Seeing ourselves through Afghan eyes

by Scott Taylor

Global Research, May 28, 2008

Esprit de Corps

Whenever a nation is at war, it is very easy to polarize all public opinion based upon the simplified premise of "us" versus "them." Soldiers simply follow orders, while the political and military leadership puts forward talking points to justify the military intervention. A large percentage of the media eagerly parrots the government press lines, and the Canadian public is more than content to be placated by the official reassurances that our cause is just. This makes for a relatively easy sales job as we all believe that we are inherently good people.

Therefore, if strange foreigners attack our soldiers with suicidal fanaticism, it is very easy to convince ourselves that our enemy is evil incarnate. When NATO artillery or airstrikes cause the deaths of innocent women and children, naturally we blame the dastardly insurgents for using their own families as human shields.

However, in the fall of 2006, following the successful conclusion of Operation Medusa, our soldiers walked among the throng of Afghan refugees returning to the Panjwai district. When a Taliban suicide bomber detonated a bicycle bomb in the midst of that crowd—killing and injuring soldiers and civilians alike—we heaped all the blame for the collateral damage into the coffin of the Taliban attackers. When our soldiers shot and killed an unarmed 10-year-old boy at the scene of an IED ambush, we said the Taliban bore full responsibility because they had created such an insecure environment that our troops had little recourse but to shoot first and take no chances.

Last week's attack against Canadian soldiers involving another 10-year-old boy would—at least on the surface—appear to substantiate that rationale.

However, if we are trying to justify our soldiers' sacrifice with the notion that our Canadian troops are in Afghanistan to protect the weak and the innocent, the fact that we are engaging and being engaged by 10-year-old boys should give us pause for thought. The official NATO spin on the Taliban's use of a young boy in a suicide attack was that this is further proof of a desperate defeated foe.

Last year, when the Taliban in Kandahar province abandoned any attempt at conventional attacks and began relying solely on IEDs, we were told this meant our tactics were working because we'd driven them underground. On May 6, when Corporal Michael Starker was killed in a rare firefight with insurgents, again we were told this was a positive step forward because we were now driving the Taliban out into the open.

Regardless of how the tactical battle is waged, the Canadian public have been repeatedly reassured that our soldiers are in Afghanistan at the request of the democratically-elected government of President Hamid Karzai.

Of course, that rosy little picture was irreparably ruptured last month when Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier denounced the governor of Kandahar as a corrupt official. While I have little doubt that Bernier has concrete proof of Governor Asadullah Khalid's sticky fingers in the funds, demanding that Afghan public officials be shuffled and replaced on demand would make the Karzai government appear to be nothing more than puppets of the Western occupation force.

On top of that, his comments only seemed to illustrate just how out of touch Bernier is with the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. While corruption is certainly rife among Afghan public officials, politicians, and security forces, they are nothing more than petty criminals compared to the foreigners who are plundering the Afghanistan mission for what it's really worth.

For instance, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently discovered a case wherein a 22-year-old American businessman sold some $300 million worth of old and mostly defective ammunition to the Afghan army and police forces. To make matters worse, the ammo cartridges were purchased and shipped from China, which is a violation of U.S. law. The same GAO report found a $32-million payment for an airfield in Iraq that was never built, and more than $8 billion in contractor incentive fees and bonuses that were paid—even if the work was not complete.

With lawlessness and violence rampant throughout Kandahar, and with foreigners lining their pockets with obscure profits, it is no wonder that Governor Khalid felt slighted when Bernier singled him out as a corrupt official.

If we are ever going to succeed in overcoming this challenge in Afghanistan, we need to start seeing ourselves through the eyes of those we are purporting to assist, not simply how we want to see ourselves.

Canadian Workers Demand Immediate End to War in Afghanistan

Global Research, June 14, 2008

The Bullet

On 29 May 2008, the delegates at the national convention of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), representing more than three million workers from every region of Canada and Quebec, voted overwhelmingly to demand that the Government of Canada immediately end its participation in the illegal war in Afghanistan.

This CLC demand represents a significant consolidation of labour power. Several national unions, notably the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) had already adopted policies to oppose Canada's participation in the war in Afghanistan. However, some powerful unions whose members work in the rapidly expanding Canadian military and development industries could profit from continuing the war. The women and men of these unions made the difficult decision to stand in solidarity with the working people of Afghanistan rather than act on self-interest.

The Afghan War and the Canadian Military

The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill uncounted thousands of Afghan civilians and cause immeasurable suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, arbitrary arrests and torture, sexual abuse, and the general humiliation of Afghans. This is an illegal war that cannot be justified by a few extra jobs for Canadian workers.

