Thursday, September 30, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/TKU_tydJNQI/AAAAAAAAJiM/L-M1y_-fQAo/s400/afghanistan7.jpg)
Labels: Afghan War, Afghanistan, American imperialism, cartoons, humour, jokes, militarism, US military, war
Sunday, August 29, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/THq-glg4jZI/AAAAAAAAJS4/r7UJpTM_BT0/s400/afghanistan6.jpg)
Labels: Afghan War, Afghanistan, American imperialism, Barack Obama, cartoons, humour, jokes, militarism, US military, war
Saturday, August 28, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/THmXeu331FI/AAAAAAAAJSM/sPxD3rWnQ0c/s400/obama14.jpg)
Labels: Afghan War, Afghanistan, American imperialism, Barack Obama, cartoons, humour, jokes, war
Sunday, August 22, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/THGhj5pAfwI/AAAAAAAAJO0/jwdLVXlt0zo/s400/leaks2.jpg)
It's a new and strange world we live in. In years past international empires could arrange an early and unpleasant end for those who released their secrets to the public. It was the old "poisoned umbrella" trick. But the action was more often than not simple revenge and terrorism to deter others (yes boys and girls, governments are the oldest, most experienced, most prolific and most noted practitioners of the fine art of 'terror' throughout human history, despite their strenuous propaganda to the contrary). In the new age in which we live all the secrets are not dumped at once. there is always an 'insurance policy' in reserve. To top it off the shear weight of the secrets that come to light are like nothing that existed in the pre-internet age. Never mind a few technical details. Now the public can be privy to full details of huge numbers of matters that empires would rather keep secret.
The recent controversy over the revelations of Wikileaks is a case in point. Lacking the good old option of 'executive action' empires are now reduced to the option of "counter-links" like the amazing appearing/disappearing accusation of rape against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. This operation bears all the labels of the usual psy-ops action, intended to target a given audience with hot buttons related to their presumed ideology. The problem was that however well conceived it was in terms of psychology it was a miserable failure in terms of background preparation, and the Swedish warrant was withdrawn in less than 24 hours ad the fragility of the charges became clear. It all goes to show that no 'intelligent' intelligence agency should depend on the pseudo-science of "psychology' as one of its main props. it actually has to be backed up with proper planning.
One is left with the question of why the USA doesn't simply carry out a cyber attack on Wikileaks. They do, no doubt, employ perhaps hundreds of skilled hackers amongst others who have been caught and who have bought their freedom by selling their services to the Empire. No doubt this is the future, but for now the horse is out of the barn. It would do the Empire little good to strike back now. Look for this in the fullness of time.
Will the revelations about imperial actions in Afghanistan have any perceptible effect on public opinion ? That is also a question for the fullness of time. For now here is an opinion from Z Communications which says they will and which celebrates the value of Wikileaks.
Why Wikileaks Must Be Protected
----------------------
Thursday, August 19, 2010
On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Wikileaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.
There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “hunted down” and “rendered”. In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defence Department official and asked, “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of Wikileaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied, “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything”. He referred me to the “ongoing criminal investigation” of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.
On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanapour interviewed Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to describe to her viewers his “anger” at Wikileaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that “this leak has blood on its hands”, thereby cueing Gates to find Wikileaks “guilty” of “moral culpability”. Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – as its own files make clear – is apparently not for journalistic enquiry. This is hardly surprising now that a new and fearless form of public accountability, which Wikileaks represents, threatens not only the war-makers but their apologists.
Their current propaganda is that Wikileaks is “irresponsible”. Earlier this year, before it released the cockpit video of an American Apache gunship killing 19 civilians in Iraq, including journalists and children, Wikileaks sent people to Baghdad to find the families of the victims in order to prepare them. Prior to the release of last month’s Afghan War Logs, Wikileaks wrote to the White House asking that it identify names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000 files were withheld and these, says Assange, will not be released until they have been scrutinised “line by line” so that names of those at risk can be deleted.
The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Australia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coalition wins the general election on 21 August, “appropriate action” will be taken “if an Australian citizen has deliberately undertake an activity that could put at risk the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any way”. The Australian role in Afghanistan, effectively mercenary in the service of Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children in a village in Oruzgan province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Australians.
Last May, following the release of the Apache footage, Assange had his Australian passport temporarily confiscated when he returned home. The Labor government in Canberra denies it has received requests from Washington to detain him and spy on the Wikileaks network. The Cameron government also denies this. They would, wouldn’t they? Assange, who came to London last month to work on exposing the war logs, has had to leave Britain hastily for, as puts it, “safer climes”.
