'Genuine Peaceful Alternatives To War?'

The War In Afghanistan

Noam Chomsky
 

The threat of international terrorism is surely severe. The horrendous eventsof Sept. 11 had perhaps the most devastating instant human toll on record,outside of war. The word "instant" should not be overlooked;regrettably, the crime is far from unusual in the annals of violence that fallsshort of war. The death toll may easily have doubled or more within a few weeks,as miserable Afghans fled -- to nowhere -- under the threat of bombing, anddesperately-needed food supplies were disrupted; and there were crediblewarnings of much worse to come.

The costs to Afghan civilians can only be guessed, but we do know theprojections on which policy decisions and commentary were based, a matter ofutmost significance. As a matter of simple logic, it is these projections thatprovide the grounds for any moral evaluation of planning and commentary, or anyjudgment of appeals to "just war" arguments; and crucially, for anyrational assessment of what may lie ahead.

Even before Sept. 11, the UN estimated that millions were being sustained,barely, by international food aid. On Sept. 16, the national press reported thatWashington had "demanded [from Pakistan] the elimination of truck convoysthat provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilianpopulation." There was no detectable reaction in the U.S. or Europe to thisdemand to impose massive starvation; the plain meaning of the words. Insubsequent weeks, the world's leading newspaper reported that "The threatof military strikes forced the removal of international aid workers, cripplingassistance programs"; refugees reaching Pakistan "after arduousjourneys from Afghanistan are describing scenes of desperation and fear at homeas the threat of American-led military attacks turns their long-running miseryinto a potential catastrophe." "The country was on a lifeline,"one evacuated aid worker reported, "and we just cut the line.""It's as if a mass grave has been dug behind millions of people," anevacuated emergency officer for Christian Aid informed the press: "We candrag them back from it or push them in. We could be looking at millions ofdeaths."¹

The UN World Food Program and others were able to resume some food shipmentsin early October, but were forced to suspend deliveries and distribution whenthe bombing began on October 7, resuming them later at a much lower pace. Aspokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned that "We arefacing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 millionshort of food and at risk of starvation," while aid agencies leveled"scathing" condemnations of U.S. air drops that are barely concealed"propaganda tools" and may cause more harm than benefit, they warned.²

A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate bythe UN that "7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter -- 2.5million more than on Sept. 11," a 50% increase as a result of the threat ofbombing, then the actuality.³ Inother words, Western civilization was basing its plans on the assumption thatthey might lead to the death of several million innocent civilians -- notTaliban, whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of slaughtering Taliban recruitsand supporters, but their victims. Meanwhile its leader, on the same day, onceagain dismissed with contempt offers of negotiation for extradition of thesuspected culprit and the request for some credible evidence to substantiate thedemands for capitulation. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food pleadedwith the U.S. to end the bombing that was putting "the lives of millions ofcivilians at risk," renewing the appeal of UN High Commissioner for HumanRights Mary Robinson, who warned of a Rwanda-style catastrophe. Both appealswere rejected, as were those of the major aid and relief agencies. And virtuallyunreported.⁴

In late September, the UN Food And Agricultural Organization warned that over7 million people were facing a crisis that could lead to widespread starvationif military action were initiated, with a likely "humanitariancatastrophe" unless aid were immediately resumed and the threat of militaryaction terminated. After bombing began, the FAO advised that it had disruptedplanting that provides 80% of the country's grain supplies, so that the effectsnext year are expected to be even more severe. All ignored.⁵

These unreported appeals happened to coincide with World Food Day, which wasalso ignored, along with the charge by the UN Special Rapporteur that the richand powerful easily have the means, though not the will, to overcome the"silent genocide" of mass starvation in much of the world.⁶

Let us return briefly to the point of logic: ethical judgments and rationalevaluation of what may lie ahead are grounded in the presuppositions of planningand commentary. An entirely separate matter, with no bearing on such judgments,is the accuracy of the projections on which planning and commentary were based.By year's end, there were hopes that unprecedented deliveries of food inDecember might "dramatically" revise the expectations at the time whenplanning was undertaken and implemented, and evaluated in commentary: that theseactions were likely to drive millions over the edge of starvation.⁷Very likely, the facts will never be known, by virtue of a guiding principle ofintellectual culture: We must devote enormous energy to exposing the crimes ofofficial enemies, properly counting not only those literally killed but alsothose who die as a consequence of policy choices; but we must take scrupulouscare to avoid this practice in the case of our own crimes, on the rare occasionswhen they are investigated at all. Observance of the principle is all too welldocumented. It will be a welcome surprise if the current case turns outdifferently.

