy them before they reach their targets.” In recent years, “two out of three NMD tests, conducted under ideal conditions, have been dismal failures.” Greenpeace notes: “The enormous technical challenges of Star Wars have been likened to ‘attempting to hit a bullet with a bullet.’” There will be additional tests. The President has already decided to continue the process, with the possibility of making it operational sometime in the latter half of the decade.

Greenpeace argues that the continuing development of NMD is undermining arms control agreements. This is so, the environmental organization contends, because it “would expose all nations around the planet to new dangers. It would destabilize and undermine key arms control agreements such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, described as a cornerstone of global stability.” On this issue, the Bush administration has withdrawn from the ABM Treaty.
This emphasis on unilateral actions by the U.S. government will inevitably fuel a new arms race. Greenpeace elaborates this point with the following arguments.

“nuclear weapons states will not let the United States’ attempts to construct a nuclear shield go unanswered. China and Russia perceive ‘Star Wars’ as an offensive move rather than a defensive one which is devised to make the United States immune from nuclear attack and capable of a first-strike advantage. Proponents of military expansion in Russia, and China and other countries will have the fuel they need to proceed with expansion and modernization of their nuclear arsenals.”

US Pentagon planners know this – “A highly classified report, ‘Foreign Responses to U.S. National Missile Defense,’ leaded to the US media last August, predicted that if the plan goes ahead China could expand its nuclear arsenal tenfold from a relatively small base of roughly 20 long-range missiles to a quantity large enough to overwhelm a land-based missile defense system…. The report warned that China’s response could easily set a domino effect in motion. India, which considers China its main national security threat, may try to field an intermediate and long-range missile capability prompting Pakistan to try and respond in kind…. could prompt Russia to place multiple warheads on ballistic missiles that now carry only one.”

Greenpeace rejects the argument that Star Wars is necessary, and argues as follows:
“The US government justifies the expense and risks of Star Wars as a defence from missile attack by so-called ’states of concern', usually interpreted to be Iraq, Iran and North Korea. US defence officials argue these countries could, in five to ten years, develop missile technologies to attack the US with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

“Yet the present and future threat from these small nations is either non-existent or exaggerated. And even if it were technically possible, any nation launching such an attack on the US would be committing immediate mass suicide, given the US ability to retaliate with more than 12,000 nuclear warheads”

Additionally, the “real threats” to attacks on the U.S. can easily bypass any NMD system that is put in place, that is, it won’t work. Greenpeace argues: “The US has more to fear from a ’ bomb in a suitcase‘ than from any ’ state of concern‘. Terrorists could easily smuggle nuclear, chemical or biological weapons into the US via hundreds of routes.” They quote CIA analyst Robert Walpole, who, in testimony before the U.S. Senate, said: "US territory is more likely to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction from non-missile delivery … than by missiles, primarily because non-missile delivery means are less costly and more reliable and accurate." CIA Analyst Robert Walpole before the US Senate. French President Jacques Chirac believes that there the system can always be bypassed. Greenpeace quotes him as saying: "The more improvements that are made to the shield, the more improvements are made to the sword. We think that with these [anti-missile ] systems, we are just going to spur swordmakers tointensify their efforts."

Greenpeace elaborates this last point in the following terms: “The system must distinguish between real warheads and decoys – “Inevitably more sophisticated, smart foils and decoys will be developed to trick and defeat the US interceptors, eliminating any supposed advantage to the US interests claimed by the system. Within a few years, possibly a few months of deployment the whole multi-billion dollar system would become obsolete sending the Pentagon back to the drawing board and taxpayers digging deeper in their pockets.”

From the perspective of Greenpeace, the “real solution” would, as Schell suggests, pursue “a policy of persuasive diplomacy, negotiations and economic incentives.” The emphasis in these discussions and negotiations should stress “that developing missiles and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will simply not meet their security concerns; rather they would make them worse. The US has already adopted this approach with North Korea.” One particular goal should be to launch “determined negotiations by all nations to implement controls on ballistic missile technology and to outlaw the development, production and stockpiling of any nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.” Unfortunately, the U.S. government is taking us in a very different direction, toward a world in which the U.S. uses its massive military power to advance the interests of U.S. corporations and its own geopolitical goals.

