|
|
|
- Starving to Death,
- Waiting to be Killed
- The U.S. War on the Afghan
People
- by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
-
-
I. Collective Punishment
In response
to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC on 11th
September 2001, the United States has led an international coalition in
initiating a bombing campaign on Afghanistan. The campaign is purportedly
part of a new “war on terror”, an attempt to root out the individuals
suspected of having masterminded and arranged the attacks on U.S. soil, and
moreover to abolish the regime that harbours them.
But the
U.S. response illustrates that this supposed “war on terrorism” is itself
guilty of the same category of politically-motivated atrocities that amounts
to terrorism, making a mockery of the idea that the U.S. has genuinely
humanitarian motives. Indeed, the official FBI definition of terrorism
states that: “Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against
persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian
population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social
objectives.”
U.S. and
British political leaders have promised their public that the bombing of
Afghanistan does not target the country’s civilian population. U.S. House
minority leader Dick Gerphardt, for instance, has insisted that: “[T]his is
not a strike against the people of Afghanistan.” But such assurances appear
to be contrary to fact. The West’s strategy of targeting civilians to
achieve regional socio-political objectives in Afghanistan – a strategy
falling directly under the FBI definition of terrorism – was perhaps most
explicitly outlined in a statement by the Chief of British Defence Staff,
Admiral Michael Boyce. Referring to the ongoing bombing campaign, he stated:
“The squeeze will carry on until the people of the
country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get the
leadership changed.” [1]
Anglo-American
strategy thus includes the punishment of Afghan civilians as an integral
objective, designed to secure the final aim of toppling the Taliban
regime. In this context, the mass destruction of civilian structures and
lives that has accompanied the bombing campaign can be understood as part
of a deliberate strategy of collective punishment against the Afghan
people. That the current U.S.-led war is itself an act of terrorism thus
clarifies the duplicity of the concept of a “war on terrorism”, and calls
into question the motives of the Western powers.
II. Starving Out the Children
The
New York Times reported around mid-September that: “Washington
has also demanded [from Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies,... and
the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and
other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population.” [2]
By the end of that month, America’s ‘newspaper of record’ reported
that officials in Pakistan “said today that they would not relent in
their decision to seal off the country’s 1,400-mile border with
Afghanistan, a move requested by the Bush administration because.”[3]
The U.S.,
in other words, effectively called for the mass slaughter of millions of
Afghans, most of them already on the brink of starvation thanks to
sanctions imposed under U.S. pressure, by severing the country’s last few
sources of limited sustenance. As a consequence, about 7-8 million Afghans
are now at risk of imminent starvation according to UN estimates. The
New York Times noted, for instance, that nearly 6 million people
depend on food aid from the UN. Another 3.5 million in refugee camps
outside the country, many of whom fled just before the borders were
sealed, also face imminent starvation. [4]
Additionally, almost all aid missions withdrew or were expelled from
Afghanistan in anticipation of the coming bombing campaign, while several
million innocent Afghans fearfully fled to the borders creating a massive
refugee crisis. With the borders of surrounding countries sealed for
several weeks under U.S. pressure, the refugees were trapped, deprived of
sustenance and largely destined to die with international community barely
even batting an eyelid. Indian journalist Arundhati Roy commented aptly on
what was at first dubbed Operation Infinite Justice, now euphemistically
re-titled Operation Enduring Freedom: “Witness the infinite justice of the
new century. Civilians starving to death while they’re waiting to be
killed.”[5]
The U.S.
attempt to absolve itself of responsibility for this predictable
humanitarian catastrophe has involved the crude public relations exercise of
dropping food aid into the country. But this belated response to a genocidal
crisis of its own making has been condemned almost universally by
international aid agencies. Leading British aid agencies have described the
U.S. food drops as “virtually useless” as an effective aid strategy. [6]
Thomas Gonnet, head of operations in Afghanistan for the French aid agency
Action Against Hunger, observed that: “It’s an act of marketing, aimed more
at public opinion than saving lives.”[7]
The international medical aid agency, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins
Sans Frontières [MSF]), which has worked in Afghanistan since 1979,
condemned the food air drops as “a purely propaganda tool, of real little
value to the Afghan people.” The agency stated that: “Such action does not
answer the needs of the Afghan people and is likely to undermine attempts to
deliver substantial aid to the most vulnerable.” Dr. Jean-Herve Bradol of
MSF elaborated that the real impact of the food drops will be “minimal”:
“How will the Afghan population know in the future if an
offer of humanitarian aid does not hide a military operation? We have seen
many times before, for example in Somalia, the problems caused for both the
vulnerable population and for aid agencies when the military try to both
fight a war and deliver aid at the same time. What is needed is large scale
convoys of basic foodstuffs, rather than single meals designed for soldiers.
