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BOMBING AFGANSITAN- A NATION BETRAYED AND DESTROYED

September 25, 2001

SANITY, COMPASSION, EXPERTISE FROM ROBERT FISK

"The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters that once graced Dodge City: 'Wanted, Dead or Alive'."

"President Bush's talk of a 'crusade' caused near heart attacks among the Saudi rulers while the idea of a 'long war on terror' has an unhappy ring for the emirs and sultans of the Gulf."

HOW CAN THE U.S. BOMB THIS TRAGIC PEOPLE?
By Robert Fisk

[The Independent, UK - 23 September 2001]: We are witnessing this weekend one of the most epic events since the Second World War, certainly since Vietnam. I am not talking about the ruins of the World Trade Centre in New York and the grotesque physical scenes which we watched on 11 September, an atrocity which I described last week as a crime against humanity (of which more later). No, I am referring to the extraordinary, almost unbelievable preparations now under way for the most powerful nation ever to have existed on God's Earth to bomb the most devastated, ravaged, starvation-haunted and tragic country in the world. Afghanistan, raped and eviscerated by the Russian army for 10 years, abandoned by its friends - us, of course - once the Russians had fled, is about to be attacked by the surviving superpower.

I watch these events with incredulity, not least because I was a witness to the Russian invasion and occupation. How they fought for us, those Afghans, how they believed our word. How they trusted President Carter when he promised the West's support. I even met the CIA spook in Peshawar, brandishing the identity papers of a Soviet pilot, shot down with one of our missiles - which had been scooped from the wreckage of his Mig. "Poor guy," the CIA man said, before showing us a movie about GIs zapping the Vietcong in his private cinema. And yes, I remember what the Soviet officers told me after arresting me at Salang. They were performing their international duty in Afghanistan, they told me. They were "punishing the terrorists" who wished to overthrow the (communist) Afghan government and destroy its people. Sound familiar?

I was working for The Times in 1980, and just south of Kabul I picked up a very disturbing story. A group of religious mujahedin fighters had attacked a school because the communist regime had forced girls to be educated alongside boys. So they had bombed the school, murdered the head teacher's wife and cut off her husband's head. It was all true. But when The Times ran the story, the Foreign Office complained to the foreign desk that my report gave support to the Russians. Of course. Because the Afghan fighters were the good guys. Because Osama bin Laden was a good guy. Charles Douglas-Home, then editor of The Times would always insist that Afghan guerrillas were called "freedom fighters" in the headline. There was nothing you couldn't do with words.

And so it is today. President Bush now threatens the obscurantist, ignorant, super-conservative Taliban with the same punishment as he intends to mete out to bin Laden. Bush originally talked about "justice and punishment" and about "bringing to justice" the perpetrators of the atrocities. But he's not sending policemen to the Middle East; he's sending B-52s. And F-16s and AWACS planes and Apache helicopters. We are not going to arrest bin Laden. We are going to destroy him. And that's fine if he's the guilty man. But B-52s don't discriminate between men wearing turbans, or between men and women or women and children.

I wrote last week about the culture of censorship which is now to smother us, and of the personal attacks which any journalist questioning the roots of this crisis endures. Last week, in a national European newspaper, I got a new and revealing example of what this means. I was accused of being anti-American and then informed that anti-Americanism was akin to anti-Semitism. You get the point, of course. I'm not really sure what anti-Americanism is. But criticising the United States is now to be the moral equivalent of Jew-hating. It's OK to write headlines about "Islamic terror" or my favourite French example "God's madmen", but it's definitely out of bounds to ask why the United States is loathed by so many Arab Muslims in the Middle East. We can give the murderers a Muslim identity: we can finger the Middle East for the crime - but we may not suggest any reasons for the crime.

But let's go back to that word justice. Re-watching that pornography of mass-murder in New York, there must be many people who share my view that this was a crime against humanity. More than 6,000 dead; that's a Srebrenica of a slaughter. Even the Serbs spared most of the women and children when they killed their menfolk. The dead of Srebrenica deserve - and are getting - international justice at the Hague. So surely what we need is an International Criminal Court to deal with the sorts of killer who devastated New York on 11 September. Yet "crime against humanity" is not a phrase we are hearing from the Americans. They prefer "terrorist atrocity", which is slightly less powerful. Why, I wonder? Because to speak of a terrorist crime against humanity would be a tautology. Or because the US is against international justice. Or because it specifically opposed the creation of an international court on the grounds that its own citizens may one day be arraigned in front of it.

The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters that once graced Dodge City: "Wanted, Dead or Alive". Tony Blair now tells us that we must stand by America as America stood by us in the Second World War. Yes, it's true that America helped us liberate Western Europe. But in both world wars, the US chose to intervene after only a long and - in the case of the Second World War - very profitable period of neutrality.

