A Criminal Decade for Afghans.

A toast to Freedom?

We have been in Afghanistan for 10 years now, though the US has interfered in Afghan affairs for closer to 30 years. It is almost common knowledge that the US intervened in the 1980s and backed the Mujahideen to fight the Russians who had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Actually it was the Carter administration that put together $500 million to set up the Mujahideen in 1978 to counteract the Saur Revolution. The fundamentalist regime of General Zia-ul-Haq was more than welcome to assist the Americans in the bid to prevent Afghanistan from falling under the Iron Curtain. The support for General Zia-ul-Haq went as far as to support the radicalisation of Pakistani society, Jihadist manuals were actually printed at the University of Nebraska before being distributed throughout Pakistan. The consequent sympathy for Islamism in Pakistan combined with bureaucratic incompetence and institutional corruption is what kept Osama bin Laden safe in the country for so long. The horrible war which has now touched Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, for lack of a better word, cannot be understood without this context.

The Poodle's reward.

In the beginning we were told this is the "fight for freedom" and we were told "we will see freedom's victory" in the end. There is little mention of the facts about the people who run Afghanistan now. It is a narco-state where 50% of the economy is "black", which means that the cultivation and trafficking of drugs accounts for half of the Afghan economy. The war lords who cultivate and smuggle drugs out of the country are the same people who slaughtered 50,000 people in a 4 year bid to takeover Kabul in the 1990s. The war lords were won over to "our side" with truckloads of cash and guns. For years now these thugs have gotten away with the mass-rape of women, girls and boys. There is no serious commitment to the reconstruction of the country, instead the Karzai government is allowed to wallow in corruption while the ordinary Afghan goes without universal health-care and education. The Afghan people are only permitted a role of ratifying the position of President Hamid Karzai as the country is occupied and trashed.

The purpose of the invasion was never to overthrow the Taliban, the US had supported the Taliban for years and had provided billions of dollars in support of the regime. Then after 9/11 came the demands from George Bush that the Taliban has to hand over Osama bin Laden to the Americans. The Taliban agreed provided that the US put forward evidence (which is normal procedure for an extradition) and the US then proceeded to bomb Afghanistan without any international authorisation in October 2001. Ironically, the following year Bush and Blair were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is worth noting that there were 5 million Afghans on the verge of starvation in the country at the time and, as the bombing commenced, it looked as though the number could rise to 7.5 million. Thankfully the war has not led to starvation on a huge scale, but that does not excuse the immoral nature of the war. Unless we think that it was a sensible idea for Russia to station nuclear missiles in Cuba and point them at the US because it didn't lead to a nuclear war.

The Long Ride to a Free World?

The attacks of September 11th 2001 provided an opportunity for the US to drive a wedge into the Islamist movement, which was actually highly critical of the "new approach" al-Qaeda had taken to attack the far enemy rather than one of the many near enemies. If there had been a serious operation to apprehend the suspects then a wedge could have been driven into the Islamist movement, Osama bin Laden would have been isolated and the threat of terrorism could have been decreased. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief strategist of al-Qaeda, wrote then that the aim of the group was to lure the US into an over-reaction in which it would "wage battle against the Muslims." So that the US would be left vulnerable in a horrible drawn-out conflict while the long divided Islamist movement could be brought together against the West. The plan worked out as the US and UK jumped at the opportunity to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. There have since been attacks against cities across Europe, from Sweden to Spain.

It is difficult to ignore the strategic value of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the battle for control of energy resources in the region, which has yet to conclude and we have to bare in mind the superpowers in waiting (e.g. China and India). Logically any pipeline from India would have to pass through Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to reach the nearest sources of oil and gas in Iran or Turkmenistan. The problem is that India could feasibly turn to Iran for oil and gas, but the US wants to isolate Iran and would prefer it if the Indians turned to Turkmenistan. Afghanistan is situated close to major energy producers in Central Asia and the Middle East, it shares a border with Iran and therefore could be used to "contain" it's independent neighbour. The possibility of a Central Asian energy network which would exclude and isolate Iran is quite appealing to the US. To the chagrin of the Americans, Iran has managed to extend its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan in spite of the continued efforts to marginalise Iran in world affairs.