Another elementary point might also be mentioned. The success of violenceevidently has no bearing on moral judgment with regard to its goals. In thepresent case, it seemed clear from the outset that the reigning superpower couldeasily demolish any Afghan resistance. My own view, for what it is worth, wasthat à

U.S. campaigns should not be too casually compared to the failed Russianinvasion of the 1980s. The Russians were facing a major army of perhaps 100,000men or more, organized, trained, and heavily armed by the CIA and itsassociates. The U.S. is facing a ragtag force in a country that has already beenvirtually destroyed by 20 years of horror, for which we bear no slight share ofresponsibility. The Taliban forces, such as they are, might quickly collapseexcept for a small hardened core.⁸

To my surprise, the dominant judgment -- even after weeks of carpet bombingand resort to virtually every available device short of nuclear weapons("daisy cutters," cluster bombs, etc.) -- was confidence that thelessons of the Russian failure should be heeded, that airstrikes would beineffective, and that a ground invasion would be necessary to achieve the U.S.war aims of eliminating bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Removing the Taliban regime wasan afterthought. There had been no interest in this before Sept. 11, or even inthe month that followed. A week after the bombing began, the Presidentreiterated that U.S. forces "would attack Afghanistan `for as long as ittakes' to destroy the Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, but he offeredto reconsider the military assault on Afghanistan if the country's rulingTaliban would surrender Mr. bin Laden"; "If you cough him up and hispeople today, then we'll reconsider what we are doing to your country," thePresident declared: "You still have a second chance."⁹

When Taliban forces did finally succumb, after astonishing endurance,opinions shifted to triumphalist proclamations and exultation over the justiceof our cause, now demonstrated by the success of overwhelming force againstdefenseless opponents. Without researching the topic, I suppose that Japaneseand German commentary was similar after early victories during World War II, anddespite obvious dis-analogies, one crucial conclusion carries over to thepresent case: the victory of arms leaves the issues where they were, though thetriumphalist cries of vindication should serve as a warning for those who careabout the future.

Returning to the war, the airstrikes quickly turned cities into "ghosttowns," the press reported, with electrical power and water suppliesdestroyed, a form of biological warfare. The UN reported that 70% of thepopulation had fled Kandahar and Herat within two weeks, mostly to thecountryside, where in ordinary times 10-20 people, many of them children, arekilled or crippled daily by land mines. Those conditions became much worse as aresult of the bombing. UN mine-clearing operations were halted, and unexplodedU.S. ordnance, particularly the lethal bomblets scattered by cluster bombs, addto the torture, and are much harder to clear.¹⁰

By late October, aid officials estimated that over a million had fled theirhomes, including 80% of the population of Jalalabad, only a "tinyfraction" able to cross the border, most scattering to the countrysidewhere there was little food or shelter or possibility of delivering aid; appealsfrom aid agencies to suspend attacks to allow delivery of supplies were againrejected by Blair, ignored by the U.S.¹¹

Months later, hundreds of thousands were reported to be starving in such"forgotten camps" as Maslakh in the North, having fled from"mountainous places to which the World Food Program was giving food aid butstopped because of the bombing and now cannot be reached because the passes arecut off" -- and who knows how many in places that no journalists found --though supplies were by then available and the primary factor hampering deliverywas lack of interest and will.¹²