Until yesterday the UN and aid agencies such as ourselves were still able to
get some food convoys into Afghanistan. Due to the airstrikes the UN have
stopped all convoys, and we will find delivering aid also much more
difficult. Medical relief is not the same as dropping medicines by plane.
Unless they are administered by qualified medical staff, medicines can
actually do more harm than good. Dropping a few cases of drugs and food in
the middle of the night during air raids, without knowing who is going to
collect them, is virtually useless and may even be dangerous.”
The military
operation can therefore not be honestly cast in any sort of genuinely
humanitarian light. MSF “rejects
the idea of a humanitarian coalition alongside the
military coalition.”
[8]
Recognising the Holocaust-like
proportions of the impending disaster in Afghanistan as a result of the
international blockade, a United Nations special investigator called for
an end to the bombing in mid-October. Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur on
the Right to Food to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated
that:
“The bombing has to stop right
now. There is a humanitarian emergency. In winter the lorries cannot go in
any more. Millions of Afghans will be unreachable in winter and winter is
coming very, very soon. We must give the (humanitarian) organisations a
chance to save the millions of people who are internally displaced (inside
Afghanistan).”
Unless the bombing campaign is
ended, he urged, aid will not get through, and up to 7 million Afghan lives
will be at risk from imminent starvation. [9]
III. A War on Terror?
Although the U.S.
has attempted to emphasise that it is not deliberately targeting civilians
in Afghanistan, there thus remains little reason to take such attempts
seriously. Middle East expert Stephen Zunes, Associate Professor of Politics
at the University of San Francisco and senior policy analyst at the Foreign
Policy in Focus Project, points out that:
“The use of heavy bombers against a country with few hard
targets raises serious doubts about the Bush Administration’s claim that the
attacks are not against the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban has allowed
Bin Laden and his followers sanctuary, but there is little evidence that
they have provided the kind of direct financial or military support that can
be crippled through air strikes.” [10]
The deliberate
targeting of civilians in the recent military intervention in Kosovo
only adds weight to this view. For instance, in April 1999, the
Washington Times reported that NATO planned to hit “power
generation plants and water systems, taking the war directly to
civilians.” [11]
The New York Times similarly reported that: “[T]he destruction
of the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia has become part of the
strategy to end the war on Kosovo... We are bringing down terror on
the Serbian people”.[12]
Analysing the sequence of events in the bombing of Afghanistan
confirms that similar policies of terrorism are being employed by
Anglo-American forces.
The first notable
incident was the killing of four civilians – and the injuring of another
four - when the offices of a United Nations agency, the Afghan Technical
Consultants (ATC) in Kabul, were bombed on 9 October 2001. The ATC oversees
mine clearing operations in the country. [13]
While the Pentagon claimed that the ATC was near a military radio
tower, UN officials contradicted the U.S. pretext, pointing out that the
tower was a defunct medium and short wave radio station that had been
abandoned and out of use for over a decade. Prior to the bombing of, the ATC
had passed on its address to more senior UN officials to notify the U.S.
military of the site so that it would be not be bombed.[14]
The second
occurrence was confirmed by a large number of independent witnesses. In the
northern village of Karam, an estimated 100-200 civilians - mostly women,
children, and old people - were killed when bombers made repeated passes
over the site during early evening prayers, flattening the entire village.
The Pentagon claimed that Karam had been training camp for Osama Bin Laden’s
terrorist network, Al-Qaeda. In fact, the site was used solely to train
mujahideen during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, with CIA support. The
camp had been run by Sadiq Bacha to train members of the Hezb-i-Islami
faction. The base has never been used by Al-Qaeda, and was closed and
abandoned in 1992, long before Bin Laden moved to Afghanistan. Since the
1990s, Karam has been inhabited by families living in mud and rock houses,
and nomads during the winter. [15]
The bombing of
buildings owned by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
first on 16 October 2001 and again on the 26th, provides
further evidence of the systematic targeting of civilian structures in
the Anglo-American air raids. The ICRC reported that “two bombs were
dropped on an ICRC compound in Kabul, wounding one of the
organization's employees who was guarding the facility…
“The compound is located two
kilometres from the city’s airport. Like all other ICRC facilities in the
country, it is clearly distinguishable from the air by the large red cross
painted against a white background on the roof of each building. One of the
five buildings in the compound suffered a direct hit. It contained blankets,
tarpaulins and plastic sheeting and is reported to be completely destroyed.
