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SPEAKING
FREELY
Planting seeds of
terror in Afghan soil
By Mohammed Daud Miraki
Speaking
Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
With the events of September 11, 2001, a
phenomenon which has long been part of human history
returned to the forefront of attention. The phenomenon
in question is the global power relationship between the
weak and the strong.
The current global
situation, in which the United States holds the rest of
humanity hostage to its imperatives, has made this
relationship more pronounced and conspicuous. This is
true and rather explicit in regard to the Muslim world.
In fact, it is not a relationship at all, but an
implicit, totalitarian, global milieu requiring total
submission and leaving no room for compromise. The Bush
administration and its allies view this in mundane,
semantic terms as the fight between democracy/freedom
lovers and those evildoers not interested in either
democracy or freedom. It is much more than this.
Haves and have-nots
I will attempt to
present this global disequilibrium - the dichotomy of
the weak and the strong - as two opposing philosophical
realities. In this dichotomy, the strong - the US and
its allies - are depicted as the "Haves", and the weak -
the Muslim world - as the "Have-nots". The "Haves"
possess modern means of offense and defense and control
global institutions, from the United Nations to global
economic blocs. The "Have-nots" lack all of this.
Although the phenomenon is acknowledged by many
under different formulations, there is a lack of
understanding in the West of the fundamental
philosophical split resulting from the gap wherein the
modern industrialized West, in particular the US,
imposes its will on the Muslim world, and expects
passivity. The difference between this present dichotomy
of Haves and Have-nots, and any similar power
relationship of the past, rests on the totality of the
current global control exercised by the US over the UN,
as well as individual nation-states and their economic
and political viability. In short, the god-given
existence of the Have-nots as people is jeopardized
unless they behave like slaves pleasing their master.
The reactions that emerge from this gap
epitomize the actual incapability of the Have-nots to
carry out conventional warfare. Tragically, their
inequality in conventional capability leads them to
unconventional means of warfare, which renders them
outlaws in the eyes of the US. Conveniently, the US
government calls these acts of desperation "terrorism".
However, isn't it true that if they were on the same
playing field, the Have-nots would not need asymmetrical
warfare as their mode of reaction? Unfortunately, this
is where the thought processes of those in the West
become paralyzed with their own self-righteousness and
arrogance and refer only to their own and allies' losses
as significant, irrespective of how high the losses are
on the opposing side.
Meanwhile, there is a
crucial detail that needs to be clarified, namely the
difference between the masses in Have-not nations and
their governments or elite. Most of the time, the elite
controlling the governments of Muslim states view their
survival as parallel to the interests of the elite in
the US and its allies, and view the continuation of
their hold on power as requiring submission to the will
of the US. Therefore, the governments of Muslim
countries become irrelevant in the dynamics of this
power disequilibirum. In fact, it becomes a struggle
between the masses of the Muslim world against their own
oppressive regimes, as well as the government of the US
and its allies. An exception to this generalization was
Afghanistan, where the Taliban government's opposition
to the imperialistic expansion of the US epitomized the
frustrations of Muslims worldwide. That is why Muslims
from all over the world went to Afghanistan, either to
seek sanctuary from the oppressive regimes in their
countries or to help the Afghans against the US's
aggression.
The significance of this power
dichotomy becomes apparent when one looks at the gap
between the two sides and its tragic consequences. The
economic capabilities of the Haves, and their modern
mechanized militaries, bear no comparison with those of
the Have-nots, which, like Afghanistan, are the poorest,
most defenseless nations of the world. The Haves are
capable of pursuing a conventional war; the Have-nots
are not. The Haves possess the power to sugarcoat their
aggressive misdeeds under the code of "international
law", and justify their crimes under the cloak of
"legitimacy" ensured by international law. By
comparison, the Have-nots do not have equal access to
international law and its application. In short,
international law does not apply to them. The Haves can
violate any nation's rights and justify it through their
self-righteous rhetoric of pursuing democracy and
protecting human rights, irrespective of whether their
violations result in civilian losses of the very people
they claim to be "protecting and liberating".
When the Have-nots defend themselves through
asymmetrical offensive means, they are labeled
terrorists.
Answers within your
grasp
With the onslaught of B52s, B1s, B2s, and
the whole array of F series fighter/bomber jets - 14,
15, 16, 18, 117 - plus the entire arsenal of "smart"
bombs, uranium weapons and unmanned drones against the
poorest nation on earth, Afghanistan, one cannot ignore
the urgency of the philosophical imperatives of this
global power relationship. It is time to refrain from
using the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" so loosely.
When those on the Have-not end of the dichotomy
see no other alternative while suffering from the deadly
arsenals of the Haves, they use the means at hand. Their
only recourse is to asymmetrical warfare.
While
the loss of 2,848 civilians at the World Trade Center
was a massive tragedy, many Americans question the moral
equivalence between those deaths and the deaths of
civilians at US hands in Afghanistan. Evidently, Afghan
lives - "collateral damage" - are not as precious as
American lives. Hence, those who caused the death of
nearly 3,000 people on September 11 are terrorists, but
the US government and its allies are not, even though
the thousands of unexploded cluster bombs scattered by
the US cost Afghan children their lives every day.
Moreover, the US's use of uranium weapons is not only
causing dreadful diseases and congenital deformities,
but have made parts of Afghanistan uninhabitable. The
health risks of Afghan people and the devastation of the
ecosystem have been confirmed by the Uranium Medical
Research Center (UMRC).
