AFGHANISTAN: WHY AUSTRALIA SHOULD GET OUT

On March 21, in a speech to mark the fourth anniversary of Australian
troops being dispatched to Iraq as part of an illegal US invasion
responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqis, Prime
Minister John Howard conceded that despite the "surge" in the
occupiers' troop numbers "success is by no means assured".

He also said, "I am well aware of the sharp political differences that
exist in Australia today over Iraq, differences that have existed
since the government's initial decision to commit forces four years
ago", a reference to the fact that a majority of Australians have
always opposed his criminal war.

Despite this, the speech consisted mainly of rehashing the lies that
he has used to justify the war over the past four years. "Every time
ordinary Iraqis are given the chance they say the same thing in
overwhelming numbers: We want peace, stability and democracy", he
pontificated, despite a BBC poll released the same week showing that
not only did an overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the occupiers
gone, but 51% thought attacks on the occupation forces were justified.

Howard also attacked ALP opposition leader Kevin Rudd for supporting
the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq, albeit a staged
withdrawal over a prolonged period. "Why is it right that Australia
and its allies prevail in Afghanistan but fail in Iraq? Why is it okay
for Iraq to become a safe haven for global terror but not Afghanistan?
Why is building Afghanistan's security capability more compelling than
building Iraq's? And why is a massive setback to American global
leadership fine in one place but not in another?"

This pointed to a genuine contradiction in the ALP's position: the
invasion and occupation of Afghanistan are based on the same dishonest
reasoning as that of Iraq. The immediate justification for the attack
on Afghanistan was the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. While the Taliban regime that
ruled Afghanistan did give sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and his al
Qaeda network, the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks
were based in Europe and North America and none of them were Afghans.
Furthermore, immediately after the attacks the Taliban offered to
extradite the al Qaeda leadership to Pakistan, an offer that Islamabad
refused at Washington's behest.

Moreover, while Western politicians and media generally portray the
Taliban and al Qaeda as being the same thing, there has never been any
evidence of the former being responsible for the latter's terrorism.
Ironically, the same cannot be said for the USA and other Western
imperialist powers - in fact, al Qaeda originated as a creation of the
CIA.

In 1978, Afghanistan's aristocratic-theocratic regime was overthrown
by the leftist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which
was allied to the neighbouring Soviet Union. The PDPA was committed to
modernising the country through radical land reform, the massive
expansion of education and infrastructure and the abolition of the
chattel status of women. However, the PDPA's authoritarian methods,
and its endemic factionalism (which led to continual coup attempts,
assassinations and increasingly violent purges) fed a traditionalist
reaction in the countryside, led by the theocratic elite.

Then-US President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Zbigniew
Brzezinski devised a plan that became known as the "bear trap",
whereby military assistance to this reaction was used to destabilise
the country, provoking a Soviet intervention, and then Washington
waged a proxy war to bleed the Soviet Union. Part of this project was
the creation of an international Islamic fundamentalist army, funded
by the US and Saudi Arabia and coordinated by the CIA and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and led by Saudi billionaire Osama
bin Laden. The term al Qaeda means "the base" and originally was a
reference to the base of operations for this massive CIA covert operation.

The split between al Qaeda and its creator was, ironically,
precipitated by the falling-out between the US and another client when
Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime occupied Kuwait in 1991. Flushed with
success after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and believing
himself responsible for the collapse of the socialist bloc, bin Laden
offered the services of his outfit to the US to fight the Iraqis. The
US, however, was anxious to set a precedent for direct military
intervention in the Third World in the post-Cold war environment and
declined.

A further justification for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the
oppressive nature of the Taliban regime and its ultra-violent and
misogynist interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. However, in this
regard the Taliban is identical to all the other armed factions in
Afghanistan, which all originated from the US-funded anti-PDPA reaction.

While during the 1980s these mujaheddin were portrayed as a unified
movement of anti-Soviet freedom fighters, in fact they were always a
tenuous alliance between rival clan militias and warlords.

After the collapse of the PDPA regime in 1992, they turned on each
other in a devastating civil war. When the Taliban, who represented
the "second generation" of mujaheddin, created in Saudi- and
CIA-funded religious schools across the border in Pakistan, took power
in 1996, many Afghans welcomed them for bringing stability of a sort.
Their violence soon alienated this support, however.

The Western takeover of Afghanistan in 2001 was accomplished by
devastating aerial bombardment and the buying of non-Taliban
mujaheddin commanders. For this reason, the only change experienced by
most Afghans since this so-called "liberation" is a return to
factional warfare between rival warlords and militias and the massive,
but unrecorded, killing of civilians by the occupation forces.

It is almost impossible to obtain information on the civilian body count
in occupied Afghanistan: estimates vary between several thousand and
over a million. The corporate media prefers to focus on the fact that in
the small part of the capital, Kabul, actually controlled by
US-installed President Hamid Karzai, some women from elite backgrounds
are able to wear cosmetics.

Another justification for the occupation is the "war on drugs". This
is particularly ridiculous given that not only was Afghanistan's
heroin industry created by the CIA as part of the covert war of the
1980s, it was actually suppressed by the Taliban in 2000 in an attempt
to curry favour with the US, possibly the only time in history that
any government has taken the US "war on drugs" rhetoric at face value.
Since the 2001 invasion, the Afghan heroin industry has become bigger
than ever before.

The "resurgence of the Taliban" currently being reported in the media
is a result of the violence of the occupying forces. While the US and
its allies use the term Taliban to describe all armed opposition, the
actual armed resistance includes both former Taliban and other clan
militias and warlords. All of these are being supplied with recruits
by both the violence of the occupation and token poppy-eradication
programs that leave the big heroin producers alone but deprive poor
peasants of their livelihood. Increasingly the term Taliban is also
being applied to civilian victims of the US-led forces.

Howard's recent proposal to double the number of Australian troops in
Afghanistan has been applauded by Rudd and the ALP. The notion that
more occupying troops will bring stability to Afghanistan must be
opposed. Immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops would be a genuine
step towards stability. However, given the almost total destruction of
homes, schools, hospitals, industry and other infrastructure since
1992, payment of large scale reparations is also necessary.