Whatever Happened to Women and Children First?

October 18, 2011 Counterpunch

70,000 Children on the Streets of Kabul

by JOHNNY BARBER

“All wars, whether just or unjust, disastrous or victorious, are waged against the child.”

–Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, 1919.

In Kabul, the children are everywhere. You see them scrounging through trash. You see them doing manual labor in the auto body shops, the butchers, and the construction sites. They carry teapots and glasses from shop to shop. You see them moving through the snarled traffic swirling small pots of pungent incense, warding off evil spirits and trying to collect small change. They can be found sleeping in doorways or in the rubble of destroyed buildings. It is estimated that 70,000 children live on the streets of Kabul.

The big news story on CNN this morning is the excitement generated as hundreds of people line up to buy the newest iphone. I can’t stop thinking of the children sitting in the dirt of the refugee camp, or running down the path pushing old bicycle tires, or the young boy sitting next to his overflowing sacks of collected detritus. He has a deep infection on the corner of his mouth that looks terribly infected. These images contrast with an image of an old grandfather, dressed in a spotless all white shalwar kameez squatting on the sidewalk outside a huge iron gate, embracing his beautiful young grand daughter in a huge hug, each smiling broadly, one of the few moments of joy I have witnessed on the streets of Kabul.

In Afghanistan, one in five children die before their 5^th birthday, (41% of the deaths occur in the first month of life). For the children who make it past the first month, many perish due to preventable and highly treatable conditions including diarrhea and pneumonia. Malnourishment affects 39% of the children, compared to 25% at the start of the U.S. invasion. 52% don’t have access to clean water. 94% of births are not registered. The children are afforded very little legal protection, especially girls, who are stilled banned from schools in many regions, used as collateral to settle debts, and married through arranged marriages as young as 10 years old. Though not currently an issue, HIV/AIDS looms as a catastrophic possibility as drug addiction increases significantly, even among women and children. Only 16% of women use modern contraception, and children on the streets are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. This is why the “State of the World’s Mothers” report issued in May 2011 by Save the Children ranked Afghanistan last, with only Somalia providing worse outcomes for their children.

Retired Army Col. John Agoglia said, “A key to America’s long-term national security and one of the best ways for our nation to make friends around the world is by promoting the health of women and children in fragile and emerging nations”–in Afghanistan, this strategy is failing. Not a single public hospital has been built since the invasion. It is not an impossibility; it is a matter of will. Emergency, an Italian NGO, runs 3 hospitals and 30 clinics throughout Afghanistan on a budget of 7 million dollars per year. This is ISAF’s (NATO’s International Security Assistance Force) monthly budget for air-conditioning.

Polls have consistently shown that over 90 percent of Americans believe saving children should be a national priority. Children comprise 65% of the Afghan population. Afghanistan was named the worst place on earth to be a child. In Afghanistan children have been sacrificed by the United States, collateral damage in our “war on terror”.

The mothers of these at risk children are not faring any better. Most are illiterate. Most are chronically malnourished. 1 woman in 11 dies in pregnancy or childbirth, this compares to 1 in 2,100 in the US (the highest of any industrialized nation). In Italy and Ireland, the risk of maternal death is less than 1 in 15,000 and in Greece it’s 1 in 31,800. Skilled health professionals attend only 14% of childbirths. A woman’s life expectancy is barely 45 years of age.

Women are still viewed as property. A law has been passed by the Karzai regime that legalizes marital rape, and requires a woman to get the permission of her husband to leave the house. Domestic violence is a chronic problem. A women who runs away from home (even if escaping violence) is imprisoned. Upon completion of her sentence she is returned to the husband. Self-immolation is still common as desperate women try to get out of impossible situations.

Shortly after the U.S. invasion, Laura Bush said, “The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control.” President Bush said, “Our coalition has liberated Afghanistan and restored fundamental human rights and freedoms to Afghan women, and all the people of Afghanistan.” Actually, the former warlords responsible for the destruction, pillage, and rape of Afghanistan were ushered back into power by the United States. In 2007, these very same warlords, now Parliamentarians, passed a bill that granted amnesty for any killings during the civil war. A local journalist said, “The killers are the ones holding the pens, writing the law and continuing their crimes.”

