The Dominion - civil war

Lies and War Crime

hillarybain — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:35:30 +0000

Guatemalan ex-military accused of war crimes held in Alberta prison

CHIMALTENANGO, GUATEMALA—Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, ex-member of the Guatemalan special forces known as the Kaibiles, was arrested in Lethbridge, Alberta, on January 18, 2011. He was detained at the request of the United States; the US may solicit his extradition to face charges of immigration fraud.

If proven guilty of having lied about his role in the Guatemalan military on his US application for naturalization, Sosa Orantes could face up to 10 years in prison in the United States. Meanwhile, human rights groups in Canada and Guatemala are petitioning the Canadian courts to try him for war crimes.

Sosa Orantes has been implicated in the planning and execution of the massacre at Las Dos Erres, in the northern department of Peten, where at least 252 unarmed civilians were systematically killed on December 6, 1982. This massacre was carried out in much the same manner as the more than 650 massacres committed by the Guatemalan military during the country’s 36-year internal armed conflict, which included widespread rape, torture and the mass killing of men, women and children, most of whom were Mayan.

According to Aura Elena Farfan from the Association for the Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Guatemala (FAMDEGUA)—the plaintiff organization that since 2000 has been bringing forward a case against Sosa Orantes and 16 other ex-Kaibiles implicated in the massacre—it is important that he be tried for the more serious crimes against humanity, rather than for the lie he told US immigration officials.

“Of course that lie is important,” says Farfan. “But for there to be justice, it is important that he is not only judged for that lie, but for the serious violation of human rights in Guatemala.”

Even with an unprecedented amount of evidence, including survivor testimonies, exhumation records and the testimony of a repentant ex-Kaibil who took part in the massacre, Farfan does not believe the justice FAMDEGUA seeks is possible in Guatemala.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has found the Guatemalan government unwilling to live up to its judicial responsibilities to investigate and successfully prosecute those responsible for the massacre. The country is still characterized by widespread violence, while many of the intellectual and material authors—those who planned and those who carried out the massacres—retain high positions of political power in the current government and military.

Even though the Guatemalan Supreme Court issued arrest warrants in 2010 for the 17 ex-Kaibiles implicated in the massacre, Farfan believes this case is stuck in impunity. “It needs to be heard in a place where there does not exist the same danger of being bought off.” Such bribery, says Farfan “is likely to happen in Guatemala.”

Matt Eisenbrant from the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) has called on the Canadian government to launch a full criminal investigation against Sosa Orantes.

“Usually, a trial in the place where the abuses occurred is preferable,” he says. “This should only be done, however, if all due-process guarantees can be protected and there are assurances that a fair trial can proceed without being tainted by outside influences.” The CCIJ is calling on the Canadian government to ensure that Sosa Orantes will be held fully accountable by conducting its own criminal investigation into possible war-crime charges, taking this into account when considering the extradition requests.

Legal support for the case first surfaced in 1994, after FAMDEGUA officially received an exhumation request from three families from the area. Within a year, anthropologists had found 162 complete skeletons in a 12-metre grave, 67 of which were from children under age 12.

According to a report released by Amnesty International in 2002, the findings of the exhumation matched up with survivors’ testimonies about the massacre; it involved first the mass and repeated rape of the women and young girls, followed by the killing of the children and then the women, many of whom were pregnant. The men were killed last. Anthropologists’ reports reveal that most of the victims were killed by a blunt object to the back of the head, after which they were thrown into the mass grave.

Both witnesses and FAMDEGUA have received numerous threats for bringing this case forward. Still visibly affected by the case, Farfan says that “[Sosa Orantes] did not have compassion for the victims who were asking not to be killed, not to be tortured.” She expresses the weight of the blood that was spilled in Guatemala, stating that the bodies of the young children and pregnant women should tip the scales of justice further than the lie Sosa Orantes told to gain US citizenship.

“If victims are to be satisfied and if we are to provide deterrence against such abuses happening in the future, perpetrators must be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible,” says Eisenhart.

Sosa Orantes was denied bail on March 9, 2011, by Albertan judge Suzanne Bensler who deemed him too much of a flight risk. His next court appearance is scheduled for April 20, 2011.

Valerie Croft is living in Guatemala, completing a CIDA internship with CEIBA—a Guatemalan environmental advocacy organization that works on issues related to climate justice, food sovereignty and the defense of territory.

Corn and Feet

Kosovo Crisis Continues

dru — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:18:27 +0000

Serbia and EU escalate conflict; misery of majority of Serbians and Kosovars likely to continue

Pro-European Union (EU) candidate Boris Tadic won the final round of Serbian Presidential elections on February 4. Tadic beat nationalist Serbian Radical Party candidate, Tomislav Nikolic, by a little over two per cent of the vote. His win is largely attributed to the Serbian expatriate vote.

The central election issue was the status of Kosovo. Serbia's southernmost province has been under UN tutelage and occupation since the NATO bombing campaign of 1999 forced Serbian forces out of the province. Kosovo holds historic and religious significance for Serbs. Now, for many Serbs, the province has become a symbol of US and European attempts to weaken and break apart the former Yugoslavia, and now Serbia. Less symbolic crises -- such as widespread unemployment, sub-poverty wages and restrictions on migration -- loom in the background, but have yet to share in the electoral spotlight.

European and US diplomats hailed the election results as an endorsement of their policies. "The results for me at least signalled the wish of the majority of the people in Serbia who want to continue the path towards Europe, and I'd like to say Europe is very happy with that," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters.

The day after the election, the EU announced a new force of 1,800 "police and legal officials" to be deployed to Kosovo, which has been under UN administration for the past eight years. The EU did not announce their decision before the election, arguing they did not want to "interfere" with the outcome of the vote.

With Kosovo expected to declare independence in the coming weeks, the EU's move has thrown the Serbian government into crisis. Any move to support EU efforts towards Kosovo's independence would be deeply unpopular, and would likely trigger another election or a place in a coalition government for the Radical Party.

Half the Serbian population supported the Radicals, led by Vojislav Seselj. Seselj could not stand for election; he has been imprisoned at The Hague for five years, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. He is viewed by many as a symbol of Serbian defiance against foreign imperialism. Tadic, on the other hand, represents compromise. He made it clear during his campaign that Kosovo should remain a province of Serbia but that European integration was the primary goal, and that sacrifices might have to be made.

Serbia currently faces a 50 per cent unemployment rate. The average income remains 300 Euros a month. Serbs face tough visa restrictions and the vast majority of people under the age of 30 have never left the former Yugoslavia.

Some observers say fundamental issues are being overshadowed by concern over Kosovo. Igor Todorovic, editor of Privredni Pregled, a Belgrade-based economic daily, said Serbia’s two main political parties are using the Kosovo conflict to their advantage. "By making the Kosovo issue such a constant issue, by filling the headlines everyday, it means they managed to neglect all the other problems that they actually have the authority and the power to solve."

When the news of EU plans for the Kosovo mission broke (without consultation of Serbia), Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica cancelled the meeting in which he intended to sign the integration agreement between Serbia and the European Union. Newly-elected President Tadic wanted to go along with the signing regardless of the EU decision. Many felt Tadic was bowing to international pressure and disregarding the views of people of Serbia. Before assuming his current role, Prime Minister Hassim Thaci was the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an organization funded by the smuggling of illegal arms, drugs and people, and likely on the receiving end of significant CIA backing. Analysts are nearly unanimous in predicting the fall of the new government.

It has become evident that eight years of UN occupation has done little in terms of benefiting most people living in Kosovo -- either the Albanian majority or the Serb, Roma or Egyptian minority groups. It is estimated that between three and five billion dollars in "international aid" has been pumped into Kosovo since the 1999 bombing, which resulted in over 250,000 Serbs and Romas from the region becoming refugees. An estimated 300,000 Albanians fled in the months preceding the escalation of fighting between the Serbian army and the KLA, and the resulting addition of NATO forces and bombings.

The result was Kosovo as a UN protectorate, its population unable to determine its own affairs.

Today, there is no clean drinking water throughout the province. Electricity is sporadic and can be out for 12 hours at a time. Despite these conditions, the UN maintains that "much progress has been made."

Corruption is rampant. International organizations and institutions based in Pristina often repeat the "need to address the problem," but Kosovars are skeptical. Avi Zogiani is with the Anti Corruption Organization, a grassroots group trying to keep track of aid money-fueled deals in the area. "The so-called government of Kosovo is in a constant state of readjusting ideas of development to coexist with economic and industrial interests of the outside world," says Zogiani.

"With eight years of having no influence on the political process, on decisions, the people have given up on trying to guarantee any of their rights and instead choose to suffer at the whims of the international actors and players."

Privatization of state-owned resources and services is nearly complete. The coal factory is the latest to be sold off, and the development wing of the US State Department is in charge of much of the operations of its sale. This involves regular consultation with the energy minister and handpicking the NGO that would do the "outreach" to "educate the population on the benefits" of privatization.

Over a billion dollars already has gone into this coal plant, and it still suffers from daily blackouts. The expected buyer, a US-Czech company CEZ has promised an additional $3.1 billion in investment to make it operational, if they get the deal. Zogiani believes part of the last ditch dealings could involve ensuring major players in the current UN force receive more of the privatization booty before the UN moves out and the EU settles in.

Kosovo has become a diplomatic and geopolitical flashpoint, with Russia backing Serbia's opposition to full independence. Meanwhile the US State Department and EU have taken an aggressive stance in favour of independence, using EU membership as a carrot and the country's economic woes as a stick.

Russia holds the powerful UN Security Council veto, and can to block any attempt to push through a resolution. With opposing positions set by the two sides, the future looks dismal for the people of Kosovo caught in the middle. Alexander Popadic, editor of Kontrepunkt, a widely-read independent popular web forum, magazine and grassroots media organization based in Belgrade, expressed frustration with both the Russian and American influence in the region.

"The presence of Russian Big Brother in the minds of Serbian people and the US for the Albanians has to be cut off," said Popadic.

"Such steps are necessary if we are to see some real progress and independent development of this region. Stuck within the process of so-called unfinished modernization, with the burden of wars and neoliberal reforms, Serbia and Kosovo are deeply polluted with nationalist hatred, religious fundamentalism and social insecurity."

A declaration of independence is imminent. Most EU countries and the US have already signaled they will immediately recognize Kosovo's country status. Few people in Serbia seem ready to physically fight for Kosovo again. However, many politicians have shown they are not willing to hand over the province.

The only certainty is that people in both Kosovo and Serbia will continue to live in desperate conditions with few opportunities. The international institutions which speak of peace and prosperity for the region have in fact delivered the opposite.

