by John Pilger
At the Labour party conference following the September 11 attacks,
Tony Blair said memorably: "To the Afghan people, we make this
commitment. We will not walk away... If the Taliban regime changes,
we will work with you to make sure its successor is one that is
broadbased, that unites all ethnic groups and offers some way out of
the poverty that is your miserable existence." He was echoing George
Bush, who had said a few days earlier: "The oppressed people of
Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and its allies. As
we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and
supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of
Afghanistan. The US is a friend of the Afghan people."
Almost every word they spoke was false. Their declarations of
concern were cruel illusions that prepared the way for the conquest
of both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the illegal Anglo-American
occupation of Iraq now unravels, the forgotten disaster in
Afghanistan, the first "victory" in the "war on terror", is perhaps
an even more shocking testament to power.
It was my first visit. In a lifetime of making my way through places
of upheaval, I had not seen anything like it. Kabul is a glimpse of
Dresden post-1945, with contours of rubble rather than streets,
where people live in collapsed buildings, like earthquake victims
waiting for rescue. They have no light and heat; their apocalyptic
fires burn through the night. Hardly a wall stands that does not
bear the pock-marks of almost every calibre of weapon. Cars lie
upended at roundabouts. Power poles built for a modern fleet of
trolley buses are twisted like paperclips. The buses are stacked on
top of each other, reminiscent of the pyramids of machines erected
by the Khmer Rouge to mark Year Zero.
There is a sense of Year Zero in Afghanistan. . . .
MUST READ FULL TEXT
Enver Masud, "Deadly
Deception, Pretexts for War," The Wisdom Fund, July 30, 2001
Enver Masud, "What Really
Happened on September 11 Remains a Mystery," The Wisdom Fund,
April 27, 2002
Standard Schaeffer, "'Al Qaeda Itself Does
Not Exist'," CounterPunch, June 21, 2003
[To build the new housing, which would be for Afghan cabinet
ministers, government officials and mujahedeen commanders, a crew of
100 armed police officers with bulldozers started demolishing the
modest mud-walled houses of about 30 families two weeks
ago.--Carlotta Gall, "Housing Plan for Top Aides in Afghanistan Draws Rebuke,"
New York Times, September 21, 2003]