Talking Tough, Talking Bullshit.

Only when some of "our lads" are killed in battle are we allowed to criticise the war. So the deaths of over 40,000 Afghans would be fine so long as no American or British troops died along the way. The assumption is that this is a noble war against terrorism, which has to be fought to secure the West from further terrorist attacks. The line goes "If we don't fight them over there, we will be fighting them over here." The same argument was used by the US government to defend it's war against the Vietnamese, President Johnson stated "We have to stop the Communists over there [Vietnam] or we'll soon be fighting them in California." This is perverse because American and British troops are effectively dying in Afghanistan to raise the threat of terrorism in the US and the UK. As the war has been escalated it has spilled over into Pakistan, so now the possibility of a state with nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamists has increased. Protection of Western civilians and prevention of the spread of terrorism has nothing to do with the Afghan War.

The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with freedom, democracy or anything as sanitary as self-defence. Not so much as a thought of the Afghan people has ever passed through the minds of the war-pigs and chickenhawks who decided to start this war. We are only allowed to question the war because "our lads" are suffering, which might explain there is little ink and camera film used to cover the slaughter of thousands of Afghan civilians. The vast majority of the people who have been killed in Afghanistan were the victims of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, not the defenders of Osama bin Laden. We have to concede that the backlash has come from the victims of war, the Taliban now represents a small element of the armed opposition to the occupation. The war itself has made the West hated even more than it was before 9/11 and neither George Bush nor Tony Blair will have to live with the consequences of such hatred. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who said "When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die." Think Bush. Think Blair. Think of Obama and Cameron. Forgive none of these bastards.

Support our Dupes?

The Master and Medvedev.

So, it looks like Vladimir Putin will be President of Russia by March 2012 due to a convenient arrangement with Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in 2008 though Putin stayed on as Prime Minister. By 2008 Putin had served two terms as Russian President and had to allow someone else to take office for at least a term because of a constitutional technicality. So Medvedev stood for the Presidency and Putin became Prime Minister for 4 years. In return Medvedev will serve as Prime Minister and lead United Russia. This is not a surprise to anyone familiar with the highly cynical and corrupt nature of Russian politics. It has reached the point that there is not even a whiff of shame to be found at such scenes anymore. It was in front of an audience of dutiful bureaucrats that the decision was announced, then came an embrace which the bureaucrats were keen to welcome with applause. Then it was openly stated that Putin and Medvedev had come up with this arrangement several years ago. The obvious had been admitted.

The possibility of 12 years of Vladimir Putin draws the inevitable comparison with Joseph Stalin in the Western media, e.g. if Putin retains power until 2024 he will be Russia's longest serving ruler since Stalin. When faced with a Russian authoritarianism the Western media can only refer us back to the shibboleths of the old Communist Party. Sadly it doesn't go without saying that the rise of Putin cannot be understood without context. The Economist would have you believe that it is Putin who has undermined Russian democracy before it got a chance to flourish; created a "Mafia state" of crony capitalism via the Kremlin and poisoned the benevolent experiment with liberal capitalism. The conclusion being that the West should adopt a tougher policy towards Russia, e.g. to support Ukraine and Georgia. There is no room for a deeper look at the roots of Putinism, because we might find that the post-Communist world is not just an orgy of consumerism where the sky is the limit when it comes to free-choice and rates of growth.

For the journalists at The Economist it was Putin's failure to shirk from liberalisation of the economy which will lead Russia into future crises. According to The Economist these "weaknesses may make Russia unstable and nationalistic, which will make it harder for foreigners to deal with." Even though nationalism has been a strong tendency in Russia for a long time and the economy was plunged into a deep crisis in the 1990s as a result of reforms. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the advice and support of the US, Boris Yeltsin initiated economic "shock therapy" - a wave of spending cuts, removal of price-controls, deregulation and a spree of privatisation. It was "creative destruction" as millions were plunged into poverty, prices shot through the roof and ruthless businessmen grabbed as much as they could. The country was effectively looted as the state became increasingly ensnared by the oligarchs that had managed to seize large chunks of Russian industry in the chaos. Ultimately the structural adjustments of the Russian economy provide the pretext and create the conditions for a figure such as Putin to emerge on top.