IV. Threats to Basic Constitutional Rights

In the second part of my analysis, I have argued that, beyond Afghanistan, the
the September 11 attacks and the declaration of a war on international terrorism have influenced other U.S. policies and development, (1) in the South Asian region around Afghanistan, (2) in planning for an extension of the anti-terrorist campaign, or vaguely related wars, into other countries (e.g., Iraq, Iran, the Philippines), (3) in major shifts in budgetary policies, most notably and disturbingly in a dramatic increase in planned military spending and the apparent rejuvenation and acceleration of the moderation of U.S. nuclear capacity, and (4) in policies aimed at beefing up homeland “security” that, in some ways, seem to threaten some basic constitutional protections of U.S. citizens. In the previous three sections, I have considered information related to three of these topics. In this last section, I turn to the 4th issue, namely, threats posed by U.S. government policies to the constitutional rights of its own citizens and others who find themselves living in the country.

The Threats

Ronald Dwokin (Feb. 28, 2002) refers generally to what has happened with respect to the constitutional rights of citizens since Sept. 11.

“What has al-Qaeda done to our Constitution, and to our national standards of fairness and decency? Since September 11, the government has enacted legislation, adopted policies, and threatened procedures that are not consistent with our established laws and values and would have been unthinkable before.”

James Petras (Jan. 2002) sees five signs of the incipient growth of a police state in the U.S.

First, there are thousands of people of Middle Eastern descent, some of whom are citizens, who “have been arrested without charges” (or for minor immigration violations) and “their right to criticize U.S. policy in the Middle East has been branded as support for terrorism.”

Second, a climate of “mutual suspicion” now hovers over the society, a hallmark of a totalitarian regime, especially when “civil society is turned into a network of secret police informers…. [and] Thousands of Middle Eastern neighbors, local shop owners, and employees were denounced, as were numerous other U.S. citizens.”

Third, a police state involves skapegoating, in this case the skapegoating of Arabs, who are being arrested, investigated, accused, and targeted. Petras notes: “The head of the FBI considers all Arab civic, charity, and other associations suspect of aiding terrorism and subject to investigation and its members targets for arrest.” On this point, Dworkin (Feb. 28, 2002) writes:

“The Justice Department has now detained several hundred aliens, some of them in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day. None of them has been convicted of anything at all, and many of them have been charged with only minor immigration offenses that would not by themselves remotely justify detention. It has refused repeated efforts on the part of journalists, the ACLU, and other groups even to identify these detainees. So our country now jails large numbers of people, secretly, not for what they have done, nor even with case-by-case evidence that it would be dangerous to leave them at liberty, but only because they fall within a vaguely defined class, of which some members might pose danger.”

Fourth, on Oct 26 “…Bush signed the USA/Patriot Act, which vastly strengthened the powers of the police over civil society” and, Petras continues, “The extension of secret police powers was approved almost unanimously by Congress (most of whose members never read the law).” Petras points out that every clause of this law violates the U.S. Constitution and gives the following examples.

“Under this law: (a) any federal law enforcement agency may secretly enter any home or business, collect evidence, not inform the citizen of the entry, and then use the evidence (seized or planted) to convict the occupant of a crime; (b) any policy agency has the power to monitor all Internet traffic and emails, intercept cell phones without warrant of millions of ‘suspects’; (c) any Federal police agency can invade any business premises and seize all records on the basis that it is ‘connected’ with a terrorist investigation.”

In addition, the USA/Patriot Act embodies a “vague, loose definition of ‘terrorism’ that allows it to repress any dissident organization and protest activity.” To make his point, Petras refers to Section 802 of the Act in which terrorism is defined as “any activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States… (and) appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population (or)… to influence the policy of the government by intimidation or coercion.’ Any anti-globalization protest, such as occurred in Seattle, can now be labeled ‘terrorist,’ its leaders and participants arrested, their homes and offices searched, documents seized, and, if they are not citizens, shipped to military tribunals.”