A second building, containing food supplies, caught fire and was partially
destroyed before the fire was brought under control.” [16]
Only ten days
later, clearly visible Red Cross buildings were again destroyed by
U.S. bombs in the very same compound. The ICRC reported that “bombs
have once again been dropped on its warehouses in Kabul. A large (3X3
m) red cross on a white background was clearly displayed on the roof
of each building in the complex…
“At about 11.30 a.m. local time,
ICRC staff saw a large, slow-flying aircraft drop two bombs on the compound
from low altitude. This is the same compound in which a building was
destroyed in similar circumstances on 16 October. In this latest incident,
three of the remaining four buildings caught fire. Two are said to have
suffered direct hits. Following the incident on 16 October, the ICRC
informed the United States authorities once again of the location of its
facilities. The buildings contained the bulk of the food and blankets that
the ICRC was in the process of distributing to some 55,000 disabled and
other particularly vulnerable persons. The US authorities had also been
notified of the distribution and the movement of vehicles and gathering of
people at distribution points.” [17]
The Red Cross
incidents in themselves clarify the United States’ flagrant lack of
concern for civilian life in relation to the bombing campaign, and
illustrate the Western powers’ insistence on punishing the Afghan
people as an integral part of their military strategy.
A lucid breakdown of
the systematic targeting of civilians since then in the month of October has
been recorded by American journalist and peace activist Geov Parrish, based
on refugee testimony and reports from Western and Pakistani journalists:
·
In Jalalabad, the Sultanpur Mosque was hit by a
bomb during prayers, with 17 people caught inside. Neighbors rushed
into the rubble to help pull out the injured, but as the rescue effort
got under way, another bomb fell, killing at least 120 people.
·
In the village of Darunta near Jalalabad, a U.S.
bomb fell on another mosque. Two people were killed and
dozens--perhaps as many as 150 people - were injured. Many of those
injured are languishing without medical care in the Sehat-e-Ama
hospital in Jalabad, which lacks resources to treat the wounded.
·
More civilian deaths are being reported in the
villages of Torghar and Farmada, north and west of Jalalabad. At least
28 civilians had died in Farmada, which has an abandoned Al-Qaeda
training camp nearby.
·
In Argandab, north of Kandahar, 10 civilians have
died from the bombing and several houses have been destroyed. The same
has happened in Karaga, north of Kabul.
·
A five-year-old child was killed while sleeping in
his family’s home outside Kandahar when two bombs fell on a munitions
storage area half a mile away. The explosion threw shells and rockets
in all directions and one of those shells smashed through the
mud-brick wall of his bedroom, slicing open young Taj Muhammed’s
abdomen and burning his six-year-old sister, Kambibi. Taj suffered for
12 hours at a nearby hospital before he died.
·
On Oct. 7, the first night of the bombing, at least
one private residence in Kabul suffered a direct hit and others were
damaged. The U.S. also destroyed the Hotel Continental in the city's
center. On the same night, bombs were dropped on the houses of Taliban
leaders in Kandahar. Two civilian relatives of Mullah Muhammad Omar
were killed: his aged stepfather and his 10-year-old son.
·
On Oct. 8, the second night of the bombing, three
missiles were aimed at the airport in Jalalabad, but only one hit the
target. The other two went astray and exploded nearby, killing one
civilian, and injuring a second so severely that he was driven to a
hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, to have shrapnel removed from a deep
wound in his neck and his spinal injuries treated. He’s not expected
to survive. A third 16-year-old boy injured in the same attack was
also taken to a hospital in Peshawar; he lost his leg and two fingers,
and he says that many more people were injured and may have died in
the same incident.
·
On Oct. 11, a bomb aimed at the Kabul airport went
astray and hit Qala-e-Chaman, a village one mile away, destroying
several houses and killing a 12-year-old child. On the same night,
another missile hit a house near the Kabul customs building, killing
10 civilians.