On 16 August, the Guardian, citing Daniel Ellsberg, described the great Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as “the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear age”. Vanunu, who alerted the world to Israel’s secret nuclear weapons, was kidnapped by the Israelis and incarcerated for 18 years after he was left unprotected by the London Sunday Times, which had published the documents he supplied. In 1983, another heroic whistleblower, Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerical officer, sent documents to the Guardian that disclosed how the Thatcher government planned to spin the arrival of American cruise missiles in Britain. The Guardian complied with a court order to hand over the documents, and Tisdall went to prison.
In one sense, the Wikileaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the Wikileaks site and read a Ministry of Defence document that describes the “threat” of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having published skilfully the Wikileaks expose of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Julian Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.
I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, “When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents we see that they state it is offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information.”
Labels: Afghanistan, American imperialism, current events, imperialism, media, secrecy, Wikileaks, Z Communications
Sunday, August 15, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/TGg_ZpC260I/AAAAAAAAJK0/bo7OXFFq4dg/s400/leaks.jpg)
Labels: Afghanistan, American imperialism, cartoons, censorship., humour, jokes, leaks, secrecy, Wikileaks
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/TFg2cgP5S2I/AAAAAAAAJHc/2sA5nIsb5zE/s400/afghanistan4.jpg)
Labels: Afghanistan, cartoons, humour, international politics, jokes, Wikileaks
Sunday, July 18, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/TEPPc7kSD6I/AAAAAAAAJC8/uHm3iLW7RJ0/s400/kandahar.png)
It's summer, and an old general's fancy heavily turns to thoughts of mayhem. Or at least that is the way it is in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan as American troops and their various bands of mercenaries prepare to once more launch attacks. Heaven help the civilians in the way. The Canadian organization 'Cease Fire' has a petition to the various political parties asking that the carnage be cancelled. Here's the story.
Help Stop the Attack on Kandahar
Send your letter to Stephen Harper and all party leaders
Your help is needed. Civilians are paying a heavy price in Afghanistan as thousands of U.S. Marines, leading Afghan and Canadian troops, prepare to attack Kandahar and surrounding areas.
Please send your letter to Stephen Harper and all party leaders, calling on them to urge the U.S. and NATO to call off the attack and make sure that Canadian forces are not involved in the offensive.
With the attack looming, aid agencies are warning about more casualties. “More troops have led to more fighting, which has always left more casualties,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross this week.
This week an Afghan human rights group reported that 1,074 civilians have been killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents this year.
Most of the casualties were caused by insurgents fighting Western forces, like Canada. But still, the U.S. and NATO forces were responsible for more than 200 civilian deaths.
In a desperate attempt to regain the upper hand, the U.S. general leading the Afghan war is considering lifting restrictions on the use of heavy weapons and air strikes when civilians are close to the fighting. This will mean many more civilian deaths.
Dear Prime Minister Harper,
I urge you to tell the U.S. and NATO to call off the attack on Kandahar, and to ensure that Canadian troops are not involved in the planned offensive.
Countless civilians are at risk. More than 2,400 civilians were killed last year in fighting by both sides. Now, the U.S. general leading the attack is reportedly considering allowing greater use of heavy weapons and air strikes when civilians are present during fighting.
Please stop the bloodshed, and end Canada’s war in Afghanistan right away.
++
Cher premier ministre Harper
Je vous conjure de demander aux États-Unis et à l’OTAN de décommander l’attaque contre Kandahar et de vous assurer qu’aucun soldat canadien ne sera engagé dans cette offensive planifiée.
La vie d’innombrables civils est en jeu. Plus de 2400 civils ont été tués l’an dernier dans les combats initiés par les deux parties en présence. Aujourd’hui, on apprend que le général américain qui dirigera l’offensive envisage de recourir de façon plus intensive aux armes lourdes et aux frappes aériennes, alors que des civils sont autour pendant les combats.
Nous vous prions de mettre un terme au bain de sang et de cesser immédiatement la guerre du Canada en Afghanistan.
Labels: Afghanistan, anti-militarism, Canadian militarism, Canadian politics, Cease Fire organization, international politics, Kandahar, militarism, petitions, war
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/TCoQHg9YPlI/AAAAAAAAI8E/Xu18Ipcj_TU/s400/mchrystal1.jpg)
Labels: Afghanistan, American politics, Barack Obama, cartoons, humour, jokes, McChrystal
Thursday, June 17, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/TBrJB5gp4SI/AAAAAAAAI4E/ZeUdObk0seI/s400/afghanistan3.jpg)
Labels: Afghanistan, cartoons, humour, jokes, war
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/S61w-6rRZJI/AAAAAAAAIeQ/avD4v9-c44c/s400/canadianmilitary.jpg)
KEEP YOUR PROMISE-WITHDRAW FROM AFGHANISTAN:
I was astonished to read this on the front page of the newspaper: “U.S. to press for Canada to keep troops in Afghanistan.”
