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2 Years Later: Pittsburgh Remembers Afghanistan
by quinten
Tuesday, Oct. 07, 2003 at 4:04 PM
quinten@indypgh.org
A protestor holds a sign expressing her opposition to war at the corner of Bigelow and Forbes Avenue Tuesday evening. About 50 protestors commemorated the beginning of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan in 2001 and the so-called War on Terror.
war_is_terror.jpg, image/jpeg, 640x479
Carrying signs, at times beating drums and chanting "Drop Bush Not Bombs", but mostly silent, about 50 Pittsburghers today commemorated the commencement of the US-led bombing campaign against Afghanistan in October 2001. Mostly young, mostly students from the University of Pittsburgh, they brought their message of peace to rush hour traffic in the heart of Oakland -- the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning on Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the "War on Terror," independent estimates of news reports suggest that it has been responsible for the deaths of at least 4,000 civillians in Afghanistan and more than 7,300 in Iraq. An additional 300 British and American troops have been killed in Iraq with the death toll mounting daily.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan are in shambles: US appointed leader Hamid Karzai controls a tiny fraction of Afghanistan while the rest is controlled by warlords and violence reigns; in Iraq, the civillian population is without basic services and anger grows against the occupying American forces. Simply put, say organizers Pittsburgh Professors for Peace and Justice, the "War on Terror" has been a human catastrophe.
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/october7.htm
2 Years Later: Pittsburgh Remembers Afghanistan
by quinten
Tuesday, Oct. 07, 2003 at 4:04 PM
quinten@indypgh.org
march.jpgekyhzn.jpg, image/jpeg, 640x480
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/october7.htm
2 Years Later: Pittsburgh Remembers Afghanistan
by quinten
Tuesday, Oct. 07, 2003 at 4:04 PM
quinten@indypgh.org
onlookers.jpg, image/jpeg, 640x480
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/october7.htm
2 Years Later: Pittsburgh Remembers Afghanistan
by quinten
Tuesday, Oct. 07, 2003 at 4:04 PM
quinten@indypgh.org
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/october7.htm
2 Years Later: Pittsburgh Remembers Afghanistan
by quinten
Tuesday, Oct. 07, 2003 at 4:04 PM
quinten@indypgh.org
bring_us_troops.jpg, image/jpeg, 636x503
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/october7.htm
So do these protesters like the Taliban?
by Hank $
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 10:13 AM
Aside from knocking out a regime that would not return Ossama Bin Jackoff over, we took out one of the worst regimes ever. Are these same protesters for Gay Rights and Womens Rights? Do they like the Taliban? The same Taliban that sentenced homosexuals to have a wall pushed on them so that they were crushed to death? Before all of you idiots go out and protest something, take a look at the whole picture. This isn't 1969 and this isn't Vietnam. Look at the lovely pictures that kids have drawn who live under the taliban:
http://rawa.false.net/kid-pic.htm. Boy, the US attacking the Taliban is really something worth protesting.
Which Taliban?
by Masood
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 11:30 AM
When you say Taliban, do you mean the Mullah Ashcroft Taliban or the Mullah Omar Taliban, which coinidentaly is the de facto ruler of SE Afghanistan. There are fewer than 2,000 US troops in Afghanistan, looking for Bush family friend Osama.
you still don't recognise the gist of the message
by hank $
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 12:14 PM
People are protesting the us attack on the taliban like it is a bad thing. Not all war is bad. As far as who is in control of Afghanistan, I don't believe what either the rightwing or leftwing media have to say. None of us know and you won't know unless you go there. The media are all liers.
The point is that when you protest the "Attack on Afghanistan, 2 years later" your supporting the Taliban. You are implying that the Taliban are legit and deserving of some type of dialogue. You are stating that they are a worthy govt. Follow the links that I left and see how worthy they are. You can't negotiate with religious nuts.
Believe me, I'm not a supporter of US policy around the world and I don't think that we are some saviors. But I do think that the Taliban are a bunch of scum bag tortures who got what they deserved.
Talibans are bad-period
by Masood
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 12:24 PM
Agreed, the Afghan Taliban has regrouped. Hamid Karzai is the President of Kabul, nothing more. Osama is still running loose.
The Mullah Ashcroft's Taliban needs to be blown to bits, too. They are my problem, unlike thae Afghan Taliban.