·
As of Oct. 12, the U.N. had independently reported
at least 20 civilian deaths in Mazar-i-Sharif and 10 civilian deaths
in Kandahar.
·
On Oct. 13, Khushkam Bhat, a residential district
between Jalalabad airport and a nearby military area, was accidentally
bombed by U.S. planes trying to down a Taliban helicopter. More than
100 houses were flattened. At least 160 people were pulled from the
rubble and taken to hospitals. In Kabul, witnesses described a huge
fireball over the Kabul airport, indicating either the possible use of
fuel-air bombs, which can cause destruction over a wide area, or the
bombing of an enormous fuel storage faclity which can have the same
effect. Casualties are not yet known.
·
On Oct. 16, two bombs fell on two Red Cross
warehouses in the center of Kabul. The warehouses, bombed in full
daylight, were clearly marked with red crosses on their roofs. U.S.
spokesmen claim that the warehouses were hit because there were
military vehicles parked nearby. They were Red Cross transport trucks.
·
On Oct. 17, a bomb scored a ‘direct hit’ on a boy’s
school in Kabul, but fortunately didn't explode. A U.S. plane,
however, dropped a bomb at Mudad Chowk, a residential area of Kandahar,
which did explode, destroying two houses and several shops, and
killing at least seven people. In Kabul, four bombs fell near the city
center; casualties are still unknown.
·
On Oct. 18, a bomb killed four members of a family
in the eastern suburb of Qalaye Zaman Khan when it demolished two
homes. A half mile away, another bomb exploded in a housing complex,
killing a 16-year-old girl. The U.N. reported that Kandahar had fallen
into a state of ‘pre-Taliban lawlessness’, with gangs taking over
homes and looting shops. By the next day, according to the U.N., at
least 80 percent of Kandahar’s residents had left the city to escape
the bombing. They are swamping the surrounding villages, where there
are no resources to care for them. Some have moved on to the border
and crossed into Pakistan. One refugee said that there are bodies
littering the streets of Kandahar and people are dying in the
hospitals for lack of drugs. ‘We know we will lead a miserable life in
Pakistan, in tents,’ he said. ‘We have come here just to save our
children.’
·
The civilian death toll is probably in the
thousands, and sure to rise with two new developments. U.S. Air Force
pilots may now fire ‘at will’ - at anything they desire, without
pre-authorization from strategists peering at satellite and
surveillance photos. In fact, there are now regions of the country
that have been designated ‘kill boxes’, reminiscent of Vietnam’s
‘free-fire zones’ but without benefit of advance warning to Afghanis.
Kill boxes are patrolled night and day by low-flying aircraft with the
mission to shoot anything that moves within the area. [18]
The
testimony of Afghan refugees further demonstrates that the bombing
campaign is virtually targeting the entire civilian population. On 22
October, Reuters reported that: “Afghan refugees fleeing U.S. air
raids said Saturday the strikes destroyed shopping bazaars in the
heart of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, killing and injuring
shoppers and other civilians. The bombs hit the southern city Thursday
and Friday, spearing shoppers with shards of shrapnel in attacks
apparently targeting government buildings.”
Mohammed
Ghaus, who crossed into Pakistan with his wife and five children,
stated that: “On Thursday night around 10 p.m. and yesterday at 2 p.m.
and again last night, there was heavy bombing. The bazaar around the
Keptan intersection in the city enter was flattened.My neighbor’s
house was destroyed. That’s why we left.” Reuters added that: “There
were civilian casualties, he said, but he did not know how many. Other
new arrivals, streaming across the Chaman checkpoint in their hundreds
Saturday, told similar stories.” [19]
Testimonials from many other
refugees confirm the indiscriminate nature of the bombing campaign. The
Institute for Health and Social Justice has compiled a sample of such
testimony based on reports in the Boston Globe and New York Times:
Rais Mazloomyar Jabirkhail: “They
are not God. They want to pinpoint every target, but they can’t make every
missile go after Osama and terrorist training camps.” Clarifying that he is
not a supporter of Osama Bin Laden, he asked why, on the pretext of
targeting Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, the U.S. “is destroying our whole
country.”
Mohammad Akram: “They should find Osama bin Laden and
attack only him. Why did they attack all of Afghanistan? We are just poor
people in Afghanistan.”