We can be certain that the retired generals and the defence contractors in the pro-war lobby are cheering, because this will put pressure on Canada to keep fighting the war even longer.
We need to act now, to tell Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff that we do not want to extend the war, and want Canada to be a UN peacekeeper again.
Please send your letter to Prime Minister Harper, opposition leaders, and your local MP, right away.
We have also prepared a campaign kit for you, if you want to help spread the word. After you have sent your letter, consider ordering your Peacekeeping Campaign Kit, or visit our Ceasefire.ca Gear page directly.
Thank you for everything you do for peace.
I want our troops to return from Afghanistan in 2011, or even sooner.
The end of the Afghanistan mission is an opportunity for the Canadian Forces to contribute troops to United Nations peacekeeping operations. More than 80,000 troops are deployed on dangerous and important UN missions, but less than 60 of them are from Canada.
I urge you to end the military mission in Afghanistan, and contribute more troops to UN peacekeeping operations. Make Canada a proud peacekeeper, once again.
++
Je demande que nos soldats en Afghanistan rentrent au pays en 2011, voire avant.
La fin de sa mission en Afghanistan permet au Canada de contribuer aux opérations de maintien de la paix des Nations Unies auxquelles participent actuellement plus de 80 000 soldats, déployés dans des missions dangereuses et importantes. Or, moins de 60 de ces soldats sont du Canada.
Je vous demande avec instance de mettre fin à la mission militaire en Afghanistan, et d’envoyer davantage de soldats contribuer aux opérations de maintien de la paix de l’ONU. Retrouvons la fierté d’aider au maintien de la paix.
Labels: Afghanistan, Canadian militarism, Canadian politics, Cease Fire organization, current events, militarism, petitions
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/Sw3XcWzPAfI/AAAAAAAAH0Q/t9tYl4hsLf4/s400/tortureinquiry.jpg)
Add your voice - We need a Torture Inquiry:
I want a TORTURE INQUIRY
The news from Ottawa is shocking. Senior intelligence officer Richard Colvin repeatedly warned the government about the routine use of torture in Afghan prisons, yet the Canadian Forces continued to hand over their prisoners to brutal Afghan authorities.
In peace,
Steven Staples, Ceasefire.ca
P.S. After you send your letter, please make your donation to Ceasefire.ca's campaign to end Canada's war in Afghanistan. If you have already made a gift recently, please accept our thanks.
I am very concerned by the recent testimony of senior intelligence officer Richard Colvin.
According to Mr. Colvin, who served in Afghanistan and is currently posted to Canada's embassy in Washington, the government received repeated warnings that people who were taken prisoner and transferred to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops were tortured by the Afghans. Yet the Canadian government failed to act.
I support the call for an independent public inquiry into the possibility that government and military officials abandoned their responsibility to ensure Canada acted within Canadian and International law, and upheld Canadian values.
I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
------------------------------------
Monsieur le Premier ministre,
Le récent témoignage de Richard Colvin, officier senior du renseignement, m’inquiète beaucoup.
D’après monsieur Colvin, qui a servi en Afghanistan et qui est aujourd’hui en poste à l’ambassade du Canada à Washington, le gouvernement canadien a reçu maints avertissements selon lesquels les gens faits prisonniers par les soldats canadiens et transférés aux autorités afghanes étaient torturés par les Afghans. Or, le gouvernement canadien a refusé d’agir.
Il est possible que le gouvernement et les autorités militaires n’aient pas vu à ce que le Canada agisse selon les lois canadiennes et le droit international et respecte les valeurs canadiennes, comme ils en ont la responsabilité. J’appuie donc l’appel en faveur d’une enquête publique indépendante là-dessus.
En attendant votre réponse, Monsieur le Premier ministre, je vous prie d’agréer mes salutations respectueuses.
Labels: Afghanistan, Canadian militarism, Canadian politics, Cease Fire organization, militarism, petitions, torture.
Monday, November 23, 2009
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/Swt38WwaeJI/AAAAAAAAHzQ/J9_CxyaFx3I/s400/antiwar1.jpg)
Harperites deaf to suffering of detainees, innocent or not, and quick to slag courageous whistleblower.
OTTAWA, November 20, 2009, a special HarperIndex.ca report: The reaction to diplomat Robert Colvin's report, that top advisers gagged him when he tried to report widespread torture of Afghan detainees captured by Canadians, revealed the Harper government's callousness in two ways. First, the government, according to Colvin, who served as a top diplomat in Afghanistan, willfully ignored urgent reports from him in 2006 and 2007 that all detainees, guilty and innocent, were subject to torture, including being beaten with rubber hoses and electrical cable, shocked with electrical current, and raped.
Colvin pleaded for a year with top officials to deal with the situation, but he was told to keep quiet and to stop putting his concerns in writing.