Czech Helicopters

Jo Negociata -- Vetëvendosje!

Signs in a Serbian Area of Kosovo

Food aid

Kosmet

Tadic Supporters

Fear, Impunity and State Power

dru — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:53:01 +0000

Colombia's paramilitary regime and social movements

MONTREAL -- In August of 2007, Paola, a mother, university student and teacher, received a written death threat. She is a member of the Committee for Solidarity for Political Prisoners, a group that struggles for the rights of political prisoners in Colombia. It is a country where state repression has broken the social fabric, where being a human rights defender can have dangerous consequences; since 2002, there have been 955 assassinations committed by the Armed Forces, the highest level of politically motivated homicide in the Western hemisphere.

In a country where repression of social organizations involves selective and collective assassinations, disappearances, detentions and massacres, fear of death is part of daily life. On the bus on the way to the Industrial University of Santander in Bucaramanga, Paola handed me a note sent by the paramilitary organization known as “Aguilas Negras” to 11 student organizers, accusing them of being linked to networks of the FARC and ELN, Colombia’s two largest guerrilla groups. The death threat assured their recipients that their actions were being monitored and their days numbered. "You and the organizations you represent are a problem for Colombia... The plan to annihilate you all will begin with the very next student strike."

The death threat is a common tactic from this nationwide right-wing paramilitary group. Weeks ago, the local office of SINALTRAINAL, a national union of food workers, received a written death threat under the front door. Fear courses in the veins of the country; a legitimate fear, a well-sanctioned and reasonable fear for the safety of human rights defenders, unionists, peasant leaders, Afro-Colombians, indigenous leaders and community members.

Paramilitary and military forces have honed a method of instilling fear and producing forced displacement throughout the country. Jose Antonio knows this tactic well. An Afro-Colombian peasant, a subsistence farmer until his forced displacement and the theft of his lands in 1997, he and his family have lived it first-hand. As we walked through the African Palm plantations in Choco, Jose Antonio showed me the former location of his community. Ten years ago, under Operation Genesis, the whole region was attacked by air, water and land, a concerted military and paramilitary operation that massacred, tortured, assassinated and forcibly displaced over 4,000 traditional communities living ancestral lifestyles. He showed me the former location of his brother's small farm, which is now rows of African Palm trees.

Jose Antonio pointed to where there used to be a river and said, "Over there, my brother used to fish."

"He was fishing one day with his four children, when the paramilitaries came to him. They tied his hands behind his back, cut open his chest and removed his innards with their hands. They told his children to leave and not to come back to this land."

The statistics of systematic violence in Colombia show the endemic nature of the problem. The Union Patriotica, a political party seeking a humanitarian accord between the FARC and the government since the 1990s, have suffered the assassination of over 5,000 members. The highest rates of homicide of indigenous people have been among the Embera Katio, the Wayuu and the Kankuamo peoples, who have suffered 234 homicides since 1999. From 1986 to 2006, there have been 2,515 union leaders assassinated. The National Federation of Municipal Councils (FENACOM) reports 251 council members assassinated since 1985. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, between 1996 and June 2006, 31,656 people were either killed or disappeared. Of these massacres, 83.07% are attributed to State forces.

The Consultation of Human Rights and Forced Displacement (CODHES) has stated that between 1985 and 2005, there were 3,720,428 citizens registered as forcibly displaced. According to the Ideas for Peace Foundation, members of the AUC--a former paramilitary organization--have invested in three million hectares of land, while drug traffickers have bought one million hectares. Seventy per cent of landowners are small-scale farmers who possess only five per cent of total land area. The reality of forced displacement by State forces and the subsequent purchasing of large quantities of land by paramilitary members are facts that demonstrate the illegal appropriation of land through violent means. Meanwhile, most small-scale farmers are forced either to find smaller parcels of land to cultivate, or join the growing waves of urbanization. In either case, they continue to face the threat of violence.

A traveller passing through the cities of Colombia might see a moderately developed country, an urbanized population and a burgeoning middle class. Liberal economic journals describe Colombia’s economy as a prosperous, growing market, rich in natural resources and ready for investment. But many Colombians understand the situation as an ongoing civil war. The State apparatus of control and repression--legitimated through impunity and maintained through the consolidation of executive military power in all branches of government and a broken social fabric with violence being a continual threat in all levels of society--has maintained a state of siege and atomized the Colombian countryside. Informants and military and paramilitary forces create local fiefdoms, regional strongholds of ultra-right-wing power. Urban centres are infiltrated by networks of informants and surveyed by police and military.

“The most preoccupying factor of the situation is the appearance of normality which this military and political project has acquired”, says Soraya Gutierrez Arguello, president of the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective. Specific elements of social control, such as paramilitarism, impunity and State power, have kept much of the country's population in a state of terror.

Paramilitarism: Infiltrating Civil Society and Rending the Social Fabric

Most socio-political studies agree that the origins of contemporary violence in Colombia began in the mid-1940s. Institutional and rural violence, stimulated by the Conservative Party, left 300,000 dead without investigation and left thousands without homes. The resulting armed uprising from rural sectors precipitated an internal conflict that to this day continues to spill blood. The State doctrine since the 1960s has been one of counterinsurgency and has authored systematic, generalized violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. A key element of the counterinsurgent strategy has been paramilitarism, which uses terrorist tactics and benefits from state support.

Paramilitarism has worked to annihilate social resistance and democratic opposition of civil society, creating new agents of capitalist accumulation while generating forced displacement.

According to Arguello, paramilitarism has united the anti-insurgent struggle with drug trafficking and State support under one apparatus of "irregular right-wing war, constructing paramilitary corridors, owned territorialities, zones of consolidation, eruption of local para-states, interlinked into a national phenomenon of power."

Armed right-wing paramilitary groups have had ample support from corporate sectors, large scale farmers, merchants, State security institutions, Armed Forces, police and regional government. They have even benefited from significant representation in Colombian parliament and share a profound affinity with the current administration of President Uribe Velez. The Colombian Office of the United Nations' High Commission of Human Rights has signalled the ongoing connections between paramilitary groups and the State.

The paramilitary strategy is excused with claims that victims are suspected guerrillas or guerrilla collaborators. In reality, the victims are systematically targeted members of the civilian population. According to a follow-up mission conducted by the Organization of American States in July 2007, paramilitaries maintain and exercise an authoritarian criminal control, which inhibits the possibility of citizen action without coercion, making municipal and departmental elections very problematic. Relying on a network of informants, paramilitary infiltration into communities and authorities at all levels of society has broken the social fabric, creating suspicion and mistrust among communities, neighbours and even family.

According to Leonardo Jaimes M, a lawyer with the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (FCSPP), it is common in penal processes to observe lists created by militaries that include many people (students, small farmers, unionists, civilians) accused of being guerrillas.

"No one knows how these lists are formed, what criteria are held, or what proof exists to conclude guerrilla participation. The majority of these listed people are later assassinated or disappeared by State agents or paramilitary groups."

Canadian and other foreign companies certainly figure prominently in the paradigm of State violence for economic development. According to Maria Jimenez of The Globe and Mail, Canadian investments in Colombia are an estimated $1 billion from 17 corporations, making Canada the 10th largest investor in the world. The investments are concentrated in the sectors where repression of unionists is greatest: oil, gas and mining.

While scandal erupts in Colombia over President Uribe’s ties to narco-traffickers and paramilitaries, Canada is putting trade negotiations with Colombia in overdrive by signing a new Free Trade Agreement. The FTA will open up Colombia for more foreign development and resource extraction for the profit of Canadian companies at the expense of the basic civil rights of Colombians.

Three Soldiers

The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

dru — Mon, 07 May 2007 01:42:32 +0000

Afghan MP speaks about the US-backed warlords currently in power

The following is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, given at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th:

In the name of Democracy and Peace –

Dear friends, first of all I extend my deep regards and thanks to the friends in the University of California to provide the opportunity for me to be here and share my point of view with you and inform you about the ongoing tragedy in my crying Afghanistan.

While the pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalists groups and individuals of Afghanistan are being marginalized, suppressed and silenced, you give a helping hand to me as a small voice of my suffering people to speak about the crisis in Afghanistan and terrible conditions of its people. You in fact play your role in raising awareness on what is going on in my devastated country.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land.

Today the Northern alliance leaders are the key power holders and our people are hostage in the hands of these ruthless gangs of killers. Many of them are responsible for butchering tens of thousands of innocent people in the past 2 decades but are in power and hold key positions in the government.

Let me list few of the key power-holders of Afghanistan:

Karim Khalili, the vice-president, is leader of a pro-Iran party called Wahdat, responsible for killing thousands of innocent people, and named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Ismael Khan, another killer warlord and lackey of the Iranian regime is the minister of water and power.
Izzatullah Wasifi, Afghanistan’s anti-corruption chief has been a convicted drug trafficker who has spent around 4 years in a Nevada state prison in the US.
General Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the anti-drug effort, is a former warlord and famous drug-trafficker.
Rashid Dostum, the chief of staff of the Afghan army, is a heartless killer and warlord, named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Qasim Fahim, former defense minister and now a Senator and adviser to Mr. Karzai is the most powerful warlord of the Northern Alliance, and accused of war crimes.

And this list has hundreds of men on it, including Sayyaf, Ulomi, Golabzoi, Rabbani, Qanooni, Mohaqiq, Mullah Rocketi, etc. They should all be removed from power and put on trial for war crimes. In fact all the major institutions in Afghanistan are occupied by warlords and drug-lords. How can we talk about democracy when our legislative, judicial and executive bodies are infected with the viruses of fundamentalism and drug mafia?

Many freedom-loving individuals and groups in Afghanistan had long ago warned that bringing the criminal “Northern Alliance” back into power by the US government will pose a danger to Afghanistan. But today, most governments and world institutions accept that Afghanistan is a failed state which is heading toward disaster.

Afghans are deeply fed-up with the current situation and every day that passes they turn against the government, the foreign troops and the warlords. And the Taliban make use of it to increase their influence and acts of terror. Countries like Pakistan, Iran, Russia etc. are also meddling in Afghanistan for their own interests.

The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a recent report: “…Afghans are frustrated with their economic situation… They suffer from unsteady employment and economic insecurity, and are turning to illicit and illegal activity, such as corruption and opium production…the Taliban has become an alternative source of employment, recruiting the jobless as foot soldiers in the insurgency.”

In such a situation when a bunch of killers are in power, life cannot be easy for our unfortunate people. I would like to describe the tip of the iceberg on the reality of life in my bleeding Afghanistan:

Seven hundred children and 50-70 women die on a daily basis because of a lack of health services. Infant and maternal mortality rates are still very high — 1,600 to 1,900 women among each 100,000 die during childbirth. Life expectancy is less than 45 years.

