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mately. [W]e and our allies prevented the Tal-iban from stopping a presidential election,Obama boasted, and although it was marredby fraud, that election produced a governmentthat is consistent with Afghanistans laws andconstitution.

So the U.S. military helped Karzai to hold anelection so obviously fraudulent that the UN de-manded a run-off, only the second-place finisherrefused to participatethats some triumph of democracy!

Obama tried to sugarcoat the war drive with a

promise that U.S. troops will start pulling out of Afghanistan in July 2011. But given the scale of the Taliban resistance, that plan is utterly lackingin credibility. The talk about Afghans taking re-sponsibility for their own security was a deadringer for George W. Bushs promises that asIraqis stand up, we will stand down.

The U.S. waron Afghanistan

Collected articles from SOCIALIST WORKER .org

EDITORIAL

Its Obamaswar nowDecember 2, 2009

Barack Obama motivated his decision to send30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan with a warmon-gering speech that recalled the worst ofGeorge W. Bush.

B ARACK OBAMA has disappointed many of those who hoped his presidency would de-liver change we can believe in.

But theres one campaign promise Obamahas kepttwice.

In his prime-time speech on December 1,Obama followed through on a pledge to escalatethe war in Afghanistan for a second time, an-nouncing that he would send an additional30,000 U.S. troops. When Obama took office,fewer than 50,000 U.S. soldiers were deployedto Afghanistan. He ordered an additional 21,000troops there earlier this year. With the additional30,000, he has doubled the U.S. presence.

Obama motivated the troop buildup with aspeech that recalled George W. Bushs call for awar on terror. He recycled the Bush lie that theU.S. invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago wasretribution for the September 11, 2001, attacks,and he falsely claimed that Afghanistans Talibangovernment refused to hand over Osama bin

Laden and al-Qaeda. America, our allies and theworld were acting as one to destroy al-Qaedasterrorist network, and to protect our common se-curity, Obama told West Point cadets.

Later, Obama concluded by summoning thewar frenzy cynically whipped up by the Bushadministration after September 11: It is easy toforget that when this war began, we were unitedbound together by the fresh memory of a hor-rific attack, and by the determination to defendour homeland and the values we hold dear. I re-fuse to accept the notion that we cannot sum-

mon that unity again. I believe with every fiberof my being that weas Americanscan stillcome together behind a common purpose.

Wrapping himself in the flag Bush-style,Obama strained to sell people on the idea thatthe discredited, fraudulently elected govern-ment of President Hamid Karzai can rule legiti-

WHATS INSIDEEDITORIAL

Its Obamas war nowPage 1

MALALAI JOYAWhy the U.S.has to goPage 2

BACKGROUND AND ANALYSISPHIL GASPER

How Afghanistanwas bled dryPage 4

ERIC RUDER

What the U.S.wantsfrom this warPage 6

ELIZABETH SCHULTE

Is the U.S.fighting forwomens liberation?Page 6

SHARON SMITH

The war they all agree onPage 7

ANAND GOPAL

Who are the Taliban?Page 9

ERIC RUDER

The warlordspresidentPage 11

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE WARAHMED SHAWKI

Can the U.S. bring justice?Page 12

SHARON SMITH

The antiwar movementretreatsPage 13

ERIC RUDER

The myths of the good warPage 15


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INTERVIEW WITH MALALAI JOYA

Why the U.S.has to goNovember 10, 2009

Malalai Joya has been called the bravestwoman in Afghanistan for her outspoken

opposition not only to the U.S. occupation ofher country, but both the corrupt U.S.-backedgovernment of Hamid Karzai and the Taliban-led insurgency.

Joya was elected to Afghanistans parlia-ment from Farah province in 2005, but wassuspended several years later after otherrepresentatives claimed she insulted them.She has continued to speak out against warcrimes and warlordism, in spite of numerousattempts on her life.

Joya is on a speaking tour of the U.S. for herbook A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordi-

nary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to RaiseHer Voice . She talked to Deepa Kumar aboutthe situation in her country and the messageshe hopes to bring to people in the U.S.

WHAT HAS been the impact of the U.S.occupation and its puppet government onwomen in Afghanistan? Has the U.S. liber-ated Afghan women as it claimed it would?

FIRST, LET me say that after September 11, theU.S. government threw us from the frying paninto the fire. Over the last eight years, the U.S.,under the banner of womens rights and humanrights, has occupied my country, and millions of men and women have suffered from injustice,insecurity, corruption, joblessness, poverty, etc.

But women have suffered morefor them,

it is almost as if the Taliban was still in power.After the war, the U.S. brought to power thesemisogynist warlords called the Northern Al-liance, who are just like the Taliban. These werethe same people who ruled between 1992 and1996, and they attacked womens rights and hu-man rights.

This time, wearing suits and ties, they haveagain have come into power with the help of theU.S. Thats why todays situation for women isworse, especially in many of the provinces. It istrue that in some big cities like Kabul, MazariSharif or Herat, you will see that some womenhave been able to get jobs and an education. Butin most of the provinces, women do not even

have basic human rightsthe situation is likehell.Today, killing a woman is like killing a bird.

Even in big cities, women do not feel secure, andso most of them wear the burqa. I believe that theburqa is a symbol of oppression. Yet women haveto wear them just to be safe. So the disgustingburqa today gives life.

Over the last eight years, women in my coun-try have not even regained the limited rights thatthey enjoyed in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Duringthat time, women could wear any kind of clothesthey wanted to, and they had jobs, they couldwalk freely on the streets, and they didnt have

IN ANOTHER note reminiscent of the Bushyears, we were treated in the run-up to thespeech to a steady media diet of good newsabout the Afghan war campaign, designed tosuggest that theres light at the end of the tun-nel.

Take, for example, the revelation that anti-Taliban militias are spontaneously springingup in various parts of Afghanistan. A front-page

New York Times report gushed that the emer-gence of the militias, which took some leaders in

Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the Ameri-can and Afghan officials that they are planningto spur the growth of similar armed groupsacross the Taliban heartland in the southern andeastern parts of the country...

The Americans hope the militias will en-courage an increasingly demoralized Afghanpopulation to take a stake in the war against theTaliban.

But even the Times acknowledges that U.S.Special Forces are fanning out across the coun-tryside, descending from helicopters into valleyswhere the residents have taken up arms againstthe Taliban and offering their helpcasting se-rious doubt about how spontaneous thesemilitias are.

With this effort, the U.S. is hoping to bypassunpopular and tyrannical warlords and set uptribal networks allied with occupation forces.Money for development will be used to furthercement these ties.

But this strategy is a long shot at best. As theTimes admits, the strategy of giving ammunition,communication hardware and other support tothese militias could backfire spectacularly. Thegrowth of the anti-Taliban militias runs the risk that they could turn on one another, or againstthe Afghan and American governments, it re-ported.

This isnt just a hypothetical. U.S. backingfor Afghanistans mujahideen fighters againstthe ex-USSRs occupation in the 1980s gave riseto the armed networks that eventually producedal-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Now the Obama administration cites thefight against the terrorists of al-Qaeda as theprimary justification for sending even moreU.S. troops to kill and be killed in Afghanistan.This involves a double conceithistorical am-nesia about the bitter fruits of U.S. p olicy inAfghanistan since the 1970s, and deceptionabout the real reasons for the continued U.S.interests in cultivating a pro-U.S. regime inAfghanistan.

That effort goes back to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. The day that the So-

viets officially crossed the border, I wrote toPresident Carter, recalled Zbigniew Brzezinski,who was Carters national security advisor from1977 to 1981. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.

At the time, U.S. foreign policy officials en-couraged the growth of the most extreme Islamicelements because they considered them the keyto defeating the USSR. After the U.S. achievedits goal, the mujahideen fighters it had backedcame to powerand Washington stepped asideand watched, as the country descended into acivil war among the divided factions that had tri-

umphed over the Soviet Union.When the Taliban emerged as the victor in

1996, the U.S. adopted an attitude of benign in-difference. At least the Taliban brought stabilityand an unrelenting hostility to the opium trade,reasoned U.S. officials.

But September 11 gave the U.S. a new oppor-tunity to project military power into the heart of Central Asia. It quickly installed military basesin countries that had been part of the old USSR,giving the Pentagon the means to pressure

China, Russia and neighboring Iran, and providegreater U.S. access to the regions oil and gas re-sources.

BUSHS FAILURE to secure those gainswith the war on terror dr ew criticismfrom Obama throughout the presidential cam-paign.

Perhaps some Obama supporters thoughtthat the Democratic candidates call to escalatetroop strength in Afghanistan was simply rheto-ric to shield him from criticism on the right. ButObamas West Point speech makes it perfectlyclear that hes a willing and aggressive propo-nent of the pursuit of U.S. imperial aims.

According to White House estimates, eachadditional U.S. soldier sent to Afghanistan willcost taxpayers $1 million a year. So Obamasdouble dispatch of troops will cost an additional$55 billion over the next year. Compare that tothe Afghan governments entire national budgetof roughly $1 billion a year.

But even more outrageous than the vastsums Obama wants to spend is the reality thathis strategy of escalating the war has almost nochance of succeeding, as many in the Washing-ton political and media establishment seem torecognize. The Karzai government is like anorganized crime ring, wrote New York Timescolumnist David Brooks. The governing talentis thin. Plans to build a 400,000-man Afghansecurity force are unrealistic.