Since the war in Afghanistan began, Canada has become the sixth largest military exporter in the world, according to data collected by the U.S. Congressional Research Service. Canada is now behind only the USA, Russia, the UK, Germany, and China in export volume. The U.S. manufactures more than all other military manufacturers combined, so comparing Canada's military industrial complex to the American mega-industry is ridiculous. But, Canada trails China -- number five on the list -- by only a hundred million dollars worth of exports in an industry that brings billions of dollars into Canada. No one knows exactly how many billions of dollars military exports bring into Canada though. Why not? Because, for the past four years, the Canadian government, citing security concerns, has refused to release much of the data regarding the export of military products to the U.S. -- our biggest customer.

Canada's own military spending has risen considerably. Since the war began in 2001, Canada rose from the position of 16th to 13th biggest military spender in the world, and from 7th to 6th within NATO, according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report. Canada's defence budget projects a 37 percent increase in spending from 2001 to 2010.

The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) represents more than five hundred companies. In an interview with a CBC journalist, the CADSI president, Tim Page, claimed his industry represents about 70,000 jobs in over 177 federal ridings. This may not seem like a large number of workers, but it represents significant political power. Many of these high-tech jobs are among the best in the country.

However, the workers who build the weapons and everything else needed for warfare, as well as the service workers who make the Canadian state function, recognise that it is the shareholders who profit most from the rising fortunes of the companies in Canada's military industrial complex. Corporations such as GM Canada, Bombardier, Bell Helicopter, SNC-Lavalin, CAE Electronics, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Canadian Marconi, and Colt Canada are only a few of the Canadian based military suppliers profiting from the war in Afghanistan.

Canadian Development Aid in Afghanistan

The Canadian development industry also profits from the war and occupation. The one billion dollars Canada has "pledged" to spend on development in Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2011, pales in comparison to the 7.2 billion dollars already spent on the military mission. Nonetheless, a billion dollars is a significant sum. However, most development spending returns to Canada as salaries and expenses. Manufacturers as well as service providers such as construction contractors and airlines profit significantly from the development industry -- while the little development spending that actually does reach Afghanistan benefits few Afghans.

When our research group toured five Afghan provinces in 2007, we were appalled by the miserable conditions most Afghans must live in. Even in the safest areas of the country, where there is no excuse for the occupying forces failure to reconstruct essential infrastructure, many Afghans do not have even the barest essentials of clean water and adequate sanitation. In Kabul, where the international forces have occupied the city since 2001, less than 29 percent of the people have access to clean drinking water, according to reports by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.

Peter McKay, Canada's Minister of Defence, frequently claims that over six million Afghan children -- one third of them girls -- have been enrolled in school. However, his claim is not substantiated by Afghan researchers. Girls represent only 3 percent of students, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The children of poor families cannot afford school; they must work to survive. The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit claims this fact especially inhibits girls from going to school.

When we interviewed people in Afghanistan, their experiences of development sounded very much like what Michael Ignatieff had described in his book "Empire Lite" in 2003. Ignatieff stated:

The rhetoric about helping Afghanistan stand on its own two feet does not square with the hard interest that each Western government has in financing, not the Afghans, but its own national relief organisations. ...These fly a nation's flag over some road or school that a politician back home can take credit for. ... the international's first priority is building their own capacity -- increasing their budgets and giving themselves good jobs (Michael Ignatieff. Empire Lite. 2003).

Since becoming a politician, Ignatieff no longer talks about these issues, but Afghans see this reality every day.

Commercial Exploitation

Despite the fact there is no systemic development of the basic infrastructure necessary for human survival in Afghanistan, massive commercial developments proceed at a rapid pace.

The biggest development to date is the Aynak copper mine just a few kilometres from Kabul. This rich mine site was auctioned, in late 2007, to the Chinese metallurgical corporation MCC for a price of more than 3 billion American dollars. The Aynak deposit is the first of more than 1,400 state owned mineral deposits in Afghanistan slated for privatisation in the near future.

A Soviet geological survey in the 1970s found -- and American and British surveys since 2001 have confirmed -- massive deposits of almost every kind of mineral wealth exist in Afghanistan, such as gold, iron, uranium, and copper, as well as hydrocarbons, especially coal. Afghanistan is also one of few locations on Earth where the rare element tantalum, also known as coltan, is found. Tantalum is essential in the manufacture of cell phones and laptop computers. The largest previously known source is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where tantalum mining played a part in the most destructive war, in terms of human casualties, since WWII.

Canadian mining giants are competing with American, British, Russian, and Chinese companies in a scramble for the rich mineral prizes found in Afghanistan. Financial predictions for the Afghan mining industry are in the unfathomable hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. But, as an article by Antony Benham in the October 2007 issue of "Nature" notes, it is unlikely much of this wealth will benefit many Afghans.

Development of the transportation and energy infrastructure needed by the mining industry is rapidly proceeding, while ordinary Afghans suffer without the most basic necessities of life. Some sceptics claim that even the electricity to be transported by a transmission network currently under construction funded by the Asian Development Bank, is not likely destined for the millions of Afghans without electricity, but will instead be sucked up by electricity hungry ore processing plants.