The ACLU News (Spring 2002) identifies the “most troubling provisions” in this “antiterrorism legislation, as follows:

“Permits Information Sharing” – “Allows information obtained during criminal investigations to be distributed to the CIA, NSA, INS, Secret Service and military, without judicial review, and with no limits as to how these agencies can use the information once they have it.”

“Authorizes Covert Searches” – “Authorizes expanded use of covert searches for any criminal investigation, thus allowing the government to enter your home, office or other private place and conduct a search, take photographs, and download your computer files without notifying you until years later.

“Allows the CIA to Spy on Americans” – “Gives CIA Director the power to manage the gathering of intelligence in America and mandate the disclosure of information obtained by the FBI about terrorism in general – even if it is about law-abiding American citizens – to the CIA.”

“Allows Forum Shopping” – “Law enforcement can apply for warrants in any court in any jurisdiction where it is conducting an investigation for a search anywhere in the country. This would make it difficult for individuals subjected to searches to challenge the warrant.”

“Imposes Indefinite Detention” – “Permits authorities to indefinitely detain noncitizens, without meaningful judicial review.”

“Reduces Privacy in Student Records” – “Allows law enforcement to access, use and disseminate highly personal information about American and foreign students.”

“Expands Wiretap Authority” – “Minimizes judicial supervision of law enforcement wiretap authority in several ways, including: permitting law enforcement to obtain the equivalent of ‘blank’ warrants in the physical world; authorizing intelligence wiretaps that need not specify the phone to be tapped or require that only the target’s conversations be eavesdropped upon; allowing the FBI to use its ‘intelligence’ authority to circumvent the judicial review of the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment.”

In reporting on the USA Patriot Act, Walt Brasch (March 7, 2002) identifies the provisions of the U.S. Constitution that are threatened by this legislation. He writes: “The Act butts against the protections of the First (free speech), Fourth (unreasonable searches), Fifth (right against self-incrimination), and Sixth (due process) amendments.

Fifth, the powers of the executive branch of the federal government are being extended in other ways that threaten the constitutional rights of citizens. “In totalitarian states,” Petras writes, “the supreme leader seizes dictatorial powers, suspends constitutional guarantees (citing ‘emergency powers’), empowers the secret police, and handpicks tribunals to arbitrarily arrest, judge, and condemn the accused to prison or execution.” There are striking parallels with President Bush’s emergency order of November 13 [mandating military tribunals], issued without consulting Congress. “The order permits the government to arrest non-citizens who they have ‘reason to believe’are terrorists to be tried by military tribunal. The tribunals are secret and the prosecutors do not have to present evidence if it is ‘in the interest of national security.’”

Dworkin (Feb. 28, 2002) draws out some of the implications of the new policy on military tribunals.

“…. On November 13, in the most dramatic declaration so far, President Bush announced that any non-US citizen that he declared a suspected terrorist—aliens resident in the United States for many years as well as soldiers captured in combat in Afghanistan—might be tried, at his sole discretion, by a military tribunal rather than in an ordinary criminal court. Such tribunals might be secret, and would be governed by special rules laid down by the secretary of defense, including provisions for the "qualifications" and "conduct" of lawyers representing the accused; the ordinary rules of evidence would not apply; the tribunal might declare a defendant's guilt even though not satisfied of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; its verdict, including any death penalties it might order, could be taken by a two-thirds vote of its members; and that verdict might be reviewed only by the President, or the secretary of defense if the President so designates. This is the kind of "trial" we associate with the most lawless of totalitarian dictatorships. If any American were tried by a foreign government in that way, even for a minor offense, let alone a capital crime, we would denounce that government as itself criminal.”