Then, confronted this week with Colvin's explosive testimony to a Parliamentary committee, government ministers blasted Colvin as an incompetent official and under Taliban influence. "We are being asked to accept testimony from people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren and who blow up buses of civilians in their own country," defence minister Peter MacKay said in Parliament.
Attacks by MacKay and other government members came despite Colvin's support for Canada's military role in Afghanistan, and his posting, since 2007, to Washington in the high-security role of senior intelligence officer at the Canadian embassy.
"From ordering officials to stop documenting information on detainee abuse, to gagging witnesses, using delay tactics, and interfering with the Military Police Complaints Commission, this government continues to undermine the investigation into Afghan prisoner abuse," NDP defence critic Jack Harris (St. John's East) told a Parliament Hill news conference. "It places our soldiers in a perilous legal position. As Mr. Colvin testified, handing detainees over to people who we know will torture them constitutes a war crime."
Posted: November 20, 2009
Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca
Labels: Afghanistan, Canadian militarism, Canadian politics, current events, Harper Index, Steven Harper, torture., war
Saturday, September 26, 2009
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/Sr6jIT1ofAI/AAAAAAAAHjo/o0DuwNO_97Q/s400/afghanistancanada.jpg)
I am very pleased to tell you that a new book is available that examines positive alternatives to the terrible war in Afghanistan.
My co-editor, Lucia Kowaluk, and I asked writers and experts from across Canada to give us their analysis of the war, and suggest how Canada can best work to bring peace to this troubled country.
The result is Afghanistan and Canada: Is There an Alternative to War? (Black Rose Books, 2009).
I have signed several copies, which I want to make available to you.
I know that you will enjoy the contributions by Michael Neuman, Murray Dobbin, D’Abord Solidaires, John W. Warnock, Tariq Ali, Échec à la Guerre, Stephen Cornish, Linda McQuaig, Ira Basen, Ligue des droits et libertés, Richard Preston, Cheshmak Farhoumand-Sims, Asad Ismi, Rose Marie Whalley, John Foster, A. Walter Dorn, Pierre Beaudet, Claude Castonguay, Richard Preston, Peggy Mason, and many others.
We have opened a section of Ceasefire.ca called Ceasefire.ca Gear, where you can pick up great other great books, Ceasefire.ca pins, and even campaign tools.
I hope you enjoy it.
In peace,
Steven Staples, Ceasefire.ca
P.S. If you live in the Ottawa region, we are hosting a book launch on Friday, October 2. Please join us.
Labels: Afghanistan, american empire, anti-militarism, books, Canada, Canadian militarism, Canadian politics, Cease Fire organization, international politics, militarism
Sunday, August 09, 2009
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/Sn8qE1zkWCI/AAAAAAAAHQs/9YI2EJI7WqU/s400/malalaijoya.jpg)
I am not sure how many more days I will be alive," Malalai Joya says quietly. The warlords who make up the new "democratic" government in Afghanistan have been sending bullets and bombs to kill this tiny 30-year-old from the refugee camps for years - and they seem to be getting closer with every attempt. Her enemies call her a "dead woman walking". "But I don't fear death, I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice," she says plainly. "I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: 'I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.'"
The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and - when they were toppled - cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists.
But she says: "Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. (That is) what your soldiers are dying for." Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.
The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan - the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda.
"We are our sisters' keepers"
I meet Joya in a London apartment where she is staying with a supporter for a week, to talk about her memoir - but even here, her movements have to be kept secret, as she flits from one safe house to another. I am told not to mention her location to anyone. She is standing in the corridor, small and slim, with her hair flowing freely, and she greets me with a solid handshake. But, when our photographer snaps her, she begins to giggle girlishly: the grief etched on to her sallow face melts away, and she laughs in joyous little squeaks. "I can never get used to this!" she says.
Then, as I sit her down to talk through her life-story, the pain soaks into her face once more. Her body tightens into a tense coil, and her fists close.
Joya was four days old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day, her father dropped out of his studies to fight the invading Communist army, and vanished into the mountains. She says: "Since then, all we have known is war."
Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother's legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children alive as best she could. When the police became too aggressive, she took her kids to refugee camps across the border in Iran. In these filthy tent-cities lying on the old Silk Road, Afghans huddled together and were treated as second-class citizens by Iran. At night, wild animals could wander into the tents and attack children. There, word reached the family that Joya's father had been blown up by a landmine - but he was alive, after losing a leg.
There were no schools in the Iranian camps, and Joya's mother was determined her daughters would receive the education she never had. So they fled again, to camps in western Pakistan. There, Joya began to read - and was transformed. "Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are," she says. Starting in her early teens, she inhaled all the literature she could - from Persian poetry to the plays of Bertolt Brecht to the speeches of Martin Luther King. She began to teach her new-found literacy to the older women in the camps, including her own mother.