Whether it is here in Canada, in Latin America, in Africa, throughout Asia, as it is now in Afghanistan, the Aboriginal Peoples who live on the land are perceived to stand in the way of what we in the so-called developed world call development. The environmental devastation that can be caused by resource extraction is well known, but this is a fact known better by those people directly affected who rely on their land for their livelihood than by anyone else. However, the disciplinary power of the modern state is being used to counter any protest, eliminate all resistance, and clear the land of Aboriginal Peoples wherever it is deemed necessary.

The New Afghan Theocratic State

The destruction of the Taliban regime by American armed forces in 2001 effectively silenced opposition and effectively re-instituted a theocratic regime. A theocratic state was first imposed on Afghans in 1992 when the U.S. helped the mujaheddin gain power by financing their war with billions of dollars against the secular Soviet-backed government. American President Jimmy Carter initially began providing military and other support for the mujaheddin Islamic revolutionaries on 3 July 1979, which then drew the Soviet military into Afghanistan 25 December 1979. In coming to power, the mujaheddin declared Afghanistan an Islamic republic. The ouster of the mujaheddin by the Taliban in 1996 brought an even greater degree of social and political repression for Afghanis, and intensified the theocratic features of the Afghanistan state, often through brutal means.

Secular Afghans, those of other faiths, and Muslims who believe in a separation of state and religion have been profoundly disenfranchised by the theocratic state that first gained support from the Western powers in the 1990s. They have remained so by the new theocratic state re-established, under the puppet leadership of President Karzai, by a handful of Western leaders in the Bonn Agreement of 2001. The Bonn Agreement was instituted despite a UN Security Council recommendation issued several weeks earlier that urged that "the new Afghan government should respect the human rights of all Afghan people, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion."

The Bonn Agreement accomplished, among others, three objectives with profoundly adverse consequences for many Afghans. First, it rewarded the mujaheddin warlords for their decades of services to the USA. Second, it promised the mujaheddin impunity for the many horrendous war crimes they had committed since 1979, which continue to this day during the American-led occupation. Third, it re-instituted the theocratic state as a means of social control.

The U.S. State Department reports: "The government requires all citizens to profess a religious affiliation and assumes all Afghans to be Muslim. According to Islamic law, conversion from Islam is punishable by death." The U.S. State Department also reports that socialism is illegal in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, because socialists are atheists.

Afghan political opponents of many progressive stripes must remain underground fearing retribution from both the Taliban insurgents and the ruling mujaheddin regime. In essence, the only substantive difference between the Taliban and mujaheddin regimes is that one is an intolerant authoritarian theocratic regime bent on resistance to the new world order and the other is an intolerant authoritarian theocratic regime willing and well prepared to profit from engagement with the new world order.

Now that the workers of Canada and Quebec have officially declared our solidarity with Afghan workers, it is time to begin building bridges to join our struggles against the new authoritarianism and theocracy in Afghanistan and Western and Canadian imperialism.

Michael Skinner is a Researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science, York University. He is also a member of CUPE Local 3903 and the Toronto Local CUPW.

In 2007, Skinner and Afghan-Canadian researcher Hamayon Rastgar, representing the Afghanistan Canada Research Group, travelled throughout much of Afghanistan. They listened to Afghan intellectuals, opposition politicians, and particularly the ordinary Afghan workers and peasant farmers whose views are not represented in the Canadian media (read dispatches on TUAW website - http://www.tuaw.ca/other/dispatch0.html ).
You can see a short video of this research, "Searching for Development in Afghanistan"

Heart of darkness: Afghan Resistance against Foreign Occupation

by Eric Walberg

Global Research, June 4, 2008

Al-Ahram Weekly

Princess Patricia, a Taliban takeover. Oh the horror of it all

News from Afghanistan makes no sense. On the one hand there are up-beat stories like the recent Canadian Operation Rolling Thunder in Pashmul, Kandahar. “I started the operation on a hospital operating table and I’m ending it with everybody coming back safely. I couldn’t be happier,” beamed Major Grubb, leading the 2nd Battalion of the bizarrely named Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Company.

The few locals still living in Pashmul, the scene of this “liberation” campaign by the kuffar Canadians, either fled by foot or cowered in their dugouts before the fighting started. Most are poor farmers. Scores of locals, the “enemy”, were killed by the brave Canucks, who, just to clinch their “success”, called on US military air support to drop several bombs, including Hellfire missiles. Several dozen “enemy” were destroyed. Only one Afghan government soldier was hurt when he accidentally shot himself in the foot. No Canadians were even injured. Major Grubb acknowledged the operation isn’t a “permanent result” because the Taliban seem to have an unlimited supply of fighters willing to battle for Pashmul.

