Hidden Agenda Behind War On Terror

The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks'bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has beencaught or killed in Afghanistan.

Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has beenterrorised by the most powerful - to the point where American pilots have runout of dubious "military" targets and are now destroying mud houses, ahospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.

Unlike the relentless pictures from New York, we are seeingalmost nothing of this. Tony Blair has yet to tell us what the violent death ofchildren - seven in one family - has to do with Osama bin Laden. 

And why are cluster bombs being used? The British publicshould know about these bombs, which the RAF also uses. They spray hundreds ofbomblets that have only one purpose; to kill and maim people. Those that do notexplode lie on the ground like landmines, waiting for people to step on them. 

If ever a weapon was designed specifically for acts ofterrorism, this is it. I have seen the victims of American cluster weapons inother countries, such as the Laotian toddler who picked one up and had her rightleg and face blown off. Be assured this is now happening in Afghanistan, in yourname. 

None of those directly involved in the September 11atrocity was Afghani. Most were Saudis, who apparently did their planning andtraining in Germany and the United States.

The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use wereemptied weeks ago. Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americansand the British. In the 1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded bythe CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the Russians. 

The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban tookKabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soonon their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oilcompany, Unocal. 

With secret US government approval, the company offeredthem a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipelinethat the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan. 

A US diplomat said: "The Taliban will probably developlike the Saudis did." He explained that Afghanistan would become anAmerican oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no democracy andthe legal persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.

Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgentpriority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oilindustry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in theCaspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth and enough,according to one estimate, to meet America's voracious energy needs for ageneration. Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hopeto control it.

So, not surprisingly, US Secretary of State Colin Powell isnow referring to "moderate" Taliban, who will join anAmerican-sponsored "loose federation" to run Afghanistan. The"war on terrorism" is a cover forthis: a means of achieving Americanstrategic aims that lie behind the flag-waving facade of great power. 

The Royal Marines, who will do the real dirty work, will belittle more than mercenaries for Washington's imperial ambitions, not to mentionthe extraordinary pretensions of Blair himself. Having made Britain a target forterrorism with his bellicose "shoulder to shoulder" with Bushnonsense, he is now prepared to send troops to a battlefield where the goals areso uncertain that even the Chief of the Defence Staff says the conflict"could last 50 years". 

The irresponsibility of this is breathtaking; the pressureon Pakistan alone could ignite an unprecedented crisis across the Indiansub-continent. Having reported many wars, I am always struck by the absurdity ofeffete politicians eager to wave farewell to young soldiers, but who themselveswould not say boo to a Taliban goose. 

In the days of gunboats, our imperial leaders covered theirviolence in the "morality" of their actions. Blair is no different.Like them, his selective moralising omits the most basic truth. Nothingjustified the killing of innocent people in America on September 11, and nothingjustifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else. 

By killing innocents in Afghanistan, Blair and Bush stoopto the level of the criminal outrage in New York. Once you cluster bomb,"mistakes" and "blunders" are a pretence. Murder is murder,regardless of whether you crash a plane into a building or order and colludewith it from the Oval Office and Downing Street.

If Blair was really opposed to all forms of terrorism, hewould get Britain out of the arms trade. On the day of the twin towers attack,an "arms fair", selling weapons of terror (like cluster bombs andmissiles) to assorted tyrants and human rights abusers, opened in London'sDocklands with the full backing of the Blair government. 

Britain's biggest arms customer is the medieval Saudiregime, which beheads heretics and spawned the religious fanaticism of theTaliban.

If he really wanted to demonstrate "the moral fibre ofBritain", Blair would do everything in his power to lift the threat ofviolence in those parts of the world where there is great and justifiablegrievance and anger. 

He would do more than make gestures; he would demand thatIsrael ends its illegal occupation of Palestine and withdraw to its bordersprior to the 1967 war, as ordered by the Security Council, of which Britain is apermanent member.

He would call for an end to the genocidal blockade whichthe UN - in reality, America and Britain - has imposed on the suffering peopleof Iraq for more than a decade, causing the deaths of half a million childrenunder the age of five. 

That's more deaths of infants every month than the numberkilled in the World Trade Center.

There are signs that Washington is about to extend itscurrent "war" to Iraq; yet unknown to most of us, almost every day RAFand American aircraft already bomb Iraq. There are no headlines. There isnothing on the TV news. This terror is the longest-running Anglo-Americanbombing campaign since World War Two.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US andBritain faced a "dilemma" in Iraq, because "few targetsremain". "We're down to the last outhouse," said a US official.That was two years ago, and they're still bombing. The cost to the Britishtaxpayer? 800 million so far. 

According to an internal UN report, covering a five-monthperiod, 41 per cent of the casualties are civilians. In northern Iraq, I met awoman whose husband and four children were among the deaths listed in thereport. He was a shepherd, who was tending his sheep with his elderly father andhis children when two planes attacked them, each making a sweep. It was an openvalley; there were no military targets nearby. 

"I want to see the pilot who did this," said thewidow at the graveside of her entire family. For them, there was no service inSt Paul's Cathedral with the Queen in attendance; no rock concert with PaulMcCartney.

The tragedy of the Iraqis, and the Palestinians, and theAfghanis is a truth that is the very opposite of their caricatures in much ofthe Western media. 

Far from being the terrorists of the world, theoverwhelming majority of the Islamic peoples of the Middle East and south Asiahave been its victims - victims largely of the West's exploitation of preciousnatural resources in or near their countries. 

There is no war on terrorism. If there was, the RoyalMarines and the SAS would be storming the beaches of Florida, where moreCIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin American dictators and torturers, are givenrefuge than anywhere on earth.

There is, however, a continuing war of the powerful againstthe powerless, with new excuses, new hidden agendas, new lies. Before anotherchild dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics arecreated in both the east and the west, it is time for the people of Britain tomake their voices heard and to stop this fraudulent war - and to demand the kindof bold, imaginative non-violent initiatives that required real politicalcourage.

The other day, the parents of Greg Rodriguez, a young manwho died in the World Trade Center, said this: "We read enough of the newsto sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge,with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying,suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.

"It is not the way to go...not in our son'sname."

(By arrangement with Znet)