When Malalai Joya addressed the Peace Loya Jirga convened in December, 2003, she boldly asked, “Why are we allowing criminals to be present here?” She was thrown out of the assembly. Undeterred, she ran for Parliament, winning in a landslide. She began her maiden speech in Parliament by saying, “My condolences to the people of Afghanistan…” As she continued speaking, the warlord sitting behind her threatened to rape and kill her. The MP’s voted her out of Parliament and Karzai upheld her ouster. In hiding, she continues to champion women’s rights. She has stated that the only people who can liberate Afghan women are the women themselves. When we spoke briefly to her by phone, she stated that she was surprised to still be alive, and needed to cancel our meeting, as it was too dangerous in the current security situation. The Red Cross states that the security situation is the worst it has been in 30 years.

In America, as our total defense budget balloons to 667 billion dollars per year, women and children are faring worse as well. In the “State of the World’s Mothers” report, America has dropped from 11^th in 2003 to 31^st of the developed countries today. We currently rank behind such luminaries as Estonia, Croatia, and Slovakia. We fall even farther in regards to our children, going from the 4^th ranked country to the 34^th. Poverty is on the increase with an estimated 1 child in 5 living in poverty. More than 20 million children rely on school lunch programs to keep from going hungry. The number of people living in poverty in America has grown by 2.6 million in just the last 12 months.

Dear reader, I hesitate to bother you with so many statistics, I eliminated the pie charts and graphs, and this report is still dull. After all, the new iphone has Siri, a personal assistant that understands you when you speak. You can verbally instruct it to send a text message, and it does! Now that’s excitement! CNN states there is no need to panic; the Atlanta store has plenty of phones to fill the demand.

Looking only at numbers it is easy to avoid the truth of the enormous amount of human suffering they envelop. Drive through the streets of any American city and these statistics come alive in the swollen ranks of the homeless. Drive through the streets of Kabul and these statistics come alive in the forms of hungry children begging for change.

It is difficult to ascertain what benefit America is deriving from our continued military presence in Afghanistan, though exploitation of natural resources certainly plays a role. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent in a military strategy that is failing by all indicators. Yet the politicians in this country continue to back this strategy. Arms dealers and contractors, like G.E. and Boeing, all with lobbyists on Capitol Hill, continue to reap big financial rewards and in turn reward politicians with financial support. Our politicians claim to be “tough on terror” and profess we are “winning”. But by what measure do they ascertain this? The only Afghan people benefiting from our presence are the people supporting the occupation forces, the warlords, and the drug lords. As the poppy fields produce record yields “poppy palaces” are springing up all over Kabul, ostentatious signs that someone is benefiting from our interference.

One measure to judge the success of a nation is its ability to protect its most vulnerable populations. America is not succeeding. The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is still a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control. When will our politicians hear the desperate cry of the street children of Afghanistan, who, with all the incense in the world, simply can’t ward off the evil of our occupation?

Johnny Barber just returned from Afghanistan as a member of a delegation from Voices for Creative Non-Violence. He has traveled to Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Gaza to bear witness and document the suffering of people who are affected by war. His work can be viewed at: www.oneBrightpearl-jb.blogspot.com and www.oneBrightpearl.com

To support the vital work of Voices for Creative Non-Violence please see www.vcnv.org

Good Night, Afghanistan

[col. writ. 6/23/11]  (c) '11 Mumia Abu-Jamal

  A calm and cool American president announces a small withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Afghanistan, less than 10% of the total number, in an expression of caution
that masks the limits of empire.

  In an address remarkable for its brevity, President Barack Obama essentially
announced success, lectured Afghanistan on its responsibilities to secure its
territory, and noted upcoming troop withdrawals.

  Anyone who has lived through past U.S. wars abroad has heard similar statements
before, but I doubt they've heard what Obama said before: that the U.S. is "not
an empire."

  That's surely news to dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America,
which have had their leaders chosen, armed or replaced on American whims.

  This is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end.