By the year's end, long after fighting ended, the occasional report notedthat "the delivery of food remains blocked or woefully inadequate,""a system for distributing food is still not in place," and even themain route to Uzbekistan "remains effectively closed to food trucks"over two weeks after it was officially opened with much fanfare; the same wastrue of the crucial artery from Pakistan to Kandahar, and others were soharassed by armed militias that the World Food Program, now with suppliesavailable, still could not make deliveries, and had no place for storage because"most warehouses were destroyed or looted during the U.S.bombardment."¹³

A detailed year-end review found that the U.S. war "has returned topower nearly all the same warlords who had misruled the country in the daysbefore the Taliban"; some Afghans see the resulting situation as even"worse than it was before the Taliban came to power."¹⁴The Taliban takeover of most of the country, with little combat, brought to anend a period described by Afghan and international human rights activists as"the blackest in the history of Afghanistan," "the worst time inAfghanistan's history," with vast destruction, mass rapes and otheratrocities, and tens of thousands killed.¹⁵These were the years of rule by warlords of the Northern Alliance and otherWestern favorites, such as the murderous Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the few whohas not reclaimed his fiefdom. There are indications that lessons have beenlearned both in Afghanistan and the world beyond, and that the worst will notrecur, as everyone fervently hopes.

Signs were mixed, at year's end. As anticipated, most of the population wasgreatly relieved to see the end of the Taliban, one of the most retrograderegimes in the world; and relieved that there was no quick return to theatrocities of a decade earlier, as had been feared. The new government in Kabulshowed considerably more promise than most had expected. The return ofwarlordism is a dangerous sign, as was the announcement by the new JusticeMinister that the basic structure of sharia law as instituted by the Talibanwould remain in force, though "there will be some changes from the time ofthe Taliban. For example, the Taliban used to hang the victim's body in publicfor four days. We will only hang the body for a short time, say 15minutes." Judge Ahamat Ullha Zarif added that some new location would befound for the regular public executions, not the Sports Stadium."Adulterers, both male and female, would still be stoned to death, Zarifsaid, `but we will use only small stones'," so that those who confess mightbe able to run away; others will be "stoned to death," as before.¹⁶The international reaction will doubtless have a significant effect on thebalance of conflicting forces.

As the year ended, desperate peasants, mostly women, were returning to themiserable labor of growing opium poppies so that their families can survive,reversing the Taliban ban. The UN had reported in October that poppy productionhad already "increased threefold in areas controlled by the NorthernAlliance," whose warlords "have long been reputed to control much ofthe processing and smuggling of opium" to Russia and the West, an estimated75% of the world's heroin. The result of some poor woman's back-breaking laboris that "countless others thousands of miles away from her home in easternAfghanistan will suffer and die."¹⁷

Such consequences, and the devastating legacy of 20 years of brutal war andatrocities, could be alleviated by an appropriate international presence andwell-designed programs of aid and reconstruction; were honesty to prevail, theywould be called "reparations," at least from Russia and the U.S.,which share primary responsibility for the disaster. The issue was addressed ina conference of the UN Development Program, World Bank, and Asian DevelopmentBank in Islamabad in late November. Some guidelines were offered in a World Bankstudy that focused on Afghanistan's potential role in the development of theenergy resources of the region. The study concluded that

Afghanistan has a positive pre-war history of cost recovery for keyinfrastructure services like electric power, and "green field"investment opportunities in sectors like telecommunications, energy, and oil/gaspipelines. It is extremely important that such services start out on the righttrack during reconstruction. Options for private investment in infrastructureshould be actively pursued.¹⁸

One may reasonably ask just whose needs are served by these priorities, andwhat status they should have in reconstruction from the horrors of the past twodecades.

U.S. and British intellectual opinion, across the political spectrum, assuredus that only radical extremists can doubt that "this is basically a justwar."¹⁹ Those who disagreecan therefore be dismissed, among them, for example, the 1000 Afghan leaders whomet in Peshawar in late October in a U.S.-backed effort to lay the groundworkfor a post-Taliban regime led by the exiled King. They bitterly condemned theU.S. war, which is "beating the donkey rather than the rider," onespeaker said to unanimous agreement.