The number of suicide cases by Afghan women was never as high as it is today: A month ago eighteen year old Samiya, hung herself by a rope because she was to be sold to a sixty year old man. Another woman called Bibi Gul locked herself up in the animals’ stable and burned herself to death. Later her family found nothing except her bones.

The study by the governmental agency Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission shows a marked increase in reported cases: Two years ago in Farah province, there were 15 cases of women burning themselves reported, but the number jumped to 36 in the first six months of 2006. Kandahar province had 74 cases two years ago and 77 cases in the first six months of the past year. But the real numbers are much higher.

According to a UNIFEM survey, 65% of the 50,000 widows in Kabul see suicide as the only option to get rid of their misery. UNIFEM estimates that at least one out of three Afghan women has been beaten, forced into sex or otherwise abused.

The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The Taliban continue their fascism in the eastern parts of Afghanistan where the government has no control. They carry out public executions and kidnappings. When some days ago an Italian journalist and his Afghan translator and driver were kidnapped, the Afghan government made a deal with them and released five Taliban leaders from prison so the Italian journalist was freed. But no one cared for the fate of the two innocent Afghans and both of them were beheaded by the Taliban.

A report by Human Rights Watch about war criminals in Afghanistan and the hanging of Saddam Hussein scared many Afghan criminals and now they are trying to block any efforts for their prosecution. Last month the warlord MPs, under the name of “national reconciliation” passed a bill in the parliament based on which no one can file a case or prosecute anyone for committing war crimes in the past 25 years.

I and a few other MPs raised our voices against it but as the fundamentalist warlords hold over 80% of the seats, the bill was easily approved. This bill will now provide amnesty to all criminals.

But Afghan people who have suffered terribly in the past 3 decades consider this bill an abuse against them. According to a survey conducted by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission over 80% of Afghan people want to prosecute those responsible for past crimes and brutalities and see it as the only way to experience a bright future in Afghanistan.

Even Mr. Karzai signed this disgusting bill which is regarded as a joke and abuse to the millions of Afghans who have suffered and lost their loved ones and were waiting for the day of justice. Meanwhile the killers forgave their own crimes and live without fear. Such bills officially sanction further brutalities and human rights violations against our defenseless people.

The story of Afghanistan’s reconstruction is painful: After 5 years you cannot see any serious reconstruction projects. Billions of dollars of aid has been looted by the warlords, corrupt NGOs, the UN and government officials. Afghanistan still stands 175th out of 177 countries in the UN Human Development Index and the rate of unemployment is over 40%.

The so-called “freedom of speech” in Afghanistan is another joke with our people. Let me describe my own recent experience: In early February this year, during the passage of the infamous bill of amnesty for war criminals in the parliament, I had an interview with a local TV channel; they had interviewed some other people including Sayyaf, who is a wanted criminal and member of the parliament.

The TV station broadcast an advertisement for the program a number of times in which they showed some parts of my interview. After this Sayyaf himself called the TV station and threatened them that if Joya’s interview was broadcast the consequences would be dangerous for the director. So they resorted to censorship and excluded me from the program. And this is not the first time that I have been censored in the media. Many journalists are too afraid to report my comments.

Last year the UN announced that Afghanistan under US troops could become a narco-state but today no one has any doubt that it has been changed into a mafia-state when Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s supply of opium. High-ranking officials like ministers and deputy ministers etc. have links to the drugs mafia. And all of it happens under the very noses of the thousands of foreign troops.

A mafia system is in place in Afghanistan. The US backed president Karzai and his westernized intellectuals have joined hands with fundamentalists of all brands to impose this mafia system on our people. This is the main reason for today’s problems in the deadlocked Afghanistan. Those who speak for justice are threatened with death.

My voice is always being silenced even inside the parliament and once I was physically attacked by pro-warlord and drug-lord MPs in the parliament just for speaking the truth. One of them even shouted “prostitute, take her and rape her!” Despite hating guns, I need to live under the protection of armed bodyguards to survive.

President Hamid Karzai, instead of relying on people to bring the criminal warlords to trial, appoints these criminals to higher posts. Due to his criminal-fostering policies, the people of Afghanistan hate him as someone equally responsible for the current catastrophe. Even the CIA admitted in its report recently that he has lost the people’s support and has no control outside of Kabul.

The Afghan government is the most corrupt and unpopular in the world. In a March 2007 survey conducted by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, it was revealed that about 60 percent of Afghans think the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades.

It is due to this tragic situation that returning to Afghanistan is still an unattractive option for the 4 million Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan and many more still trying to flee the country.

Dear friends, in 2001 the US government announced that it has learned from its past mistakes of supporting the fundamentalists in Afghanistan and will not repeat them. But the agonizing truth is that the US is committing the same mistakes. It is generously supporting the fundamentalists more than ever.

Besides supporting the bands of the Northern Alliance, underground efforts are going on to include some elements of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government. The US included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on its list of most wanted terrorists, yet his party was allowed to have 34 members in the Afghan parliament, which was elected in an un-democratic and fraudulent election. I have announced a number of times that the US administration has no problem working with pro-American terrorists, but oppose only anti-American terrorists. This is the reason that our people make a mockery of the “war on terror”.

I fully agree with Kathy Gannon, an expert in Afghanistan, that “the US is not interested in peace in Afghanistan. The people who killed thousands, who patronized the drug business are in charge of the country.”

Dear friends, the US is not concerned with the suffering and disastrous conditions of our people; it is in the US’s strategic and economic interests to put our people in danger as long as its own regional interests are met. That is why our people do not consider the US a “liberator” of our country. The US invaded Afghanistan under the name of human rights and democracy but today we are as far from these values as were 5 years ago. However, since 2001 the death toll of innocent civilians as a result of the so-called “war on terror” is five times the number killed in the 9/11 tragedy.

I hope you have realized from the small taste of the problems that I just shared, that my country is still in the chains of bloody and terrorist fundamentalists. The situation in Afghanistan and the conditions of its ill-fated women will never change positively, as long as the warlords are not disarmed and both the pro-US and anti-US terrorists are not removed from the political scene of Afghanistan.

It is a clear and proven fact that no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation is not money to be donated; it should be achieved in a country by the people themselves. The ongoing developments in Afghanistan and Iraq prove this claim. People of other countries only can give us a helping hand and support.

I think that the people of the US can play a great role to put pressure on their policy-makers to stop its wrong policies in Afghanistan and value the wishes of our people. I should say that unlike its government, the people of the US are great, caring and peace-loving, so the democratic-minded elements of Afghanistan can count on your support and solidarity.

The people of the US must help poor Afghan people and its democratic-minded individuals and groups, who are currently defeated and under much pressure. This is the only correct policy that can help Afghan people and guarantee a bright future for us. Unlike the US administration, the true friends of Afghan people must care about the voices of our men and women for justice; they should realize that the existence of fundamentalist groups of any brand as political and military forces, is the main cause of all the problems in Afghanistan. They should know that bringing the Northern Alliance to power was the key to all the disasters that we are experiencing today.

I am well aware of the hardships, challenges, and prospects of death from anti-democratic forces. But I trust my people and enjoy their full support and encouragement. The enemies of my people have weapons, political power and the support of the US government to suppress me. But they can never silence my voice and hide the truth. I am proud to be a beacon of hope for my people and enjoy strong support from them in my mission for democracy and freedom.

Your show of solidarity and support gives me more power and determination to fight the enemies of democracy and humanity in my devastated Afghanistan. You can give me a helping hand by providing moral support and your generous donations so that I can continue and expand my work for the benefit of the desperate and sorrowful women of Afghanistan.

The fundamentalists are counting their days to kill me, but I believe in and follow the noble saying of the freedom-loving Iranian writer Samad Behrangi:

“Death could very easily come now, but I should not be the one to seek it. Of course if I should meet it and that is inevitable, it would not matter. What matters is whether my living or dying has had any effect on the lives of others…”

Thank you. ---

Malalai Joya is Afghanistan’s youngest and most out-spoken parliamentarian. She has openly criticized the US-backed warlords that dominate the Afghan parliament. In return, she has received a continuous stream of death threats. At the age of 28, Malalai has survived 4 assassination attempts. Recently a documentary profiling her, Enemies of Happiness, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Malalai Joya is on a brief US speaking tour. For more information about Malalai Joya, please visit www.malalaijoya.com.

Malalai Joya at McGill University

Malalai Joya at McGill University 2

Kandahar Faces Daily Misery

dru — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:46:44 +0000

"You did not bring us freedom," say residents of Afghanistan's southern province

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN --Anyone who values their life tries to avoid going out after dark in Kandahar. This place is a death trap at the best of times and the odds of survival plummet with the sun.

Security is almost non-existent here. More than five years after they were promised peace, prosperity and liberty, many now want the Taliban to come back.

“The Americans say they are democratic, modern and know everything, but they fuck us in so many different ways,” Faiz Mohammed Karigar, a local resident said. “How can we forgive them? How can we forgive the Americans?

“If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us. 'You did not bring us freedom.'”

As the world starts to acknowledge the full horror of the present state of Iraq, Afghanistan slips towards the same state. With each passing week the list of the dead grows in a war Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists is being won.

“When the Taliban were here I escaped to the border of Iran, but I was never worried about my family,” Karigar told me. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried. Maybe tonight the Americans will come to my house, touch my wife, touch my children and arrest me.

“I have already decided to stand against them. I will stand against them even when I see them on the road. I will fight them with my tongue, my hands, with guns – I will fight them in any way I can.”

The southern province of Kandahar is where the Taliban movement was born and it is here that it has come back to life, resuscitated by the widespread anger Afghans feel towards the foreign troops in their midst.

When Mullah Mohammed Omar was in power people could walk the streets safely as long as they complied with a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Now a simple outing to the market is a risk.

“That’s right, [President Hamid] Karzai is always shouting about democracy and saying everything is fine, but it’s just words,” Maria Farah, mother of five, said. “If you meet women their faces are very sad. I don’t just mean two or three women; all our faces are very sad. And if you go to houses you will see the same faces on husbands as well because they cannot get jobs, they worry about security and they worry about their children.

“I can only talk about Kandahar city. I think life under the Taliban was very good. If we did not have a full stomach we could at least get some food and go to sleep. If we went out somewhere there were no problems,” she continued.

“How about now? If we go out we don’t know if we will arrive home or not. If there is an explosion and the Americans are passing they will just open fire on everyone. The security problems are too much here. If someone is driving on the highway they will be stopped and beheaded. If women leave the house when it is getting dark people look at them with a hatred in their eyes.”