  And it ends not that differently from that of the former Soviet occupation,
albeit slower, for both empires were drained of wealth and will.

  In the wake of the earth shaking economic fall of late 2008, the U.S. was left
with limited resources. Also, recent polls have shown that support has been
dwindling for the continuing war effort.

  With an election coming, among dramatically high unemployment levels, military
draw downs might re energize disaffected Democratic voters.

  The President suggested Al Qaeda's crippling and the Taliban's humbling the
latter being brought to the bargaining table.

  But the Taliban is far from humbled. For just a month ago they hit one of
Afghanistan's largest cities, immobilized it for 30 hours, and attacked important
military and governmental targets with ease.
  Using suicide bombers and small arms, several dozen men hit the governor's
palace, police headquarters, the transportation police headquarters and several
military buildings.

  One observer of the strike in Kandahar said shell casings hit the streets like
"hail after a storm."

  Kandahar is more than a big city: it's the biggest in southern Afghanistan and a
major NATO base.

  One Kandaharian asked, "How are they able to occupy nearby buildings and stage
themselves so they can shoot on the governor's office and N.D.S. department? (NDS
is the Afghan intelligence agency - its CIA)  Answering  his own question,
Kandahar's Mohammed Umar Sathi suggested, "Either the security forces are
incompetent, or they have no coordination among each other."*

  The Taliban are itching for the hour of American withdrawal, at which time will
come a reckoning.

  Empires, like individuals, can tire.
  It was not for naught that Afghanistan has been called, "the graveyard of empires."

--(c) '11 maj

{*Sources: Sha Taimoor and Alisse J. Rubin, "Broad Taliban Attack Paralyzes
Kandahar", New York Times, Mon., 5/9/11, p. A4.: Gould, Elizabeth & Paul Fitzgerald,
Crossing Zero: The  AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire (San Francisco
, CA:City Lights Books/Open Media Series, 2011}
=============


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WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!

Taliban tunnel more than 480 out of Afghan prison

By MIRWAIS KHAN and HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Apr 25, 2011

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – During the long Afghan winter, Taliban insurgents
were apparently busy underground.

The militants say they spent more than five months building a 1,050-foot
tunnel to the main prison in southern Afghanistan, bypassing government
checkpoints, watch towers and concrete barriers topped with razor wire.

The diggers finally poked through Sunday and spent 4 1/2 hours ferrying
away more than 480 inmates without a shot being fired, according to the
Taliban and Afghan officials. Most of the prisoners were Taliban
militants.

Accounts of the extraordinary prison break, carried out in the dead of
night, suggest collusion with prison guards, officials or both.

Following a recent wave of assassinations here, the breakout underscores
the weakness of the Afghan government in the south despite an influx of
international troops, funding and advisers. It also highlights the spirit
and resourcefulness of the Taliban despite months of battlefield setbacks.

Officials at Sarposa prison in Kandahar city, the one-time Taliban
capital, say they discovered the breach at about 4 a.m. Monday, a
half-hour after the Taliban say they had gotten all the prisoners safely
to a house at the other end of the tunnel.

Government officials corroborated parts of the Taliban account. They
confirmed the tunnel was dug from a house within shooting distance of the
prison and that the inmates had somehow gotten out of their locked cells
and disappeared into the night. Kandahar remains relatively warm even
during winter and the ground would not have frozen while insurgents were
digging the tunnel.

Police showed reporters the roughly hewn hole that was punched through the
cement floor of the prison cell. The opening was about 3 feet (1 meter) in
diameter, and the tunnel dropped straight down for about 5 feet (1.5
meters) and then turned in the direction of the house where it originated.

But access was denied to the tunnel itself, and it was unclear how the
Taliban were able to move so many men out of the prison so quickly. Also
unclear was why guards would not have heard the diggers punch through the
cement floor, and whether they supervise the inside of the perimeters at
night.

A man who claimed he helped organize those inside the prison told The
Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained
copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from "friends." He did not
say who those friends were.

