Against war and terror
This pamphlet was written by anarchists from four continents in the period between the September
11th terror attacks on the US and the (public) start of the 'War on Terrorism' announced by
the US government. We know war means death, destruction and oppression for the working class internationally.
While we deplore the attacks on the USA and the deaths of thousands of people we are also aware that the 'retaliation'
to this attack is designed to advance the control of the USA and other western powers
over the people of the world. Not just the people of Asia and the Middle East but also in the imperialist countries
as the war is used as a 'loyalty' test and to introduce repressive legislation. Already it has
been the excuse for the sacking of tens of thousands of workers, particularly in the airline industry.
We refuse the choice that is offered by both sides in this conflict - you are either for us or against us. As anarchists
we obviously see little attraction in the sort of religious state fantasised about by bin Laden and enacted by
the Taliban, where the individual is controlled right down to forbidding the trimming of beards! But we also oppose
the fake democracy of the western states where politicians are bought by oil companies, refugees are criminalised
and where corporations rule.
We hope these articles will stimulate some discussion about the causes and real goal of this war. We also hope
it will help those who, like us, seek to undermine the war efforts of all sides. But beyond that,
this is just another war in a long series - we need an alternative to the capitalist system that breeds wars just
as surely as it breeds severe inequality. War in not an aberration - war is the health of capital and
the state.
We make no claim that these articles represent a collectively agreed position. Each represents the opinion of the
author. What the authors (mostly) have in common is agreement with the Anarchist Platform statement to be found
on the web at http://struggle.ws/platform.html.
Anarchism is our collective alternative to capitalist war and terror. We want an equal society, one without classes,
without sexism, without racism. We want a society where each workplace and community is self-managed and where
everyone contributes according to their abilities and receives according to there needs! We want a libertarian
society, one which is really democratic, where there is freedom of movement for all. We want a society without
borders, based on solidarity and mutual aid. We want a society where liberty, justice and dignity are a reality.
The tragedy of Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a tragic country. The Soviet-backed coup and subsequent invasion in 1979 ushered in more than two
decades of brutal war. During the 1980's, the US supplied at least USD 32 billion
[1] of military aid to the mujahadeen, the Islamic opposition to the Soviet regime. The US explicitly channelled
their funding to the most fanatical and violent islamists in an attempt to cause the maximum
damage to the Russians.
When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the Western states turned their attention away from this barren wasteland. While
the US had been willing to pump billions of dollars of weapons into the country, their
concern for the oppressed population did not extend to the same generosity in funding reconstruction. The UNHCR's
budget for Afghanistan in 1999 - as part of the Common UN Appeal for
Afghanistan - was $17 million[2]. The decade after the Soviet retreat was dominated by constant war as the heavily
armed warlords fought it out for the meagre resources of this forgotten land.
During the past 20 years about 2.5 million Afghans have died as a direct or indirect result of the war - army assaults,
famine or lack of medical attention[3]. This makes up over 10% of the population or one
death every 5 minutes. Those who have survived have often been maimed by bombs and landmines. A sign at the Dogharoon
border post reads: "every 24 hours 7 people step on mines in Afghanistan".
UN estimates in 2000 put the average life expectancy of Afghans at 41, and since then this has undoubtedly sharply
declined. Afghan children have one chance in five of dying before their second birthday. Increasing repression
has accompanied the slaughter, and women in particular have found themselves even further excluded from public
life and locked in the prison of the home by the fundamentalist ideology of the 'holy warriors.'
Refuge
According to UN statistics the number of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan is 6.3 million[4] or one refugee
every minute over 20 years. These people have fled despite the fact that all they can look forward to is a life
of misery in one of the squalid and hopeless camps across the border. So during this period of war some 10% of
the population has been killed and 30% have been forced into exile, a tragedy on a monumental scale and one that
has been almost totally ignored by the West.
In the last year the harsh situation has become dramatically worse. The worst drought in 30 years has seen the
virtual extermination of the country's only productive resort - their livestock. Famine and
starvation are sweeping through the land.
The UNHCR estimates that there are at least one million Afghans starving to death at the moment [5]. Now even the
last chances of survival for many of these appear to have disappeared as the
neighbouring countries are refusing entry to refugees and deporting 'illegal' immigrants. The Iranian filmmaker
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is one of the rare outsiders who has taken an interest in this disaster zone: "I witnessed
about 20,000 men, women and children around the city of Herat starving to death. They couldn't walk and were scattered
on the ground awaiting the inevitable...In Dushanbeh in Tajikestan I saw a scene where 100,000 Afghans were running
from south to north, on foot. It looked like doomsday. These scenes are never shown in the media anywhere in the
world. The war-stricken and hungry children had run for miles and miles barefoot. Later on the same fleeing crowd
was attacked by internal enemies and was also refused asylum in Tajikestan. In the thousands, they died and died
in a no-man's land between Afghanistan and Tajikestan and neither you found out nor anybody else" [6]. Afghanistan
is fast becoming a vast extermination camp, with armed guards on all the exits so that nobody can escape.
