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Topic: Why Canada should immediately withdraw from Afghanistan
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N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140
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posted 25 October 2007 07:57 PM
Tariq Ali on Afghanistan six years after the initial U.S. bombing, invasion and occupation. quote: What people underestimate is that imperial occupations under neoliberalism reflect the priorities of the new capitalist order, where they’re privatizing everything in their own countries. So what happened was that money did pour in--and this money was used by Hamid Karzai and his cronies to construct an elite in Afghanistan.In the heart of Kabul, on prime land that they took by land-grabbing, the elite were and are building large villas protected by NATO troops in front of the entire population of the city and country. It costs about $5,000 or $6,000 to build a cheap house for a family of five or six, but they didn’t do that. They spent millions of dollars constructing large villas. God knows why, since they need a permanent NATO guard to live in one of those villas. And they’ll be taken away from them once the Western armies withdraw.
USA! USA! How many kids did you kill today! quote: Wherever the U.S. heard gunfire, they would drop bombs. Someone should have told them that Afghanistan is a tribal society, a culture where people fire guns to celebrate--whether it’s weddings or the birth of a child, they just run out and fire guns in the air. You’d have thought Americans would have been more sympathetic to this, given the gun culture in the U.S., but somehow they didn’t appreciate it in Afghanistan.So the U.S. started bombing people. Reports came of a wedding ceremony in the U.S. came and bombed the hell out of it. Casualties: 90 or 100 killed, men, women and children. And this multiplied.
In Ali's view, it is the Pakistani military, supporting the Taliban, that wants the Karzai regime to negotiate with the Taliban. Says Ali: quote: THE PAKISTANI military is hoping that the West will withdraw and some sort of coalition government will be cobbled together between Karzai and chunks of the Taliban.This is worth stressing. Backed by the West, the Karzai regime, even as we speak, is in serious negotiations with the Taliban. So the Taliban, which was demonized as the worst force that ever existed in the world, is now backed by the West--as long as they do a deal with Karzai.
Ali outlines a position different from that of the Pakistani military. This is worth underlining: quote: I’ve been arguing in Pakistan and elsewhere for the total and immediate withdrawal of all major troops and, simultaneously, the convocation of a peace conference by the regional powers involved in Afghanistan--which means Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India, which is the biggest power of all--to set up a national government following Western troop withdrawal and provide a breathing space for this country to rest and hold elections for a constituent assembly in two or three years’ time.
However, he's pessimistic about the prospects. Neither the Americans nor the Pakistanis will go for such an arrangement. In other words, he expects things to go from bad to worse. Still. Telling the truth about such a situation, where people are being killed, is better than lying about it. We've got a government here in Canada that lies effortlessly about such things. And they will continue to lie - right up until the day when Canadian troops finally leave Afghanistan. Afghanistan today. Tariq Ali.
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003
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