The Obama administration hasnt committedas many troops as some military hardliners want.But the reality is that the current combinedU.S./NATO presence68,000 U.S. troops,33,000 from various NATO countries, and morethan 70,000 U.S. military contractorsalreadyexceeds the number of troops deployed by theSoviet Union at the height of its involvement inAfghanistan.

The U.S. could continue to muddle throughunless it meets a significant opposition thatcant be ignored. Already, there is anxiety thatthe U.S. public may not be willing to pu t upwith a five- or 10-year strategy, especially con-

sidering the high price tag.The antiwar movement needs to give thoseanxieties concrete expression by organizing avisible opposition. The demonstrations organ-ized in cities across the U.S. t o respond toObamas speech are an important opportunity tobegin building a vocal opposition to a war that isall Obamas now.

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I think that the people of the U.S. wouldagree with usdemocracy never comes from thebarrel of a gun or through war. Also, Obama isreally not being honest with the Afghan people.

First of all, Obama should apologize to mypeople and put Bush on trial in the internationalcriminal court. Obama should stop arming thewarlords, and he shouldnt negotiate with theTaliban. We have many democrats and demo-cratic-minded people in my country, and Obamashould support them instead. If Obama were re-

ally to be honest with the Afghan people, he, to-gether with the UN, would stop working withcountries like Iran, Pakistan and Russia, whosupport the Taliban and these warlords.

Let me give my condolences to those fami-lies here who have lost their sons in Afghanistan.I would like to send condolences on behalf of my people, but I also ask them to please raisetheir voice against the wrong policies of the U.S.government. The troops are the victims of thepolicy of their government. The U.S. is spendingtaxpayer money and shedding the blood of itssoldiers in support of an undemocratic corruptmafia system.

WHAT DO you think about people in theantiwar movement in this country who nowsay that we shouldnt speak out for U.S.immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan?They say that the U.S. should stay longer,because if it pulls out, the situation forwomen will get worse. Whats your mes-sage to them?

I THINK the people who are saying that shouldknow that the people of Afghanistan do not wantmore troops in Afghanistan.

First of all, it is the right of my people to saythat. Secondly, we believe that no nation canbring liberation to another nation. Todays situ-ation, this eight-year disaster, is a good exampleof what war and occupation does.

People also say that if the U.S. withdrew,there would be a civil war. My message to peoplewho say that is that there already is a civil war,and as long as these troops are in Afghanistan,the worse the civil war will be.

The occupation forces are even bombingwedding parties. In Nuristan, 47 people, includ-ing the groom and bride, were killed. In a bomb-ing in May in Farah province, 150 civilians werekilled, most of them women and children. InKunduz province, 200 civilians were killed,most of them women and children. After all of these war crimes, why havent they apologized?

We want occupation forces out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. They must end thistragedy of the so-called war on terror, which iswar on innocent civilians. In the last eight years,fewer than 2,000 Taliban have been killed, andmore than 8,000 civilians by U.S. forces. Theoccupation forces are not protecting my peopleor womenthey are doing more harm.

They say they are bringing democracy toAfghanistan. In reality they have brought war-lords and drug lords to power. They have al-lowed my country to become the center of drugstoday. Even the White House says that the Tal-iban have become more powerful since the 2001war. These medieval-minded men of the Taliban

to worry about being kidnapped or raped.Then, the warlords attacked womens rights,

and the Taliban continued this. The U.S. broughtthe same misogynist warlords back, and theonly difference between the Taliban period andnow is that all of these crimes are happening inthe name of democracy. The warlord misogy-nists who are in power cover up, in the name of democracy, countless cases of rape, violenceagainst women, domestic violence, suicide, etc.And these sorts of attacks are increasing rapidly.

Let me give you a few examples of the situa-tion for women. I think it will help people in theU.S. to understand the situation better.

For example, recently in Jowzjan province, a25-year-old girl burned herself in a hospital.These sorts of suicides are becoming common.We recently got a report that there have been 600such suicides. Also, a 5-year-old girl was killedby a 40-year-old man in Sar-e Pol province asshe resisted his attempt to rape her. A 14-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped by three men,one of them the son of a member of the parlia-ment. And this member of parliament, his nameis Haji Payinda Mohammad, changed the age of his son in documents to show him to be less than18, so he wont be punished.

There are many examples like this. This is acrime against women. Its fashionable for themedia to say that its the Taliban, but these arenot all the crimes of the Talibanthere are war-lords as well who are continuing their fascism.

Today, Sharia law is guid ing the laws thatparliament has made. This is quite similar tothe Taliban, and thats because the warlords arementally like the Taliban.

WHAT DO you think of the recent electionsand of the government of President HamidKarzai? And what about the man who wasrunner-up to Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah?If they formed a coalition government,

what do you think would happen?FIRST, LET me tell you, the election was just a

showcase for the U.S. government. Internationalobservers have talked about widespread fraud.The so-called independent commission for theelection says that around 1.3 million ballotswere fixed. The actual number is higher.

There is no question that an election is themain sign of democracy in a country, but inAfghanistan, they have been betraying democ-racy for the eight years of the U.S. occupation.

Abdullah is the main candidate of the war-lords, and he is seen as a war crimi nal in Af -

ghanistan because of his activities between 1992and 1996. Abdullah has been a part of HamidKarzais parliamentary system. Karzai has com-promised with people like Abdullah and manyother warlords who n ow have key posts inAfghanistan. Neither will bring positive changesto the lives of men and women of my country.

Let me say to the people of the U.S.: an elec-tion held in the shadow of Afghan warlordism,drug-lordism, awful corruption and occupationforces has no legitimacy at all. People in mycountry say that the result of this election willbring back the same donkey, but with a new sad-dle. As the old saying goes, Its not importantwhos voting, its important whos counting.Thats our problem.

RIGHT NOW, the Obama administration istrying to decide whether to go with a Pen-tagon recommendation to send tens ofthousands more soldiers to Afghanistan.What would you like to say to Obama, andwhat do you think will happen if moretroops are sent to Afghanistan?

MORE TROOPS will bring more conflict andmore war. Obamas foreign policy regardingAfghanistan is quite similar to that of the Bushadministration. Bush is a war criminal, and nowObama wants to approach the moderate Talibanto join the government as well. There are nomoderate Talibanthey are putting a soft nameon these terrorists in order to bring them intopower.

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BACKGROUNDAND ANALYSIS

PHIL GASPER

How Afghanistanwas bled drySeptember 28, 2001

Phil Gasper examines the history of the coun-try the U.S. is ready to bomb.

W E COME now to the question of bomb-ing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age,Afghan-American writer Tamim Ansary wrote inan article for Salon.com. Trouble is, thats beendone

Make the Afghans suffer? Theyre alreadysuffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn theirschools to piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate theirhospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure?Cut them off from medicine and healthcare? Toolate. Somebody already did all that.

Unless Afghanistans Taliban regime turnsover Osama bin Laden, the U.S. is prepared torain death and destruction on a country that hasalready been devastated by more than 20 years of military occupation and civil war.

Millions of Afghanis live in refugee camps.The country has more than 500,000 disabled or-phans. Much of the already devastated country-side is currently experiencing a drought, lead-ing to famine in some areas.

The U.S. governments massive military

might will make things far worse. But past U.S.actions are in no small part responsible for themisery and poverty that already exists inAfghanistan. As the Economist magazine put it,[U.S.] policies in Afghanistan a decade andmore ago helped to create both Osama bin Ladenand the fundamentalist Taliban regime that shel-ters him.

The U.S. is only the latest power to causemayhem in the country. Modern Afghanistanemerged during the 19th century as a buffer statesqueezed between the Russian and British em-pires. From the beginning, it was a pawn in bat-tles between these two world powers.

The countrys mountainous terrain protected

it from imperial occupation, but also resulted inlittle economic development. Afghanistan hasalways been one of the poorest countries in theworld. By the 1970s, less than 10 percent of thepopulation was literate, and life expectancy wasonly 35 years. The central state was weak, andoutside of a few cities, Afghan society remainedtraditional, with power divided among rival eth-nic clans.

This began to change in the 1950s and 1960s.As a result of foreign aid from the former USSRand the U.S.which were competing for influ-ence during the Cold Warthere was a shift of power toward the state.

are destroying the country.Today, we have two enemies in Afghanistan

the occupation forces, and the Taliban andwarlords. If one of them is gone, it makes ourtask easier. Then we will have only one enemyto fight.

WHAT DOES the resistance or resistancesto occupation look like in Afghanistan?

THERE ARE two kinds of resistances in Afghan -istan. One is of ordinary, democratic-minded

people, and the other is of the Taliban. Most ordi-nary people hate the Taliban, and so their resist-ance is not the resistance of the people.

Ordinary people have resisted in manyprovinces. They are demonstrating both againstthe occupation and against the Karzai govern-ment. For instance, I mentioned that in May inFarah province 150 people were killed by occu-pation forces, most of them women and chil-dren. In response to this, thousands of studentsin various provinces came out onto the streets toexpress their solidarity with the victims and toprotest their killing. There are many such exam-ples of students and others are resisting the oc-cupation. This is happening in big citiespeo-

ple are coming out onto the streets in Kabul andalso in other provinces.So there is resistance, but it isnt that big.