Re: So do these protesters like the Taliban?
by Sam
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 2:28 PM
You're wrong. The Taliban *did* offer to hand over bin Laden. They said they were willing to hand him over to a neutral third country, and allow him to be put on trial in the United States.
The Taliban did not attack the United States on September 11. Al Qaeda did. The argument could be made that the Taliban contributed to the act; yet representatives of Afghanistan warned the U.S. that bin Laden was plotting something months before the attack.
If someone attacks you, you don't respond by killing members of his or her family. You go to the police. Likewise, the legal, moral way for the U.S. to deal with 9/11 under international law was to go to the UN, which would demand bin Laden's surrender, or send a multinational force in to apprehend him.
The Taliban is an oppressive bunch of thugs, but there are lots of oppressive bunches of thugs throughout the world, many of which we support -- like the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Colombia, just to name a few. Furthermore, in Afghanistan, we've backed the Northern Alliance, a group just as brutal as the Taliban.
Is Afghanistan better off today than it was under the Taliban? No. The country is dominated by warlords. Women have been forgotten. People still starve and die of easily curable diseases.
BTW, you linked to the Web site of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. RAWA opposed the war on Afghanistan.
A final point: the U.S. war on Afghanistan has killed thousands, many more than were killed on 9/11, and more than were killed by (and probably more than would have been killed by) the Taliban.
the bombs...
by pjd
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 2:29 PM
fell on many more than just Mulla Omar and some other taliban leaders.
The idea that opposing the afghan "war' is supporting the Taliban is incredible in it's simple-mindedness - it also suggests a considerable lack of knowlege of the nefarious history of US foreign policy over the past 30 years. The US has ZERO credibility as a liberator of anyone!
As Arundhati Roy said, what we have here is a profound lack of imagination. There are mumerous ways a people can free themselves from tyrants like the Taliban; there are also numerous ways the nations of the world can assist in the liberation of a people without paternalistic military intervention and occupation - which are invariably giuded by ulterior motives. Check out the recent history of the Philippines, Romania, South Africa, East Timor, and Burma (ongoing). These people thew off or will soon throw off tyrants in spite of hte US often supporting of their opressors. Please remember that the US largely installed the Taliban (during the Russian war) to begin with.
At any rate, it isn't like the lives of Afghan women have improved since the ejection of the Taliban, just about everyone currently in control outside of a few blocks in Kabul is equally mysogynistic and extremist.
Children's Drawings and War
by Sticking to my Opinion
Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 at 8:25 PM
A quick note about the link to the children's drawings on the RAWA site....did you happen to notice that not all of the pictures were based on Talaban opression? Quite a number of them showed bombings. One even showed a plane dropping a bomb with a circle around it and a line through it with a white dove pictured on the other side. Hmmmm....might that be an anti-war statement from the hand of a child? Did the war hurt these children and their families too? Obviously. Hey, I hate the Taliban as much as any American can at this point, but I hate war almost as much. Innocent people get hurt and killed either way, and things really aren't any better in Afghanistan now than they were before. The war was a waste of money and lives and it disgusts me. I protested it when it started, and I still disagree with it now and am more than willing to say so.
CIA Frankensteins still ravage Afghanistan
by John Lacny
Thursday, Oct. 09, 2003 at 7:53 AM
Hank tells the following lie:
> Aside from knocking out a regime that
> would not return Ossama Bin Jackoff over,
and the following half-truth:
> we took out one of the worst regimes ever.
In reality, the Taliban offered to turn over Osama Bin Laden to a third country, to be tried in an international court. So "Hank" is a liar.
Further, the removal of the Taliban meant that they were succeeded by another collection of criminals, only gathered from other, non-Pushtu ethnic groups, as well as a few miscellaneous puppets like Hamid Karzai, the Mayor of Kabul.
Now, broad masses of Pushtuns are regrouping behind the Taliban, probably not so much out of ideology as out of a desire for protection from retribution and atrocities against Pushtuns. This explains why Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, the former CIA/Pakistani client who hated the Taliban and especially resented them when the Pakistanis dumped him for them, is now together with the Taliban in their war against the US-backed puppet regime in Kabul.
And so the fallout war among the cutthroats continues, and since it's now 11 years since the downfall of the PDPA, the infighting among the mujaheddin has lasted almost as long as the PDPA government and the muj/Pakistani/Saudi/US war against it (1978-1992) did.
