War On Terror: False Victory

Howeverwelcome the scenes of people playing music and shaving off their beards, theso-called Northern Alliance are no bringers of freedom. They are the same peoplewelcomed by similar scenes of jubilation in 1992, who then killed an estimated50,000 in four years of internecine feuding. The new heroes so far have torturedand executed at least 100 prisoners of war, and countless others, as well aslooted food supplies and re-established their monopoly on the heroin trade. Thisweek, Amnesty International made an unusually blunt statement that was buried inthe news. It ought to be emblazoned across every front page and televisionscreen. "By failing to appreciate the gravity of the human rights concernsin relation to Northern Alliance leaders," said Amnesty, "UK ministersat best perpetuate a culture of impunity for past crimes; at worst they riskbeing complicit in human rights abuse." The truth is that the latest cropof criminals to "liberate" Kabul have been given a second chance bythe most powerful country on earth pounding into dust one of the poorest, wherepeople's life expectancy is just over 40.

And forwhat?

Not asingle terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has yet to be caught orkilled. Osama bin Laden and his network have almost certainly slipped into thetribal areas of the North-West Frontier of Pakistan. Will Pakistan now bebombed? And Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, where Islamic extremism and its militarynetwork took root? Of course not. The Saudi sheikhs, many of them as extreme asthe Taliban, control America's greatest source of oil. The Egyptian regime,bribed with billions of US dollars, is an important American proxy. No daisycutters for them.

Therewas, and still is, no "war on terrorism". Instead, we have watched avariation of the great imperial game of swapping "bad" terrorists for"good" terrorists, while untold numbers of innocent people have paidwith their lives: most of one village, whole families, a hospital, as well asteenage conscripts suitably dehumanised by the word "Taliban".

It isperfectly understandable that those in the West who supported this latestAmerican terror from the air, or hedged their bets, should now seek to cover theblood on their reputations with absurd claims that "bombing works".Tell that to grieving parents at fresh graves in impoverished places of whom thesofa bomb-aimers know nothing.

Thecontortion of intellect and morality that this triumphalism requires is not anew phenomenon. Putting aside the terminally naive, it mostly comes from thosewho like to play at war: who have seen nothing of bombing, as I have experiencedit: cluster bombs, daisy cutters: the lot. How appropriate that the lastAmerican missile to hit Kabul before the "liberators" arrived shoulddestroy the satellite transmitter of the Al-Jazeera television station,virtually the only reliable source of news in the region.

Forweeks, American officials have been pressuring the government of Qatar, the Gulfstate where Al-Jazeera is based, to silence its broadcasters, who have given aview of the "war against terrorism" other than that based on the falsepremises of the Bush and Blair "crusade". The guilty secret is thatthe attack on Afghanistan was unnecessary. The "smoking gun" of thisentire episode is evidence of the British Government's lies about the basis forthe war. According to Tony Blair, it was impossible to secure Osama bin Laden'sextradition from Afghanistan by means other than bombing. Yet in late Septemberand early October, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiated binLaden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the September 11 attacks. Thedeal was that he would be held under house arrest in Peshawar. According toreports in Pakistan (and the Daily Telegraph), this had both bin Laden'sapproval and that of Mullah Omah, the Taliban leader.

Theoffer was that he would face an international tribunal, which would decidewhether to try him or hand him over to America. Either way, he would have beenout of Afghanistan, and a tentative justice would be seen to be in progress. Itwas vetoed by Pakistan's president Musharraf who said he "could notguarantee bin Laden's safety".

But whoreally killed the deal?

The USAmbassador to Pakistan was notified in advance of the proposal and the missionto put it to the Taliban. Later, a US official said that "casting ourobjectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of theinternational effort if by some luck chance Mr bin Laden was captured". Andyet the US and British governments insisted there was no alternative to bombingAfghanistan because the Taliban had "refused" to hand over Osama binLaden. What the Afghani people got instead was "American justice" -imposed by a president who, as well as denouncing international agreements onnuclear weapons, biological weapons, torture, and global warming, has refused tosign up for an international court to try war criminals: the one place where binLaden might be put on trial.

WhenTony Blair said this war was not an attack on Islam as such, he was correct. Itsaim, in the short term, was to satisfy a domestic audience then to accelerateAmerican influence in a vital region where there has been a power vacuum sincethe collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of China, whose oil needs areexpected eventually to surpass even those of the US. That is why control ofCentral Asia and the Caspian basin oilfields is important as exploration getsunder way.

Therewas, until the cluster bombing of innocents, a broad-based recognition thatthere had to be international action to combat the kind of terrorism that tookthousands of lives in New York. But these humane responses to September 11 wereappropriated by an American administration, whose subsequent actions ought tohave left all but the complicit and the politically blind in no doubt that itintended to reinforce its post-cold war assertion of global supremacy - anassertion that has a long, documented history.

The"war on terrorism" gave Bush the pretext to pressure Congress intopushing through laws that erode much of the basis of American justice anddemocracy. Blair has followed behind with anti-terrorism laws of the very kindthat failed to catch a single terrorist during the Irish war.

In thisatmosphere of draconian controls and fear, in the US and Britain, mereexplanation of the root causes of the attacks on America invites ludicrousaccusations of "treachery." Above all, what this false victory hasdemonstrated is that, to those in power in Washington and London and those whospeak for them, certain human lives have greater worth than others and that thekilling of only one set of civilians is a crime. If we accept that, we beckonthe repetition of atrocities on all sides, again and again

(This piecefirst appeared in TheMirror (London), 16November 2001, pp. 6,7. Byarrangement with Znet)