The document proclaims Afghanistan an “Islamic Republic”, a nation in which “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam”.
Is it a manifesto by the Taliban, a blueprint for the state to be established after victory over the Americans?
Not quite. Actually, it’s the current constitution of the regime for which we fight.
As the American conservative Andrew C. McCarthy noted rather unhappily back in 2006, the document begins with the words “in the name of God, the Merciful, the compassionate”, announces the legitimacy of “rightful jihad”, mandates a national anthem containing the cry “Allahu Akbar” and accepts death as an appropriate punishment for religious apostasy!
Here we are, in Year Eight of the Global War on Terror, with the rather surreal spectacle of enthusiasts for the Clash of Civilisations urging greater sacrifices on behalf of an Islamic republic.
And therein lies the problem with the case most commonly made for continuing the war: the pundits contrast the theocratic rule of the Taliban circa 2000 with an Afghan future that exists only in their imagination, neatly ignoring the real Afghanistan that the war has brought into being.
Take the oppression of women. We all remember the Taliban’s insistence on a vile form of gender apartheid, something that induced many liberals to support regime change. Consider, then, a recent assessment from Sonali Kolhatkar of the Afghan Women’s Mission and Mariam Rawi from the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan: “Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse … the US military may have removed the Taliban, but it installed warlords who are as anti-woman and as criminal as the Taliban. Misogynistic, patriarchal views are now embodied by the Afghan cabinet, they are expressed in the courts, and they are embodied by President Hamid Karzai.”
But note that caveat about improvements in Kabul. The key American clients in Afghanistan understand the importance of providing something for their backers to sell back home. So, yes, the Karzai government builds sufficient girls schools in Kabul to provide feel-good footage for the TV. But it also refuses to strike down laws permitting husbands to withhold financial support to a wife who refuses to “submit to her husband’s reasonable sexual enjoyment”.
The constitutions itself reflects this weird duality. It contains passages that seem entirely secular, even progressive; it stipulates, for instance, that Afghanistan “shall abide” by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So how does this work alongside the proclamation of Islamic primacy? Well, it all depends on the judiciary — and that judiciary is dominated by conservative clerics. It was they who declared the constitutional legitimacy of punishing the Christian convert Abdul Rahman by death.
But doesn’t the backwardness, cruelty and corruption of the Karzai regime only reinforce the need for more intervention rather than less?
Well, no, for the kind of war being necessarily corrodes human rights throughout the society. Consider the case of the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who in 2001 killed hundreds — perhaps thousands — of prisoners by confining them in packing crates. The US not only impeded investigations into the incident, but there’s also now claims that Americans watched the massacre taking place.
You see, at the time, Dostum was on the payroll of the CIA. Cozying up to brutal warlords on the basis of military necessity was the policy then and it remains the policy still. So is it any wonder that, according to a recent report, some 80% of Afghan officials think that torture is actually legal?
There’s no longer any easy answers in Afghanistan. Withdrawal or not, the future is likely to be bloody.
This week the United Nations high Commission for Refugees released the latest report for Afghanistan
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4a6477ef2.html
Despite the billions of dollars and blood of thousands spent in Afghanistan, civilian casualties increased by 40% last year, making 2008 their most violent year since 2001. As a result, one out of every four refugees in the world today is an Afghan. They have fled to 69 different countries with more than 2.6 million living in Pakistan and Iran.
Operation Enduring Freedom launched in 2001 has brought anything but to the Afghan people. These forces have been responsible for many of the civilian deaths and have done nothing to diminish the cruelty and and abuse of women- one of their stated aims after they failed to find Osama Bin Laden- whoops yes the man the whole thing was launched to find.
Meanwhile those Afghans who leave in search of a life are pushed back at every turn. The west is doing everything they can to reject them. They are deported from Europe and the UK. The Greek government has just destroyed their makeshift camps and locked them up. Australia is funding their detention in Indonesia.
Today 100 asylum seekers, locked inside a warehouse for 3 months are into their 6^th day of a hunger strike in Indonesia. A 15 year old boy, an unaccompanied minor in refugee jargon, weeps in a cell in Jakarta after 3 months incarceration. His father sent him out of Quetta after his brother and sister were killed by Taleban.
The lucky ones are those on Christmas Island. They earned their place in the lottery of refugee selection by placing their lives at risk.
Leaving the people to the merciless Taleban is unthinkable as is the continuing slaughter by warlords In the Government supported by “US”.
Whatever is the answer- we have not found it yet. However we went in and stirred the hornets nest so we are now duty bound not to run away.
I didn’t know much about Afghanistan, apart from news reports, until I read “A Thousand Splendid Suns” on the recommendation of my Irish daughter-in-law, a teacher. Makes you realise that indeed there are no easy answers, the future likely to be more of the same, living like those women do, is hard to comprehend in the 21st Century.
A realistic approach to Afghanistan has to start with the premise that the invasion had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden (who died in December 2001), much less with bringing “democracy” to that country.
The decision to invade Afghanistan was made by the Americans no later than July 2001 when the then Taliban government refused America’s terms for the building of an oil pipeline across their territory to an Indian Ocean port.
The Caucusus was and is one of the world’s greatest potential sources for gas and oil and the Americans are both determined to control it and by extension deny access to China.
An ancillary goal of the American military was to build a string of bases in Afghanistan and the “Stans” to the north as part of their policy of encircling China. Look at a map of US bases. They fulfil both goals perfectly.
A side benefit was reasserting control over Afghanistan drug production which now accounts for 93% of the world’s heroin supply. As to the linkages between drugs, the military, and financing of off the books western intelligence operations read Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott.
What is long overdue is a realistic debate about Australia’s role in this imperial enterprise and formulating a foreign policy that addresses the real interests of this country and not those whose policies do us harm.