Western readers have become numbed into accepting the code words “enemy” and “insurgents”, ignoring the underlying fact that the Taliban are still the legitimate government, that these so-called insurgents are in fact widely seen as freedom fighters battling the non-Muslim foreign occupiers — the real “enemy” — who invaded the country illegally and have killed hundreds of thousands of resistance fighters and innocent civilians illegally. Rather than “killed”, the word “murdered” might be more appropriate. For locals, the dead are “martyred”, as in Iraq and Palestine.

In a recent report which notably reflects the implicit horror of what the occupiers are doing, the Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders describes a scene in Naray, on the northeast border with Pakistan, where 200 trigger-happy US Army soldiers huddle in tents, sheltering themselves from regular rocket attacks. He was greeted by a certain Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Kolenda, a clean-cut, steel-eyed officer in the 173rd Airborne, who introduced him to one of the key battlefield tactics of the new American military — the two-hour PowerPoint presentation. “The heart of the matter here, as we see it, is a socio-economic dislocation,” Kolenda told him, before quoting from Sir George Scott Robertson’s 1900 manual Kaffirs of the Hindu Kush and explaining in detail the anthropology and tribal politics of this region, including some new research he had commissioned from American Human Terrain Specialists.

“There’s been an atomisation of society here — the elders lost control over their people, and a new elite of fighters came in to fill the vacuum, so what we need to do out here is to re-empower the traditional leadership structures. As you approach the possibility of self-sufficient development, then you reach what I’ll call the developmental asymptote, which is the point we’re striving to reach.” Hardly the sort of talk he had expected from an infantry brigade known for its ruthlessness. Here at the headwaters of the river, he felt he had encountered some “latter-day Colonel Kurtzes, losing themselves in Cartesian twists of logic amid all the mud and dust.”

This, apparently, is the Petraeus Doctrine, a new version of the infamous “strategic hamlets” strategy of Vietnam days, with officers taking totalitarian command of the society, in hopes of replacing the Taliban with a made-in-America secular, consumer culture. A zealous US officer in Naray effused, “Our goal is to rebuild the government and society from the ground up in our model,” using the Commander’s Emergency Response Programme, funding so-called society-rebuilding programmes — similar to what the dozens of Western aid organisations might do if they dared venture forth from Kabul.

“We do not believe in counterinsurgency,” a senior French commander, clearly recalling Vietnam and Algeria, told Saunders. “If you find yourself needing to use counterinsurgency, it means the entire population has become the subject of your war, and you either will have to stay there forever or you have lost.” The Americans, unfortunately, have yet to learn this lesson. “We’re trying to raise the opportunity cost of picking up a weapon or growing poppy,” says Alison Blosser, a Pashto-speaking State Department official. And they are willing to wait things out, according to one official, an obvious acolyte of presidential hopeful Senator John McCain: “We’re still in Germany and Japan 60 years after that war ended. That’s how long it can take. I fully expect to have grandchildren who will be fighting out here.”

Despite the insistence by the occupiers that they can outlast the resistance, there is a constant string of reports indicating the Taliban are continuing to increase their strength, taking control of the regional centre Ghaszani in central Afghanistan last week, though reports were quick to add that occupation forces rushed in to retake the village. There have been reports of Taliban fighters moving into several other rural districts north and east of Kabul. The Taliban is seen by many in the districts surrounding the capital as a credible alternative to the weak US-backed government.

Kabul itself is the constant scene of bombings. Sunday, a remote-controlled bomb blew up a mini-bus shuttling National Army personnel to the Ministry of Defence, killing a woman and wounding five others, including three army personnel. Three days earlier a suicide bomber targeted a convoy of international soldiers in eastern Kabul, killing three civilians.

Violence has increased around Afghanistan during the last two years, even as more international troops have poured into the country. More than 1,500 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year. Analysts estimate that this has been the bloodiest spring since the start of the insurgency and that the increasing instability is fuelling the call to deploy more troops to the region. Ninety-seven British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001, most in the past two years. At current rates, the 100 mark will be passed in the coming month.

NATO officials claim that the surge in violence is related in part to the recent peace deals between the Pakistani government and the rebels in that country, which, it is argued, allow for a haven for Taliban fighters who cross the border to launch attacks in Afghanistan. The US response to this American theory has been — yes — to start bombing Pakistan.

Any talk of “society building” must be put in the context of the situation in Helmand province, where, of the 224 schools opened in 2001-02, only 60 are now active. Teachers should get $60 per month, but are rarely paid at all. On the other hand, the province is now the world’s biggest producer of opium, and the authorities cannot successfully eradicate it or find a substitute crop. And once the harvest is in, or if fields of poppies are destroyed by the occupiers, destitute farmers flock to the Taliban’s ranks.