The extent to which anti-Taliban Afghan opinion was ignored is ratherstriking -- and not at all unusual; during the Gulf war, for example, Iraqidissidents were excluded from press and journals, apart from "alternativemedia," though they were readily accessible. Without eliciting comment,Washington maintained its long-standing official refusal to have any dealingswith the Iraqi opposition even well after the war ended.²⁰In the present case, Afghan opinion is not as easily assessed, but the taskwould not have been impossible, and the issue is of such evident significancethat it merits at least a few comments.

We might begin with the gathering of Afghan leaders in Peshawar, some exiles,some who trekked across the border from within Afghanistan, all committed tooverthrowing the Taliban regime. It was "a rare display of unity amongtribal elders, Islamic scholars, fractious politicians, and former guerrillacommanders," the New York Times reported. They unanimously"urged the U.S. to stop the air raids," appealed to the internationalmedia to call for an end to the "bombing of innocent people," and"demanded an end to the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan." They urged thatother means be adopted to overthrow the hated Taliban regime, a goal theybelieved could be achieved without slaughter and destruction.²¹

Reported, but dismissed without further comment.

A similar message was conveyed by Afghan opposition leader Abdul Haq, whocondemned the air attacks as a "terrible mistake."²²Highly regarded in Washington, Abdul Haq was considered to be "perhaps themost important leader of anti-Taliban opposition among Afghans of Pashtunnationality based in Pakistan."²³His advice was to "avoid bloodshed as much as possible"; instead ofbombing, "we should undermine the central leadership, which is a very smalland closed group and which is also the only thing which holds them all together.If they are destroyed, every Taliban fighter will pick up his gun and hisblanket and disappear back home, and that will be the end of the Taliban,"an assessment that seems rather plausible in the light of subsequent events.

Several weeks later, Abdul Haq entered Afghanistan, apparently without U.S.support, and was captured and killed. As he was undertaking this mission"to create a revolt within the Taliban," he criticized the U.S. forrefusing to aid him and others in such endeavors, and condemned the bombing as"a big setback for these efforts." He reported contacts withsecond-level Taliban commanders and ex-Mujahidin tribal elders, and discussedhow further efforts could proceed, calling on the U.S. to assist them withfunding and other support instead of undermining them with bombs.

The U.S., Abdul Haq said,

is trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don't care about the suffering of the Afghans or how many people we will lose. And we don't like that. Because Afghans are now being made to suffer for these Arab fanatics, but we all know who brought these Arabs to Afghanistan in the 1980s, armed them and gave them a base. It was the Americans and the CIA. And the Americans who did this all got medals and good careers, while all these years Afghans suffered from these Arabs and their allies. Now, when America is attacked, instead of punishing the Americans who did this, it punishes the Afghans.

We can also look elsewhere for enlightenment about Afghan opinions. Abeneficial consequence of the latest Afghan war is that it elicited some belatedconcern about the fate of women in Afghanistan, even reaching the First Lady.Perhaps it will be followed some day by concern for the plight of womenelsewhere in Central and South Asia, which, unfortunately, is often not verydifferent from life under the Taliban, including the most vibrant democracies.²⁴Of course, no sane person advocates foreign military intervention to rectifythese and other injustices. The problems are severe, but should be dealt withfrom within, with assistance from outsiders if it is constructive and honest.

Since the harsh treatment of women in Afghanistan has at last gained somewell-deserved attention, one might expect that attitudes of Afghan women towardspolicy options should be a primary concern. A natural starting point for aninquiry is Afghanistan's "oldest political and humanitarian organisation,"RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), which has been"foremost in the struggle" for women's rights since its formation in1977.²⁵ RAWA's leader wasassassinated by Afghan collaborators with the Russians in 1987, but theycontinued their work within Afghanistan at risk of death, and in exile nearby.

RAWA has been quite outspoken. Thus, a week after the bombing began, RAWAissued a public statement entitled: "Taliban should be overthrown by theuprising of Afghan nation."²⁶It continued as follows:

Again, due to the treason of fundamentalist hangmen, our people have been caught in the claws of the monster of a vast war and destruction. America, by forming an international coalition against Osama and his Taliban-collaborators and in retaliation for the 11th September terrorist attacks, has launched a vast aggression on our country... what we have witnessed for the past seven days leaves no doubt that this invasion will shed the blood of numerous women, men, children, young and old of our country.