She soon discovered that she loved to teach - and, when she turned 16, a charity called the Organization for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) made a bold suggestion: go to Afghanistan, and set up a secret school for girls, under the noses of the Taliban tyranny.
So she gathered her few clothes and books and was smuggled across the border - and "the best days of my life" began. She loathed being forced to wear a burka, being harassed on the streets by the omnipresent "vice and virtue" police, and being under constant threat of being discovered and executed. But she says it was worth it for the little girls. "Every time a new girl joined the class, it was a triumph," she says, beaming. "There is no better feeling."
She only just avoided being caught, again and again. One time she was teaching a class of girls in a family's basement when the mother of the house yelled down suddenly: "Taliban! Taliban!" Joya says: "I told my students to lie down on the floor and stay totally silent. We heard footsteps above us and waited a long time." On many occasions, ordinary men and women - anonymous strangers - helped her out by sending the police charging off in the wrong direction. She adds: "Every day in Afghanistan, even now, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women act out these small gestures of solidarity with each other. We are our sisters' keepers."
The charity was so impressed with her they appointed her their director. Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. "Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy," she says. "The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped."
As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced - by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, "I realized women's rights had been sold out completely... Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban - and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters."
The warlords "have ruled Afghanistan ever since," she adds. While a "showcase parliament has been created for the benefit of the U.S. in Kabul", the real power "is with these fundamentalists who rule everywhere outside Kabul". As an example, she names the former governor of Herat, Ismail Khan. He set up his own "vice and virtue" squads which terrorized women and smashed up video and music cassettes. He had his own "private militias, private jails". The constitution of Afghanistan is irrelevant in these private fiefdoms.
Joya discovered just what this meant when she started to set up the clinic - and a local warlord announced that it would not be allowed, since she was a woman, and a critic of fundamentalism. She did it anyway, and decided to fight this fundamentalist by running in the election for the Loya jirga ("meeting of the elders") to draw up the new Afghan constitution. There was a great swelling of support for this girl who wanted to build a clinic - and she was elected. "It turned out my mission," she says, "would be to expose the true nature of the jirga from within."
"I would never again be safe"
As she stepped past the world's television cameras into the Loya jirga, the first thing Joya saw was "a long row with some of the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known - warlords and war criminals and fascists".
She could see the men who invited Osama bin Laden into the country, the men who introduced the misogynist laws later followed by the Taliban, the men who had massacred Afghan civilians. Some had got there by intimidating the electorate, others by vote-rigging, and yet more were simply appointed by Hamid Karzai, the former oilman installed by the U.S. army to run the country. She thought of an old Afghan saying: "It's the same donkey, with a new saddle."
For a moment, as these old killers started to give long speeches congratulating themselves on the transition to democracy, Joya felt nervous. But then, she says, "I remembered the oppression we face as women in my country, and my nervousness evaporated, replaced by anger."
When her turn came, she stood, looked around at the blood-soaked warlords on every side, and began to speak. "Why are we allowing criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now... It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who have brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again... They should instead be prosecuted in the national and international courts."
These warlords - who brag about being hard men - could not cope with a slender young woman speaking the truth. They began to shriek and howl, calling her a "prostitute" and "infidel", and throwing bottles at her. One man tried to punch her in the face. Her microphone was cut off and the jirga descended into a riot.
"From that moment on," Joya says, "I would never again be safe... For fundamentalists, a women is half a human, meant only to fulfil a man's every wish and lust, and to produce children and toil in the home. They could not believe that a young woman was tearing off their masks in front of the eyes of the Afghan people."
A fundamentalist mob turned up a few hours later at her accommodation, announcing they had come to rape and lynch her. She had to be placed under immediate armed guard - but she refused to be protected by American troops, insisting on Afghan officers.
Her speech was broadcast all over the world - and cheered in Afghanistan. She was flooded with support from the people of her country, delighted that somebody had finally spoken out. One dirt-poor village pooled its cash to send a delegate hundreds of miles across the country to explain how pleased they were.
An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons - one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: "I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear."
She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: "You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me."
But the U.S. and NATO occupiers instructed Joya that she must show "politeness and respect" for the other delegates. When Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador, said this, she replied: "If these criminals raped your mother or your daughter or your grandmother, or killed seven of your sons, let alone destroyed all the moral and material treasure of your country, what words would you use against such criminals that will be inside the framework of politeness and respect?"
She leans forward and quotes Brecht: "He says, 'He who does not know the truth is only a fool. He who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal.'"