Herman Schwartz, (a professor of constitutional law), comments on the “military tribunals in an article for The Nation on January 21, 2002. He contends that the “fundamental problem” with this system is that all of its “judicial” elements lie “entirely within the military chain of command and subordinate to the President, who is the ultimate authority over every aspect of the proceedings.” The system lacks the element of “independent impartial judges who are not beholden to any side,” a judicial element that is “an indispensable bedrock of any credible system of justice.” While government officials “have sought to reassure doubts by noting that habeas corpus review will be available,” the executive order “expressly prohibits any course to any court.” In addition, according to Schwartz, Bush’s executive order provides no real limit on what evidence may be admitted into the proceedings of a military tribunal. Schwartz writes: “The tribunal still may admit single, double and triple hearsay, affidavits, opinion and other dubious evidence. None of this can be effectively tested by cross-examination, especially since some of this evidence can be kept secret from the accused and his lawyers.”

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch, identifies what is at stake and some of the major problems with the President’s order of November 13th, in which Bush approves the use of military tribunals (or commissions) in dealing with non-citizens suspected of terrorist organizations or acts. Roth believes that the President’s order may violate “the fair trial guarantees mandated by” international human rights law, especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the guarantees found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. According to international law, military tribunals are permitted during armed conflict and other emergency situations, but “it limits who may be subjected to such trials and requires that the trials meet fundamental due process requirements.” Roth specifies seven concerns that he has about the new Executive Order allowing for, and extending the use of, military tribunals, and what rules he thinks should be preserved or introduced.

Military Jurisdiction – “The Department should specify that the personal jurisdiction of the military commissions would be limited to persons engaged in armed conflict against the United States who are being tried for violations of the laws of war…. As drafted, the presidents order permits military jurisdiction over a far greater range of persons than what is permitted under international human rights and humanitarian law. It authorizes trial by military commission of non-US. Citizens who are or were members of al Qaeda; who have engaged in acts of international terrorism; or who have knowingly ‘harbored’ such persons. The scope of this jurisdiction not only far exceeds that permitted historically for military tribunals in the US, but it is inconsistent with international due process norms. The Human Rights Committee, the body authorized to interpret and monitor compliance with the ICCPR has stated that the trial of civilians by military courts should be very exceptional and occur only under conditions that genuinely afford full due process.” Roth continues: “when military courts replace regular courts to exercise jurisdiction over civilians being tried for criminal offenses, the defendant’s right to a hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal is violated.”

Triable Offenses – The Executive Order of Nov. 13th “authorizes military trials for violations of the laws of war and ‘other applicable crimes.’ This open ended reference to other crimes permits persons to be tried for virtually any offense, well beyond violations of the laws of war for which military tribunals have historically been used.”

Habeas Petitions – determining the legality of one’s detention…. The ICCPR specifically provides that anyone who is detained has the right to have the lawfulness of that detention determined by a court (Art. 9).” This right is not guaranteed under the Executive Order.
Public Proceedings – “Trials by military commissions should be public…. They should be closed to the public only for the limited time required for the introduction of classified information or to protect the security of specific witnesses.”

No Indefinite Detention – The Executive Order “does not expressly require that charges be filed and trials be held within a specific period of time. Rules are needed to prevent the possibility of indefinite detention without trial in violation of the fundamental right to liberty (Art. 9, ICCPR).”

Adherence to Rules for General Courts-Martial – “In keeping with US military justice standards, US constitutional law and international human rights law, the following basic due process provisions must be incorporated at a minimum into the commission’s rules” – the accused is: informed of all charges; not forced to confess or testify against himself; given access to all exculpatory evidence; the right to be present at his trial; the assistance, as needed, of translations or interpreters; innocent until proven guilty; beyond reasonable doubt; etc
Appellate Review – “Although the president’s order denies the possibility of appeal of the military commission’s proceedings to federal or state courts, it does not preclude appellate review by higher military courts,” that is, appeals should be allowed to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

The Death Penalty – “The President’s order authorizes military commissions to impose the death penalty upon a vote of two-thirds of the commission members present.” There should be minimum protections including at least the following two: “1) No person may be sentenced to death except for offenses for which the death penalty has been established by laws in force at time of the offense (Art. 6, ICCPR; Art. 52, UCMJ); and 2) a sentence of death can only be imposed by unanimous vote (Art. 52, UCMJ).”