The 33-year-old finished our conversation with a simple request.

“Ask [George W.] Bush to come here once and meet with women who want to tear his skin off,” she said.

Soon after the Taliban first surfaced in Kandahar during the mid 1990s they brought peace to an area previously ruled by rival warlords.

Today this is one of the most dangerous places in the country, with political and criminal violence spreading fear among the population. There are approximately 2,500 Canadian troops based here and casualties on all sides are mounting, with suicide attacks, firefights and roadside bombings increasingly common in the southern province.

But whatever the real cause of the bloodshed, Afghans almost always blame the foreign soldiers and local security forces. Many of them simply regard this as a US occupation, often seeing little or no difference between the various countries that make up the NATO-led mission.

“Forget that a road has been built,” Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder, said. “If a road has been built and you are killed, what good is it?

“Everyone is a robber. I guarantee if you sit in my car and we go for a drive no Taliban will take you away. But I cannot guarantee you [the same] about the police. If they stop you they will steal your money and your camera.”

His friend, Abdul Hamid, shared similar concerns. All of his six sons are unemployed and he believes jihad is he only way forward for Afghanistan.

“It’s much, much worse than when the Russians were here,” the 71-year-old said. “At that time maybe we were scared a rocket would land on our house, but we were not scared of them coming into our house.

“One of my sons wanted to join the military. I was not happy about that. I told him this country is fucked up, everyone is a robber and you have to make a stand and fight for the truth.”

Panjwayi is a Taliban stronghold in the west of Kandahar province. Last May US-led forces conducted an air strike on alleged insurgents in the district.

American officials claimed as many as 80 militants might have been killed, but villagers at the scene said a number of the casualties were civilians.

Mawlawi Abdul Hadid told me 18 members of his family died in the raid. He said 30 innocent people were killed in all, the youngest of them a two-year-old girl.

“In the beginning you had only one enemy. Then you made two, then three and now I also stand against you,” he declared. “You made me your enemy as well and I will stand against you.

“The Taliban are the sons of this country: my son is a Talib and your son is a Talib,” the 45-year-old added, gesturing towards another man in the room.

“The Taliban are fighting for our rights, they are fighting for humanity and they are fighting for the truth. Day by day the Americans are losing support, but lots of people support the Taliban.”

Asked how long it would take to defeat the foreign soldiers, Hadid gave the kind of response increasingly heard across Afghanistan.

“In Islam we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” he said. “But one thing we do know is that God brought them here and God will take them away.”

Abdul Hamid and Haji Abdul Rahman

Lebanon: Shadows of War

dru — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:36:46 +0000

Rawi Hage’s <cite>De Niro’s Game</cite> renders civil war-era Beirut from the Diaspora

Turning the pages of De Niro's Game, one is transported to the war-torn streets of Beirut in the midst of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, a tragic reality of flying bombs and bullets. A debut literary work from Montreal author Rawi Hage, who conveys this era of Lebanon's turbulent history through the experiences of a pair of youths from Beirut, childhood best friends growing to adulthood in the political quagmire of civil war.

"De Niro's Game started as a short-story," Hage explains at a café in Montreal's Côte-des-Neiges district. "Initially I wanted to write a piece about an incident that I remember of some kids who started playing Russian roulette after watching The Deer Hunter, which screened in Beirut at the beginning of the war in the 1970s. Guns were available everywhere in Beirut so kids starting playing."

De Niro's Game is a fast-paced poetic novel detailing historical events and the gritty details of life in Beirut during Lebanon's civil war; from the bombs falling erratically on residential districts, to the dirty economy of armed political factions, to the soaring voice of Lebanese diva Fariuz echoing on Beirut streets and the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Israeli supported right-wing Lebanese militias at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila.

Through the eyes of the novel's main characters, Bassam and George, Hage confronts the existential and pragmatic debate surrounding the question facing everyone living through the civil war era in Lebanon: to remain in mortal danger upon familiar ground, or to flee westward toward hostile nations? Expansive contemplations on forced migration from Lebanon's civil war appear in the first chapters:

Ten thousand bombs had landed, and I was waiting for George. Ten thousand bombs had landed on Beirut, that crowded city, and I was lying on a blue sofa covered with white sheets to protect it from dust and dirty feet.

It is time to leave, I was thinking to myself. My mother's radio was on. It had been on since the start of the war, a radio with Rayovac batteries that lasted ten thousand years. My mother's radio was wrapped in a cheap, green plastic cover, with holes in it, smudged with the residue of her cooking fingers and dust that penetrated its knobs, cinched against its edges. Nothing ever stopped those melancholic Fairuz songs that came out of it.

I was not escaping the war; I was running away from Fairuz, the notorious singer.

De Niro's Game has received broad acclaim in Canada and internationally, nominated for both the Governor General's Award for fiction, the Giller Prize for literature and winner of the Quebec Writers Federation's Prize for Fiction. A national best-seller in Canada, De Niro's Game is a startling success for a first-time author.

Hage, born in Lebanon, lived through nine years of the civil war in the achrafieh district of Christian East Beirut, in which the fictional narrative of De Niro's Game occurs. As a witness to a war that continues to haunt Lebanese politics until today, Hage through fiction offers a biting critique toward the sectarian fighting, foreign intervention and gangster politics which fuelled the civil conflict in Lebanon, resulting in over a hundred thousand dead.

"I grew up with Beirut divided," Hage recounts. "Through this novel I presented a secular element amidst all the sectarian chaos, as I think that Lebanon has maintained an understated, undermined secular element throughout the past 100 years, which is why I presented the main character in the novel as an atheist who doesn't believe in organized religion."

Currently Lebanon's confessional political system enshrines sectarian divisions in the nation's constitution, a fact which many Lebanese point to as a fundamental cause of the civil strife which still frames political life in Lebanon today.

Dating to Lebanon's independence from France in 1943, Lebanon's constitution divides the nation's 128 parliamentary seats equally between multiple Muslim and Christian religious communities. Lebanon's civil war ended in 1990 with the signing of the Ta'if Accord by warring Lebanese factions, an agreement sponsored by the US, Saudi Arabia and Syria that reinstated constitutional sectarian political divisions.

"De Niro's Game champions secularism," says Hage, "while illustrating how ugly sectarianism is, and the corruption of organized religion."

Hage's novel provides an essential historical context to current political turmoil in Lebanon, a nation which in the past two years has experienced an Israeli invasion, unprecedented internal political strife and a string of bloody assassinations of national political figures.

"I like to think of the novel as a small slice of the collective memory of Lebanon," explains Hage. "In Lebanon there was no conscious decision from the government to preserve the history of the war, to understand issues that created war in the first place."

"Quickly the entire downtown area of Beirut, where the major fighting took place was eradicated, no monument built, while the civil war is not in the national school curriculum," Hage adds. "Authorities in Lebanon are still not dealing with our history."

"Until now, there has been no governmental project of national reconciliation in Lebanon."

"I think that some of the only people who are attempting to deal with the history of war in Lebanon are independent artists and writers," says Hage. "I am one of those artists, who through writing, is trying to come to terms with and understand the history of war because I think that we have to deal with it, as Lebanese, for future generations."

De Niro's Game renders, in vivid prose, the deadly 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut, in which over 10,000 Lebanese and Palestinians lost their lives. A historical recount of the aerial attack offered by Hage will strike any current reader as a historical shadow to the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon.

Israeli jets flew over Beirut and bombed houses, hospitals and schools. The radios trumpeted from every window on our street. On the west side, people were fleeing for their lives, and on our east side, in the night, we could see flashes of resistance aiming at the skies. I went to the roof and looked at the west. The landscape was lit up under lightning bolts that fell from Israeli airplanes. There was one consistent line of red that reached to the sky. It never ceased, and I wondered if my uncle was shooting at the gods. And I wondered if cheap whisky bottles would turn into Molotov cocktails in Ali's hands.

Today, historical realities of war and conflict are not shades of a violent past but the looming crisis of the future, as political tensions are rife in a nation still recovering from the 2006 Israeli attack which resulted in major damage of the national infrastructure and 1,300 dead Lebanese civilians.

"I was extremely upset during the war this summer," reflects Hage. "It was a different type of war than the one I lived, conducted mainly from the air by a state trying to impose hegemony over the region without regard for the human costs."

Stefan Christoff is an independent journalist based in Montreal, you can contact him at: christoff -at- resist.ca

De Niro's Game, by Rawi Hage

Rawi Hage

Le Soutien des États-Unis au Fatah Crée un Nouveau Conflit

hillarybain — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:20:46 +0000

Le Hamas et le Fatah s'engagent dans une rivalité meurtrière.

Le son des explosions, des fusillades intenses et des sirènes d'ambulances a de nouveau retenti dans la bande de Gaza, le 1er février, seulement deux jours après la cessation des combats entre les partisans du Fatah et du Hamas durant lesquels plus de 30 Palestiniens sont morts.

À la tombée de la nuit, on dénombrait six décès et plus de 60 blessés à Gaza. Des combattants fidèles au gouvernement élu du Hamas – la force exécutive du ministre de l'Intérieur et la milice du mouvement islamiste, les Brigades Izzadin Al-Qassam – affrontaient les forces de sécurité du Fatah, fidèles au Président de l'Autorité palestinienne Mahmoud Abbas.

Dans l'après-midi, au moment des combats, le Hamas a intercepté quatre camions de chargement venant d'Israël par le passage de Kerem Shalom. Ces derniers ont voulu réquisitionner la cargaison d'armes destinée à la garde présidentielle, une force de sécurité fidèle à M. Abbas et soutenue par les États-Unis.

Le Fatah a officiellement nié toute connaissance de cette cargaison d'armes. Selon son porte-parole, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, le convoi transportait seulement des tentes, des générateurs et du matériel médical.

En décembre dernier, un chargement de 2 000 fusils, 20 000 chargeurs et 2 millions de cartouches d’origine égyptienne était transporté à travers ce même passage de Kerem Shalom. Le convoi, officialisé par Israël, avait également rejoint la bande de Gaza.

La reprise de la violence s'est produite au moment où Washington a annoncé le débloquement de 86,4 millions de dollars supplémentaires pour soutenir le Président M. Abbas.

Les dirigeants du Hamas ont dénoncé la participation de Washington dans l’entraînement et le financement des forces de sécurité du Fatah. Son porte-parole, Ismayil Radwan, a déclaré dans une intervention publique que l'intention de Washington était de « susciter une guerre civile dans l'arène palestinienne ».