The attempts to murder her began then with a sniper - and have not stopped since. But she says plainly, with her fist clenched: "I wanted the warlords to know I was not afraid of them."�
So she ran for parliament - and won in a landslide. "I would return again to face those who had ruined my country," she explains, "and I was determined that I would stand straight and never bow again to their threats."
"In every corner is a killer"
Joya looked out across the new Afghan parliament on her first day and thought: "In every corner is a killer, a puppet, a criminal, a drug lord, a fascist. This is not democracy. I am one of the very few people here who has been genuinely elected." She started her maiden speech by saying: "My condolences to the people of Afghanistan..."
Before she could continue, the warlords began to shout that they would rape and kill her. One warlord, Abdul Sayyaf, yelled a threat at her. Joya looked him straight in the eye and said: "We are not in [the area he rules by force] here, so control yourself."
I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. "I am never frightened when I tell the truth." She is speaking fast now: "I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me."
She says there is no difference for ordinary Afghans between the Taliban and the equally fundamentalist warlords. "Which groups are labeled 'terrorist' or 'fundamentalist' depends on how useful they are to the goals of the U.S.," she says. "You have two sides who terrorize women, but the anti-American side are 'terrorists' and the pro-American side are 'heroes'."
Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is "a shameless puppet" who will win next month's presidential elections because "he hasn't yet stopped working for his masters, the U.S. and the warlords ... At this point in our history, the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the U.S. government and the mafia that holds power in our country."
Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women - and get back in the fight. She tells me about a 16-year-old constituent of hers, Rahella, who ran away to an orphanage Joya had helped to set up in her constituency. "Her uncle had decided to marry her off to his son, who was a drug addict. She was terrified. So of course we took her in, educated her, helped her." One day, her uncle turned up and apologized, saying he had learnt the error of his ways. He asked if she could come home for a weekend to visit her family. Joya agreed - and when she got back to her village, Rahella was forced into marriage and spirited away to another part of Afghanistan. They heard six months later that she had doused herself in petrol and burned herself alive.
There has been an epidemic of self-immolation by women across the "new" Afghanistan in the past five years. "The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery," she says, "they are crying out for justice."
But she was not allowed to raise these issues in the supposedly democratic parliament. The fundamentalist warlords who couldn't beat Joya at the ballot box or kill her chanced upon a new way to silence her. The more she spoke, the angrier they got. She called for secularism in Afghanistan, saying: "Religion is a private issue, unrelated to political issues and the government... Real Muslims do not require political leaders to guide them to Islam." She condemned the new law that declared an amnesty for all war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 30 years, saying "You criminals are simply giving yourselves a get-out-of-jail free card." So the MPs simply voted to kick her out of parliament.
It was illegal and undemocratic - but the President, Hamid Karzai, supported the ban. "Now the warlord criminals are unchallenged in parliament," she says. "Is that democracy?"
We in the West have been fed "a pack of lies" about what Afghanistan looks like today. "The media are 'free' only if they do not try to criticize warlords and officials," she says in her book, Raising My Voice. As an example, she names a specific warlord: "If you write anything about him, the next day you will be tortured or killed by the Northern Alliance warlords." It is "a myth" to say girls can now go to school outside Kabul. "Only five per cent of girls, according to the UN, can follow their education to the 12th grade."
And it is "false" to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. "By the 1950s, there was a growing women's movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights," she says. "I have a story here" - she rifles through her notes - "from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is 'Afghanistan's women lift the veil'. We were developing an open culture for women - and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again."
Many of her friends urge her to leave the country, before one of her wannabe-assassins gets lucky. But, she says, "I can never leave when all the poor people that I love are living in danger and poverty. I am not going to search for a better and safer place, and leave them in a burning hell." Apologizing for her English - which is, in fact, excellent - she quotes Brecht again: "Those who do struggle often fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed."
Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. But, she says, any Afghan democrat today is "trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns." She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. "With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it (will be) easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies."
If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country's war criminals to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. "Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished," she says, "from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush." Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed - many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."
The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 percent of Afghans want an immediate NATO withdrawal. Many people in Afghanistan were hopeful, she says, about Barack Obama - "but he is actually intensifying the policy of George Bush ... I know his election has great symbolic value in terms of the struggle of African-Americans for equal rights, and this struggle is one I admire and respect. But what is important for the world is not whether the president is black or white, but his actions. You can't eat symbolism."
U.S. policy is driven by geopolitics, she says, not personalities. "Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia, so it's a very important place to have military bases - so they can control trade very easily with other Asian powers such as China, Russia, Iran and so on.
"But it can be changed by Americans," she adds. She is passionate now, her voice rising. "I say to Obama - in my area, 150 people were blown up by U.S. troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m (�11m) to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? I say to Obama - change course, or otherwise tomorrow people will call you another Bush."
