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NEWS & LETTERS, April 2002
Column: Our Life
and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
War,
terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan In
March, as the war in Afghanistan entered its fifth month, reports of U.S.
attacks on civilians increased. In one case three deaths of innocent civilians
resulted from a U.S. "Hellfire" missile, when a villager named Tall
Man Khan was observed from a distance by U.S. forces and mistaken for Osama bin
Laden. At
the same time, promised improvements in the lives of ordinary Afghans, who have
suffered more losses than any other from bin Laden's terrorism and the
ultra-fundamentalist Taliban, have been slow to appear. For example, while women
are now able to walk the streets of Kabul without male guardians and some were
able to register for college, many more women remain trapped by poverty and
tradition. As
the famine born of four years of drought continues, some children are being sold
by their parents. For young girls, this can mean sexual slavery. The
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan declared on March 8:
"The women of the world celebrate International Women's Day with spirit and
enthusiasm; in Afghanistan women still don't feel safe enough to throw away
their wretched burqa shrouds, let alone raise their voices in support of freedom
and democracy." Also
in March, U.S. troops battled Al Qaeda holdouts in the mountains of eastern
Afghanistan. Despite initial U.S. claims of a big victory, it appeared that many
Al Qaeda forces had escaped, likely across the border into Pashtun areas of
Pakistan. Pakistan's
Northwest Frontier Provinces, which border Afghanistan, have long been known for
their fierce insistence on maintaining Pashtun customary law (Pashtunwali) and
for their conservative brand of Islam. This has made the Pashtun areas on both
sides of the border a fertile recruiting ground for both Taliban and Al Qaeda. In
many respects, the Taliban simply exaggerated and gave a more overtly
fundamentalist form to Pashtunwali. For example, while traditional Islam grants
women some limited inheritance rights, Pashtunwali gives women nothing. The
traditional Pashtun term for a husband who does not beat his wife is literally
"a man with no penis." Pakistani
fundamentalism is not limited to the rural Northwest, however. It has been
nurtured for years, initially with U.S. support as well, by the military and the
notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It was the ISI that trained and in
some cases even led the Taliban as they swept to victory in 1996. Today these
elements are being sidelined, but they are not going without a fight. They enjoy
some popular support due to legitimate grievances against U.S. imperial
arrogance and the Indian occupation of Kashmir. The
videotaped beheading of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, and possibly even the more
recent church bombing in Islamabad, were likely planned and executed with the
help of elements of ISI. The international media cover these incidents when the
victims are U.S. or European, but seldom mention the hundreds of Pakistanis who
have been murdered by these state-supported fundamentalist thugs. This
is what makes Bush's statement about a terrorist "axis of evil" in
Iraq, Iran, and North Korea such a lie. If Bush really wanted to undercut the
prime support networks for Al Qaeda, the best places to start would be closer at
hand, with the two conservative U.S. allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Concerning the latter "moderate" Arab state, on March 11, 14 girls
burned to death during a fire at their intermediate school in Mecca. The reason?
Religious police interfered with rescue efforts because fleeing students were
not "properly" covered. |
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