Pour Mouin Rabbani, analyste éminent à l'International Crisis Group, les États-Unis poussent la garde présidentielle de M. Abbas à devenir la principale force de sécurité palestinienne. « Elle est renforcée afin de combattre la force exécutive du Hamas » a-t-il affirmé à IPS. Selon lui, les États-Unis travaillent sur le long terme au lieu de chercher à attiser les récents affrontements à Gaza.

« Il n'y a pas d'instigation directe des Américains car ils ne sont pas encore convaincus que le Fatah est prêt à affronter le Hamas », poursuit M. Rabbani. « Mais ils commencent à fournir des quantités importantes d'armes, entraînent et financent le Fatah dans l’espoir qu’il dominera le conflit final. »

Washington a confirmé l’entraînement de la garde présidentielle de M. Abbas à la tactique des combats de rue, à Jéricho en Cisjordanie, sous la direction du lieutenant général Keith Dayton, coordinateur américain de la sécurité auprès d'Israël et de l'Autorité palestinienne.

En décembre, K. Dayton avait déclaré au quotidien israélien Yedioth Ahronoth: « Nous sommes engagés dans le renforcement de la garde présidentielle, procédant à son instruction, l'aidant à se développer elle-même et lui donnant des idées ». K. Dayton avait démenti la préparation de cette force à la confrontation avec le Hamas.

Toujours en décembre, le Congrès américain a voté la loi contre le terrorisme palestinien. Celle-ci vise explicitement la direction élue du Hamas et cherche à soutenir l'Autorité palestinienne en association avec le Fatah.

En vertu de cette loi, les États-Unis sanctionnent le Hamas jusqu'à ce que « l'Autorité palestinienne, contrôlée par le Hamas, accomplisse des progrès notoires dans la purge des individus des services de sécurité liés au terrorisme, dans le démantèlement de toutes les infrastructures terroristes, dans la coopération avec les services de sécurité israéliens, dans l'arrêt de toute motivation anti-américaine et anti-israélienne, et dans l'assurance de la démocratie et de la transparence financière. »

Le mouvement islamique Hamas a mis fin à 40 années de règne du Fatah sur la scène politique palestinienne en gagnant les élections parlementaires de janvier 2006. Un régime de sanctions sévères, initié par les États-Unis, a été imposé au Hamas lors de la formation du gouvernement au mois de mars suivant. C'est la première fois, selon les Nations Unies, que de telles sanctions sont prises contre une population sous occupation. Les sanctions ont aggravé la situation à Gaza, déjà qualifiée de crise humanitaire par des agences onusiennes comme le Programme Alimentaire Mondiale (PAM).

Au minimum, les trois quarts du million et demi d’habitants vivent dans la pauvreté et sont menacés d'insuffisance alimentaire. En outre, plus de 220 000 personnes sont totalement dépendantes de l'assistance alimentaire du PAM.

Cependant, d'après les sondages, les sanctions ne sont pas parvenues à éroder la popularité du Hamas.

Pour les Palestiniens, ce combat interne est une crise supplémentaire à celle des 40 années d’occupation israélienne. « Ce matin, je voulais amener ma fille au jardin d'enfants, mais je n'ai pu passer à cause des barrages routiers. Toutes les boutiques sont fermées et les rues sont vides. La population de Gaza écoute seulement les nouvelles et les coups de feu », a confié Nabil Diab, chargé des relations publiques pour le Croissant Rouge palestinien à Gaza ville.

« Les gamins avaient l'habitude de jouer aux “Palestiniens contre les Israéliens“. Maintenant, ils jouent au “Fatah contre le Hamas“ », dit le père de deux enfants.

Le Centre Al-Mezan pour les Droits de l'Homme à Gaza a dénombré 63 morts et plus de 300 blessés durant les combats de décembre entre le Hamas et le Fatah.

Ces affrontements armés ont lieu dans l’une des régions les plus densément peuplées du monde et font énormément de victimes civiles : huit enfants tués et plus de 30 blessés durant le mois de janvier. Une souffrance de plus pour les habitants de Gaza qui ont vécu 60 ans de déplacements forcés et sept années de guerre longue et oppressante avec Israël.

Les Palestiniens restent lucides sur les conséquences de cette lutte politique interne. Cette phrase lâchée à IPS par une habitante de Gaza, pressée de rentrer chez elle avec ses courses, résume bien leurs inquiétudes : « Si ces combats continuent, nous allons nous anéantir nous-mêmes ».

Sources : IPS, « U.S. Backing for Fatah Stirs New Conflict »
Traduction : Campagne Civile Internationale pour la Protection du Peuple Palestinien (CCIPPP) et Vivien Jaboeuf

Un Drapeau Palestinien

Mohammed Dahlan

The Taliban's Past and Future

dru — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:11:51 +0000

An interview with Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, former Taliban foreign minister

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--There was a time in recent memory when the people here had nothing but God and an AK-47 to keep them safe from harm. In the early 1990s, Afghanistan was imploding and few in the West seemed to care. Those with power abused it; those with wealth flaunted it; and everyone else lived with the knowledge that each morning could be their last.

Back then, Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil was just another young man whose father had been killed during the Soviet occupation. He needed a reason to hope and one day he found it. By his mid-20s he was at the forefront of a movement that first stabilised the country, then helped bring war to America and ultimately changed the way Islam was perceived across the world.

"At the time I started with the Taliban, every village had its own government and very dangerous issues threatened Afghanistan," he said. "Every government was making a new currency, every government had its own ministry of defence, everyone had their own private airports.

"For the purpose of stopping the division of the country and solving the problems inside the country -- improving the transportation system and saving innocent people from warlords and their rockets -- the Taliban movement was set up. And a thousand people like me joined it. We had no other purpose, it was just to give the country freedom. We did not represent any other government and we did not stand for anyone else."

These kind of impoverished, deeply religious young men still found across Afghanistan formed the Taliban. They were initially welcomed as saviours by a population tired of having old Mujahideen commanders kill and kidnap at will.

"We wanted a peaceful Afghanistan and good relations with other countries," Mutawakil said. "Now people think the Taliban wanted to make a country full of terrorists, but we didn’t want that."

Less than two years after capturing Kandahar, they rolled into Kabul, bringing a fragile peace to the devastated city and imposing their strict interpretation of the Qur’an on its people.

With Mutawakil working as spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and later as foreign minister, the new government banned music and kite flying, sanctioned capital punishment and forced all men to grow beards.

"We hoped our laws would bring freedom to everyone in every part of their life, but we did not have lots of facilities," Mutawakil said. "Nowadays lots of countries are giving donations to Afghanistan, but at that time they were only wagging their fingers at us and complaining."

The most notorious edicts were aimed at the female population. Women were not allowed out alone and when they were in public, they had to cover their entire bodies. Girls were stopped from going to school.

"We are against co-education, but we are happy with separate education," Mutawakil insisted. "For example, in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, people are studying separately, which is according to Islamic law. If women wear the hijab, they can go to school."

After capturing the south and Kabul, the Taliban pushed onwards in an effort to establish control over the whole country. A movement of rival warlords known as the Northern Alliance put up fierce resistance and appealed for outside support in its struggle against the new government. Untold numbers of people were maimed and killed by both sides, many of them civilians.

But the West only really began to take notice of what was happening when Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, a country he had helped liberate from Soviet occupation while fighting alongside other CIA-sponsored jihadis.

The Saudi was now regarded as a terrorist by Washington and he soon became a close ally of the Taliban, encouraging more foreign militants to come and join those who had remained in the country since the 1980s.

"We did not hate them, we had a sort of love in our hearts for them. But it was not worth the price for us -- it was not worth putting our lives in danger, which is what happened," Mutawakil said.

"The only solution was for the Arabs to live here quietly, safely, as immigrants. They should have lived here as immigrants, not as fighters."

Mutawakil denied the Taliban had any prior knowledge of 9/11 and he believes the US may already have been planning to overthrow the regime before New York and Washington were hit.

Four months after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan started, the foreign minister handed himself over to the local authorities. He was held for a night and then transferred to American custody, where he remained for most of the next two years.

It is not easy to meet Mutawakil now. Private security guards stand watch outside his home and he claims the government keeps track of his every move.

On a freezing cold January morning, he agreed to this exclusive interview. A friendly, bespectacled man, he talked in Pashto for almost two hours about his life and the difficulties Afghanistan faces.

"All of our problems were not solved under the Taliban," he said. "But the interesting thing from that time, and lots of people are remembering this now, is the tight security there was in the country.

"When the new regime came, people had lots of hope, but one day they found out nothing was happening and they had even lost the tight security they had under the Taliban."

About 4,000 people are estimated to have died in the insurgency last year, a body count roughly four times higher than in 2005 and the worst since the invasion. Indiscriminate suicide attacks are common now, as are reports of NATO-led forces killing civilians in airstrikes and shootings. The Taliban already control areas close to Kabul city and further violence is expected following the winter.

Mutawakil believes the only way to stop the situation escalating into a nationwide jihad is for the Karzai administration and its allies to open high-level talks with the insurgents.

"Now the foreigners think all the Taliban are terrorists," he said. "I think inside the Afghan government, there are people who are far worse criminals than the Taliban; they have committed many crimes.

"So the best way is to forgive everyone. It’s better to start negotiations. Of course there will be problems, as the foreigners don’t like the Taliban and call them terrorists and the Taliban don’t like the foreigners, but the best way is to start negotiations. By negotiations we can move forward step by step.

"The biggest problem now faced by the world is that it does not know the exact definition of terrorism: who is a terrorist; where are the terrorists. I think that terrorism can be in every society, it’s not unique to any tribe, to any religion, to any person -- you can have it everywhere."

But with NATO determined to defeat the insurgency by force, corrupt warlords still holding the reins of power in the government and more heavy fighting due in the spring, it looks like the kind of anger that first launched the Taliban will explode into the open once again.

"There is no hope for the people -- their hearts are broken," Mutawakil said.

Canadian Solider in Kandahar City

Corruption, Impunity Pervade Afghan Government

dru — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:15:42 +0000

Police part of insecurity problem: victims, human rights groups

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--Zohra Madadi represented everything the new Afghanistan should have been about. She was a young, intelligent woman who believed in democracy and dreamed of becoming a politician.

Then someone kidnapped the 16-year-old, stuck a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Her dead body was dumped in the wilderness.

“She was a very open-minded girl and she studied very hard. She didn’t care about TV, she just listened to the news and then kept busy with her studies until 11 o’clock at night,” said her father, Abdul Hussain.

“She kept telling me: ‘Dad, don’t worry about the current situation in Afghanistan. One day it will be good here.’”