"It's hard to be strong all the time"
"It's not good to show my enemies any weakness, (but) it's hard to be strong all the time," Joya says with a sigh, as she runs her hands through her hair. She has been speaking so insistently - with such preternatural courage- that it's easy to forget she was just a girl when she was thrust into fighting fundamentalism. She was never allowed an adolescence. The fierce concentration on her face melts away, and she looks a little lost. "Yes, my mother is proud of me," she says, "but you know how mothers are - they worry. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, the first sentence and the last sentence are always 'Take care'."
Two years ago, she got married in secret. She can't name her husband publicly, because he would be killed. Her wedding flowers had to be checked for bombs. She will only say that they met at a press conference, "and he supports everything I do". She has not seen him "for two months", she says. "We meet in the safe houses of supporters. I cannot sleep in the same house two nights running. It is a different home every evening."
Where does this courage come from? She acts as if the answer is obvious - anyone would do it, she claims. But they don't. Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. "When I die, others will come. I am sure of that," she says.
She certainly has a strong sense of belonging to a long history of Afghans who fought for freedom. "My parents chose my first name after Malalai of Maiwand. She was a young woman who, in 1880, went to the front line of the second Anglo-Afghan war to tend the wounded. When the fighters were close to collapse, she picked up the Afghan flag and led the men into battle herself. She was struck down - but the British suffered a landmark defeat, and, in the end, they were driven out."
When she ran for office, she had to choose a surname for herself, to protect her family's identity. "I named myself after Sarwar Joya, the Afghan poet and constitutionalist. He spent 24 years in jails, and was finally killed because he wouldn't compromise his democratic principles ... In Afghanistan we have a saying: the truth is like the sun. When it comes up, nobody can block it out or hide it."
Malalai Joya knows she could be killed any day now, in our newly liberated Warlord-istan. She hugs me goodbye and says, "We must keep in touch." But I find myself bleakly wondering if we will ever meet again. Perhaps she senses this, because she suddenly urges me to look again at the last paragraph of her memoir, Raising My Voice. "It really is how I feel," she says. It reads: "If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice." I look up into her face, and she is giving me the bravest smile I have ever seen.
'Raising My Voice' by Malalai Joya is published by Rider. All profits will go to supporting the cause of women's rights in Afghanistan.
Labels: Afghanistan, feminism, fundamentalism, imperialism, Malalai Joya, people, war, women, Z Communications
Saturday, August 08, 2009
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/Sn3PGPCSRGI/AAAAAAAAHQE/j8jbWmm2p9s/s400/bombing2.jpg)
Canada continues to kill civilians in Afghanistan.
by Linda McQuaig
The downside of holding a wedding in Ontario this summer is that, chances are, you'll be rained on. The upside is that, chances are, you won't be bombed.
That can't be said of Afghanistan, where the sun is more reliable, but the bride has been known to wear blood. Since 2001, dozens of celebrants — including brides and grooms — have been killed when their wedding parties were bombed by NATO planes mistaking them for Taliban operatives.
One person's collateral damage is another's fiancée.
While Canadian troops haven't been involved in these air strikes, they have been involved in civilian killings on the ground. Just last week, Canadian soldiers fired a warning shot at a motorcyclist speeding toward them. The bullet ricocheted off the ground and entered the body of a young girl nearby, killing her.
Such killings are a big part of the reason the NATO mission appears to have failed to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. One person's collateral damage is another's fiancée.
The attitude of our military authorities toward these civilian killings is disturbing. Last week, Maj. Mario Couture simply shifted the blame onto insurgents: "We know that insurgents want to drive a wedge between the coalition force and the population, so if they can make us make mistakes, then it serves their purpose... If we fire, it works in their favour."
So we kill a young Afghan girl, and it's the fault of the insurgents?
The girl's killing at least got some media attention here. Male deaths are more readily discounted. A week earlier, Canadian soldiers killed an Afghan man and wounded three others after the minivan they were travelling in failed to slow down, according to the Canadian military. Maj. Couture explained that the victims were "all males of fighting age." Enough said, apparently.
Canadian soldiers are understandably keen to protect themselves from suicide bombers. And the Taliban undoubtedly does want to drive a wedge between us and the population. But that simply underlines why our presence there is so problematic — and wrong.
Left out of Maj. Couture's explanations is the context that we are in Afghanistan as a heavily armed foreign military force. Ottawa says we're there to champion democracy, but many Afghans see us as part of a Western occupying power that has killed, imprisoned and tortured people they love.
We're not much interested in that side of the story. While the Harper government and Canadian media show great interest in dissidents in Iran, China and Burma, they've shown little in Malalai Joya, an elected Afghan MP who was expelled from parliament for calling for the prosecution of war criminals in the Afghan government and parliament.