The insurgency is spread not by fear alone: a weak central government and the country’s declining socioeconomic situation point to the Taliban as the only feasible force to control the situation. “The population of Afghanistan is becoming disillusioned with the government,” says Halim Kousary, of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul. “People in the north believe there hasn’t been enough reconstruction.”

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen told Congress last week the US will respond by increasing troop strength. Yes, that will be sure to improve the situation: kill even more Afghan patriots, inciting their relatives to seek revenge, and drop some more bombs, terrifying and killing civilians for good measure.

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002/

A U.S. report casts a pall over conditions in Kandahar

JEFFREY SIMPSON

jsimpson@globeandmail.com

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June 24, 2008 at 7:43 AM EDT

Canadians are in Afghanistan, yes, but, more important, they are in Kandahar city and province.

Kandahar was and, to some extent remains, the heartland of the Taliban and its allies. It was there that the Taliban movement began, politically and intellectually; it is to there the Taliban wishes to return. It was to there that the Taliban invited al-Qaeda and other "foreign fighters"; it is there that "foreign fighters" were discovered in the battle north of the city last week.

Saturday, another roadside bomb struck a convoy west of Kandahar, killing four unidentified soldiers and wounding two others. In Kandahar city last week, militants successfully stormed a prison, freeing all who had been incarcerated there. Taliban from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and "foreign fighters," were then pushed from villages north of the city. Perhaps a hundred or so were killed; the rest melted away.

Canada and its NATO allies hope the Afghan National Army can do more of the fighting. Certainly, this has been the strategy propounded by the Canadian government.

The task force chaired by former deputy prime minister John Manley supported this strategy. Said the task force members: "The Afghan National Army has shown measurable improvements." The army had reached 47,000 troops and planned to deploy at least 70,000 by 2010.

Alas, that optimism was not reflected by the General Accountability Office of the U.S. Congress. It reported last week that, despite a U.S. investment of more than $10-billion since 2002, only two of 105 ANA units are capable of operating effectively.

The report says the ANA lacks equipment, leaders, recruits, trainers and weapons. Part of the shortfall in trainers and weapons is tied to U.S. deployments in Iraq, the conflict that still dominates U.S. spending, strategy and deployment of personnel.

The ANA, despite this assessment, remains far ahead of the Afghan National Police that is undermanned, underpaid, deeply corrupt and generally ineffective. The GAO found that none of the ANP's 433 units were "fully capable," and 12 per cent were "capable" only with coalition support. Put another way, of the 433 units, 381 were "not capable."

From weekly reports of ANP detachments, the GAO found that 94 per cent reported problems with pay and 87 per cent with corruption, and that 85 per cent were attacked or working in dangerous places that led to high rates of desertion.

It would be reassuring to believe that the conflict has turned a corner, but it has not in Kandahar and other troubled provinces of the country's south and east. The Taliban indigenous to Afghanistan and the Taliban in Pakistan have changed tactics, relying much more on suicide bombings and ambushes than pitched battles.

They are using an asymmetrical military strategy that they believe, if sustained, will exceed the willingness of foreigners to remain. The best antidote to their strategy would be a robust Afghan military and police, but as last week's GAO report demonstrated, Afghanistan is a long way from having either.

In Pakistan, an entire structure of institutions produces young men (and women) ready to blow themselves up, with payments paid to families of the bombers from profits extorted or made from the opium trade NATO has been incapable of halting. As long as the Pakistani government is powerless or unwilling to combat these institutions, a constant stream of recruits will cross the border into Kandahar.

The result has been that in the first three months of 2008, there were 704 Taliban attacks from suicide bombings, ambushes and other kinds of assaults, compared to 424 in a similar period last year. The incidence of violence is increasing, especially in and around the epicentre of the Afghanistan fighting: Kandahar.

This year, there has been an average of 18 suicide attacks a month, twice the average in 2006 and 2007. Remember that in the entire Afghan war against the Soviets, there is no record of a suicide bombing. Suicide attacks have arrived courtesy of imported but now ingrained al-Qaeda ideology, the example of Iraq and the teachings of various religious communities.

Conventional military deployments are next to useless against suicide bombings, which cannot win a war but can terrorize indigenous populations and demoralize others whose troops have been sent to faraway places.

NATO, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan: What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

By Faheem Hussain

Global Research, June 9, 2008

What is NATO doing in Afghanistan? What are the true aims of NATO intervention in the region? These are the questions that I mean to address in this article. To understand what is happening in Afghanistan one has to go back to the attack on Yugoslavia by NATO forces in February 1999.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO lost its raison d'être given that Western Europe and the United States were no longer threatened by an invasion from Eastern Europe. NATO thus had the choice between disbanding itself or developing a new reason for its existence. This gave the opportunity to the United States to reshape NATO in ways that would serve its imperial interests. It is very important to remember that its founding documents clearly say that NATO was a defensive organisation, which would go into action only when one of its member states was attacked.