Why? Because people are tired from war, andthey hate the warlords and the Taliban. But to-day, there is more resistance than there was eightyears ago. People are starting to stand up againstwar crimes, and with the passage of time, I think they will stand up and resist more.

CAN YOU describe some of the secularand democratic groups and forces of theresistance in Afghanistan?

THERE ARE a lot of parties and democratic in-tellectuals who are risking their lives and strug-gling to challenge the corrupt warlord govern-ment.

RAWA [the Revolutionary Association of theWomen of Afghanistan] is one such group. I meta member of RAWA, Zoya, who told me aboutthe problems and risks they take, and how theyhave to be underground. There are many suchgroups and people, but I would not reveal theirnames because of a lack of security. There havebeen many attempts on my life, and I dont wantto risk the life of anyone else. But it is thesepeople who are the hope for the future.

WHAT HAS been your experience herein the U.S. as your speaking tour getsunderway?

THERE IS a lot of support among people whohave come to the meetings. People in the U.S.havent been told the correct story through themedia. Theyre told that Iraq was the bad war,and that Afghanistan is the good war. When theyhear about the suffering of my people, some peo-ple crysome have come up and hugged me andshown their support.

This isnt my first trip to the U.S. When I washere earlier, I met a group of mothers who losttheir sons in Afghanistan. They, too, hugged meand cried. Sometimes, people apologize for whattheir government is doing to my people. And I

reply to them that they should not apologize, be-cause it is their government that is responsiblefor this, and the government should apologize tothem for its war crimes.

I have also come across rich Afghanspeo-ple who are enjoying their lives here in the U.S.They support the occupation and claim that theU.S. is bringing democracy and freedom toAfghanistan. They are wrong, and they dontknow what is really happening in Afghanistan.There are also some corrupt NGOs that support

the occupation because they dont want to losetheir contracts and their projects. But most of the people at the meetings support the cause of my people.

My main message to the democratic people of the U.S. is that you are not the same as your gov-ernment. You can support the Afghan people andask Obama to do four things. First, end the occu-pation immediatelythis is not a war on terror,this is a war on innocent civilians. Second,Obama must apologize to my people and deliverBush to the International Criminal Court. Third,he should stop arming the warlords, and not ne-gotiate with Taliban. Fourth, he should tell Iran,Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan and other countriesthat support Taliban and the warlords to stop.

My message to people in the U.S. is to putpressure on their government to support demo-cratic-minded people in Afghanistan.

Transcription by Rebecca Anshell and MeredithReese

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regime for its repression and brutality. But this isrank hypocrisy. Washingtons warlords are onlylooking for an excuse for wara war that willfurther devastate the lives of ordinary people inAfghanistan.

Freedom fighters armedand trained by the U.S.THE AFGHAN rebels that fought the USSRsmilitary occupation were backed to the hilt by the

U.S. government. In fact, in a 1998 interview,Zbigniew Brezinski, who was national securityadviser in the Carter administration, admittedthat Washington had begun funding the muja-hadeen six months before the Russian invasion inorder to provoke a Soviet military intervention.

The U.S. deliberately chose to back Islamicfundamentalist organizations, rather than secularand nationalist groups, because Brezinski hopednot just to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan,but to cause unrest within the USSR itself.

With the support of Pakistans military dicta-tor, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, the U.S. began recruitingand training mujahadeen fighters from the 3 mil-lion Afghan refugees in Pakistanas well as

large numbers of mercenaries from other Islamiccountries.The operation was supervised by the CIA,

with Pakistani forces carrying out the work onthe ground. The trainers were mainly from Pak-istans Inter Services Intelligence agency, wholearnt their craft from American Green Beretcommandos and Navy SEALS in various U.S.training establishments, according to the Britishmilitary magazine Janes Defence Weekly .

Washington leaders fell in love with theirrebel army in Afghanistan. Ronald Reaganthesame man who denounced the African NationalCongress and the Palestine Liberation Organiza-tion for not renouncing violencedescribed themujahadeen as freedom fighters.

Reagan met in Washington with rebel lead-ers like Abdul Haq, who openly admitted his re-sponsibility for terrorist attacks, such as a 1984bomb blast at Kabuls airport that killed at least28 people.

Meanwhile, with CIA assistance, the muja-hadeen greatly expanded opium production in ar-eas under its controlturning Afghanistan intowhat one U.S. official later described as the newColombia of the drug world.

Between 1979 and 1989, the CIA and Saudiintelligence together pumped in billions of dol-lars worth of arms and ammunition, accordingto the Economist . But when the USSR finallywithdrew in 1989, the administration of GeorgeBush Sr. turned its back on Afghanistanleav-ing it, in the words of the Economist , awashwith weapons, warlords and extreme religiouszealotry.

Who trained Osama bin Laden?OSAMA BIN Laden, a civil engineer and busi-nessman from a wealthy family in Saudi Ara-bia, was one of the first non-Afghan volunteersto join the mujahadeen. He recruited 4,000 vol-unteers from his own country and developedclose relations with the most radical rebel lead-

In 1973, the corrupt and repressive regime of King Zaher was overthrown by his cousin, Daud,who declared a republic. But expected reformsdidnt materialize, and the emerging urban mid-dle class grew increasingly discontented.

In April 1978, as Daud tried to move againstopponents to his left, he was overthrown andkilled by army officers sympathetic to the Peo-

ples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, whichhad close ties with the USSR.But the new government had little support

in the countryside, and its attempt to institutereforms from above was disastrous. Resistancebegan to spread across Afghanistan.

It was met with severe repression as the gov-ernment itself broke into hostile factions. Theopposition came to be dominated by a collectionof radical Islamist groupsknown as the muja-hadeen, or holy fighterswith reactionary po-litical ideas, especially concerning women.

In December 1979, hard-liners in the USSRworried that a regime hostile to them mightcome to power in Afghanistandecided to inter-vene. Russian troops advanced on the capital of Kabul, killed the president and replaced him withtheir own man.

For the next decade, the USSR fought a bru-tal war for domination of the country. More than1 million Afghanis died, and millions more fledtheir homes, becoming refugees in neighboringPakistan and Iran. But by 1989, with casualtiesmounting and its troops in a state of near-rebel-lion, the USSR withdrew its forces.

U.S. policymakers celebrated the Russian re-treat from the countryand promptly cut off aidto the rebel forces that they had armed, trainedand supported.

Afghanistan collapsed into virtual anarchy.Almost a quarter of the population was in refugeecamps, and most of the country was in ruins.

Different factions of the mujahadeen strug-gled for power in the countryside, while thegovernment of Muhammed Najibullah, the lastUSSR-installed president, remained in controlin Kabul.

Kabul finally fell in April 1992 to one factionof the mujahadeen. But the civil war continued.In 1994, a new organization, the Taliban,

emerged. Its members had been trained in thereligious schools set up by the Pakistani govern-mentwith U.S. supportalong the border.

The Taliban advocated an ultra-sectarian ver-sion of Islam. Under its rule, Afghani womenhave been denied education, health care and theright to work, and must cover themselves com-pletely in public. With the aid of Pakistans army,the Taliban swept across an exhausted country,taking power in 1996.

The U.S. government made no criticism of the regime it now demonizes as the main sourceof international terrorism. A State Departmentspokesperson told reporters that there was noth-ing objectionable about the Talibans coming topower. That opinion wasnt shared by Afghaniwomenor the Talibans political opponents,who were savagely repressed.

In fact, the U.S. hoped the Taliban would pro-vide stability. Its most important function, onecommentator wrote, was to provide security forroads and, potentially, oil and gas pipelines thatwould link the states of Central Asia to the inter-national market through Pakistan rather thanthrough Iran.

Today, U.S. politicians denounce the Taliban

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July, senior U.S. officials proclaimed that mili-tary action against Afghanistan was in the worksand would likely take place by October, accord-ing to Niaz Naik, Pakistans former foreign sec-retary.

The officials said the U.S. had plans to g etOsama bin Laden. But the wider objective wouldbe to topple the Taliban and install a more mod-erate regime in its place.

The Americans indicated to us that in casethe Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan

also doesnt help to influence the Taliban, thenthe United States would be left with no optionbut to take an overt action against Afghanistan,Naik told reporters.

As it turns out, the September 11 attacksprovided the U.S. with a perfect excuse to carryout a strategy that it had been considering formonths.

Before the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, Busi-ness Week magazine declared in an editorial:Oil is worth going to war for. Now it turns outthat the U.S. war for democracy and justicein Afghanistan is about the same thingwhowill profit off the worlds most valuable com-modity.

ELIZABETH SCHULTE

Is the U.S. fightinfor womensliberation?December 7, 2001

Many voicesfrom pro-war Republicans tomainstream feministsare applauding theU.S. war in Afghanistan for supposedly puttingan end to the horrible conditions that womensuffered under the Taliban government. Buthave Afghan women been liberated? ElizabethSchulte explains why Washingtons rhetoricabout freeing women from oppression is acover for an unjust and barbaric war.