It's hard not to admire RAWA's dedication and principled opposition to Islamists of all ethnic and sectarian varieties (Pushtun/Taliban, Uzbek, Shi'ite Hazara, etc.), but their purist Maoism is a little hard to take (e.g., their continued ranting against "Parchami and Khalqi traitors"). I don't mean to downplay the internecine bloodiness of the Afghan left, but from the point of view of ordinary people, women in particular, who WOULDN'T prefer even the old conniver Babrak Karmal to the rival gangs of thieves who run that sad country now? And it seems that the Najibullah government was on its way to achieving some kind of broad-based, stable, and progressive way forward, until the US-supplied Stinger missiles in the hands of the muj finally overcame the PDPA militarily (though it took the bastards THREE YEARS after the Soviets pulled out, by the way!).
mini reply to John
by saleh
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003 at 2:49 PM
salehw@yahoo.com
just to add to and perhaps slightly correct some of what John wrote:
1) Taliban also offered to turn over Osama if the US could convince scholars in 3 countries (other than Afgh) that they had proof (thereby keeping it confidential from the Taliban), and at one pt they said Osama "disappeared" which according to a US special forces analyst was code for "come and get him without having us lose face". But like with Iraq Bush was determined to go in, Osama was the bogey man but what the ruling class is really threatened by are non-compliant regimes and non-compliant political forces
2) Even the Pashtu governors of Karzai are worse than the Taliban, stopping women from going to school or driving (altho for show women in Kabul are allowed to drive, or at least get a license), banning TV, etc. More than the ethnic reasons, people are joining the Taliban because of US abuses, and as before the Taliban for some form of independance and stability - the local governors are Pashtun in Pashtun areas, not the northern warlords.
3) While content-wise RAWA seems the same as Maoists like the Afghanistan Liberation Organization in terms of criticizing the PDPA (actually the ALO does a better job), historically they are really just non-dielectical. Their criticism of the PDPA on human rights (stuff like "they were not progressive on women because women were oppressed like the men were") is like taking legitimate criticism of the Shah's burgi faux-progressivism (women get rights in a burgi/private-property way, not as women themselves) and grafting it on top of the PDPA, their lack of dialectical thinking making them treat the PDPA like the Shah's regime in terms of both of them having oppressive content, ignoring their different character. RAWA has AFAIK never said anything aligning themselves with Mao, and in fact reject the comparison, unlike the ALO.
4) The US-supplied stingers (the Muj preferred captured soviet weapons to US ones) weren't what brought down the PDPA government, militarily it was able to withstand the Muj past the fall of the USSR and looked like it could go on indefinately. It won the battle of Jalalabad, the DRA Army was doing much better alone than it had when the Soviets were helping and had politically consolidated enough groups. Things were at a stalemate, there were agreements between the Muj to keep the highway to Kabul open and leave Kandahar to the PDPA.
The PDPA fell apart because it imploded, Najibullah could not consolidate his power in the PDPA either through genuine political work with the people or through overcoming his enemies in the PDPA who were loyal to people like Karmal and Taraki and Amin. He lost the loyalty of the PDPA which lead to Khalqis and others changing sides or being bought off, note the DRA Army was not defeated militarily.
Najibullah unfortunately could not have made peace with the Muj anytime soon because of the animosity that came from the Soviet intervention, the most the PDPA could have done would be to consolidate themselves in the north where the local militias were on their side (not warlords). A lot of time would be needed before the Afghan people realized that the Najibullah gov't had a diff character than earlier ones. The real turning point (in terms of peace) came later when Rabbani refused to continue the rotation of the presidency. There were and still are enough progressive Afghans within various political forces there to still have influence.
The US gov't's country studies series is pretty good on scholarly facts:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/aftoc.html
altho not when they try to talk about ideological content.
Saleh
bush is liee
by john
Monday, Nov. 24, 2003 at 4:56 PM
model_4k 92-817232 peshware
bush is the first person that instead of having rich economy wants fighting for more money he want to kill his home land soldiors just for oil and he dont care that who is dieing in this oprationg for oil all the world know that he made alot of enemys for american poepl around the world
Hey John
by 2Beers
Monday, Nov. 24, 2003 at 5:08 PM
You have convinced me. We need to spend more money on education in America.
What the hell did you say? I am hoping that you were actually on crack when you wrote that, and that you don't talk and write like that all the time.
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