The first step in the US strategy of changing the nature of NATO was the attack on Yugoslavia on the pretext of preventing ethnic cleansing. Clearly Yugoslavia had not attacked a NATO member state thus excluding a response from NATO. Whatever one can say about Kosovo, it was internationally recognised as an integral part of Yugoslavia (and is still internationally recognised as part of Serbia) and Yugoslavia did not attack or even threaten a NATO member state.

As was clear right from the beginning of the Kosovo crisis in the 90s, and as was confirmed at the NATO 50th Anniversary Celebrations in Washington in April 1999, one of the aims of the United States in attacking Yugoslavia at that time on the pretext of preventing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was to present to the European states a fait accompli as an example of the future role of NATO as an offensive organisation whose aim was to act as the world’s policeman, or more rightly thug, in the defence of perceived United States interests. It was clear that the US was intent on provoking a war with Yugoslavia and its subsequent bombardment.

How was this achieved? One of the final steps in the American strategy in attacking a sovereign state, Yugoslavia, which had not attacked any NATO member state, was the proposed Rambouillet Accords, February 23 1999. These show clearly that the Americans had no intention of pursuing a peaceful settlement of the Kosovo problem and that they intended to push Milosevic into a situation that he could not accept. In the words of Lamberto Dini, the then Italian Foreign Minister, the Rambouillet Accords were made deliberately to "humiliate the Serbs" so that they could not accept them.

Here I reproduce some of the worst points of the proposed Rambouillet Accords, Appendix B: Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force:

3. The Parties recognize the need for expeditious departure and entry procedures for NATO personnel. Such personnel shall be exempt from passport and visa regulations and the registration requirements applicable to aliens. At all entry and exit points to/from the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, F.H.), NATO personnel shall be permitted to enter/exit the FRY on production of a national identification (ID) card. NATO personnel shall carry identification which they may be requested to produce for the authorities in the FRY, but operations, training, and movement shall not be allowed to be impeded or delayed by such requests.

6. a. NATO shall be immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal.

b. NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties, jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses (sic) which may be committed by them in the FRY. The Parties shall assist States participating in the operation in the exercise of their jurisdiction over their own nationals.

7. NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY. NATO personnel erroneously arrested or detained shall immediately be turned over to NATO authorities.

8. NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver (sic), billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.

9. NATO shall be exempt from duties, taxes, and other charges and inspections and custom regulations including providing inventories or other routine customs documentation, for personnel, vehicles, vessels, aircraft, equipment, supplies, and provisions entering, exiting, or transiting the territory of the FRY in support of the Operation.

15. The Parties recognize that the use of communications channels is necessary for the Operation. NATO shall be allowed to operate its own internal mail services. The Parties shall, upon simple request, grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO. This shall include the right to utilize such means and services as required to assure full ability to communicate, and the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum for this purpose, free of cost. In implementing this right, NATO shall make every reasonable effort to coordinate with and take into account the needs and requirements of appropriate authorities in the FRY.

17. NATO and NATO personnel shall be immune from claims of any sort which arise out of activities in pursuance of the operation; however, NATO will entertain claims on an ex gratia basis.

21. In carrying out its authorities under this Chapter, NATO is authorized to detain individuals and, as quickly as possible, turn them over to appropriate officials.

I have here only given some of the articles of the infamous Appendix. The others are more of the same ilk. The whole appendix is worth reading. These are some of the privileges which are for example enjoyed by US troops in Italy. (The new secret agreements being proposed between the US government and the Maliki puppet government in Iraq go much further). It was clear that the Rambouillet Accords were attacks on the sovereignty of Yugoslavia and that NATO wanted to completely take over Yugoslavia. The above conditions were obviously entirely unacceptable to a sovereign state and it was clear that these conditions were put so that Milosevic could not accept them and that the bombing of Serbia could start. In fact that is exactly what happened.

It should be clear and there is ample evidence of this, which I cannot reproduce here without making this article too long, that the attack on Yugoslavia had absolutely nothing to do with preventing ethnic cleansing and all to do with punishing a state that did not accept US diktat and was a crucial step towards reinventing the role of NATO.

Attentive readers in Pakistan will note the uncanny similarities between the proposed Rambouillet Accords of 1999 preceding the 78 day NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia and what Shirin Mazari, a Pakistani defence analyst and former head of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad (ISSI), revealed as a set of demands that the USA recently made to the Pakistan government (The News March 8, 2008). Although one can never be sure, I hope that the Musharraf government at that time and the present government have rejected these demands which negate Pakistani sovereignty. I wonder if the new “democratic” dispensation has given in to US pressure to remove Ms. Mazari from her position as head of the ISSI given her opposition to NATO presence in Afghanistan and her criticisms of US policy in the region.