If any of these Afghan
victims or their families target Western interests, they
are immediately labelled "terrorists". However, the
Americans and British whose governments have turned
Afghanistan into a nuclear wasteland are "heroes" and
"liberators".
There is unlikely to be much
concern voiced about the effects of uranium weapons on
the Afghan population. After all, has anyone been
brought to justice for the horrendous congenital
deformities that resulted from exposure to the US and
British depleted-uranium weapons used in Iraq, where
hundreds of deformed babies are born each year?
Dr Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear
medicine and radiology and a former advisor to the US
military, set up the UMRC and has been monitoring
victims of these weapons in Iraq and the Balkans. He
found that subjects exposed to these uranium weapons
nine years ago have still significant amounts of uranium
poisons in their urine samples. Dr Durakovic sought to
explore if there were alternative explanations for the
presence of uranium contamination in Afghanistan; there
were none, in fact. Dr Durakovic ruled out all other
potential sources of contamination.
Incidentally, the uranium found in Afghanistan
was neither from geological sources nor had similarity
to the depleted uranium and enriched uranium used in
Iraq and Kosovo. A report written by Davey Garland,
coordinator of the Pandora DU Research Project (based in
Britain), concluded: "The only conclusion is that the
allied forces are now possibly using milled uranium ore
in their warheads to maximize the effectiveness and
strength of their weapons, as well as to mask the
uranium, hoping that it may be discounted as part of any
local natural deposits ... However, marked differences
between natural uranium and the uranium used in the
metal fragments found in Afghanistan was uncovered with
the use of an electron microscope, which revealed the
presence of small ceramic particles produced by the high
temperatures created on impact. This method of
disguising uranium would benefit governments that are
under pressure from the growing anti-DU lobby."
The only sources of the uranium uncovered are
American and British arsenals used indiscriminately
against Afghanistan. Weapons enriched with uranium have
been used heavily in the east, southeast and southwest
of Afghanistan and have contaminated these areas beyond
repair. The water and vegetation in these areas cannot
be consumed for decades, even centuries.
In
fact, it is a certainty that various types of cancers
will take thousands of lives in Afghanistan in the near
future, as they have in Iraq, where in some parts
leukemia among children has risen more than 600 percent.
I suppose this is not a weapon of mass destruction
(WMD): of course not - it is used by the "champions of
democracy and human rights", the United States and
Britain. Uranium becomes a WMD only when "crazy
terrorist Muslims" employ it, for instance, in a
radiological bomb.
Meanwhile, there are no means
whereby the perpetrators of these crimes, the US-UK
governments, could be held accountable and tried for
their crimes because the US controls global
institutions. According to their own "international
law", civilian losses in excess of 1,500 in a military
assault constitutes a war crime. But, again, it is
impossible for any justice to be implemented since US
and her allies control all the means for such an
undertaking. Consequently, the weak and the victims of
the US aggression are left hopeless, in dire need of
attracting global attention to their plight. And, again,
to no avail. This is when asymmetrical warfare becomes
the method of the weak.
And this is when
Westerners become the victims of "terrorism", and they
cry "Why do they hate us?"
The answers are
within their grasp, if they choose to look for them.
A semantic debate
Let us now reflect
on the words "terror" and "terrorism". In fact, these
are relative terms defined by the powerful to
de-legitimize the weak. The United States' terrorism is
not confined to Afghanistan; rather, it is widespread by
means of direct military, economic and political support
to Israel and to totalitarian Arab regimes.
When
Ariel Sharon uses his entire US-made conventional
arsenal - from M16s to F16s - his crimes are judged
under the rubric of self-defense, but when the
Palestinians acquire weapons to defend themselves, they
become terrorists, and Yassir Arafat is confined to his
residence. Yet it is acceptable when Israel - condemned
84 times by the United Nations, and remaining in
violation of 67 UN resolutions (not 16 like Iraq) -
continues to kill Palestinians against the established
UN (and, indeed, universal) principle that mandates that
any occupied people has the right to resist.
When George W Bush calls the self-defense of
Palestinians "terrorism", no one should be surprised -
perhaps because Bush himself started a war against
Muslims and Islam, killing thousands of Afghan civilians
and turning their land into a nuclear waste. If he does
not support Sharon, how could he pursue his own war on
terror? It does not surprise me when Bush calls Sharon a
"man of peace" - this man, who is an indicted killer of
1,700 Palestinians in the massacre of the Sabra and
Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. After all,
Bush is the murderer of thousands of Afghan civilians,
and his father, George Bush Sr, has his hands stained to
his elbows with the blood of millions of Iraqis. We are
talking about a family whose ascendance to power rests
on the murder of innocents.
As to the issue of
the eradication of terrorism, it is a fallacy. No one
could stop or eradicate terror or terrorism unless the
fundamental causes of terror are corrected. It is
tantamount to the claim of eradicating the common cold.
Until there are pathogens, there will be diseases in the
world. No disease could be eradicated unless the
fundamental cause of its pathogenesis is understood. On
the same token, unless the hypocritical behaviors and
policies of the US and her allies are corrected, terror
and terrorism will remain alive and well. The arrogance
and self-righteousness of the US government have cost
millions of lives worldwide, and have turned friends
into foes.
Are Americans and the American
government still puzzled why they are hated worldwide so
much? They know why they are hated. Bush should not be
"amazed" at the extent of the hatred. He should look at
his and his predecessors' policies toward the Muslim
world; then he will understand.
Mohammed Daud Miraki,
MA, MA, PhD, is an Afghan-American
academic.
(Copyright 2003 Mohammed Daud
Miraki)
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
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