Hers is a compelling case championed by women's groups around the world — a young female MP in a viciously patriarchal land daring to challenge Afghanistan's powerful warlords. Yet, despite our supposed concern about Afghan women and democracy, the Canadian government and media have paid scant attention to Joya — perhaps because she considers NATO an occupier and calls for its immediate withdrawal from her country.
Although the Canadian media remain largely supportive of our military involvement in Afghanistan, Canadians aren't. An EKOS poll released earlier this month found that support for the mission has fallen from 60 percent in 2002 to just 34 per cent today. Yet two more years remain in our commitment.
Meanwhile, best to avoid weddings in Afghanistan, particularly if the party includes any "males of fighting age".
Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989 for writing a series of articles, which sparked a public inquiry into the activities of Ontario political lobbyist Patti Starr, and eventually led to Starr's imprisonment. In 1991, she was awarded an Atkinson Fellowship for Journalism in Public Policy to study the social welfare systems in Europe and North America.
She is author of seven books on politics and economics – all national bestsellers – including Shooting the Hippo (short-listed for the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction), The Cult of Impotence, All You Can Eat and It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet. Her most recent book is Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the US Empire.
Since 2002, McQuaig has written an op-ed column for the Toronto Star. This article previously appeared in The Star.
Email: lmcquaig@sympatico.ca.
Labels: Afghanistan, Canada, Canadian militarism, international politics, Linda McQuaig, militarism, Straight Goods, Toronto Star, war
Sunday, May 10, 2009
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20101029100146im_/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/SgdJTQJuqDI/AAAAAAAAG0o/4gh9NewJAeI/s400/bombing2.jpg)
Stop Canadian Air Strikes
The military wants to send our CF-18 fighter bombers to Afghanistan.
Action Alert:
Stop CF-18 warplanes from being deployed to Afghanistan
Send your letter to Stephen Harper right away
As you may have heard on the news, up to 100 Afghan civilians are feared dead as a result of U.S. air strikes.
Now, I am writing to alert you of a potential major escalation of Canada’s war in Afghanistan: Canadian fighter-bomber warplanes.
The military is engaging in a lobbying campaign to have a squadron of our CF-18 Hornet fighter bombers deployed to Afghanistan.
The planes would be used to attack suspected insurgents and to fight with Canadian and U.S. troops engaged in search and destroy missions. But they will also kill untold numbers of Afghan civilians in these attacks.
The deployment of CF-18 fighter bombers would be a major increase in our combat role in Afghanistan, and should be opposed by Canadians. Please send your letter to Prime Minister Harper right away.
Bombing runs by similar warplanes used by the United States and other Western forces have killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children. As well, U.S. pilots have already killed five Canadian soldiers.
According to the United Nations, 530 Afghan civilians were killed by U.S. and NATO air strikes in 2008, a 65 per cent increase over 2007. Experts all agree that the growing number of civilians killed by air strikes is eroding Afghan support for foreign troops.
Canadian warplanes should never be part of these deadly bombing and strafing runs in Afghanistan. How many deaths of innocent Afghans would be on our hands?
We need to push back against the military lobby by sending a strong signal to the Harper government, and the military, that we do not want Canadian CF-18 fighter bombers sent to Afghanistan.
Thank you for doing what you can to end Canada’s war in Afghanistan.
In peace,
Steven Staples,
Ceasefire.ca
I oppose the deployment of CF-18 fighter bombers to Afghanistan.
Air strikes are the leading cause of civilian deaths from NATO military operations. Canada cannot claim to be defending Afghan women and children while coalition air strikes killed more than 500 civilians in 2008, according to the United Nations.
I urge you to state clearly that Canada will not deploy CF-18 fighter-bombers to Afghanistan. Furthermore, your government should support a diplomatic end to the conflict, and bring Canadian troops home as soon as possible.
I look forward to your reply.
------------------------------------
Monsieur le Premier ministre,
Je m’oppose au déploiement des chasseurs bombardiers CF-18 en Afghanistan.
De toutes les opérations militaires de l’OTAN, les frappes aériennes sont celles qui font le plus de victimes parmi les civils. Le Canada ne peut pas prétendre défendre les femmes et les enfants afghans alors que, selon les Nations Unies, les frappes de la coalition ont fait plus de 500 victimes chez les civils en 2008.
Je vous demande avec instance de déclarer clairement que le Canada ne déploiera pas de chasseurs bombardiers CF-18 en Afghanistan. De plus, votre gouvernement devrait aider à trouver une issue diplomatique au conflit, et rapatrier nos soldats dès que possible.
Espérant avoir une réponse de vous, je vous prie, Monsieur le Premier ministre, d’agréer mes salutations respectueuses.
Labels: Afghanistan, anti-militarism, Canadian militarism, Canadian politics, Cease Fire Action Centre, militarism, petitions, war