The scenes of joy in the streets of Kabul evokenothing less than the images of Paris liberated

from the Nazis. Women taking to the streets tobask in the Afghan sun, free at last to showtheir faces. Children gathering to fly kites, aonce forbidden pastime. Old people dancing tomusic, banned for many years. The liberationof Afghanistan from the tyranny of the Talibanis a watershed event that could reverberate for

years. The warm embrace by ordinary peopleof the freedom to do ordinary things is a major victory for Western humanist values. Thisvictory of values, in the long run, may count for

far more than the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

THIS IS how Business Week magazineits frontcover featuring an unveiled Afghan woman be-neath the word Liberation described the fallof the Taliban government last month.

ers in Afghanistan.He also worked closely with the CIA raising

money from private Saudi citizens. In 1988,with U.S. knowledge, reports Janes Weekly ,Bin Laden created Al-Qaeda (The Base): aconglomerate of quasi independent Islamic ter-rorist cells spread across at least 26 countries...Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Quaeda,confident that it would not directly impinge onthe U.S.

After the USSRs withdrawal from Afghan -

istan, bin Laden and other volunteers returned totheir own countries. In their home countries,they built a formidable constituencypopularlyknown as Afghaniscombining strong ideo-logical convictions with the guerrilla skills theyhad acquired in Pakistan and Afghanistan underCIA supervision, writes author Dilip Hiro.

Over the past 10 years, the afghani network has been linked to terrorist attacks not only onU.S. targets, but also in the Philippines, Pakistan,Saudi Arabia, France, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan,China, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and elsewhere.

This is an insane instance of the chickenscoming home to roost, one U.S. diplomat in Pak-istan told the Los Angeles Times . You cant plugbillions of dollars into an anti-Communist jihad,accept participation from all over the world andignore the consequences. But we did.

ERIC RUDER

What the U.S.wants fromthis warDecember 7, 2001

Eric Ruder looks at whats behind the U.S.war against Afghanistan.

E ITHER YOU accept our offer of a carpetof gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs. Thats how one U.S. diplomat report-edly put it to Afghanistans Taliban governmentduring negotiations that began just after GeorgeW. Bush took over the White House in January2001and continued until just weeks beforeSeptember 11.

Of course, its difficult now to find any men-tion of U.S. efforts to woo the Taliban. Thatwouldnt fit with the Bush administrationsagenda of claiming that U.S. bombs liberatedAfghans from a sworn enemy of freedom.

But only a few months ago, the U.S. was try-ing to cut a deal with the Talibanand it didnthave anything to do with human rights.

Whats more, according to a new book, theBush administration blocked efforts by U.S. in-telligence agencies to investigate Osama binLaden during its bargaining with the Afghan gov-ernmentprompting FBI Deputy Director JohnONeill to resign in protest in July. The mainobstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were

U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played bySaudi Arabia, ONeill told French intelligenceanalysts Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie,authors of the new book Bin Laden: The Forbid-den Truth .

This wouldnt be the first time that U.S. oilinterests played a major role in shaping U.S.dealings with the Taliban. The U.S. began ro-mancing the Taliban, as journali st AhmedRashid put it, even before Islamist hard-liners es-tablished full control over Afghanistan in 1996.

Between 1994 and 1997, the U.S. in fact wassupporting the Taliban in the sense that it was al-lowing Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, its two alliesin the region, to back the Taliban, Rashid said inan interview. And this was because the U.S. andU.S. oil companies were interested in building oiland gas pipelines from Central Asia acrossAfghanistan, through Pakistan, to the Gulf

[T]here was the hope at one time, by U.S.policymakers, that the Taliban would provide akind of security force for these pipelines, be-cause these pipelines were crossing southernAfghanistan, which is the heartland of Talibancontrol.

The U.S. oil giant Unocal was particularlybold in sucking up to the Taliban, even flyingrepresentatives of the regime to its corporateheadquarters in Texas. The Taliban were of-fered a cut of the profits from the pipelines; 15percent was mentioned, journalist John Pilgerwrote in Britains New Statesman magazine. AU.S. official observed that, with the Caspiansoil and gas flowing, Afghanistan would becomelike Saudi Arabia, an oil colony with nodemocracy and the legal persecution of women.We can live with that, he said.

The U.S. attack on Sudan and Afghanistanin 1998in retaliation for the bombings of twoU.S. embassies in Africa supposedly organizedby Osama bin Ladeneffectively ended Uno-cals plans.

But U.S. designs on the region were alwaysbigger than one pipeline. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, U.S. oil companies haveschemed to gain access to the huge oil and gasreservesworth an estimated $4 trillion at cur-rent pricesin the former Soviet republics bor-dering the Caspian Sea.

The list of countries that want a piece of theaction is predictably longand includes Russia,China, Iran and Europe, in addition to the U.S.

Given the Bush administrations ties to theoil industry, its not surprising that quiet butpersistent negotiations with the Taliban werenear the top of its agenda when it set up shop inWashington.

Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, haslong understood the importance of the CaspianSea. While still CEO of the oil services companyHalliburton, Cheney said, I cant think of a timewhen weve had a region emerge as suddenly tobecome as strategically significant as theCaspian.

But after months of talks, U.S. officialswerent any closer to an agreement with the Tal-iban and were beginning to lose patienceandincreasingly turned to the stick of threatenedmilitary strikes rather than the carrot of oilmoney.

At a UN-sponsored meeting in Berlin in mid-

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ices. And when Bush needed advice about life-saving stem cell research, he turned to anti-woman evangelist Billy Graham for guidance.

No one who wants Afghan women to achievereal freedom should support the U.S. govern-ments war. The decades-long intervention by theU.S. and other Western powers is to blame for thegrinding poverty of Afghanistan and the viciousrule of tyrants and warlordsthe perfect breed-ing ground for the cruel oppression of women.

They havent suddenly become interested in

liberation now. We have to expose the real aimsof this U.S. war for liberationbefore theyliberate other countries.

SHARON SMITH

The war theyall agree onSeptember 11, 2008

Sharon Smith explains how Americas tworuling parties have come together to plan theescalation of the U.S. war on Afghanistan.

IN EARLY September, the Pentagon closedits investigation into allegations that U.S.bombs killed 92 Afghan civilians, includingas many as 60 children, as they slept peace-fully in the village of Nawabad on the night ofAugust 21.

Despite protests from the UN, human rightsorganizations and the villagers themselves, Pen-tagon officials insisted for weeks that only sevencivilians had been killed, along with 35 Talibanfighters, during a legitimate military operation

aimed at capturing Taliban commander MullahSadiq.

Indeed, they claimed that the attack, whichincluded bombardment with a C130 Spectergunship, was a necessary response to heavy fireemanating from a meeting of Taliban leaders inthe village.

In its defense, the Pentagon cited evidencefrom an embedded Fox News correspondent whohad substantiated its claims. Unfortunately, thatcorrespondent turned out to be former Marine Lt.Oliver North, who has been known to bend thetruth in the past.

Norths military career was cut short after hisrole was revealed in the Iran-contra scandal in the

1980s. At the time, North admitted to having ille-gally channeled guns to Iran while funneling theprofits to the CIA-backed contra mercenary forcefighting to overthrow Nicaraguas democraticallyelected Sandinista governmentand then lyingto Congress about it. In recent years, North hasnevertheless cultivated a lucrative broadcastingcareer at Fox.

Although North assured Fox viewers, Coali-tion forces...have not been able to find any evi-dence that non-combatants were killed in thisengagement, video footage taken on the sceneby a local doctor showed scores of dead bodiesand destroyed homes, documenting a civilian

They must not have asked Abdul Abdullahfor his opinion. Abduls cousin Aziz Khan andhis wife Fatma fled their home near Herat whenfighting erupted between Taliban and NorthernAlliance forces. On their way toward the Iranianborder, Khan and his wife were stopped with 20other families at a checkpoint set up by anti-Tal-iban warlords. The men were herded into thehills and shot. The women were taken away.

Abdul doesnt know Fatmas fate. But giventhe appalling record of rape among Northern

Alliance soldiers, he can guess. I know they letmost of the women go, but they kept the youngand pretty ones, he told a reporter.

Stories like these expose the lie that Afghanshave been liberated by the U.S. governmentsbrutal new allies.

Western news reports regularly feature pic-tures of women appearing in public without aveil. What the photos do not show is the womenputting [the veils] back on again moments later,one reporter for Britains Guardian wrote. Forthe fact remains that the Alliance feels the sameway about women as the Taliban didthey arechattel, to be tolerated but kept out of real life.

In fact, the Observer newspaper reported thatthe Talibans retreat from Kabul had unleashed awave of so-called honor crimesin which rel-atives kill or maim young men and women for vi-olating the strict Islamic code governing relation-ships.

This should be no surprise. The warlords of the Northern Alliance have a miserable record of human rights abuses, especially against women.

One has only to ask Afghan women who re-member when the warlords reigned before theTaliban came to power in 1996. Theyre just asbad as the Taliban, and in some ways worse,explained Tahmeena Fayral, of the Revolution-ary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,during a recent U.S. speaking tour. They lootedmuseums and hospitals and schools, and soldwhat they found. They raped women and evenchildren. They committed the worst crimes inAfghan history.

The U.S. government didnt let these well-established facts get in the way of backing theNorthern Alliancejust as it ignored the Tal-ibans vicious repression of women when it wascourting the regime in the mid-1990s.

And any talk about the U.S. going to war forwomens liberation will come as a surprise towomen in Saudi Arabia, which imposes Taliban-style restrictions as well.

THE U.S. medias interest in what life is likefor Afghan women is sudden. Under the hard-line version of Islam followed by both the Tal-iban and the Northern Alliance warlords, womenmust dress in the head-to-toe shr oud of theburqa, for fear of public beating or death.