Hussain is not expecting justice because he knows that is not the way things work, not when the chief suspect is a leading member of the intelligence services.

“They blame the Taliban, but it’s actually the police doing these things,” he said. “I am not frightened. Because I have lost my daughter, life and death mean nothing to me.”

Zohra lived in the southern province of Ghazni and her corpse was dumped there last summer, on the road to Kandahar. She might have been murdered because her older sister is involved in local politics, or perhaps it was just because she caught the eye of the wrong man.

Whatever the reason, no one should be surprised that an official meant to enforce the law is accused of violating it in the cruellest of ways.

Sayed Hussain was arrested in Kabul for allegedly bringing teenage girls back to his house for sex. Rather than go through the legal system, the police simply beat him to death. Ten months after the event, his elderly-looking wife, Bibi Gul, cried as she remembered what happened.

“They said, ‘Let me tell you the bad news. Just go to the hospital and you will see the dead body of your husband.’ When I complained that he was alive when he was taken, they said I had signed a document that said he had a heart attack,” she recalled.

The Dominion has seen photographs of Sayed Hussain’s blackened corpse, along with other pictures showing the results of police abuse on a number of prisoners.

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) recorded 290 cases of torture by the security forces between June 2005 and June 2006.

That is 200 less than the year before, but it is still more than enough to stoke the widespread public anger now fuelling the Taliban-led insurgency. Talk to people on the street and they will tell you they do not trust the police. They will tell you uniforms stand for violence, bribery and corruption.

“There is not a very strong rule of law and the government is not keen to follow the law. Also, in the criminal court there is not a very strong and clear code for prosecuting police action,” said Ahmad Zia Langari, a commissioner at AIHRC.

“The main problem in Afghanistan is the culture of impunity. The government is not powerful. When a governor, for example, has committed violence or he has been very corrupt, he is not prosecuted. The president just changes his position.”

A joint report released last month by the Pentagon and the US State Department was hugely critical of the American-trained Afghan police. It said the force was ‘far from adequate’ at carrying out even conventional responsibilities, with illiterate recruits and pervasive corruption cited as some of the key problems. The report also revealed that it is unclear how many officers are actually on duty.

Mohammed Yahya’s lower right leg looks like it has been ripped off by an animal, with bone sticking out from the bloody flesh above his severed foot. The photograph showing this wound was taken in 2005, soon after he refused to pay the police in Kabul a bribe.

“They came to me and said, ‘Stop working. We will go away and come back and if you want to work, give us some money.’ Then when they came back, they started beating four old people who were working with us,” the 19-year-old said.

“I told them if I had money I would not be working here, then they opened fire. I can’t remember anything from that moment on.”

An entire magazine from a Kalashnikov was emptied into Mohammed, with one bullet shot into his left leg and the rest blowing away the bottom half of his right leg. Although the policemen who attacked him have been jailed, his family still regret giving up their lives as refugees in Iran.

“Everyone in the government is proud of themselves, but who cares about the poor people?” lamented his mother, Zahra Azimi.

When The Dominion contacted the Ministry of Interior, it was referred to Colonel Haq Nawaz Haqyar. He acknowledged some police officers were still under the control of warlords and happy to commit human rights abuses. But he insisted he would never sanction torture.

“Whatever the chief of police says and does, his staff will do the same. Everything depends on him. The Taliban tortured me and it had a very bad effect on my mind,” he said.

“Once a week I talk to my staff about human rights and respecting the people. I tell them, ‘If you care about human rights, the people will co-operate because you will have left them with good memories. But if you torture them, they will never join you; they will join outsiders like the Taliban.’”

Last summer, the police in Ghazni beat Rahullah Amiri’s 22-year-old brother with their guns and some kind of cable.

“Two or three of his teeth were missing, his nose was broken and his back was as black as your coat,” said Rahullah.

“I can’t describe my feeling; it’s very hard. But let’s say at that time I hated the Karzai government and I decided to join the Taliban. When the Taliban were here everything was okay. At least when they arrested people, they had allegations against them. They were not arresting people without any reason. Now all the countries of the world are here -- the Americans are here, the UK is here -- how can this happen?

“Even now I don’t know why they beat him. The only thing I can think of is that it was because of our low culture and the culture of war. For three decades we have been at war.”

With the words flowing from him, he continued: “Please pass my voice, my words, onto your officials, your newspapers. Tell the world you are coming here, you are losing your young people [soldiers] in the fighting and it’s a waste because the government is nothing. Karzai has failed, everything has been lost. Five years have passed, there is no security here; there are a lot of explosions, a lot of suicide attacks.

“So what can the people do? My brother was beaten so I want to give up my life here, I want to sell my factory and leave this country because there is no security.

I am not a jihadi and that means I can’t get a high position in the government, so I want to leave the country. I want to tell the world Karzai has failed, it’s a waste of time.

“There is only one way for us now: leave the country or join the Taliban. I really feel like joining the Taliban and fighting the government.”

Mohammed Yahya

Yahya

dru — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:24:34 +0000

"Yes, soon the jihad will start. I will fight against the Taliban and the infidels, the foreigners. If your stomach is empty, of course you will do something and what we will do is fight," said Yahya, a local labourer. ©2006 Reproduction without permission prohibited.

Shia in Kabul Preparing for War

dru — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 05:18:22 +0000

Residents warn sectarian violence is just around the corner

This trash-strewn Kabul suburb is dotted with giant furnaces used for baking bricks. Yet not so long ago the smoke coming from these chimneys carried the stench of charred human flesh. People were cooked alive here in the 1990s simply because they belonged to the wrong ethnic group or fought for the wrong commander.

The men who murdered them are not the insurgents NATO-led forces have been struggling against. This is a Shiite neighbourhood and its residents are staunch opponents of the Taliban. But after five years of trying to eke out an honest living from Afghanistan’s shattered economy, they have had enough and are once again waiting for war.

"I will kill [foreign] civilians and not soldiers. There won't be any soldiers on the ground; they will all have disappeared and you will just see them in the sky in their planes. But I will kill civilians because they have stolen all our money. All the money that's been given to Afghanistan goes in their pockets.

"Of course I will kill you if you come back to see me when the jihad starts. That happens when there is fighting. I have seen men kill their own brothers."

Strip away all the NATO talk of winning hearts and minds and it becomes clear the nation is approaching meltdown.

As the insurgency grows stronger, so does the fear and anger among the Shiite Hazara community. Following a civil war in the early to mid 1990s, they faced a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing under the Sunni-extremist Taliban regime. They are not about to let that happen again.

Qurban Hussain told The Dominion that the arrival of international troops had helped save his people from further bloodshed. But he also claimed a new wave of internecine violence lies just around the corner.

"At first, the four per cent of Hazaras who are rich will leave the country. But the others will stay here and the Taliban will start killing and arresting them. Those people who have got small houses will then have to sell them to get their relatives released," he said.

The 32-year-old was speaking in what was once a notorious jail run by Shiites. Men from Afghanistan's two largest ethnic groups, the Pashtuns and the Tajiks, were frequently imprisoned, tortured and murdered between these walls.

"The next civil war will be twice as bad," said Hussain.

The building is now a warehouse and few signs of the horrors remain. One room still lies in ruins from a rocket attack and on a nearby door there is a child-like drawing of an obese man carrying a gun and a knife.

"The last civil war was horrible," said Khoda Dad Attay, as he sat beside Hussain. "Even if we were at home or at work the rockets were raining down and killing us."

He is now preparing for the next round of carnage.

"It's 100 per cent certain we will fight the Taliban. We will fight them to the best of our ability," he said.

Afghanistan's Shiites are found mainly among the Hazara, an ethnic group believed to have descended from Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes. Their heartland is in the province of Bamiyan, where they were massacred by the Taliban regime.

Haji Mehdawi, a former militia commander, said most of them had surrendered their weapons after the 2001 invasion. Now they want them back.

"We just want peace because we are hoping the government will build schools, will build hospitals, will improve our economic situation. But to be honest, nothing has been done," he told The Dominion.

"Many times I have met the Americans in Bagram, and I have met the Canadians. I have said, 'Give us guns and we will fight against the Taliban. If anything happens we will defend our tribes and families. Make us an army, give us guns and a salary, then we can defend our tribes and families.'

"We will fight against the Taliban, but we need the foreigners to give us guns. We believe that the foreigners are the water of life for us."

When asked why he did not enlist in the Afghan National Army (ANA), Mehdawi's response spoke volumes about the deep hatred that exists between the country's different ethnic groups.

"If you join the ANA you have to sign a contract. We want to do it as a community, so if someone has a problem they can leave. Our standards are different to theirs," he said.

"Most of our people believe if we join the ANA the Pashtuns will ask us to go to the front line, then from behind they will shoot us in the back."

Qurban Hussain

Yahya

Afghan MPs Predict "Very Big War"

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 08:43:50 +0000

Civilian deaths, corruption, occupying troops leading to "jihad" against foreigners, say leaders

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--As a former senior Taliban commander and associate of Osama bin Laden, Mullah Abdul Salaam Rocketi was a shining example of the warlords who seemed to be rejecting violence and embracing Afghanistan's new democracy.

But the MP for the southern province of Zabul now typifies the anger and despair raging through this blood-soaked country.

In a series of interviews with The Dominion, a number of Afghan politicians said a mass uprising against NATO-led forces will soon begin, driving out the foreign troops and igniting a civil war.

"When the Taliban came along, I gave everything to them because I wanted the country to improve and the people to be safe," said Rocketi. "Then when the current government came along, I gave everything to them because I thought they would make the country better. But I regret that.

"Everything is gone now, we have nothing. I regret it not because I am no longer with the Taliban, but because this government does not have the power to improve our country.

"It's getting worse and worse and worse. I don't have any hope. But whatever is happening now, the people can't complain. If they make a noise the local governor will say they are Taliban or Al-Qaeda and get them sent to Bagram."

Rocketi -- whose name derives from his famed ability with a Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher -- said pressure is building as his country slips backwards.

"I know, I am sure, that soon a very big war will start between the foreigners and the population," he explained.

The parliamentary elections of September 18, 2005, were hailed as a key event in Afghanistan's transition from a war-torn nation ruled by Islamic extremists to a peaceful and moderate democracy.

However, the Taliban-led insurgency has grown rapidly during the last year and MPs believe the rebellion is an accurate reflection of public anger.

While all militants are usually portrayed as isolated radicals, the reality is not so simple. Fierce anti-American and anti-NATO rhetoric can be heard almost everywhere in this country now. Even moderates who support the presence of foreign troops are predicting catastrophe.