Click image to see photos of the prison break in Afghanistan


AP/Allauddin Khan

"There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a
tunnel from the outside," said Mohammad Abdullah, who said he had been in
Sarposa prison for two years after being captured in nearby Zhari district
with a stockpile of weapons. "Some of our friends helped us by providing
copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the
doors for friends who were in other rooms."

He said the diggers broke through Sunday morning and that the inmates in
the cell covered the hole with a prayer rug until the middle of the night,
when they started quietly opening the doors of cells and ushering
prisoners in small groups into the tunnel.

He said they woke the inmates up four or five at a time to sneak them out
quietly. They also didn't want too many people crawling through the narrow
and damp tunnel at one time because of worries that they would run out of
oxygen, Abdullah said.

The AP reached Abdullah on a phone number supplied by a Taliban spokesman.
His account could not immediately be verified.

The Taliban statement said it took 4 1/2 hours for all the prisoners to
clear the tunnel, with the final inmates emerging into the house at 3:30
a.m. They then used a number of vehicles to shuttle the escaped convicts
to secure locations.

Reporters were not allowed into that building, but officials pointed out
the mud-walled compound with a brown gate and shops on either side.

The city's police mounted a massive search operation for the escaped
convicts. They shot and killed two inmates who tried to evade capture and
re-arrested another 26, said Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor.

But there was no ignoring that the Taliban had pulled off a daring success
under the noses of Afghan and NATO officials.

"This is a blow," presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. "A prison break
of this magnitude of course points to a vulnerability."

At least 486 inmates escaped from Sarposa, most of them Taliban fighters,
according to Gov. Wesa. The Taliban said they had freed more than 500 of
their fellow insurgents and that about 100 of them were commanders — four
of them former provincial chiefs.

Government officials declined to provide details on any of the escaped
inmates or say whether any were considered high-level commanders.

The highest-profile Taliban inmates would likely not be held at Sarposa.
The U.S. keeps detainees it considers a threat at a facility outside of
Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan. Other key Taliban prisoners are
held by the Afghan government in a high-security wing of the main prison
in Kabul.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the military command in
Afghanistan had "not been asked by the Afghans to provide any assistance"
such as intelligence help in looking for the escaped inmates.

Asked if the incident would prompt a rethinking or delay in the planned
June turnover of the Parwan detention operation in the east to Afghans,
Lapan said: "I think it's still too soon to tell. I have not gotten any
indications of that, but it's too soon to tell."

The 1,200-inmate Sarposa prison has been part of a plan to bolster the
government's presence in Kandahar. The facility underwent security
upgrades and tightened procedures after a brazen 2008 Taliban attack freed
900 prisoners. In that assault, dozens of militants on motorbikes and two
suicide bombers attacked the prison. One suicide bomber set off an
explosives-laden tanker truck at the prison gate while a second bomber
blew open an escape route through a back wall.

Afghan government officials and their NATO backers have repeatedly
asserted that the prison has vastly improved security since that attack.

There are guard towers at each corner of the prison compound, which is
illuminated at night and protected by a ring of concrete barriers topped
with razor wire. The entrance can be reached only by passing through
multiple checkpoints and gates.

An Afghan government official familiar with Sarposa prison said that while
the external security has been greatly improved, the internal controls
were not as strong. He said the Taliban prisoners in Sarposa were very
united and would rally together to make demands from their jailers for
better treatment or more privileges. He spoke anonymously because he was
not authorized to talk to the media.

The Kandahar escape is the latest in a series of high-profile Taliban
operations that show the insurgency is fighting back. Over the past year,
tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO reinforcements routed the Taliban from
many of their southern strongholds, captured leading figures and destroyed
weapons caches.

The militants have responded with major attacks across the nation as the
spring fighting season has kicked off. In the past two weeks, Taliban
agents have launched attacks from inside the Defense Ministry, a Kandahar
city police station and a shared Afghan-U.S. military base in the east. In
neighboring Helmand province on Saturday, a gunman assassinated the former
top civilian chief of Marjah district. That's where U.S. Marines started
the renewed push into the south early last year.

___

Vogt reported from Kabul. Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Rahim
Faiez in Kabul and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this
report.