There is no attempt to even reflect on this point in the pages of The Economist. Of course, what really bugs the squealing pigs at The Economist is that the new Russia has yet to join the World Trade Organisation and that the rampant corruption in the country has a disruptive impact on the market. This is not a fundamental critique of Putinism. Primarily The Economist is displeased with Putin's specific choice of Prime Minister and would prefer it if he had chosen Alexei Kudrin over Medvedev. The reason: Kudrin stands for "fiscal responsibility" which means spending cuts for the plebs. The fact that Kudrin can balance a budget means more to this lot than the fact he's just another crony. Kudrin has an affinity for civil liberties, human rights and political pluralism, so he is much more appealing than Medvedev. But he is even more appealing as a "martyr" to liberal values in a barbarous land, it feeds into the self-serving narrative in the Western media. If Alexei Kudrin was Prime Minister under Putin then he would no doubt walk the same line as Medvedev.

The Economist notes that the swap between Medvedev and Putin "opens a new chapter in Russian history - one that may well end in crisis." The fact that it was a crisis in 1998 which allowed Putin to slither into the Kremlin in the first place. The "new chapter" began with the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which Fukuyama heralded the "End of History" and a pisshead named Boris Yeltsin became the President of the new Russia. The collapse of Communism left a void, it was as if all ideologies had failed and the world had entered a post-political age of managerial governance which fed into a climate of cynical anti-politics. Since then an ultra-nationalist populism has emerged, as well as anti-Communist hysteria and even a conservative nostalgia for the Cold War. In a similar way to Berlusconi in Italy Putin stands as a bulwark to the chaos of the marketplace which is conveniently situated at the apex where ultra-politics and anti-politics collide. The only "alternative" permitted by the Kremlin is the Russian Communist Party, everywhere the politics of Russia is riddled with ultra-rightist and proto-fascist groups such as the National Bolsheviks. All the while the Western media is only capable of liberal day-dreams about the new Russia.

The Luck of the Irish.

The Blood Never Dried.

It was on October 3rd 1981 that the Irish Hunger Strike came to an end, it was the culmination of a five-year protest by Republican inmates at Maze Prison. For the Thatcher government it was a Pyrrhic victory as the protest came to an end and Sinn Féin became an established party of the mainstream in the wake of the protests. Margaret Thatcher became a Republican hate-figure as she maintained "We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political". So the British refused to budge on the withdrawal of Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners as 10 inmates starved to death. When Bobby Sands died Thatcher had to comment in Parliament "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". Naturally Thatcher has since been hated almost as much as Oliver Cromwell, who expropriated Irish land and allotted it to officers and soldiers in his army.

The IRA reacted with violence and in 1984 bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton where Thatcher stayed to attend the Conservative Party Conference. In the aftermath the IRA issued the statement: "Mrs. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war." Bare in mind that the British government introduced internment in order to detain suspected terrorists without charge. The intention being to crush the IRA but it actually turned into a major recruiting pitch for Republicans. Then came Bloody Sunday in 1972 in which British soldiers fired on unarmed protestors and bystanders, hitting 26 and killing 13 on the spot. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry of 2010 concluded that the shooting was unjustifiable and came without any warning. None of the dead posed a threat to the British soldiers. Finally David Cameron issued an apology for the massacre which was long overdue.

Let's not forget about Irish history. The Easter Rising led to the War of Independence and then to the Irish Civil War of 1922-24, a very savage affair, fought between Irish nationalists on the issue of the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British, which established dominion status for Ireland (a self-governing Free State, but still part of the British Empire) with the right of exclusion (to be left out) for loyalist Northern Ireland. The partition was established in a desperate political compromise with the Irish to save some face before the country could be sufficiently humiliated once more. The seemingly age-old antagonism between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland was instigated by the British in collusion with land-owners looking to exploit religious sectarianism. The division remains a source of great strife in Ireland, while class is pushed aside as an issue of debate at all. Republicanism remain the official means by which the Catholic working-class is supposed to express its' interests. The great irony being the role of Protestants in the roots of the Irish Republican movement.