With his well pressed suit and smart tie, Mohammad Hashem Watanwall, MP for the southern province of Uruzgan, would look perfectly at home in the House of Commons. But his vision of the future is bleak.

"When the current government came along I gave everything to them because I thought they would make the country better. But I regret that." -- Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, MP for Zabul. © 2006 Chris Sands

"There is a big fire under the earth. It's like a volcano and soon it will explode," he warned. "It will explode if everything continues like now; the corruption, the bad security, the bombing of civilians by coalition forces. Soon it will explode and people will stand up in the name of jihad and martyrdom if there are no big changes.

"Now in parliament the MPs are saying 'Forget about Pakistan and the Taliban; why are the foreigners here?'

"They are saying a thousand-headed dragon is here and it's the foreign armies. Just imagine, if the MPs are saying that in an official place, what will a simple person in a village be saying?"

He added: "Now in parliament they say if you kill a foreigner, a non-Muslim, and then you yourself are killed, you will become a martyr and go straight to paradise. They see no difference between the military or civilians."

The insurgency that overpowered Soviet troops and Kabul's puppet communist regime began with small rebel movements. It developed into a nationwide struggle during which Mujahideen battled against the Russians, local government forces and each other.

That occupation ended in 1989, but peace remained elusive and between 1992 and 1996, a brutal civil war raged between Afghanistan's different ethnic groups and political factions.

Watanwall predicted any new full-scale jihad would have the same result. "Of course some tribes will fight each other," he said. "They will say: you are Pashtun, I am Tajik; I am Tajik, you are Hazara; you are Shia, I am Pashtun. The civil war will start because of differences of skin, differences of language, differences of religion."

"Hazaras say they don't have enough positions in the government; Uzbeks say that, Tajiks say that, even Pashtuns say that and they have Karzai as President. Now it's ideological and with words, but soon it will turn to violence.

"I believe if the international forces and the government don't take any strong steps then soon it will start and it could get as bad as Iraq."

Ahmad Shah Khan Achekzai is MP for Kandahar, where Canadian troops are based. He joined Rocketi in demanding that Pashtuns -- the ethnic group from which the Taliban draw their core support -- be given more positions in government. He also launched into a tirade against the foreign troops.

"The population hates the government, hates the Americans and hates their friends because they are all liars," he said.

"Soon the jihad will start, that's right. The Americans and the coalition came to Afghanistan by way of the United Nations, but when they go into people's houses and search them, it's unacceptable. They are acting against Islam and they are attacking innocent people.

"There will be jihad, I am 100 per cent sure. It's against our culture, it's against Islam -- if they want to come to our houses, they need permission."

Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: "If the jihad starts, of course I will join it -- it's natural."

Afghanistan correspondent Chris Sands interviews Afghan MPs, and hears predictions of a "very big war" and jihad against foreign troops.

War, Warlords, War Crimes

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:50:11 +0000

Afghanistan in context

photo: Corporal Robin Mugridge, Canadian Forces Image Gallery

When war is waged, multiple factors are suddenly brought into play. An accurate understanding of the ensuing events requires broad, contextual information. Context, however, is frequently denied, obscured and misrepresented by political leaders and wartime media coverage. In this respect, Afghanistan has been no exception. The analysis that follows seeks to provide some of the historical basics essential for an accurate, critical examination of the war in Afghanistan today.

Afghanistan 1979-2001

On Dec. 22, 1979, Soviet forces began to enter Afghanistan. In the decade of war and occupation that followed, over 15,000 Soviet troops and one million mujahideen fighters and Afghan civilians were killed. Yet it was the Islamic fundamentalist mujahideen, backed with billions of dollars in arms and funding by the West, who would ultimately prevail. By 1992, three years after the final withdrawal of its Soviet backers, the government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan fell.

An arduous civil war began, fought between rival warlords of the former mujahideen. The civil war was brutal, and the warlords became known for their rapes, purges, summary executions and repression of women, among other crimes. These actions were condemned worldwide. By 1996, however, the tide had turned against the warlords as another fundamentalist group, the Taliban, began its rise to power, taking control of the national capital of Kabul.

The ruling warlords were so cruel and violent that most Afghans welcomed their defeat at the hands of the Taliban, who were credited with bringing some semblance of stability and security to Afghanistan, as well as improving the economy, which had been crippled by the widespread practice among warlords of demanding payoffs from businesses.

While warlords continued to control many parts of the country for some time, by 2001 most of Afghanistan was under Taliban rule. While the Taliban were swept into power amid widespread disgust with the vicious crimes of their predecessors, they too became known as repressive and brutal. In recent years, they became notorious in the West for their repression of women and authoritarian rule.

Afghanistan after 9/11

On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 hijackers (15 Saudi Arabians, two Emirati, one Egyptian and one Lebanese – no Afghans) carried out the infamous terrorist attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Following the attacks, focus turned to the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan. Amid calls for calm by victims' families and a mourning American public, government rumblings began about possible military attacks against Afghanistan. Aid agencies and the United Nations warned that the threat of bombing would put nearly 2.5 million Afghans at risk of starvation, but the US contended that military force might be necessary to capture those behind the 9/11 attacks.

At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that, "There is no alternative [to a military attack] unless the Taliban regime do what they have so far obviously failed to do and yield up bin Laden." Though largely ignored in the West, the Taliban had stated explicitly through their information minister, Qudrutullah Jamal, that "Anyone who is responsible for this act, Osama or not, we will not side with him." Speaking of bin Laden, they agreed to "give him up," on the condition that they be shown evidence of his involvement. The White House rejected this proposal out of hand, promising there would be "no negotiations, no discussions" with the Taliban.

In fact, there had previously been negotiations, well before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the Taliban offered to extradite bin Laden to a neutral third country. In addition, following 9/11, as Britain's Telegraph reported on Oct. 4, 2001, they offered to give up bin Laden to an international tribunal in Pakistan, even without being shown evidence.

With the offers to turn over perpetrators quietly dismissed, on Oct. 7, 2001, the American-led coalition began its assault on Afghanistan. The military forces of the US, Britain, Canada, and other countries co-ordinated with an Afghan group calling themselves the "Northern Alliance" to overthrow the Taliban.

Between 3,800 and 5,000 Afghan civilians were killed by the initial bombing campaign, and 20,000 to 50,000 eventually died as a result of the invasion (according to investigations by University of New Hampshire economist Marc Herold and British journalist Jonathan Steele). The country, particularly outside the capital of Kabul, transformed into the cauldron of violence and unrest it remains over four years later.

The Northern Alliance Warlords and Afghanistan today

The US-led coalition allied itself with the "Northern Alliance," and one might rightly wonder: who are they?

The answer to this question had been well known to the governments of the invading countries, but ordinary Afghans knew it even better. The Northern Alliance is comprised of the murderous warlords who were finally thrown out of power a few short years before the 2001 invasion. With US backing, they would come to play a disastrous role in shaping the course of events in post-war Afghanistan.

In December 2001, with the Taliban government defeated, an agreement was reached among Afghani exiles meeting in Bonn, Germany. Hamid Karzai, an Afghan returning from exile in the US, was installed to power and would soon be named interim president of Afghanistan.

Following the Bonn Agreement, Northern Alliance warlords were given prominent positions in the interim government, including in key departments such as defence, industry and agriculture.

The leading Afghani women's rights group, RAWA, which is unequivocally opposed to both the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, had expressed hope for reform under Karzai. However, they quickly became one of his administration's harshest critics, decrying its corruption and collusion with warlord extremists. While the interim government maintained relative stability in Kabul under the protection of multinational troops, the rest of the country fell squarely into the hands of the despised warlords.

To this day, the warlords wield prominent, even dominant influence in the US-backed Karzai government. Human Rights Watch observed that last December Karzai again directly appointed notorious human rights abusers to Afghanistan's upper parliamentary house, including former defence minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim. The group also concluded that an astounding 60 per cent of the deputies currently sitting in the lower house have been linked to human rights abuses.

photo: Sergeant Carole Morissette, Canadian Forces Image Gallery

Sadly, this reflects the reality of the human rights situation in Afghanistan today. Approximately 600 children under the age of five die every day in Afghanistan, according to UNICEF, "mostly due to preventable illnesses." While women technically have more rights than before, they are not able to exercise them due to lack of security. Afghans are regularly detained arbitrarily, tortured, and denied due process rights.

Infrastructure is in ruins and rebuilding efforts are made difficult by lack of funding and rampant corruption. Much of what is spent is wasted as contracts go to foreign firms whose bids are, in many cases, 10 times more expensive than their Afghan counterparts. Organizations inside and outside of Afghanistan cite insecurity as the top human rights issue in the country.

Who is responsible for all this insecurity? Groups like RAWA, all the major human rights organizations, and even Hamid Karzai agree that the US-backed warlords are a greater threat to security in Afghanistan than the Taliban.

US Operations in Afghanistan

Throughout its occupation of Afghanistan, under the auspices of Operation Enduring Freedom, in its quest to hunt down Taliban and Al Qaeda members, the US has continued to collaborate closely with the Northern Alliance warlords.

Over the repeated objections of groups like the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, RAWA, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, the US-led military forces have undermined the rule of law in Afghanistan by backing the criminal warlords, arbitrarily detaining and denying due process rights to Afghans, and using "excessive force . . . in residential areas." Amnesty condemns what it calls "grave human rights violations" by US and coalition forces, including "killing of civilians and torture of prisoners."

This kind of conduct has "generated tremendous resentment against the international community" and "made a mockery of respect for justice," in the words of Human Rights Watch. Most critically, it is driving the crippling state of insecurity in Afghanistan.

Canada's role

In recent months, Canada has endorsed and contributed to this counterproductive, ostensibly "counterterrorist" role in Afghanistan by joining Operation Enduring Freedom. The Martin government made the plans to scale down our peacekeeping role in Kabul and join the US-led combat operations. These plans came to a head in February under the new Harper government when 2,200 Canadian troops began to arrive in Kandahar, ready to hunt down and "destroy" pockets of Taliban loyalists in the region.

The Canadian government is certainly aware that this type of mission is doing more harm than good, if they are listening at all to those they claim to be helping. The reality is not unknown to Canadian officials. In an astonishing display of self-contradiction, Major General Andrew Leslie – describing why Canada must be in Afghanistan for at least 20 years – explained that "Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you."

Still, Canadians are told this is what we must do. While Canadian troops are abroad, we must stop questioning our leaders, whose noble aims ordinary citizens cannot fully comprehend. While our troops are in danger, we should "roll up our sleeves" and prepare ourselves for the "inevitable" deaths we must endure on the march for freedom.

