Scottish Socialist Party on the war

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Alligators versus crocodiles

ALAN McCOMBES: Comment

The Herald, 16 November 2001

      IMAGINE a place where people are decapitated
      in public squares for sorcery and sodomy.
      Where public displays of music, cinema, art and
      theatre are banned.

      A country where women are forced to cover
      every part of their body in public and are banned
      from driving. Where they must receive written
      permission from their closest male relative
      before they can board public transport or
      receive hospital treatment.

      A country where trade unions and strikes are
      banned and where no elections are ever held.
      Where people who abandon the Muslim faith
      can be sentenced to death.

      It sounds like Afghanistan under the Taliban. But
      this is a description of life in Saudi Arabia, a
      signed-up member of Operation Enduring
      Freedom.

      "America has no problem with tyranny as long
      the tyrants are rich and obedient rather than
      poor and disobedient," I was told by a left-wing
      Afghan activist who now lives in Pakistan.

      Last week, in a small town in Pakistan's
      North-West Frontier province, I met the
      leadership of the Afghan Revolutionary Labour
      Organisation.

      They have more reason than Tony Blair or
      George W Bush to hate the Taliban and Osama
      bin Laden.

      As socialists fighting for democracy, women's
      rights, and human rights in Afghanistan, they live
      in fear of assassination by right-wing religious
      extremists.

      Yet they will not be celebrating the conquest of
      Kabul by the Northern Alliance. Like most
      Afghans I met in Pakistan, they regard this as a
      war between the alligators and the crocodiles.

      To illustrate the point, I was shown video filmed
      secretly in Kabul when the Northern Alliance
      mujahideen turned the streets of the city crimson
      with blood in the mid-1990s.

      At least 1000 Afghan civilians - most of whom
      had never heard of Osama bin Laden, George
      W Bush, or Tony Blair before September 11 -
      have been killed by American bombs.

      So has it all been worthwhile? Is the world a
      safer place than it was on October 15, when the
      first bombs exploded?

      According to Afghan and Pakistani left-wing
      activists I have met over the past few weeks, the
      Taliban's social base had been narrowed down
      to the most fanatical religious extremists. It was
      only a matter of time before the regime
      imploded.

      Yet countless Afghans and Pakistanis told me
      that, although they hated the Taliban, they
      supported their refusal to give up Osama bin
      Laden in the absence of any clear evidence of
      his guilt.

      Bin Laden himself has been transformed into a
      folk hero, especially among the impoverished
      youth in the cities of Pakistan.

      George W Bush and Tony Blair may claim that
      they are winning this war. Over time, they may
      even succeed in their goal of killing or capturing
      bin Laden.

      Certainly, the Taliban regime is finished. But the
      starving, battered country it leaves behind now
      looks likely to become the Balkans of the East.

      Alan McCombes is editor of Scottish Socialist
      Voice.

Full article at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/16-11-19101-1-8-43.html