Don't the dead of Manhattan deserve better than this? It's less than three years since we launched a 200-Cruise missile attack on Iraq for throwing out the UN arms inspectors. Needless to say, nothing was achieved. More Iraqis were killed, and the UN inspectors never got back, and sanctions continued, and Iraqi children continued to die. No policy, no perspective. Action, not words.

And that's where we are today. Instead of helping Afghanistan, instead of pouring our aid into that country 10 years ago, rebuilding its cities and culture and creating a new political centre that would go beyond tribalism, we left it to rot. Sarajevo would be rebuilt. Not Kabul. Democracy, of a kind, could be set up in Bosnia. Not in Afghanistan. Schools could be reopened in Tuzla and Travnik. Not in Jaladabad. When the Taliban arrived, stringing up every opponent, chopping off the arms of thieves, stoning women for adultery, the United States regarded this dreadful outfit as a force for stability after the years of anarchy.

Bush's threats have effectively forced the evacuation of every Western aid worker. Already, Afghans are dying because of their absence. Drought and starvation go on killing millions - I mean millions - and between 20 and 25 Afghans are blown up every day by the 10 million mines the Russians left behind. Of course, the Russians never went back to clear the mines. I suppose those B-52 bombs will explode a few of them. But that'll be the only humanitarian work we're likely to see in the near future.

Look at the most startling image of all this past week. Pakistan has closed its border with Afghanistan. So has Iran. The Afghans are to stay in their prison. Unless they make it through Pakistan and wash up on the beaches of France or the waters of Australia or climb through the Channel Tunnel or hijack a plane to Britain to face the wrath of our Home Secretary. In which case, they must be sent back, returned, refused entry. It's a truly terrible irony that the only man we would be interested in receiving from Afghanistan is the man we are told is the evil genius behind the greatest mass-murder in American history: bin Laden. The others can stay at home and die.

NERVOUS SAUDIS TELL U.S.:
WAR ON TERRORISM WILL NOT BE LAUNCED FROM OUR AIRFIELDS
By Robert Fisk

[The Independent, 24 September 2001, BEIRUT]: Supposedly allied in close friendship with the United States, Saudi Arabia declined to allow America to use its airfields for President George Bush's "war on terrorism'' yesterday. It specifically forbade US bombers to take off for retaliatory strikes from the massive Prince Sultan airbase near the capital, Riyadh. The decision comes only a week after Lt-Gen Charles Wald, the head of air operations for US Central Command, moved his headquarters to the airbase from South Carolina.

With truly ambiguous courtesy, a Saudi official announced that "Saudi Arabia will not accept any infringement on its national sovereignty, but it fully backs action aimed at eradicating terrorism and its causes.'' Many thousands of Saudis - not least the "prime suspect" himself, Osama bin Laden - will ask how Saudi Arabia suddenly intends to protect its sovereignty when 4,500 US military personnel are still stationed in the kingdom and when American planes still use its airfields - including the Prince Sultan base - for bombing raids over southern Iraq. In any event, eradicating the "causes'' of the atrocities in New York and Washington are not President Bush's priority.

Off the record, the Saudis are saying they are worried about possible strikes on other Muslim states - presumably including Afghanistan - and that they want some power of decision over air operations, an idea that is not going to commend itself to Messrs Bush and Powell. In reality, however, Saudi authorities know that many thousands of Muslims in the kingdom - including, it is said, prominent ulema (religious teachers) and a number of Saudi princes - have voiced quiet support for Mr bin Laden's demand that the Americans pack up and leave Saudi Arabia.

The Americans will not be amused. More than half of the 19 hijackers who took over the four American airliners on 11 September appear to have been Saudi nationals - even those who used the identities of other Saudis - and Mr bin Laden is himself a Saudi, though long since deprived of citizenship. The Taliban, whom Washington now holds responsible for Mr bin Laden, were the theological creation of the Saudi "wahabi" Sunni sect, and - until sanctions were imposed on Afghanistan - a regular flight linked Riyadh and the south-western Afghan city of Jalalabad.

The kingdom's alliance with the US began more than half a century ago when President Franklin D Roosevelt invited King ibn Saud on board the USS Quincy in 1945. The king set up his desert tent on the deck of the American destroyer with seven sheep tied to the fantail to provide daily fresh meat. He was promised that the US would never do anything which might prove hostile to the Arabs. Three days later, Winston Churchill forfeited Britain's hitherto leading influence with the Saudis by declaring to the king that "if it was the religion of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol, I must point out that my rule of life prescribes as an almost sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and - if need be - during all meals and in the intervals between them.''