Back in 1867 Karl Marx noted that the Irish needed self-government and independence from England, to achieve an agrarian revolution it would be necessary to implement protective tariffs against England. From 1783 to 1801 the Dublin Parliament, which represented the Protestant land-owners and bourgeoisie, maintained protectionist measures to insulate Irish industry from England. These measures were possible because the Dublin Parliament was able to attain a degree of independence from England in 1782. Then came the Irish Rebellion of 1798, after that the Dublin Parliament was abolished and the measures it had introduced were reversed. Free trade was established once more between Ireland and England in 1801. All industrial life in Ireland was destroyed, with the exception of a small linen industry, in a manner reminiscent of the measures imposed under Anne and George II to suppress the Irish woollen industry. As Marx pointed out, Canada and Australia had achieved independence only to go protectionist and maintain economic independence from England. The same can be said of the United States.

By the time that WB Yeats was writing the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy had failed to provide any meaningful leadership at the political level and had resorted to a cultural leadership in order to revive the Gaelic culture that they had previously repressed. It was the possibility of a cultural common ground on which all the Irish could head for and leave behind the old politics. What came before the Reformation was the ancient myths which were conveniently excluded from sectarian enmity, the project of the enlightened Anglo-Irish tradition, while it remained an opponent of conservatism. This is where a marginal element of the Protestant elite became fused with Catholics through Celtic revivalism, nationalism and idealism. As Terry Eagleton notes the irony of the Anglo-Irish who dismissed the Catholics as superstitious only to flounder in the supernatural and the spectral, from Bram Stoker to Oscar Wilde. The occult and strange magic served the Irish Protestants as a substitute for Catholic doctrine. But then Dracula could be seen as an Irish landlord deprived of the sustenance of his soil.

In the aftermath of the Rising the British soon put to death the seven, and eight others, who had signed the proclamation of an Irish Republic after the General Post Office in Dublin was seized. This is what Patrick Pearse described as the "blood sacrifice" of the Easter Rising, which was necessary in order for the War of Independence to be fought. The so-called "progressives" of the time in the British Parliament declined to issue a certificate of support for the Irish rebels. The survivors went on to shape history, the 'Big Fella' Michael Collins became leader of the Free Staters and Éamon De Valera went on to help establish the Republic. Incidentally, De Valera had escaped death because his mother was an American and the British government feared alienating the US, whose entry into the First World War on the British side was of top priority in Westminster. De Valera went on to become a cultural conservative and founded Fianna Fáil in 1926 - which has since degenerated to the point that it has signed away Ireland's future to European bankers. By the mid 1920s the small country had been left devastated by civil war and a war of liberation from Britain.

Over the course of the Civil War the same men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in the War of Independence. It began with the antagonism consequent of the establishment of the Irish Free State. From one perspective it might have been seen as the "freedom to achieve freedom", but it was also seen as a betrayal of the movement. As Michael Collins signed the Treaty with David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to seal the deal in 1921 he remarked "I tell you, I have signed my death warrant." And so it was the following year, in the early months of the Civil War, the 'Big Fella' was murdered by Republicans in a roadside ambush in Cork. The people who had fought together for Irish independence then turned their guns and bayonets on one another. The Free Staters set about shooting their prisoners without mercy and the Republicans soon sought revenge. Out of all the slaughter the Free Staters emerged victorious but it would be the Republicans who triumphed in the long-run.  The Irish Civil War left a bad taste behind in the country, as civil wars tend to do even without the kind of partition Ireland has had to endure. Since then it has been sang by some:

"Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors,
The flag we Republicans claim.
It can never belong to Free Staters.
You brought on it nothing but shame…

You've taken our brave Liam and Rory,
You've murdered young Richard and Joe.
Your hands with their blood are still gory,
From fulfilling the work of the foe.

For we stand with Enright and Larkin,
With Daley and Sullivan bold.
We'll break down the English connection,
And bring back the nation you sold…"

Easter, 1916.

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

W.B. Yeats