They arent allowed to leave home unaccom-panied by their husbands or other male familymembers and are banned from school and work.And underlying this is the grinding poverty thatcripples the entire population of Afghanistan.

The many widows in a country brutalized by23 years of war often resort to begging or prosti-tution to survive. Some 1,700 out of 100,000Afghan women die during childbirththe high-est rate in the world. Life expectancy for women

is about 45 years.Human rights groups like Amnesty Interna-

tional have tried for years to get the word outabout the plight of Afghan women, but the main-stream media showed no interest. Now, becauseof Bushs war, the issue is splashed across thecover of Time magazine.

Even Laura Bush got into the act. Becauseof our recent military gains in much of Afghan -istan, women are no longer imprisoned in theirhomes, she said in her own radio address last

week. They can listen to music and teach theirdaughters without fear of punishmentThe fightagainst terrorism is also a fight for the rights anddignity of women.

No one should forget who spoke these fine-sounding words. They should be seen for whatthey area cynical rationalization for a U.S. warthat has already murdered thousands of civilians,many of them women.

Thats why its infuriating to see many liber-als, and even radicals, backing Bushs cam-paignin the name of liberating women. For ex-ample, the liberal group Feminist Majority hasasked members to circulate a petition thankingBush and his administration for its commitmentto restoring the rights of Afghan women. Wehave real momentum now in the drive to restorethe rights of women, Feminist Majority Presi-dent Eleanor Smeal told Congress last week.

Are they talking about the same administra-tion that, immediately on taking power last Jan-uary, imposed a gag order on international fam-ily planning organizations from mentioning theword abortionin one stroke of the pen rele-gating millions of women to poverty?

And a few radicals are having secondthoughts. Susan George, vice president of theFrench-based global justice group ATTAC, saidrecently that, though she opposed the U.S.bombing campaign, the media pictures of women celebrating in Kabul made her questionher stand.

S HE SHOULD remember what she knowsfull well about the U.S. governments longrecord of promoting injustice around the globe.

The U.S. militarys own wartime abuses of women are well documented. During the Viet-nam War, American soldiers earned the title of double veterans when they raped civilianwomen before murdering them. Accounts of the 1968 My Lai massacre describe an orgy of gang rapefollowed by soldiers mowing downat least 400 people, most of them women andchildren.

The U.S. militarys culture of brutality

against women is alive and well today, with sev-eral recent cases of U.S. soldiers stationed inOkinawa, Japan, raping local teenagers. And thisisnt to mention the rapes of women in the U.S.military by fellow soldiers.

Conditions for Afghan women are far worsethan for women in the U.S. But to hold up theU.S. governmentespecially under the Bush ad-ministrationas a champion of womens rightsis offensive.

Bush has the nerve denounce Islamic fanat-ics even after he appointed anti-abortion fanat-ics John Ashcroft as attorney general and TommyThompson as head of Health and Human Serv-

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finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Talibanin Afghanistan.

Ending the war in Iraq responsibly will al-low a long-term U.S. military presence thereand the redeployment of 10,000 U.S. troops toAfghanistan to finish the job started by GeorgeW. Bush.

In one fell swoop, the candidate whose s lo-gan is change laid out a strategy bearing strik-ing similarity to that of the neocons who in-vaded Afghanistan in 2001. This was not a sur-prise. Obama first expressed his willingness tobomb Iran and Pakistan in 2004, when he toldthe Chicago Tribune , surgical missile strikeson Iran may become necessary.

On the other hand, he continued, havinga radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse. Obama went on toargue that military strikes on Pakistan should

not be ruled out if violent Islamic extremistswere to take over.

Obama represents the dissenting ruling classview since 2003, which regarded the Iraq war asa distraction from the real war the U.S. shouldpursue. That war has little to do with al-Qaeda,but much more to do with Afghanistans strate-gic location in Central Asia, and its borders withIran, Pakistan, Russia and China.

The Russia-Georgia conflict this summersurely reminded U.S. rulers that they cannot af-ford to ignore their longstanding aim to establishU.S. military bases in this key region, a goalwhich long pre-dated 9-11. As the BBC News re-ported on September 18, 2001, Niaz Naik, a for-

mer Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by sen-ior American officials in mid-July that militaryaction against Afghanistan would go ahead bymid-October.

The antiwar movement in the U.S. can nolonger afford to ignore the war in Afghanistanwithout fading into irrelevance. The war on terrorhas been resuscitated, and as Obama has repeat-edly emphasized in recent months, its centralfront is shifting back to Afghanistan.

The Afghan people have endured seven longyears of misery thanks to U.S. occupation, andit is high time to take a principled stand againstU.S. imperial aims in Central Asia.

death toll at Nawabad that is the largest since theU.S. began bombing Afghanistan nearly sevenyears ago.

Thus, the U.S. military was forced to reopenits own investigation on September 8, only daysafter it had exonerated itself. A red-faced offi-cial told reporters that emerging evidence hadconvinced the Pentagon to investigate the matterfurther.

On that same day, Human Rights Watch is-sued a report that U.S. and NATO forces dropped

362 tons of bombs over Afghanistan during thefirst seven months of this year; bombings duringJune and July alone equaled the total during allof 2006.

The rising civilian death toll in Afghanistanrattled even the normally placid New York Times ,which argued, America is fast losing the battlefor hearts and minds, and unless the Pentagoncomes up with a better strategy, the United Statesand its allies may well lose the war.

AS NEWS of the Nawabad massacre un-folded, another atrocity was also gainingmedia attention, further exposing the gangsterstate installed and maintained by U.S. forces torun Afghanistan since 2001.

President Hamid Karzai, the U.S.s hand-picked puppet, reportedly pardoned two menconvicted of brutally raping a woman in thenorthern province of Samangan in September2005.

At the time, Mawlawi Islam, the commanderof a local militia, was running for a seat inAfghanistans first parliamentary elections. Thecommander and three of his fighters came andtook my wife out of our home a nd took her totheir house about 200 meters away and, in frontof these witnesses, raped her, the womans hus-band told the Independent .

The couple has a doctors report that therapists cut her private parts with a bayonet dur-

ing the rape, and then forced her to stagger homewithout clothes from the waist down.Mawlawi won a seat in parliament in Septem-

ber 2005, as the U.S. media celebrated the elec-tions as proof that democracy was flourishing inAfghanistan thanks to U.S. occupation. ButMawlawi was assassinated, mafia-style in Janu-ary of this year.

His past had caught up with him. Mawlawihad first fought as a mujahideen commander inthe 1980s, but switched sides to become a Tal-iban governor in the 1990s. He switched sides yetagain when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001and re-joined the former mujahideen, which hadmorphed into the Northern Alliancethe group

o f w a r l o r d s i n s t a l l e d b y t h e U . S . t o r u nAfghanistan as a collection of private gangsterfiefdoms.

Karzai issued a press statement expressing hisdeep regret in response to Mawlawis death inJanuary. Bypassing the rape charge, he expressednothing but praise: Mawlawi Islam Muhammadiwas a prominent jihadi figure who has madegreat sacrifices during the years of jihad againstthe Soviet invasion.

Mawlawis three subordinates were finallyconvicted for the rape this year, and one died inprison. But although they were sentenced to 11years, Karzai reportedly issued a pardon for the

other two in May, claiming the men had beenforced to confess their crimes.

The drug-running warlords who have con-trolled Afghanistan since 2001 have no interest ineither democracy or womens rights. Indeed, it isnot uncommon for poor poppy farmers who can-not repay loans to local warlords to offer up theirdaughters for marriage instead.

Gang rapes and violence against women areon the rise, according to human rights organiza-tions. As a member of parliament, Mir AhmadJoyenda, told the Independent , The command-ers, the war criminals, still have armed groups.Theyre in the government. Karzai, the Ameri-cans, the British sit down with them. They haveimpunity. Theyve become very courageous andcan do whatever crimes they like. In this situa-tion, Afghan warlords again produce 90 percentof the worlds opium, without legal repercussion.

Womens prisons, in contrast, are teemingonce again. As Sonali Kolhatkar, author of Bleed-ing Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and thePropaganda of Silence , argued on Democracy

Now! Women are being imprisoned in greaternumbers than ever before, for the crime of escap-ing from home or having, quote-unquote, sexualrelationsillegal sexual relations. Most of these women are simply victims of rape.

DESPITE THE appalling conditions that sevenyears of U.S. occupation have produced forordinary Afghans, the two U.S. ruling partiescame together in August to plan the escalation of that sordid war with the goal of adding 10,000more U.S. troops in the coming year.

Barack Obama chided his Republican rivalduring his acceptance speech at the DemocraticParty convention on August 28, using a pagefrom Bushs playbook: John McCain likes tosay that hell follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hellbut he wont even go to the cave wherehe lives.

Obama did not utter a word of criticismabout rising civilian casualties, rampant corrup-tion, the flourishing drug trade or womens op-pression in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan duringthat historic speech. On the contrary, he contin-ued, I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and

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a monthmore than double the typical policesalary. They adjudicated disputes between tribesand between landowners. They protected poppyfields from the eradication attempts of the centralgovernment and foreign armiesa move thatwon them the support of poor farmers whoseonly stable income came from poppy cultivation.Areas under insurgent control were consigned tohaving neither reconstruction nor social services,but for rural villagers who had seen much foreignintervention and little economic progress under

the Karzai government, this was hardly new.At the same time, the Talibans ideology be-gan to undergo a transformation. We are fight-ing to free our country from foreign domina-tion, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmaditold me over the phone. The Indians fought fortheir independence against the British. Even theAmericans once waged an insurgency to freetheir own country. This emerging nationalisticstreak appealed to Pashtun villagers growingweary of the American and NATO presence.