The Taliban
The Taliban leaders were formed in Islamic religious schools while refugees
in Pakistan, and have continued to recruit students to these schools based mainly
upon the fact that they offer bread and the only education available to the
hungry masses. If the 'civilised' world had spent a tiny fraction of the billions
of military funding on providing food and rational education to these victims,
it is very unlikely that the Taliban would ever have existed as a serious force.
Instead they channelled funds through Saudi Arabia and aid organisations such
as USAID [7], into these religious schools (although they would more accurately
be described as political training camps for a movement based upon hatred and
fanaticism).
However, they flourished and as they progressively took over between 1994 and
1998, they were generally accepted by the populace, at least among their fellow
Pashtuns, who saw in them the
most realistic hope of security, albeit at the expense of freedom. The dead
have little freedom anyway. They were formed explicitly as a reaction to the
rule of warlords, a return to 'pure,' unifying religion [8].
They were well organised, relatively free from complicity in most of the hated
warfare and drug trading of the previous 15 years and were relatively well educated
in this country where rural illiteracy runs as
high as 90%.
However, while the Taliban's harsh regime initially appeared capable of offering
some hope of security and stability, Afghans quickly learned that they could
expect more of the same brutality. The Taliban forces indulged in massacres
in the towns which 'welcomed them' (the euphemism which they use to describe
their conquests of opposition towns). In 1998 the Iranian consular staff was
among the thousands of people massacred after the fall of Mazar-i Sharif to
the Taliban. They come from Afghanistan's largest tribes, the Pashtun who make
up about 35% of the population. They have been accused of brutally imposing
their harsh religious laws on other tribes, but it is women who have suffered
most at the hands of their horrific religious regime.
While they may have largely failed in their promise to provide security and
peace, their failure to provide food and work for the population is at least
as important. The Taliban have, like all governments, concentrated primarily
on supplying their own forces. So now during this time of mass famine they are
the only people with food and resources. The fundamentalists' blatant attacks
on women and individual liberties might have been tolerated by the people of
this traditionally patriarchal and strictly religious society, if they were
able to provide bread and safety. However, there were no solutions to these
problems in the Taliban's religious code, and their abject failure to even address
the economic problems of the people cost them any real support amongst Afghans.
As the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan state: "The people
of Afghanistan have nothing to do with Osama and his accomplices [they] have
no plans for socioeconomic reconstruction. Nor do they have a decent concept
for the country"[9]. The Taliban have constantly faced serious opposition
in Afghanistan, especially from the marginalised non-Pashtun peoples. However,
a people devastated by 20 years of extreme suffering and starvation have hardly
the capacity to mount effective opposition to
this band of heavily armed and ruthless soldiers. For there to be any hope of
replacing them, there would have to be a massive flow of resources to the impoverished
Afghans. If they were supplied with
food, education, health and civil infrastructure, they would not tolerate long
the burden of Taliban misrule. However, this course of action, which would actually
damage the men of violence, is not even
remotely considered by the US warlords. Instead they propose a storm of death
and destruction against the very people who are, in the words of Afghan-American
Tamir Ansay, "the first victims of the Taliban"[10].
A war of the rich states against Afghanistan will inevitably lead to the deaths
of millions of Afghans who have as little responsibility for the Taliban's or
Bin Laden's acts as the workers of the World Trade Centre had for the much greater
crimes of the US government. The first demands of the US included an order for
Pakistan to stop food aid from crossing into Afghanistan [11] - essentially
a call for mass murder on a scale that dwarfs the bombings in the US. War against
Afghanistan will especially hit those who are already the gravest victims of
the 'fundamentalists.' The only people with the facilities to evade the West's
weapons of mass destruction, especially starvation, are the Taliban soldiers
and it is them and the fundamentalists like Bin Laden who are most likely to
gain in strength with every bomb that falls on this shattered country.
The idea of the richest states in the world going to war against the most destitute
and helpless is monstrous. If you feel that innocent people shouldn't be slaughtered
then you must oppose this barbaric war, or become complicit in another of the
great crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of Western 'civilisation'
in the few tragic centuries of capitalist global expansion.
Chekov Feeney is an Irish revolutionary anarchist writer
living in Melbourne Australia. He has visited and written about many of the
most unfortunate parts of the globe in an attempt to understand the hidden foundations
of suffering on which our world order is built.
Footnotes
1.The menace of Islamic fundamentalism and the hypocrisy of
imperialism Lal Khan Pakistan, October 2000
http://www.marxist.com/Asia/islamic_fund_ism1100.html
2.UNHCR report on Afghanistan march 1999:
http://www.unhcr.ch/world/mide/afghan.htm
3.UN report quoted by Iranian film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf June
20, 2001 The Iranian
http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/index.html
4. Ibid.
5.Ibid
6.Ibid
7.Helga Baitenmann, "NGOs and the Afghan War: The Politicisation of
Humanitarian Aid", Third World Quarterly, Vol. 12 (1990), pp. 1-23
8.UNHCR report quoted on Afghanistan 1998
http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/country/writenet/wriafg03.htm
9 Revlutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan at
http://rawasongs.fancymarketing.net/index.html
10. See article at www.salon.com
11. Noam Chomsky in interview with Belgrade radio B92
at:http://www.struggle.ws/issues/war/chomsky_b26_sept19.html