It is relevant to point out that although the Serbian Parliament had agreed to an accord a day before the bombardment was started, this was deliberately ignored. Also significant is the fact that the final accord sanctioning Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosovo after 78 days of bombing achieved much less than what was being pushed in the Rambouillet Accords. So what was the point of bombardment if much less was acceptable? It was clear then and it is clearer now that the main idea was to change the nature of NATO as part of a broader strategy to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean and the oil routes from Central Asia.

The aim of reinventing the role of NATO into an aggressive arm of US foreign policy was achieved at the Washington meeting. The birth of the new NATO was sanctioned by the following words of the 19 heads of state and government on 24th April 1999:

This new alliance will be bigger, more capable and more flexible, involved in collective defence and capable of undertaking new missions, among which is the active commitment in the management of crises, including the operations of responding to crises. (Washington Summit Communiqué, 24/4/1999)

The newly born creature is the fruit of an operation of genetic engineering: from an alliance that, on the basis of Article 5 of the Treaty of 4 April 1949, authorised its member countries to assist (also with armed force) any member state that was attacked in the North Atlantic area, was transformed into an alliance that, on the basis of the new "strategic concept", commits the member countries also to conduct operations outside the territory of the Alliance (non-Article 5 operations). This was stressed several times in the document "The Alliance's Strategic Concept" approved by the Heads of State and government on April 24, 1999. For example in Article 31 it says

NATO will seek, in co-operation with other organisations, to prevent conflict, or should a crisis arise, to contribute to its effective management, consistent with international law, including through the possibility of conducting non-Article 5 crisis response operations. (The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, 24/4/1999; Defence Capabilities Initiative, 24/4/1999)

Remove the fig leaf of respect for international law and here you have the real intentions of NATO, to conduct operations throughout the world as it pleases.

To remove any doubt about the intentions of NATO, President Clinton clarified, during the press conference on 24 April 1999, that the North Atlantic Allies

have reaffirmed their readiness to affront, in appropriate circumstances, regional conflicts beyond the territory of the members of NATO. (Transcript: Clinton Says NATO May Intervene Beyond Its Borders, 24/4/1999)

To the question on what was the geographical area in which NATO was ready to intervene, "the President refused to specify to what distance NATO intended to project its force, saying that it was not a question of geography". In other words, NATO intended to project its military force beyond its borders not only in Europe, but also in other regions, like the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Ocean. NATO gave itself the right to intervene anywhere in the world whenever it feels its interests are threatened, without consulting the United Nations. Led by the biggest and most dangerous rogue state, the United States, NATO was set to become the gravest threat to peace throughout the world. One of the amazing and disgusting spectacles to watch in Europe in those days was that these so-called democracies accepted the new NATO without discussion in any of the European Parliaments. It is as if loyalty to NATO (which means in effect obedience to US diktat) has been put above all other considerations of national sovereignty and democracy. The Italian Prime Minister at that time, Massimo D’Alema, an ex-communist, said that Italy had to go to war because of its commitments and loyalty to NATO. He perhaps forgot that the principle of obeying orders while committing acts against humanity was not accepted at the Nuremberg trials as an attenuating circumstance.

It is worth remembering in these times, when one tends to blame Bush and his gang for all US aggressive imperialist policies, that all the above took place under the falsely admired Clinton and his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, famous for her remark that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as a consequence of the then embargo on Iraq was a justified price to pay to remove Saddam. We tend to forget that all US presidents follow such policies. As was obvious Bush and his gang whole-heartedly accepted the new role of NATO. If fact this was reemphasised in the recent NATO heads of states meeting in Romania where Bush explicitly said that the role of NATO was that of a “global expeditionary force”. These are terrible words that bode ill for the future of the world.

Yugoslavia of course could not and did not accept the demands made in the Rambouillet Accords and was therefore subject to savage bombing. The bombing of Serbia sanctioned NATO out of area operations and was a prelude to NATO involvement in Afghanistan as the handmaiden of the USA. NATO should never have been in Afghanistan in the first place and it is good to see that many European countries are reluctant to send their troops to die there. What is happening in Afghanistan is tragic with hundreds of innocents dying at the hands of indiscriminate bombing by US and NATO forces and by the retaliatory Taliban and resistance bombings but one thing is clear and that is that NATO will lose the war in Afghanistan. This is good because, I hope, that it will lead NATO to rethink its role in the post-cold war world and perhaps, if we are lucky, it may even be disbanded in the future. A NATO victory in Afghanistan will be disastrous for the region and for the world. It will encourage it in its Bush-designated role of a global “expeditionary alliance”. At the NATO summit in Bucarest in April Bush said about NATO: “It is now an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces across the world to help secure a future of freedom and peace for millions.” In other words to interfere in and invade other poor countries of the south with the pretext of the new white man’s burden: promoting freedom and peace. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan have enough of this so-called freedom and peace. It is therefore necessary that NATO loses in Afghanistan.