The insurgents are also fighting to install aversion of Sharia law in the country. Nonethe-less, the famously puritanical guerrillas havemoderated some of their most extreme doctrines,at least in principle. Last year, for instance, Mul-lah Omar issued an edict declaring music andpartiesbanned in the Talibans previous incar-nationpermissible. Some Taliban commandershave even started accepting the idea of girls ed-ucation. Certain hard-line leaders like the one-legged Mullah Daddullah, a man of legendarybrutality (whose beheading binges at times re-portedly proved too much even for MullahOmar) were killed by international forces.

Meanwhile, a more pragmatic leadershipstarted taking the reins. U.S. intelligence offi-cers believe that day-to-day leadership of themovement is now actually in the hands of thepolitically savvy Mullah Brehadar, while Mul-lah Omar retains a largely figurehead position.Brehadar may be behind the push to moderatethe movements message in order to win greatersupport.

Even at the local level, some provincial Tal-iban officials are tempering older-style Talibanpolicies in order to win local hearts and minds.Three months ago in a distr ict in Ghazniprovince, for instance, the insurgents ordered allschools closed. When tribal elders appealed tothe Talibans ruling religious council in the area,the religious judges reversed the decision andreopened the schools.

However, not all field commanders follow theinjunctions against banning music and parties. Inmany Taliban-controlled districts such amuse-

ments are still outlawed, which points to themovements decentralized nature. Local com-manders often set their own policies and initiateattacks without direct or ders from the Talibanleadership.

The result is a slippery movement thatmorphs from district to district . In some Tal-iban-controlled districts of Ghazni province, anAfghan caught working for a non-governmentalorganization (NGO) would meet certain death.In parts of neighboring Wardak province, how-ever, where the insurgents are said to be moreeducated and understand the need for develop-

ANAND GOPAL

Who are theTaliban?December 9, 2008

Journalist Anand Gopal writes from Afghan -istan on conditions driving resistance to the

U.S. war and occupation.

IF THERE is an exact location marking theWests failures in Afghanistan, it is the mod-est police checkpoint that sits on the mainhighway 20 minutes south of Kabul. The postsignals the edge of the capital, a city of spec-tacular tension, blast walls and standstill traf-fic. Beyond this point, Kabuls gritty, low-slung buildings and narrow streets give way toa vast plain of serene farmland hemmed in bysandy mountains. In this valley in Logarprovince, the American-backed governmentof Afghanistan no longer exists.

Instead of government officials, men in mud-

died black turbans with assault rifles slung overtheir shoulders patrol the highway, checking forthieves and spies. The charred carcass of atanker, meant to deliver fuel to internationalforces further south, sits belly up on the roadside.

The police say they dont dare enter thesedistricts, especially at night when the guerrillasrule the roads. In some parts of the countryssouth and east, these insurgents have even set uptheir own government, which they call the Is-lamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the name of theformer Taliban government). They mete out jus-tice in makeshift Sharia courts. They settle landdisputes between villagers. They dictate the cur-ricula in schools.

Just three years ago, the central governmentstill controlled the provinces near Kabul. Butyears of mismanagement, rampant criminalityand mounting civilian casualties have led to aspectacular resurgence of the Taliban and otherrelated groups. Today, the Islamic Emirate enjoysde facto control in large parts of the countryssouth and east. According to ACBAR, an um-brella organization representing more than 100aid agencies, insurgent attacks have increased by50 percent over the past year. Foreign soldiers arenow dying at a higher rate here than in Iraq.

The burgeoning disaster is prompting theAfghan government of President Hamid Karzaiand international players to speak openly of ne-gotiations with sections of the insurgency.

The new nationalist Taliban

WHO EXACTLY are the Afghan insurgents?Every suicide attack and kidnapping is usu-ally attributed to the Taliban. In reality, how-ever, the insurgency is far from monolithic. Thereare the shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and hea d-bobbing religious students, of course, but thereare also erudite university students, poor, illiter-ate farmers and veteran anti-Soviet commanders.The movement is a mlange of nationalists, Is-lamists and bandits that fall uneasily into three or

four main factions. The factions themselves aremade up of competing commanders with differ-ing ideologies and strategies, who nonethelessagree on one essential goal: kicking out the for-eigners.

It wasnt always this way. When U.S.-ledforces toppled the Taliban government in No-vember 2001, Afghans celebrated the downfallof a reviled and discredited regime. We feltlike dancing in the streets, one Kabuli told me.As U.S.-backed forces marched into Kabul, the

Afghan capital, remnants of the old Talibanregime split into three groups.The first, including many Kabul-based bu-

reaucrats and functionaries, simply surrenderedto the Americans; some even joined the Karzaigovernment. The second, comprised of the move-ments senior leadership, including its leaderMullah Omar, fled across the border into Pak-istan, where they re main to this day. The thirdand largest groupfoot soldiers, local com-manders and provincial officialsquietly meltedinto the landscape, returning to their farms andvillages to wait and see which way the windblew.

Meanwhile, the country was being carved upby warlords and criminals. On the brand-newhighway connecting Kabul to Kandahar andHerat, built with millions of Washingtons dol-lars, well-organized groups of bandits would reg-ularly terrorize travelers. [Once], thirty, maybefifty criminals, some in police uniforms, stoppedour bus and shot [out] our windows, Muham-madullah, the owner of a bus company that regu-larly uses the route, told me. They searched ourvehicle and stole everything from everyone.

Criminal syndicates, often with governmentconnections, organized kidnapping sprees in ur-ban centers like the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar city. Often, those few who were caughtwould simply be released after the right palmswere greased.

Onto this landscape of violence and criminal-ity rode the Taliban again, promising law and or-der. The exiled leadership, based in Quetta, Pak-istan, began reactivating its networks of fighterswho had blended into the countrys villages.They resurrected relationships with Pashtuntribes. (The insurgents, historically a predomi-nantly Pashtun movement, still have very littleinfluence among other Afghan minority ethnicgroups like the Tajiks and Hezaras.) With fundsfrom wealthy Arab donors and training from theISI, the Pakistani intelligence apparatus, theywere able to bring weapons and expertise intoPashtun villages.

In one village after another, they drove out

the remaining minority of government sympa-thizers through intimidation and assassination.Then they won over the majority with promisesof security and efficiency. The guerrillas imple-mented a harsh version of Sharia law, cutting off the hands of thieves and shooting adulterers.They were brutal, but they were also incorrupt-ible. Justice no longer went to the highest bidder.Theres no crime any more, unlike before, saidAbdul Halim, who lives in a district under Tal-iban control.

The insurgents conscripted fighters from thevillages they operated in, often paying them $200

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years, Pakistans longstanding policy of aidingIslamic militant groups has plunged the countryinto a devastating war within its own borders.

As Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants trickledinto Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban govern-ment in 2001, Islamabad signed on to the Bushadministrations Global War on Terror. It was aprofitable venture: Washington delivered billionsof dollars in aid and advanced weaponry to Pak-istans military government, all the while look-ing the other way as dictator Pervez Musharraf

increased his vise-like grip on the country. In re-turn, Islamabad targeted al-Qaeda militants,every few months parading a captured high-ranking leader before the news cameras, whileleaving the Taliban leadership on its territory un-touched.

While the Pakistani military establishmentnever completely eradicated al-Qaedadoing somight have stanched the flow of aidit kept up

just enough pressure so that the Arab militantsdeclared war on the government. By 2004, thePakistani army had entered the Federally Ad-ministered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous re-gion populated by Pashtun tribes (where al-Qaeda fighters had taken refuge), in force for thefirst time in an attempt to root out the fore ignmilitants.

Over the next few years, repeated Pakistaniarmy incursions, along with a growing number ofU.S. missile strikes (which sometimes killedcivilians), enraged the local tribal populations.Small, tribal-based groups calling themselvesthe Taliban began to emerge; by 2007, therewere at least 27 such groups active in the Pak-istani borderlands. The guerrillas soon won con-trol of areas in such tribal districts as North andSouth Waziristan, and began to act like a versionof the 1990s Taliban redux: They banned music,beat liquor store owners and prevented girls fromattending school. While remaining independentof the Afghan Taliban, they also wholeheartedlysupported them.

By the end of 2007, the various PakistaniTaliban groups had merged into a single outfit,the Tehrik-i-Taliban, under the command of anenigmatic 30-something guerrillaBaitullahMehsud. Pakistani authorities blame Mehsudsgroup, usually referred to simply as the Pak-istani Taliban, for a string of major attacks, in-cluding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.Mehsud and his allies have strong links to al-Qaeda and continue to wage an on-again, off-again war against the Pakistani military. At thesame time, some members of the Pakistani Tal-iban have filtered across the border to join theirAfghan counterparts in the fight against the

Americans.Tehrik-i-Taliban proved surprisingly power-ful, regularly routing Pakistani army units whosefoot soldiers were loathe to fight their fellowcountrymen. But almost as soon as Tehrik hademerged, fissures appeared. Not all Pakistani Tal-iban commanders were convinced of the efficacyof fighting a two-front war. Part of the move-ment, calling itself the Local Taliban, adopteda different strategy, avoiding battles with the Pak-istani military. In addition, a significant numberof other Pakistani militant groupsincludingmany trained by the ISI to fight in Indian Kash-mirnow operate in the Pakistani borderlands,

ment, local NGOs can function with the guerril-las permission.