These days, the Saudis might prefer a less forceful British prime minister to a US president whose nation so swiftly betrayed Roosevelt's promise. But it was King Fahd who invited half a million US forces into the kingdom after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 - a "historical decision'' according to the king, a historical betrayal according to Mr bin Laden - and it is Crown Prince Abdullah's burden to support a continued US presence to deter further aggression from Iraq.

No such doubts assail President Saddam's victim, Kuwait. Although the Emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, only recently suffered a brain haemorrhage, the Kuwaiti government has been more than happy to invite the Americans - the liberators of 1991 - to send more armour and fighter-bombers to the emirate. Bahrain, cleansed of its sinister secret policemen and their British mentors, has also offered its facilities to the US; its Gulf fleet has for years been based in the Bahraini capital of Manama. The United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic relations with the Taliban at the weekend, a decision which may be followed by Saudi Arabia.

Yet it is not difficult to see the predicament of the Saudis and their neighbours. The real problem for Gulf Arabs is the vagueness of America's proposed military response to the mass murders in New York and Washington. President Bush's talk of a "crusade'' caused near heart attacks among the Saudi rulers while the idea of a "long war on terror'' has an unhappy ring for the emirs and sultans of the Gulf. They would much prefer their own dictatorial stability than the necessity of explaining to their own people why it is necessary to host another American bombing campaign against Muslim nations.

The Saudis are genuinely mystified about American plans. Do they intend to fire cruise missiles into Afghanistan, as President Bill Clinton did after the US embassy bombings in Africa? Is Iraq to be included in the list of nations to be punished for the World Trade Centre atrocities? Or the Hizbollah in Lebanon, who clearly have no connection with the crime but who are eagerly being fingered by the Israelis? The FBI were infuriated when they were refused permission by the Saudis to interrogate the men accused of bombing the Al-Khobar military barracks in which 24 US soldiers were killed. The Americans were still pleading for the right to talk to the three accused on the day they had their heads chopped off.

Last night, Saudi and US diplomats were dancing a very odd tango. The Saudis would make no official statement about their refusal to deny their bases to the Americans while the US embassy in Riyadh referred all questions to the Pentagon. In turn, the Pentagon told journalists to call the State Department - which declined to make any comment at all. In retrospect, the Saudis may look back with some nostalgia to the tough-talking, cigar-chomping, whisky-drinking British prime minister who made a last vain attempt to maintain his country's supremacy in the kingdom by sending King ibn Saud a veteran Rolls Royce - complete with a throne behind the steering wheel.

ANTI-TERRORIST MOVE RAISES SUSPICION AMONG SAUDIS

[Pravda (Moscow) - Riyadh - 21 September]: U.S. President George W. Bush's call to form an international coalition against terrorism has raised the suspicion and fear among Saudis that such a coalition will target Muslims, sources said yesterday. They said such a coalition will give Washington and its Western allies the green light to level a military strike against any Islamic country under the pretext that it sponsors terrorism and will give America a free hand to accuse any country. They added that this applies to Afghanistan.

Aqeel bin Saeed Al Anzi, a Saudi political analyst, warned that "the U.S. scheme seems to target Muslims only. The world's countries, especially the Arab and Islamic ones, must not comply with what Washington attempts to impose. "They should instead thoroughly study the implications of this coalition, which is being dictated by Bush who threatens to regard any country which rejects or expresses reservation over his orders as a foe of the U.S.," he noted. He added: "All Arab countries wish to cooperate with the international community to eliminate terrorism. However, this should not be the U.S. approach which gives no one a chance to think about or study the type and goals of such a coalition."

Bush, he said, wanted the world's countries to follow him like sheep or be punished. Al Anzi noted that he believed Washington had revealed its ugly face after last Tuesday's attacks. "The U.S. uses the Arab and Islamic countries to execute its goals. The American forces in the Gulf have now become a sign of pressure being put on these countries to comply with what Washington sees appropriate, giving them no time for thinking."

Al Anzi said that no country in the region will allow U.S. troops to use its land to launch attacks against any Arab or Islamic country, unless this happens under extreme pressure. He stressed that the U.S. military intervention to liberate Kuwait cannot be likened to the so-called coalition to eradicate terrorism. The coalition's goals are indefinite, and give it a mandate to launch attacks against any country at any time. Al Anzi expressed the hope that the Arab officials will convince Bush that any coalition that groups their countries together should be an international one under the UN umbrella. "Under such a coalition, no country, including the U.S., should have the right to act on its own. Any other form of coalition creates a tide of hatred against Washington and its allies."


Mid-East Realitieswww.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/9/410.htm