A total withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan followed by a negotiated settlement between Afghan forces is the only way forward there. There are those who say that the withdrawal of NATO forces will lead to chaos, more deaths and re-talibanisation of Afghanistan. But the truth is that the presence of foreign troops is one of the major factors of violence there. What more chaos and destruction can there be in Afghanistan? All the touted aims of the USA and NATO are dead. There is no democracy there, Karzai is a US puppet, the warlords are in power and the level of insecurity is increasing, car bombs are becoming a norm. Pushtuns, as other peoples, never tolerate foreign occupation of their soil and to me it seems clear that the Taliban have mobilised Pushtun national sentiment in combating foreign troops.

Following the failure of NATO to defeat Afghan insurgents, the US blames Pakistan for providing sanctuary and training camps for Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the border region of Pakistan. But we have heard this before. When they cannot control the insurgency in Iraq they blame Iran or Syria for providing training and weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But this is an even older story. Those with a long memory will remember that when the US could not defeat the Vietnamese revolutionaries they said that there were training camps and sanctuaries in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. One remembers the savage bombing of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973. It did not help the US to defeat the Vietnamese nationalists but lead to over a 100,000 Cambodian deaths to add to the 3 million Vietnamese killed during the war. Now they are bombing so-called Al-Qaeda and Taliban in Waziristan on dubious “actionable intelligence” in which hundreds of innocents are killed and this without a word of protest, if not connivance, on the part of our elected representatives.

It is a good sign that, in spite of continued US pressure, one of the first tasks that the new government in Islamabad has undertaken is a review of Pakistan’s involvement in America’s “war on terror”. An involvement that has already caused death and destruction in the frontier, disillusionment in the army and suicide bombings in major cities. There are reports of secret deals, made in January, between the USA and Musharraf’s government providing Predator bases inside Pakistan and changing rules of engagement of these aircraft whose controllers are now authorised to fire on suspicion rather than “hard” intelligence. One would like to know from the elected government whether there were such secret deals and if there were does it intend to repudiate them. Already the CIA and the FBI operate freely inside Pakistan and the Americans are demanding that we now accept ground troops in the guise of trainers for the Army and militia. They want to teach the Pakistan Army about counterinsurgency. If it were not so ominous it would be really quite hilarious given the singular failure of the US army in fighting guerrillas in Vietnam and now in Iraq and Afghanistan. What methods are they going to teach the Pakistan Army? Massive bombing and collective punishment in the best traditions of Vietnam?

Although the present government has taken some timid steps in distancing itself from the so-called “war on terror” and has rightly started to talk to the people of Waziristan, it has not gone far enough. It has to clearly tell the USA that its policies in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s frontier are a failure. They have only led to death, destruction and the spread of terrorism. The only way out is for all foreign forces to get out of Afghanistan and for the US to stop interference in Pakistan. Once these forces are out of the region then and only then will one be able to come to a political solution, as there is no purely military solution neither to the problems of Afghanistan nor to the rising phenomena of Islamic militancy in Pakistan. Pushtuns have clearly voted against the mullahs and the militants but at the same time the rejection of Musharraf is also a sign that the people of Pakistan reject Pakistan’s forced marriage with the disastrous US policies in the region. It is time for a clean divorce.

Faheem Hussain is Visiting Professor of Physics at the School of Science and Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan.

Afghanistan gas pipeline could impact Canada's role in Afghanistan: report

(OTTAWA) – A new report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) raises serious questions about the impact of a proposed trans-Afghanistan natural gas pipeline on the role of Canadian Forces in that war-torn country.

A Pipeline Through a Troubled Land: Afghanistan, Canada and the New Great Energy Game documents the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which will transport natural gas 1,680 kilometres from southeast Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan, to Pakistan and India.

The report, written by international energy economist and former lead economist of PetroCanada John Foster, describes the U.S.-backed pipeline as turning Afghanistan into “an energy bridge” between Central and South Asia.

“The U.S. is our ally and it clearly asserts the geopolitical importance of the region. But the quest for 'energy security' risks drawing Canada unwittingly into a new Great Energy Game," said Foster.

A Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement, signed by representatives of the four nations on April 25, 2008, commits the four nations to initiating construction of the $7.6 billion gas pipeline in 2010, supplying gas by 2015.

“Canada’s debate has been devoid of any discussion about how building a U.S.-backed pipeline through Kandahar would affect Canadian Forces’ efforts to build peace and stability in Afghanistan’s most troubled province,” said Bruce Campbell, CCPA Executive Director. “Will Canadian Forces become guardians of this pipeline?”

The report notes that Canadian Members of Parliament and officials have participated in regional energy meetings; but in government speeches and media reports, it’s as if no meetings have ever taken place.

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