The other Taliban

NEVER SHORT of guns and guerrillas,Afghanistan has proven fertile ground for awhole host of insurgent groups in addition tothe Taliban.

Naqibullah, a university student with a sparsebeard who spoke in soft, measured tones, was notquite 30 when we met. We were in the backseatof a parked dusty Corolla on a pockmarked roadnear Kabul University, where he studied medi-cine. Naqibullah (his nom de guerre ) and hisfriends at the university are members of Hizb-i-Islami, an insurgent group led by warlord Gul-buddin Hekmatyar and allied to the Taliban. Hiscircle of friends meet regularly in the universitysdorm rooms, discussing politics and watchingDVD videos of recent attacks.

Over the past year, his circle has shrunk:Sadiq was arrested while attempting a suicidebombing. Wasim was killed when he tried to as-semble a bomb at home. Fouad killed himself ina successful suicide attack on a U.S. base. The

Americans have their B-52s, Naqibullah ex-plained. Suicide attacks are our versions of B-52s. Like his friends, Naqibullah, too, hadconsidered the possibility of becoming a B-52. But it would kill too many civilians, hetold me. Besides, he had plans to use his educa-tion. He said, I want to teach the uneducatedTaliban.

For years Hizb-i-Islami fighters have had areputation for being more educated and worldlythan their Taliban counterparts, who are often il-literate farmers. Their leader, Hekmatyar, studiedengineering at Kabul University in the 1970s,where he made a name of a sort for himself byhurling acid in the faces of unveiled women.

He established Hizb-i-Islami to counter grow-ing Soviet influence in the country and, in the1980s, his organization became one of the mostextreme fundamentalist parties as well as theleading group fighting the Soviet occupation.Ruthless, powerful and anti-Communist, Hek-matyar proved a capab le ally for Washington,which funneled millions of dollars and tons of weapons through the Pakistani ISI to his forces.

After the Soviet withdrawal, Hekmatyar andthe other mujahideen commanders turned theirguns on each other, unleashing a devastatingcivil war from which Kabul, in particular, has yetto recover. One-legged Afghans, crippled byHekmatyars rockets, still roam the citys streets.However, he was unable to capture the capitaland his Pakistani backers eventually abandonedhim for a new, even more extreme Islamist forcerising in the south: the Taliban.

Most Hizb-i-Islami commanders defected tothe Taliban and Hekmatyar fled in disgrac e toIran, losing much of his support in the process.He remained in such low standing that he wasamong the few warlords not offered a place in theU.S.-backed government that formed after 2001.

This, after a fashion, was his good luck.When that government faltered, he found him-self thrust back into the role of insurgent leader,where, playing on local frustrations in Pashtun

communities just as the Taliban has, he slowlyresurrected Hizb-i-Islami.

Today, the group is one of the fastest-growinginsurgent outfits in the country, according to An-tonio Giustozzi, Afghan insurgency expert at theLondon School of Economics. Hizb-i-Islamimaintains a strong presence in the provinces nearKabul and Pashtun pockets in the countrys northand northeast. It assisted in a complex assassina-tion attempt on President Karzai last spring andwas behind a high-profile ambush that killed ten

NATO soldiers this summer. Its guer rillas fightunder the Taliban banner, although independentlyand with a separate command structure. Like theTaliban, its leaders see their task as restoringAfghan sovereignty as well as establishing an Is-lamic state in Afghanistan. Naqibullah explained,The U.S. installed a puppet regime here. It wasan affront to Islam, an injustice that all Afghansshould rise up against.

The independent Islamic state that Hizb-i-Is-lami is fighting for would undoubtedly have Hek-matyar, not Mullah Omar, in command. But asduring the anti-Soviet jihad, the settling of scoresis largely being left to the future.

The Pakistani nexus

B LOWBACK ABOUNDS in Afghanistan.Erstwhile CIA hand Jalaluddin Haqqaniheads yet a third insurgent network, this onebased in Afghanistans eastern border regions.During the anti-Soviet war, the U.S. gaveHaqqani, now considered by many to be Wash-ingtons most redoubtable foe, millions of dol-lars, anti-aircraft missiles and even tanks. Offi-cials in Washington were so enamored withhim that former congressman Charlie Wilsononce called him goodness personified.

Haqqani was an ear ly advoca te of theAfghan Arabs, who, in the 1980s, flocked to

Pakistan to join the jihad against the SovietUnion. He ran training camps for them and laterdeveloped close ties to al-Qaeda, which devel-oped out of Afghan-Arab networks towards theend of the anti-Soviet war. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. tried desperately tobring him over to its side. However, Haqqaniclaimed that he couldnt countenance a foreignpresence on Afghan soil and once again took uparms, aided by his longtime benefactors in Pak-istans ISI. He is said to have introduced suicidebombing to Afghanistan, a tactic unheard of therebefore 2001. Western intelligence officials pinthe blame for most of the spectacular attacks inrecent memorya massive car bomb that rippedapart the Indian embassy in July, for exampleon the Haqqani network, not the Taliban.

The Haqqanis command the lions share of foreign fighters operating in the country and tendto be even more extreme than their Taliban coun-terparts. Unlike most of the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami, elements of the Haqqani network work closely with al-Qaeda. The networks leadershipis most likely based in Waziristan, in the Pak-istani tribal areas, where it enjoys ISI protection.

Pakistan extends support to the Haqqanis onthe understanding that the network will keep itsholy war within Afghanistans borders. Suchagreements are necessary because, in recent

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THE STRUGGLEAGAINST THE WAR

SPEECH BY AHMED SHAWKI

Can the U.S.bring justice?October 12, 2001

Ahmed Shawki , editor of the InternationalSocialist Review, spoke at an evening plenarysession of the Peoples Summit in Washington,D.C., in late September. These are excerptsfrom his speech.

THE TRAGEDY of September 11 is beingused by the government of this country not tohonor those who died, not to search for justice,but to advance its agenda.

Some of this agenda has been in the worksfor years, but couldnt be advanced. But they in-tend to try to use this crisis to push it as quicklyas possible.

The attacks are coming fast and furious:militarism and a drive to war; a slew of attackson minoritiesArabs, Muslims, Sikhs, peopleof color.

Im wearing a button today that I wouldnthave thought Id have to wear, which says sim-ply, No scapegoats! Being Arab is not a crime.

But it is the case that, instead of flying toD.C., I drove. It is the case that hundreds of Arabs, Muslims and others have been visited bylaw enforcement agencies to ask if they have a

connectionwhat are their politics, what aretheir views.

It is the case that this government is movingforward with legislation to expand police powers.Theyre talking about surveillance mechanismsand about rolling back a whole number of rightsthat it took years and years to win.

And it isnt simply happening here in theUnited States. People will remember last sum-mers events in Genoa, Italy, where a 23-year-old global justice demonstrator named CarloGiuliani was shot twice in the head and killedduring protests of the Group of Eight summit.

The government of Prime Minister SilvioBerlusconi came under some pressure and criti-

cism after the bloody police raid on the head-quarters of the organizers of the demonstrations,the Genoa Social Forum.

It may have gone unnoticed, but the investiga-tion into the crimes of the Genoa police and thestate security forces is over. There was a white-wash rushed through the Italian parliament of thepolice forces, leaving Berlusconi off the hook.

So here is what Silvio Berlusconi now feelslike he can say to reporters: We should be confi-dent of the superiority of our civilization, whichcounts on value systems that have given peoplewidespread prosperity and guarantees respect forhuman rights and religion. This respect does not

tion to the 68,000 already in Afghanistan, thenumber of casualties will inevitably rise further.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-NATO war is continu-ing to inflict a devastating toll on Afghans thatis only rarely the subject of mainstream mediaattention.

David Kilcullen, a former Australian army of-ficer and now a consultant to the U.S. and otherNATO countries on counter-insurgency tacticspointed out that in recent air attacks, the U.S. haskilled 98 civilians for every two insurgents

killed. As antiwar author Richard Seymour wroteon his blog:

If that ratio holds for the air war as a rule,then consider that the U.S. is currentlyboasting of having killed up to 25,000 in-surgents. Twenty-five thousand is 2 percentof 1.25 million. Lacking a Lancet-stylecluster survey, one can only make an edu-cated guess as to whether such a figure isapproximately realistic.

There was one cluster survey carried outfor the first nine months of the invasion andoccupation, which estimated that 10,000civilians had been killed, the majority fromair attacks. A similar survey today would be

reporting the effects of a far more intenseaerial campaign, in a war lasting for eightyears now. Who can say that the soaringuse of cluster bombs, daisy cutters, smartmissiles aimed at wedding parties, drone-based ordnance and the usual deposits of unexploded ordnance will have harvested anegligible number of bodies?

THE GROWING casualties from its waralong with the tarnished credibility of theKarzai governmenthas put the U.S. govern-ment in a difficult position.

It pinned its hopes for a stable, U.S.-friendlyAfghanistan on Karzais ability to construct aviable central government that can command anarmy. But Karzais reliance on the countryshated warlords to cement his rule makes a legit-imate central government a long shot at best.

