[Peace-discuss] Fw: Opium, Rape and the American Way

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Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 8:42 PM
Subject: Opium, Rape and the American Way


> Opium, Rape and the American Way
>
> by Chris Hedges
>
> Published on Monday, November 2, 2009 by TruthDig.com
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091102_opium_rape_and_the_american_way/
> and Common Dreams
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/02
>
> The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal,
> as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic
> freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking
> as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and
> our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives
> used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic
> attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War
> cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including
> democracy or the liberation of women. War always
> empowers those who have a penchant for violence and
> access to weapons. War turns the moral order upside
> down and abolishes all discussions of human rights. War
> banishes the just and the decent to the margins of
> society. And the weapons of war do not separate the
> innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version
> of an improvised explosive device. An iron
> fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A
> burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same
> terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who
> pulls the trigger.
>
> "We need to tear the mask off of the fundamentalist
> warlords who after the tragedy of 9/11 replaced the
> Taliban," Malalai Joya, who was expelled from the
> Afghan parliament two years ago for denouncing
> government corruption and the Western occupation, told
> me during her visit to New York last week. "They used
> the mask of democracy to take power. They continue this
> deception. These warlords are mentally the same as the
> Taliban. The only change is physical. These warlords
> during the civil war in Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996
> killed 65,000 innocent people. They have committed
> human rights violations, like the Taliban, against
> women and many others."
>
> "In eight years less than 2,000 Talib have been killed
> and more than 8,000 innocent civilians has been
> killed," she went on. "We believe that this is not war
> on terror. This is war on innocent civilians. Look at
> the massacres carried out by NATO forces in
> Afghanistan. Look what they did in May in the Farah
> province, where more than 150 civilians were killed,
> most of them women and children. They used white
> phosphorus and cluster bombs. There were 200 civilians
> on 9th of September killed in the Kunduz province,
> again most of them women and children. You can see the
> Web site of professor Marc Herold, this democratic man,
> to know better the war crimes in Afghanistan imposed on
> our people. The United States and NATO eight years ago
> occupied my country under the banner of woman's rights
> and democracy. But they have only pushed us from the
> frying pan into the fire. They put into power men who
> are photocopies of the Taliban."
>
> Afghanistan's boom in the trade in opium, used to
> produce heroin, over the past eight years of occupation
> has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to the
> Taliban, al-Qaida, local warlords, criminal gangs,
> kidnappers, private armies, drug traffickers and many
> of the senior figures in the government of Hamid
> Karzai. The New York Times reported that the brother of
> President Karzai, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been
> collecting money from the CIA although he is a major
> player in the illegal opium business. Afghanistan
> produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade
> that is worth some $65 billion, the United Nations
> estimates. This opium feeds some 15 million addicts
> worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually.
> These fatalities should be added to the rolls of war
> dead.
>
> Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United
> Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that
> the drug trade has permitted the Taliban to thrive and
> expand despite the presence of 100,000 NATO troops.
>
> "The Taliban's direct involvement in the opium trade
> allows them to fund a war machine that is becoming
> technologically more complex and increasingly
> widespread," said Costa.
>
> The UNODC estimates the Taliban earned $90 million to
> $160 million a year from taxing the production and
> smuggling of opium and heroin between 2005 and 2009, as
> much as double the amount it earned annually while it
> was in power nearly a decade ago. And Costa described
> the Afghan-Pakistani border as "the world's largest
> free trade zone in anything and everything that is
> illicit," an area blighted by drugs, weapons and
> illegal immigration. The "perfect storm of drugs and
> terrorism" may be on the move along drug trafficking
> routes through Central Asia, he warned. Profits made
> from opium are being pumped into militant groups in
> Central Asia and "a big part of the region could be
> engulfed in large-scale terrorism, endangering its
> massive energy resources," Costa said.