Short-term solutions

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has developed extensive action plans and recommendations on transitional justice, women's rights, children's rights, human rights monitoring, and education. Supporting their work is a potential starting point for making a positive impact in Afghanistan.

Human rights groups have stressed the need for security in Afghanistan if the country is to be reconstructed. However, the kind of security assistance they've called for is peacekeeping, not "counterinsurgency" operations, which engender "tremendous resentment" and create scores of "angry young men." According to rights groups and many other observers, what Afghanistan needs from the outside world right now is what Afghani and international rights groups have been calling for all along: an end to support for criminal warlords, an end to torture and other abuses, respect for basic due process rights and the rule of law, support for existing domestic peace initiatives, and the commitment of a sufficient, neutral international peacekeeping force. (Troops from countries that have invaded Afghanistan should be excluded, of course, and if there is any justice, costs would be covered by reparations from those governments.)

Most of these short-term solutions involve no active effort of "aid"; they simply require the US, Canada, and their allies to stop doing harm.

Their own society on their own terms

Afghanistan's woes didn't appear out of thin air. Nor did they begin with the rise of the Taliban, nor even with the rise of the mujahideen warlords. Afghanistan has suffered a long history of foreign aggression and interference by Britain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States (with Canada's help) – interventions rooted in geopolitical manoeuvring and strategic interests more than in any concern for the long-term well being of the Afghani people.

Over 40 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 2131, declaring, "Armed intervention is synonymous with aggression." Article Six of the Resolution affirms "the right of self-determination and independence of peoples and nations, to be freely exercised without any foreign pressure, and with absolute respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms."

Like every nation, the people of Afghanistan are entitled to self-determination and freedom from aggression – the right to develop their own society on their terms.

Alex Hemingway asks why Canada has allied itself with warlords in Afghanistan and provides some context to the current conflict.

Canada's Debt to Afghanistan

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:35:53 +0000

Canadians needs to "undo the damage": visiting activist

Kolhatkar in Montreal. photo: Ehab Lotayef

MONTREAL--In the midst of a public debate about Canadian troops in Afghanistan, a Montreal audience heard a stark message about what the majority of Afghani people want, but aren't getting from occupying forces: disarmament, justice and reparations.

Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the US-based Afghan Women's Mission, and radio host on Los Angeles' KPFK Pacifica Radio, was the messenger.

"Afghanistan," Kolhatkar told a crowd at Montreal's Sala Rosa, "is a broken country," that has "endured decades of continuous war." Much of that war, said Kolhatkar, was funded by "billions and billions of dollars" from the US, which trained, funded and armed the fundamentalist Mujahideen to fight against Soviet forces. After the Soviets left, the well-equipped warlords fought amongst each other, brutalizing populations with killings, rape and oppression of women. This violence was simply "formalized" by the Taliban when they seized power in 1996 with promises of a reprieve from war and corruption, said Kolhatkar. While the autocratic Islamist regime provided some stability, it also systematized the oppression of women in Afghanistan.

"The rapes of Afghan women, the forced marriages, all of that started under [what is today known as] the Northern Alliance.

"The Taliban institutionalized into law, in a more organized fashion what the Northern Alliance and the Mujahideen had already begun. What the Taliban did was the same, but with less killing. [The two] are ideological twins," said Kolhatkar.

The Northern Alliance, of course, was a key ally in the US-led 2002 invasion of Afghanistan, receiving additional millions in arms and financing from the US government.

Today, Kolhatkar told The Dominion, many of the feared warlords occupy high offices in Afghanistan's government and benefit from US and Canadian aid.

What nearly all Afghans agree on, said Kolhatkar, is that democracy and security cannot be achieved without disarmament; "Survey after survey shows that they want disarmament.

"This is something people brought up over and over again [during Kolhatkar's recent visit]. 'We want pens not guns, pens not guns.'"

There is a UN program, known as Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR), but Kolhatkar says it is "very underfunded, very selective and not at all comprehensive."

"People want absolute and complete disarmament," she said.

The International Crisis Group, a research NGO, reported in February that

the central government and its international supporters have, to some extent, been complicit in the maintenance of power by militia commanders. The US-led coalition has relied on militia commanders in its military operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, empowering its local allies militarily and economically and helping them to resist central government control.

Kolhatkar proposed that the US and its allies need to reverse this policy. However, she insists that disarmament is only the first step towards reconstruction.

"Many people identify as victims of war crimes and they want some sort of war crimes tribunal," said Kolhatkar. "Not," she added, "of the kind that the US has carried out in the former Yugoslavia or in Iraq, but something that is led by Afghans, that is created by Afghans, but that simply needs some sort of foreign support.

"If you have justice and take these men to court, you might also have to indict [US presidents] Carter and Reagan and the men who supported these warlords.

"[A war crimes tribunal] is something that Canada, the UN and NATO could at least support," she added.

Kolhatkar also criticized one-sided North American media coverage of Afghanistan, saying that few journalists venture outside of Kabul, where the country's minimal wealth is heavily concentrated and where warlords are not in control. She also cited the little-heard-of case of Malalai Joya, an Afghan woman, who interrupted the loya jirga (a constitutional forum) to point out the Mujahideen warlords in attendance and their responsibility for the civil war that destroyed what was left of Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. For this, and subsequent acts of bravery, she has been the victim of four assassination attempts and countless demeaning insults and death threats, but she has also received enormous grassroots support. Now a member of parliament, she often says she does not expect to live out the year. The Canadian- and US-backed Karzai administration removed funding to her security detail in March, but the North American press ignored her story in favour of a man sentenced to death for converting to Christianity, said Kolhatkar.

What can be done?

"This is a crucial moment for Canadians to be questioning the war, but I don't think it's as simple as 'troops out now,'" said Kolhatkar. Most Afghans, she said, believe that if troops leave, the result will be deadly: "The warlords that we armed will plunge the country into another war and tear the country apart, piece by piece."

However, Kolhatkar believes that the conflicting messages coming from Canadian commanders—alternately, "our job is to kill people" and "winning hearts and minds"--are damaging, and their actions are making things worse. Military "Provincial Reconstruction Teams" (PRTs), she said, are an extremely ineffective and expensive way to rebuild infrastructure. Additionally, Kolhatkar said the existence of PRTs has made all aid workers potential targets for Taliban attacks, as they are no longer distinguishable from the military. She cites the case of M_decins Sans Fronti_res (MSF), which pulled out of Afghanistan after maintaining a constant presence for over two decades and three wars. MSF said that the situation is now too dangerous for its workers.

The fact that US-funded warlords are as powerful as ever "does not justify our war fighting, or really even our presence, but the damage has been done."

"Canadians need to call for an undoing of the damage," she said.

In addition to disarmament and justice for warlords and criminals, Kolhatkar said that the US, Canada and their allies must pay reparations to the people of Afghanistan.

"We need to pour just as many billions of dollars into rebuilding the country as we put into destroying it." Kolhatkar said that Afghans need "no-strings-attached reparations, not loans."

In Afghanistan, Canada's annual military budget is roughly four times as large as its aid budget.

The aid money that is being spent in Afghanistan either "goes into the warlords' pockets, because they're the ones in charge," or it goes to expensive and often misguided Western firms or NGOs.

Kolhatkar cited one instance where a foreign NGO used aid money to dig 100 wells in the Farah province. The only problem: "within a year, the wells dried up." The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a group that Kolhatkar works closely with, later went in to speak to farmers, who had begun fighting over scarce water resources. They realized that the best solution was to build a canal that would divert the water equitably through all of the villages.

"They built a canal with funds from donors in the US, through the Afghan Women's Mission," said Kolhatkar. "I visited that canal last year, and now the area is getting enough water to irrigate farms that feed 35,000 people.

"Ultimately, the Afghan people know best how to rebuild their country. They don't need our expertise, they don't need our advice, but they need money.

"It's really crucial for us to figure out how we can best support grassroots organizations in Afghanistan that are doing the hard work of rebuilding."

According to Kolhatkar, there are hundreds of groups, experts and local councils that are struggling to build schools and hospitals, provide education (especially to women), resist warlords and find alternative work for farmers who are forced to grow opium poppy to feed their families.

For now, she said, the situation remains grave for the majority of Afghans who live outside of Kabul, with literacy rates between four and 10 per cent, debilitating poverty, insecurity, rule by feuding warlords and war-ravaged infrastructure.

"There is a sense that the war is over, that we just need to mop up the insurgents and that women are liberated and on their way to freedom.

"Because media coverage has gone down, donations have literally plummeted and groups have been forced to close down schools, orphanages and literacy projects," she said.

The solution, Kolhatkar told a few hundred Montrealers, is not for Canada to withdraw, but to begin to take responsibility for its actions and rebuild the country that has suffered so much at the hands of foreign powers.

Afghan Women's Mission co-director Sonali Kolhatkar says that Canadians need to begin "undoing the damage" in Afghanistan

Historic Peace Deal in Sudan

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 06:10:33 +0000

Africa's longest running civil war - extending back 21 years with 2 million dead and 4 million displaced - ended on Sunday following a comprehensive peace agreement reached in Nairobi when southern rebel leader John Garang and First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha signed a peace accord two years in the making.

Included in the accord is an agreement to grant the South its own regional government, the sharing of oil revenues, and military integration. Also included is the right of the South to vote for secession at the end of a six-year interim period. To the dismay of many, however, senior members of the Sudanese government will not be held accountable for human rights abuses committed in the rebel-held areas.

US interest in the conflict has been high as Sudan is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. The South is also home to significant oil reserves that bring the Sudanese government $4 billion each year. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, following the signing of the agreement said, "What was spent on fighting will now be spent on health, education and other services."

Along with the 4 million people displaced internally within the Sudan, observers expect that more than half a million refugees in neighbouring countries will return to their homes. The resettlement effort will require significant resources and coordination, and it is hoped that it will take place gradually.

Diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government will remain strong as the civil war in the western Darfur region continues unabated with more than 1.6 million Darfuris displaced and an estimated 70,000 killed since last March. While it is hoped that the North-South deal may prove to be a model for Darfur, warnings of escalating violence from both the UN and US Secretary of State Colin Powell cast a shadow over the Sudanese government's statements of goodwill. Observers remain hesitant even about Sunday's agreement, warning that implementing the agreement peacefully will take a great deal of negotiation and a policy turnaround on the part of the Khartoum government.

» Reuters: Sudan, southern rebels end 21-year war

» BBC: UN warning over Darfur violence

» The Guardian: No justice for Sudan

» Reuters: Powell says genocidal acts continuing in Darfur

» Christian Science Monitor: Day for peace in a splintered Sudan