And if the situation werent already badenough, the New York Times revealed in late Oc-tober that Karzais brotherAhmed Wali Karzai,who is known for profiting immensely from theopium trade and running a large area of southernAfghanistan around Kandahar with an iron fisthas been on the CIA payroll for most of the lasteight years.

Not only does Karzais brother provide intel-ligence to the U.S., but he is helping the CIA runthe Kandahar Strike Force, a paramilitary force.

He also rents a large compound outside Kanda-harthe former home of Mullah MohammedOmar, the Talibans founderto U.S. SpecialForces. Hes our landlord, a senior Americanofficial said.

Karzais CIA ties help him avoid the raidsand arrests that other Afghan drug lords face,and his control over the lucrative drug trade hasalmost certainly increased as a result.

The revelations come at a horrible time forU.S. forces hoping to portray themselves as theprotectors of civilians in Afghanistan. If we aregoing to conduct a population-centric strategy in

Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backingthugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,said Major Gen. Michael Flynn, the senior Amer-ican military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration insists the U.S. isfighting a war of necessity in Afghanistan. Ithas all kinds of rationaleskeeping Americanssafe, protecting Afghan civilians, liberatingAfghan women, crushing the Taliban insurgency,keeping al-Qaeda from using Afghanistan as abase of operations.

But the collaboration between U.S. militaryand intelligence forces and the warlords, drugdealers and paramilitaries expose these justifi-cations as a pretext for the real reason the U.S.wont bring its troops home from a country thathas rejected their presence.

The U.S. wanted war in Afghanistan becauseit saw the September 11 attacks as an opportu-nity to pursue its imperial ambitions in CentralAsia. Washingtons aim was never, first andforemost, to defeat the Taliban. In fact, the U.S.viewed the Talibans rise in Afghanistan prior toSeptember 11with its focus on law and orderand eradicating the drug tradeas a boon to re-gional stability.

If the U.S. had really wanted to capture al-Qaeda operatives responsible for September 11,why did U.S. officials reject, according to the9/11 Commission Report, Mullah Omars over-tures to hand over Osama bin Laden in exchangefor the U.S. calling off its invasion?

The answer: The prospect of establishing amilitary occupation in a region rich with oil andnatural gas ranked higher for those who call theshots in U.S. foreign policy than capturing al-Qaeda leaders.

Now that the U.S. has spent trillions of dol-lars in futile efforts to occupy both Iraq andAfghanistan, these decisions appear foolish. Butin the early 2000s, the neoconservative vision of remaking the Middle East according to U.S.wishes commanded overwhelming support fromboth Democrats and Republicans in Congress.And today, the Obama administration continuesto work from the Bush playbook on Afghanistan.

Its time to end the tragic waste of lives andmoney in Afghanistan and bring the troopshome now.

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SHARON SMITH

The antiwarmovementretreatsOctober 20, 2009

Many in the antiwar movement ardently op-posed the war in Iraq, says Sharon Smith while remaining silent about an equally immoralwar in Afghanistan.

E IGHT YEARS into the war on Afghanistanand with no end in sightseems a peculiartime for antiwar activists to claim that U.S.forces need to stay there even longer for the sakeof the Afghan people.

Yet Yifat Susskind, communications directorfor the human rights organization MADRE, re-cently argued on CommonDreams.org, Bringthe Troops Home is a bumper sticker, not a pol-icy. She continued, For MADRE, U.S. obliga-tions stem from the fact that Afghanistanspoverty, violence against women and politicalcorruption are, in part, results of U.S. policy overthe past 30 years.

Code Pink cofounders Medea Benjamin andJodie Evans began arguing for a responsiblewithdrawal after their recent visit to Af ghanistan, which focused on discovering Afghanwomens attitudes toward the U.S. occupation.While there, they met with a handpicked groupof politically connected Afghan women that in-cluded President Hamid Karzais sister-in-law,Wazhma Karzai.

According to Code Pink, many of thesemembers of parliament and businesswomen op-

posed sending an additional 40,000 U.S. troopsto Afghanistan, but also said they rely on U.S.troops for their own personal safety.

On October 6, the Christian Science Monitor published an interview with Benjamin and r e-ported on her change of heart, based on conversa-tions with some of the women she met in Kabul.For example, CSM reported, Shinkai Karokhail,an Afghan member of parliament and woman ac-tivist, told them. International troop presencehere is a guarantee for my safety.

Benjamin claimed she was misrepresented inthe Christian Science Monitor . Yet Benjamin her-self said in a recent interview:

[W]e certainly did hear some people saythat they felt if the U.S. pulled out rightnow, there would be a collapse, and the Tal-iban might take over, there might be a civilwar. But we also heard a lot of people saythey didnt want more troops to be sent in,and they wanted the U.S. to have a respon-sible exit strategy that included the trainingof Afghan troops, included being part of promoting a real reconciliation process andincluded economic development; that theUnited States shouldnt be allowed to justwalk away from the problem. So thats re-ally our position.

exist in the Islamic countries.And he goes on to discuss the needand he

puts it very bluntlyfor the West and Christiancivilization to recolonize those parts of the worldthat are now out of their reach.

THATS THE kind of politics that are beingfloated today. And its the kind of politicsthat domestically finds its reflection in GeorgeW. Bushs demands for Star Wars and new secu-rity laws.

Plus the Republicans who want to give moneyto the rich to fight terrorism. Their proposal is fora capital gains tax cut and a new tax structure tobenefit the rich.

Why? To fight terrorism, of course. How?Well, its not exactly clear.

But when it comes to the question of com-pensation for workers whose family members orcolleagues died in the World Trade Center, not apenny is to be found in the U.S. Treasury.

As House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas said: The model of thought that says weneed to go out and extend unemployment bene-fits and health insurance benefits and so forth isnot one which is commensurate with the Amer-ican spirit.

A tragedy took place in America on Septem-ber 11. But there isnt one America. There isntone America that we stand all united in.

This country, from its very inception, was acountry that privileged some and excluded many.Its a country that was built by the labor of manyto the benefit of the few. And its a country inwhich war has always been used, no matter hownoble the supposed cause, in order to advancethe interests of those who run this country.

Dont believe me. Believe U.S. Marine Gen.Smedley Butler, who wrote still the best indict-ment of imperialism that Ive ever read by amember of the Marine Corps: I spent 33 yearsand four months in active military service as amember of this countrys most agile militaryforce, the marine CorpsAnd during that pe-riod, I spent most of my time being a high-classmuscle man for big business, for Wall Street andfor the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, agangster for capitalism

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico,safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helpedmake Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the Na-tional City Bank boys to collect revenues inIhelped purify Nicaragua for the internationalbanking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912.I brought light to the Dominican Republic forAmerican sugar interests in 1916. In China, Ihelped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way

unmolested.Now people will say that Butler was talkingabout the 1910s. But I say that we already knowwhat this war will be about.

We had a glimpse of it in 1991 Gulf War. Thatwas supposedly a war to preserve democracyin a feudal monarchy.

That war produced the term collateral dam-agethe Pentagons phrase meaning the deathof innocents.

At the turn of the 20th century, four-fifths of all deaths in wars took place on the battlefields.By the turn of the new millennium, that propor-

tion was reversedfour-fifths of those who diein wars are civilians.

ACALL to war today will not bring us a stepcloser to justice. But it will bring danger andinstability to the world that will cause further vi-olence.

Now some people say, What about jus-tice? The brother who spoke just said that wewant justice, and we want peace. But I think herightly also said that we have to be very wary

who is asking for justice, on whose terms and inwhat way.Thereve been some proposals, for instance,

to have a tribunal to try those responsible for theattacks in the U.S., presided over by the UnitedNations. Yet this country has refused to abide bythe UN resolutions that have asked for the con-demnation of the state of Israels occupation of Palestinian lands.

The U.S. cares about the UN only when itserves its purposes. We should not be asked to re-spect two different sets of laws.

The abolitionist leader Frederick Douglassput it well in a speech on the Fourth of July. Hesaid that you ask me to speak here on the Fourthof July, and you speak of freedom and dignity ina country that enforces slaverythis is the heightof hypocrisy. And I condemn not the people of this country but those who would try to use thelanguage of justice to advance their own narrowinterests.

It wasnt so long ago, on March 21, 1983,that Ronald Reagan declared Afghanistan Dayin honor of the freedom fighters who werefighting in Afghanistan, armed and trained bythe CIA.

Thats one group of people in this countrythat knows all about Osama bin Laden. In fact,the presidents father would know somethingabout that, tooabout how it all started.

We will not allow them to take the languageof justice away from our movement. We donthave to explain why were against war, whywere for civil liberties and against racismver-sus those who are on the other side.

In the 1960s, the United States meant twothings to the world. On the one hand, it repre-sented napalm, it represented war, and it repre-sented the barbarism of the war it was conduct-ing in Vietnam.

But it also represented something else tohundreds of thousands of people. I know my firstthoughts at the time in Egypt were not about theVietnam Warbut were about the pride I feltwhen the Black Panther Party stood up and saidwe should have rights here.

There are two Americas. Theres an Americaof the rich and powerful. And theres the one thatrepresents us.

And there are also those who would bringwar to this country, and there are those who areadamantly opposed to that war.

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sistance against U.S. occupation. Even his pledgeto close the prison camp

afghanistan december 2009

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