WHERE THE
WEST GOES,
MASSACRE AND MISERY OFTEN FOLLOW
[MER - Washington - 9/6]
History is full of examples of what happens all too often after Western "intervention" in the Third
World. Just a few examples can make the point.
After World War II the British "departed" from both the
Holy Land and the sub-continent leaving a legacy of chaos, divisions, suspicions, that
resulted in tremendous human misery and carnage. The India/Pakistan nuclear arms race, and
the Kashmir conflict of today, are today's legacies.
During the Vietnam conflict the Americans destabilized and bombed
Cambodia. Just a few years later the "killing fields" resulted, a new Holocaust
in the "never again" post-Holcaust world. And then just a few years ago the
American Secretary of Defense of that time, Robert McNamara, told us it was all a
"terrible mistake" and he was "so sorry" that 50,000+ Americans had
been killed. Little mention of the millions of Vietnamese, Laotions, and Cambodians.
Now Afghanistan. The Americans, with their allies in Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan, used the people of Afghanistan as cannon fodder in a proxy war to weaken the
Soviet Empire. Then after giving birth the Americans abandoned the baby leaving the waring
factions heavily armed and at each other's throats.
And let's not forget of course the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Iranians,
the Lebanese, and of course the Palestinians -- all victims of Western intrique who have
been sold out and manipulated at various times as the West, led by the Americans working
in concert with various "client regimes" at various times, pursued its empirial
and capalistic excesses.
Plus of course, let's also not forget, the greatest arms salesman of
them all is the United States of America, followed by Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Israel. Not to mention that the American economy floats on a sea of cheap oil and recycled
petrodollars, all compliments of the royal families and dictators it maintains in power
against the democratic aspirations of the captive peoples.
So, put this important and insightful article by Robert Fisk, Middle
East correspondent of The Independent about current-day developments in Afghanistan and
Iran, into this larger context if you will.
THOUSANDS
MASSACRED BY TALIBAN
By Robert Fisk,
Middle East Correspondent
The Independent
"In Tehran, the authorities have made a
'strategic decision'...that the 'black Taliban' will never be allowed to rule Afghanistan
alone. Iran seeks a coalition government in Kabul after ceasefire talks involving all of
Afghanistan's neighbours, including Pakistan and Tajikistan.
"The irony of the situation is that Iran, the country usually
regarded by the Americans as the 'centre of world terror', is now opposing the
conservative and cruel Taliban, which is protecting Osama bin Laden - officially America's
'Public Enemy Number One' - the same Taliban that is controlled by Washington's allies in
Saudi Arabia."
TALIBAN MILITIAMEN in northern Afghanistan have massacred thousands
of their Shia Muslim enemies around the newly captured city of Mazar-e Sharif and there
are fears that 10 Iranian diplomats and an Iranian journalist were themselves slaughtered
inside their consulate in the city last month.
Reports reaching The Independent from Iran and Afghanistan speak of
the mass killing of men, women and children in their homes in Zaraat, Elm Arab and
Saidabad by the Sunni Muslim Taliban who are armed, paid and supported by Saudi Arabia.
News of the possible murder of the Iranian diplomats - which could,
if true, provoke conflict between the Taliban and 70,000 Iranian troops and Revolutionary
Guards exercising along their common border - came after two groups of residents in
Mazar-e Sharif drove at speed past the ruined Iranian consulate in the city. They saw up
to 20 bodies lying on the street outside and believed several were Iranian. The journalist
was working for IRNA, the Iranian state news agency.
Amnesty International has accused the Taliban of killing
"thousands of civilians" around Mazar-e Sharif, though other reports suggest the
murderers may have been members of the Hezbi Islami, Pashtu allies of the Taliban who
helped the Saudi-backed army to enter the city they were supposed to be defending. Reports
from the area suggest at least one group of civilians, perhaps more than a thousand men,
women and children, were thrown into a mass grave outside the town.
Another account, from Amnesty, says a group of 70 men were executed
in a halal - animal killing ritual - in front of villagers near the city of Hairatan.
Taliban officials have hitherto claimed no knowledge of the Iranians' fate, suggesting
that the consulate was abandoned when their militia entered the city. One of their mullahs
then stated that the Iranians were safe and would be produced in the Afghan city of
Kandahar, closer to Iran. This appears to be untrue. Iranian sources have informed The
Independent that they have the gravest fears for their citizens' fate, while Amnesty says
they may have been buried in the grounds of a Mazar-e Sharif girls' school.
That the latest ferocious stage in the Afghan war appears to be
between Sunni and Shia Muslims has inspired terror among the million Shias still holding
out against Taliban rule in the surrounded Bamyan district of Afghanistan.
Despite denials from Tehran, Iranian aircraft are flying into the
Bamyan airstrip with weapons and fuel each night. The former Russian airbase, illuminated
with lights for night-flying, is under regular Taliban bombardment. Humanitarian workers
who fled Afghanistan after the American missile bombardment last month fear that the
Taliban will try to starve the million Shias, known in Afghanistan as Hazaris, into
surrender.
Amnesty is reporting released detainees as saying that thousands of
prisoners were transferred to Kandahar while others were taken in military vehicles to
centres in Mazar-e Sharif for questioning about their religious identity. Many were later
taken to fields outside the city for execution.
Boys as young as 12, all of the Shia faith, are said to have been
imprisoned in the south-eastern city of Jalalabad while women and girls were sent to a
prison camp in Sarsashi. One report says that Taliban men took young Shia women from their
homes to become "maidservants" to be married to Sunni militiamen - almost
precisely the same cruel tactic adopted by "Islamist" gunmen in Algeria over the
past five years.
Amnesty says news of the killings "shows yet again how the
Taliban disregards internationally recognised humanitarian laws of the treatment of
civilians in armed conflict". Foreign governments bankrolling the Taliban "bear
some responsibility for failing to rein in the Taliban's worst excesses". Though too
discreet to say so, Amnesty is referring to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and by extension, since
it is the Saudis' closest Western allies, the United States.
The Taliban's hatred of Shia Muslim Iran has been all too evident in
recent weeks as the militia have discovered hundreds of tons of Iranian weapons in the
hands of their Hazar opponents, some still wrapped in their original Iranian military
packaging.
In Tehran, the authorities have made a "strategic
decision", according to The Independent's sources, that the "black Taliban"
will never be allowed to rule Afghanistan alone. Iran seeks a coalition government in
Kabul after ceasefire talks involving all of Afghanistan's neighbours, including Pakistan
and Tajikistan.
The irony of the situation is that Iran, the country usually
regarded by the Americans as the "centre of world terror", is now opposing the
conservative and cruel Taliban, which is protecting Osama bin Laden - officially America's
"Public Enemy Number One" - the same Taliban that is controlled by Washington's
allies in Saudi Arabia.
If further provoked, Iran could attempt to spread chaos in the
largely Turkmen city of Herat, whose long-standing trade links with Iran have been cut by
the fighting. There have already been reports of looting and theft in international
offices in the city.Iran's border exercises include dozens of fighter-bomber aircraft,
which are believed to have crossed and recrossed the Afghan border as a warning to the
Taliban.
"There will never be an Afghanistan controlled only by the
Taliban," an Iranian source has told The Independent. "We will never allow that
to happen."
The Taliban may prove equally stubborn.
[The Independent:
9/4]