>
> "Afghanistan, after eight years of occupation, has
> become a world center for drugs," Joya told me. "The
> drug lords are the only ones with power. How can you
> expect these people to stop the planting of opium and
> halt the drug trade? How is it that the Taliban when
> they were in power destroyed the opium production and a
> superpower not only cannot destroy the opium production
> but allows it to increase? And while all this goes on,
> those who support the war talk to you about women's
> rights. We do not have human rights now in most
> provinces. It is as easy to kill a woman in my country
> as it is to kill a bird. In some big cities like Kabul
> some women have access to jobs and education, but in
> most of the country the situation for women is hell.
> Rape, kidnapping and domestic violence are increasing.
> These fundamentalists during the so-called free
> elections made a misogynist law against Shia women in
> Afghanistan. This law has even been signed by Hamid
> Karzai. All these crimes are happening under the name
> of democracy."
>
> Thousands of Afghan civilians have died from insurgent
> and foreign military violence. And American and NATO
> forces are responsible for almost half the civilian
> deaths in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghan
> civilians have also died from displacement, starvation,
> disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, crime and
> lawlessness resulting from the war.
>
> Joya argues that Karzai and his rival Abdullah
> Abdullah, who has withdrawn from the Nov. 7 runoff
> election, will do nothing to halt the transformation of
> Afghanistan into a narco-state. She said that NATO, by
> choosing sides in a battle between two corrupt and
> brutal opponents, has lost all its legitimacy in the
> country.
>
> The recent resignation of a high-level U.S. diplomat in
> Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh, was in part tied to the drug
> problem. Hoh wrote in his resignation letter that
> Karzi's government is filled with "glaring corruption
> and unabashed graft." Karzi, he wrote, is a president
> "whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug
> lords and war crimes villains who mock our own rule of
> law and counter-narcotics effort."
>
> Joya said, "Where do you think the $36 billion of money
> poured into country by the international community have
> gone? This money went into the pockets of the drug
> lords and the warlords. There are 18 million people in
> Afghanistan who live on less than $2 a day while these
> warlords get rich. The Taliban and warlords together
> contribute to this fascism while the occupation forces
> are bombing and killing innocent civilians. When we do
> not have security how can we even talk about human
> rights or women's rights?"
>
> "This election under the shade of Afghan war-lordism,
> drug-lordism, corruption and occupation forces has no
> legitimacy at all," she said. "The result will be like
> the same donkey but with new saddles. It is not
> important who is voting. It is important who is
> counting. And this is our problem. Many of those who go
> with the Taliban do not support the Taliban, but they
> are fed up with these warlords and this injustice and
> they go with the Taliban to take revenge. I do not
> agree with them, but I understand them. Most of my
> people are against the Taliban and the warlords, which
> is why millions did not take part in this tragic drama
> of an election."
>
> "The U.S. wastes taxpayers' money and the blood of
> their soldiers by supporting such a mafia corrupt
> system of Hamid Karzai," said Joya, who changes houses
> in Kabul frequently because of the numerous death
> threats made against her. "Eight years is long enough
> to learn about Karzai and Abdullah. They chained my
> country to the center of drugs. If Obama was really
> honest he would support the democratic-minded people of
> my country. We have a lot [of those people]. But he
> does not support the democratic-minded people of my
> country. He is going to start war in Pakistan by
> attacking in the border area of Pakistan. More
> civilians have been killed in the Obama period than
> even during the criminal Bush."
>
> "My people are sandwiched between two powerful
> enemies," she lamented. "The occupation forces from the
> sky bomb and kill innocent civilians. On the ground,
> Taliban and these warlords deliver fascism. As NATO
> kills more civilians the resistance to the foreign
> troops increases. If the U.S. government and NATO do
> not leave voluntarily my people will give to them the
> same lesson they gave to Russia and to the English who
> three times tried to occupy Afghanistan. It is easier
> for us to fight against one enemy rather than two." (c)
> 2009 TruthDig.com
>
> Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com.
> Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was
> for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The
> New York Times. He is the author of many books,
> including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What
> Every Person Should Know About War, and American
> Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
> His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of
> Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
>
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