Concluding Observations

There are several striking things that stand out in the first five months of the US-led war in Afghanistan. The U.S. “war” has compounded the harm to Afghan civilians, but convinced the majority of U.S. citizens that we are liberating Afghanistan. The U.S. has no clear commitment or plan to rebuild Afghanistan. Indeed, poppy cultivation is again the bedrock of Afghan agriculture. It has helped to create an interim government that is sympathetic to U.S. interests, but there is no understanding how to integrate regional groups into a governing structure based on a central government. It has further expanded military bases in Central Asia and surrounding areas, and consequently helped to strengthen oppressive governments in a growing number of countries. The U.S. ability to allow U.S. corporations to take advantage of the plentiful oil and gas reserves of the Central Asian region has been vastly enhanced. It has the support of the U.S. Congress and the majority of U.S. citizens to conduct an unlimited number of military interventions or “wars” around the world, with or without allies. It has greatly set in motion an extraordinary expansion of the already huge military establishment and reinvigorated a commitment to nuclear weapons.

In the process, it is advancing a conservative domestic agenda to further cut or curtail a host of domestic programs, instituting tax reforms that disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful, consolidating an “energy” policy that relies on fossil fuels and that is dismissive of renewable energy forms, and doing whatever can get away with to advance the interests of corporate America at whatever costs to the great majority of U.S. citizens. The collapse of Enron is but one example of the ruthless commitment to profits, regardless of the resultant effects, that are zealously promoted by our leaders in the name of “free enterprise,” “free trade,” and “democracy” that is more like plutocracy.

And it has advanced domestic “security” measures that threaten to undermine the “freedoms” of citizens and others who reside in this country.

In the final analysis, however, none of this will ever be effective in solving the problem of terrorism against the United States or in creating a more just and ecologically sustainable world. With all the irrationality built into these patterns and trends, what else can one conclude. Let me conclude with a passage from “A Prayer for Our Country,” authored by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

“Our children deserve a world without end. Not a war without end. Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.”
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Greenpeace, “Back to the Future,” January 18, 2002 – www.greenpeace.org

Greenpeace. “Five Reasons to Oppose a Star Wars Missile Plan.” – www.greenpeace.org

Grossman, Zoltan.“New US Military Bases: Side Effects or Causes of War? Counterpunch, February 2, 2002 – www.counterpunch.org/zoltanbases.html
Heintz, Jim. “Afghan Power Struggle Resumes.” Associated Press, February 2, 2002.
Herman, Edward S., “Body Counts in Imperial Service,” Z Magazine, February 2002

Herold, Marc W. "A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting." Dec. 2001. University of New Hampshire
Durham, N.H. 03824, U.S.A. FAX : 603 862-3383. e-mail: mwherold@cisunix.unh.edu

Herold, Marc. “An Average Day: 65 Afghan Civilians Killed by U.S. Bombs on December 20th.” Cursor (a website), Dec. 29, 2001 – www.cursor.org/stories/ontarget.htm
Herold, Marc W. “The Human Cost of the War.” The Hindu, Jan. 5, 2002
Herold, Marc W. “Recent 'Success' Tally of U.S. Bombs: Over 200 Civilians are Killed to Get 1.5* Taliban Leaders,” Cursor Website, Jan. 6, 2002.
Herold, Marc W. “Above the Law and Below Morality: Data on 11 Weeks of U.S. Cluster-Bombing of Afghanistan.” Cursor, February 1, 2002.
Human Rights Watch. “Cluster Bombs in Afghanistan.” October 2001. www.hrw.org/backgrounder/arms/cluster-bck1031.htm

Jensen, Robert and Rahul Mahajan. “We Can’t Just Forget About Dead Afghan Civilians.” Common Dreams News Center, Dec. 21, 2001 – http://commondreams.org/views01/1222-03.htm