Mohammad Zahir: “Everyone wants to eliminate terrorism
from the face of the earth, but the way adopted by the U.S. is not fair
because masses of ordinary people also live in Afghanistan. The attack was
not just on terrorist camps... I know those are residential areas.”
Abdul Malik described the “great panic among the people”
in his village: “[T]hey are running toward hilly areas away from cities...
We were telling the women and children that everything will be OK, we will
be safe [in the hills], we will pray to God.”
Naseebullah Khan: “It’s not true that the Americans have
only been bombing military targets. Many of the bombs are dropping on
residential neighborhoods.” [20]
The “war on terror” is thus
utilizing mass terrorism to achieve its alleged objectives. There is thus
nothing humanitarian or moral about this war, which in fact is clearly not a
war on terror, but a war on America’s enemies, conducted to secure strategic
interests with a completely racist disregard for the lives of Afghans. As
has thus been noted in London’s Independent by British Middle East
correspondent, Robert Fisk, “as the Afghan refugees turn up in their
thousands at the border, it is palpably evident that they are fleeing not
the Taliban but our bombs and missiles…
“The Taliban is not ethnically
cleansing its own Pashtun population. The refugees speak vividly of their
fear and terror as our bombs fall on their cities. These people are
terrified of our ‘war on terror’, victims as innocent as those who were
slaughtered in the World Trade Centre on 11 September. So where do we stop?…
The figure of 6,000 remains as awesome as it did in the days that followed.
But what happens when the deaths for which we are responsible begin
to approach the same figure?… Once the UN agencies give us details of the
starving and the destitute who are dying in their flight from our bombs, it
won’t take long to reach 6,000. Will that be enough? Will 12,000 dead
Afghans appease us, albeit that they have nothing to do with the Taliban or
Osama bin Laden? Or 24,000? If we think we know what our aims are in this
fraudulent ‘war against terror’, have we any idea of proportion?… This
particular war is… not going to lead to justice. Or freedom. It’s likely to
culminate in deaths that will diminish in magnitude even the crime against
humanity on 11 September.” [21]
Notes:
[1]
Cited in Weisbrot, Mark, ‘A War Against Civilians?’, Knight
Ridder/Tribune, 2 November 2001. Weisbrot is Co-Director of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC.
[2] New York
Times, 12 September 2001.
[3] New York
Times, 27 September 2001.
[4] New York
Times, 25 September 2001.
[5] The
Guardian, 29 September 2001.
[6] Steele,
Johnathan and Lawrence, Felicity, ‘Main aid agencies rejecte U.S. air
drops’, The Guardian, 8 October 2001.
[7] Cited in
Tyler, Patrick E., ‘4 UN Workers Killed in Initial Strike on Afghanistan’,
New York Times, 9 October 2001.
[8] MSF Press
Release, ‘MSF rejects link of humanitarian and military actions’, Médecins
Sans Frontières, 8 October 2001.
[9] Zhumatov,
Shamil, ‘UN investigator condemns bombing of Afghanistan’, Reuters, 15
October 2001.
[10]
IPA Press Release, ‘As Bombing Proceeds: Now What?’, op. cit.
[11]
Washington Times, 25 April 1999
[12]
New York Times, 9 April 1999
[13]
Tyler, Patrick E., ‘4 UN Workers Killed in Initial Strike on Afghanistan’,
op. cit.
[16]
ICRC Press Release, ‘ICRC warehouses bombed in Kabul’, International
Committee of the Red Cross, 16 October 2001.
[17]
ICRC Press Release, ‘Bombing and occupation of ICRC facilities in
Afghanistan’, International Committee of the Red Cross, 26 October 2001.
[18]
Parrish, Geov, ‘Where are the bodies?’, op. cit.
[19]
Reuters, ‘Refugees Say U.S. Planes Destroyed Kandahar Bazaars’, 22 October
2001.
[20]
Chien, A. J., ‘The Civilian Toll’, Institute for Health and Social
Justice, 11 October 2001.
[21]
Fisk, Robert, ‘As the refugees crowd the borders, we’ll be blaming someone
else,’ The Independent, 23 October 2001.
Mr. Nafeez Ahmed is a
political analyst and human rights activist based in London. He is
Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and a
Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights
Commission.
Source:
by courtesy & ©
200 1
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
by the same author:
|
|
|
