Let Them Stay

international | racism & migration related issues | opinion/analysis Wednesday May 17, 2006 13:51 by Dave - swp

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Let Them Stay

On its travel advice website, updated as recently as the 3rd of May, the Department of Foreign Affairs warns “ against all non-essential travel to Kabul and against all travel to other parts of Afghanistan”. The department goes on to state that “ The security situation in Afghanistan remains serious and the threat to Westerners from terrorist or criminal violence, including kidnappings, remains high. Irish citizens travelling to Kabul are urged to exercise extreme caution and vigilance throughout their visit”.

Yet during the course of the Afghan Hunger and Thirst Strike controversy, Justice Minister Michael McDowell has admitted only to ‘some disturbances’ in Afghanistan. This nebulous reference to ‘disturbances’ is undoubtedly designed to mask the rapidly deteriorating situation in a country that has been a victim of imperialist aggression for more than a century and a half.

Of course we should support he hunger and thirst strikers regardless of what the government says about anything. Only a couple of years ago government ministers and TDs were queuing up to be photographed with Afghan refugees- as they did earlier with Kosovans.

This was all part of supporting Washington’s ‘war on terror’ . Now that the Afghans have outlived their political usefulness as propaganda totems they are being cast back into the hell they tried to escape.

Afghanistan is a hell that has been created by the clash of imperialisms. Its location at the apex of one of the world’s great trade routes has long made it a target for various kinds of ‘intervention’. At the end of the 19th century the discovery of vast quantities of oil in neighbouring countries made Afghanistan the ideal location for the rapid land-based transport of the ‘black gold’ from the Middle East to Markets in Russia and the West. Afghanistan has remained a cauldron of conflict between rival capitalist states ever since

The British tried to subdue the Afghans for one hundred years from the mid-nineteenth century, launching a number of invasions. They carpet bombed tribal villages in the 1920s. But they were continually repelled by determined tribal rebellions and never managed to subdue the country as they did neighbouring Iraq.

After a period of relative calm following WW11, when great improvements were made in the living standards of many Afghans, the Red Army marched in in 1980 to prop up an unpopular and failing Stalinist regime. The Pentagon saw its opportunity to ‘give Russia its own Vietman’. The CIA fed hundreds of millions of dollars into mujahadeen guerrillas, among whose leaders was Osama Bin Laden, fuelling a war which forced the Russians to withdraw in 1989.

The Americans withdrew from funding the Islamic militant groups after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Afghanistan then degenerated into a vicious civil war between rival regional and tribal factions, each funded by a different contending power. Iran, China, India, and Pakistan all threw their lot in with one or the other feuding warlords. The result was the complete destruction of civil society in Afghanistan, the levelling of its cities and the casting of its people into a state of subjugation and poverty reminiscent of dark age feudalism. This is why the Taliban, a well armed and funded extremist group emerging from the fundamentalist Madrassa schools of Pakistan, were able to sweep to power with some initial popular support in the late 1990’s. The Taliban seemed at first to at least offer the desperate Afghan people a way out of the chaos that had been choking their country for twenty years

Like many other extremist groups, the Taliban are the bastard offspring of the proxy war between the USA and Soviet empires, abandoned to their own devices in the aftermath of the end of the Cold war. They were created with the full support of the Pakistani ISI, an intelligence service that was little more then a subsidiary of the CIA in the 1980's, when the Taliban cadres were formed. The US administration under Clinton had no problem with the Taliban, and Taliban representatives were in Texas in 1997 discussing oil and pipelines with US oil giant UNOCAL. According to the US Department of Energy, "In January 1998, the Taliban signed an agreement that would allow a proposed 890-mile, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project led by Unocal to proceed." At this point nobody in the US elite was objecting to the Taliban’s treatment of women or their book-burning.

Only when the tail bit the dog, and Al Queda launched the September 11 atrocity did imperial prerogatives take a different turn. Thousands of civilians died in the American bombing in 2001, but the bulk of the Taliban, on advice from the Pakistani govt, just shaved off their beards and took to the borderlands of west Pakistan. But since then the Taliban, along with other insurgent organisations, have regrouped and are taking advantage of the widespread chaos, despair and hatred of western troops in Afghanistan to launch a new campaign of violence in the south of the country.

1500 people died from violent attacks in 2005 alone. The Taliban is currently undertaking a spring offensive in the South of the country, where thousands of extra British troops have recently been deployed. There are numerous attacks and bombing everyday, focussed mainly on the occupation forces and their Afghan adjuncts, but there are also many civilian casualties.

Since the invasion of 2001 opium production has increased manifold and now up to 90% of world opium production takes place in Afghanistan. For the first time ever a major heroin refining industry has also emerged, enriching opium warlords, who often have their own private armies, and adding greatly to the insecurity if the country.

While maize fields are being cleared to make way for poppies under the eye of the occupiers 3.5 million people are in need of food aid and large scale malnutrition threatens.

But what happened to the billions promised in aid for Afghan reconstruction, the much vaunted bombs first, schools later policy? Vast fortunes are being made in Afghanistan by US and other multinationals who pocket ‘aid money’ officially meant to support the rebuilding of Afghani infrastructure. According to a senior official in the Afghan interior ministry ‘The money the Americans send for the Afghans goes right back into US company pockets,”

In an article available at www.socialistworker.org.uk, Fariba Narwa of the activist NGO Corporate Watch concludes that :

"On paper, it looks as though the international community has been awash in altruism and generosity toward Afghanistan. But most of the money allocated to Afghanistan never reaches Kabul. The US and the international community have a system, through world financial institutions, that treats the country like a massive money laundering machine.

The money rarely leaves the countries that pledge it. USAID gives contracts to US companies, and the World Bank and IMF give contracts to, companies from their donor countries, who take huge chunks off the top and hire layers and layers of subcontractors who take their cuts, leaving only enough for sub-par construction.

Quality assurance is minimal. Contractors know they can swoop in, put a new coat of paint on a rickety building, and submit their bill, with rarely a question asked.

The result is collapsing hospitals, clinics, and schools, rutted and dangerous new highways, a “moderniszed” agricultural system that has actually left some farmers worse off than before, and emboldened militias and warlords who are more able to unleash violence on the people of Afghanistan"

Afhanistan is unfortunately likely to remain a warzone as long as Empires seek to impose their order on its people.

Imperialism drives its victims to despair, and the hunger strike haS LONG is the last stand of those who have had every other means of resisting taken away from them. It is 25 years ago since the Irish hunger strikers used this against the British Empire. Back then a mass movement was built in communities all over Ireland to support the prisoners. The Cathedral where the Afghans have blockaded themselves is, in some ways, just as much a prison as the H-blocks were. The hunger and thirst strikers know if they allow themselves to be forcibly returned to their war-torn country they will, at best, face grinding poverty and oppression. We should all be thinking of ways to bring the numbers onto the streets that can make sure these courageous Afghans are allowed to remain and live a dignified live here in Ireland.

Dave Lordan