The statement called for "the eradication of the plague of Taliban andAl Qieda" by "an overall uprising" of the Afghan peoplethemselves, which alone "can prevent the repetition and recurrence of thecatastrophe that has befallen our country...."

In another declaration on November 25, at a demonstration of women'sorganizations in Islamabad on the International Day for the Elimination ofViolence against Women, RAWA condemned the U.S./Russian-backed Northern Alliancefor a "record of human rights violations as bad as that of the Taliban's,"and called on the UN to "help Afghanistan, not the Northern Alliance."RAWA issued similar warnings at the national conference of the All IndiaDemocratic Women's Association on the same days.²⁷

Also ignored.

One might note that this is hardly the first time that the concerns ofadvocates of women's rights in Afghanistan have been dismissed. Thus, in 1988the UNDP senior adviser on women's rights in Afghanistan warned that the"great advances" in women's rights she had witnessed there were beingimperilled by the "ascendant fundamentalism" of the U.S.-backedradical Islamists. Her report was submitted to the New York Times and WashingtonPost, but not published; and her account of how the U.S. "contributedhandsomely to the suffering of Afghan women" remains unknown.²⁸

Perhaps it is right to ignore Afghans who have been struggling for freedomand women's rights for many years, and to assign responsibility for theircountry's future to foreigners whose record in this regard is less thandistinguished. Perhaps, but it does not seem entirely obvious.

The issue of "just war" should not be confused with a whollydifferent question: Should the perpetrators of the atrocities of Sept. 11 bepunished for their crimes -- "crimes against humanity," as they werecalled by Robert Fisk, Mary Robinson, and others. On this there is virtuallyunanimous agreement -- though, notoriously, the principles do not extend to theagents of even far worse crimes who are protected by power and wealth. Thequestion is how to proceed.

The approach favored by Afghans who were ignored had considerable support inmuch of the world. Many in the South would surely have endorsed therecommendations of the UN representative of the Arab Women's SolidarityAssociation: "providing the Taliban with evidence (as it has requested)that links bin Laden to the September 11 attacks, employing diplomatic pressuresto extradite him, and prosecuting terrorists through internationaltribunals," and generally adhering to international law, followingprecedents that exist even in much more severe cases of international terrorism.Adherence to international law had scattered support in the West as well,including the preeminent Anglo-American military historian Michael Howard, whodelivered a "scathing attack" on the bombardment, calling instead foran international "police operation" and international court ratherthan "trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch."²⁹

Washington's refusal to call for extradition of the suspected criminals, orto provide the evidence that was requested, was entirely open, and generallyapproved. Its own refusal to extradite criminals remains effectively secret,however.³⁰ There has been debateover whether U.S. military actions in Afghanistan were authorized underambiguous Security Council resolutions, but it avoids the central issue:Washington plainly did not want Security Council authorization,³¹which it surely could have obtained, clearly and unambiguously. Since it lostits virtual monopoly over UN decisions, the U.S. has been far in the lead invetoes, Britain second, France a distant third, but none of these powers wouldhave opposed a U.S.-sponsored resolution. Nor would Russia or China, eager togain U.S. authorization for their own atrocities and repression (in Chechnya andwestern China, particularly). But Washington insisted on not obtaining SecurityCouncil authorization, which would entail that there is some higher authority towhich it should defer. Systems of power resist that principle if they are strongenough to do so. There is even a name for that stance in the literature ofdiplomacy and international affairs scholarship: establishing"credibility," a justification commonly offered for the threat or useof force. While understandable, and conventional, that stance also has lessonsconcerning the likely future, even more so because of the elite support that itreceives, openly or indirectly.

....

FOOTNOTES

(Excerpted from Lakdawala lecture, New Delhi, during recent India visit.Online version with notes, prepared Dec. 30, by arrangement with Znet)