Kaufman, Marc and Peter Baker, “U.S. Mistakes Cost Innocent Lives, Afghan Leader Says,” Washington Post Foreign Service, February 6, 2002; Page A01

Keena, Kathleen. “Afghanistan conditions deteriorating,” The Toronto Star, Dec. 4, 2001 – www.zmag.org

Klare, Michael T. “’Axis of Evil’ Crumbles Under Scrutiny.” Pacific News Service, January 31, 2002 – www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12321

Kucinich, Dennis. “A Prayer For Our Country.” February 26, 2002 - www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/kucinich1.htm

MacAskill, Ewen. “From Suez to the Pacific.” The Guardian, March 8, 2002 – www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,663947,00.html

MacKinnon, Mark. “Warlords Imperil Afghan Peace.” Foreign Policy, January 22, 2002 – (also located at: www.zmag.org)

Mahajan, Rahul.“The State of the Union and the New Cold War,” Counterpunch, January 31, 2002 – www.counterpunch.org

Monboit, George, “America’s Imperial War.” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2002. (included on www.zmag.org)

National Priorities Project, “Unfair and Unwise: Overview of the Bush Administration’s Proposed FY 2003 Budget.” February 4, 2002 – www.nationalpriorities.org/budget/FY03/Commentary.htm

Nessman, Ravi, “Afghan village forced to eat grass.” Associated Press, January 8, 2002 – www.zmag.org/nessman.htm

Neuffer, Elizabeth, “Unexploded US bomblets mine villages,” Boston Globe, January 20, 2002
Ottaway, Marina and Anatol Lieven, “Rebuilding Afghanistan: Fantasy versus Reality.” Carnegie Endowment for Peace, January 2002.

Pearce, Fred, “The World’s No. 1 Science and Technology News Service. New Scientist, January 2, 2002 – www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991733

Petras, James. “Signs of a Police State are Everywhere.” Z Magazine, January 2002.

Pilger, John. “The Colder War.” Counterpunch, January 31, 2002 – www.counterpunch.org/pilgercold.html

Rashid, Ahmed. Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Richter, Paul. “U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Weapons.” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2002. – www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-030902bombs.story

Ridgeway, James with Meritxell Mir, “Let Them Eat Teddy Bears,” Village Voice (December 6)

Roth, Kenneth. Executive Director, Human Rights Watch, “Letter to Secretary Rumsfeld on Military Commissions,” Counterpunch, Dec. 20, 2001 – www.counterpunch.org

Schell, Jonathan, “Disarmament Years.” The Nation, February 25, 2002

Schwartz, Herman (a professor of constitutional law), “Tribunal Injustice,” The Nation, January 21, 2002.

Shalom, Stephen R., “Interviews Noam Chomsky,” January 2002 – www.zmag.org

Shalom, Stephen R. “Confronting Terrorism and War,” New Politics, no. 32, Winter 2002 -
Smucker, Philip. “Blunders that let bin Laden slip away.” Telegraph, February 23, 2002 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk…&sSheet=/news/2002/02/23/ixnewstop.html

Surowiecki, James. “Is war really good for the economy?” New Yorker, 2-11-02 – www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/020211ta_talk_surowiecki

Steele, Jonathan, “Kabul’s Loss, Counterpunch, Feb. 26, 2002 – www.counterpunch.org/steele.html

Times of India, “Karzai calls for an end to warlords in Afghanistan,” February 5, 2002 –wysiwyg://22/htpp://www1.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1832538836

Tisdall, Simon. “Reaching the parts other empires could not reach.” Guardian Newspapers, January 16, 2002 – www.s.tisdall@guardian.co.uk

Traynor, Ian “First snow warns of humanitarian disaster,” Dec. 4, 2001 - www.zmag.org/traynordis.htm

Traynor, Ian, “Afghans Still Dying,” Feb. 12, 2002 – www.zmag.org

Stop the War in Afghanistan!

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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A look back at 1st year of US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan

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