In May, The Australian reported that SAS troops in Afghanistan had successfully carried out what it called a “targeted assassination”. This was, we learned, part of a strategy explicitly modelled on the Phoenix Program, a notorious Vietnam era CIA operation that degenerated into a campaign of torture and murder.
The revelations about Australian assassination squads raise many questions. Phoenix was directed solely at civilians but the SAS are said to be targeting “Taliban leaders”. Yet, in the context of an insurgency based on tribal and religious affiliations, when the military draws up its death lists, how does it distinguish between civilian and military targets?
The question arises once more as the Pentagon adds drug traffickers to its register of those who can be captured or killed on sight.
The New York Times notes:
The policy of going after drug lords is likely to raise legal concerns from some NATO countries that have troops in Afghanistan. Several NATO countries initially questioned whether the new policy would comply with international law.
“This was a hard sell in NATO,” said retired Gen. John Craddock, who was supreme allied commander of NATO forces until he retired in July.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO until last month, told the Senate committee staff that to deal with the concerns of other nations with troops in Afghanistan, safeguards had been put in place to make sure the alliance remained within legal bounds while pursuing drug traffickers. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai , is also informed before a mission takes place, according to a senior military official.
Those European panty-waists with their — pah! — “international laws”. Whatever could they be worried about?
Here’s the thing: even in war, you’re not supposed to kill just anyone. Drug traffickers might be criminals but that doesn’t, in and of itself, make them a military target. The Times again:
The generals told Senate staff members that two credible sources and substantial additional evidence were required before a trafficker was placed on the list, and only those providing support to the insurgency would be made targets.
Currently, they said, there are about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.
Now it’s nice that they need “two credible sources”. Still, legalists might object that, even the Karzai regime, knee-deep in warlordism and torture, pays lip-service to the idea of a judiciary resolving criminal matters, and that, whatever you might say about the military and its “credible sources”, they don’t actually amount to a trial.
But, really, the key issue centres on the provision of support for the Taliban, since it’s only on that basis that anyone can suggest it’s legal to consider drug dealers as targets. Most of Afghan’s opium grows in the southern provinces, places where the Taliban often exerts de facto control.
In 2008, there were an astonishing 157,000 hectares under poppy cultivation, a figure suggesting that most farmers have something to do with the trade. In such circumstances, if you wanted to, you could describe just about anyone as a “drug kingpin”. Given that the Taliban collects taxes from areas where it has a presence, you could also accuse just about anyone of “contributing money to the Taliban”.
It’s a pretty broad basis on which to be drawing up death lists.
What of it? you might say. If this war is to be won, we can’t be worrying too much about legalistic restrictions on whom we kill and whom we don’t. Why, perhaps the increasing reliance on assassinations in Afghanistan is actually progressive, since it means a decreasing use of the aerial bombing that has caused such carnage amongst civilians.
That might be true. But if so, what does it say about where this war is at? Or, to put it another way, after everything we learned from Vietnam, how did we once more get into a situation where we must choose between bombing campaigns and death lists?
If assassinations are the answer, surely there’s something wrong with the question.
Any “targeted assassination” is a war crime, to be added to the innumerable other war crimes that are committed on a daily basis by the western forces.
Your linking of poppy cultivation with areas under de facto Taliban control creates a misleading impression. Most poppies are grown in the south because that is where the climate and the terrain create the best growing conditions for any crop, not just poppies. It is now very well established, although you would hardly know it from the western press, that the drug trade has long been the preserve of the warlords and their American allies. Karzai’s brother is one of the major figures, as are sundry warlords who double as members of the Karzai government.
Most of the poppies are converted to heroin within Afghanistan. To do that requires major supplies of chemicals that are not produced in Afghanistan, but are imported over the northern border. Those shipments are protected by the Americans, which ought to raise a number of questions about their commitment to reducing heroin volumes. Blind Freddy knows that the CIA are up to their eyeballs in producing and distributiong the heroin, not least because it funds their black operations. They did the same during the Vietnam war, and they are doing the same in Columbia and Mexico.
There are other fundamental questions that need to be asked about Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan, such as the lack of legality, the nonsense rationale for the invasion in the first place, whether we want to be part of a blatant effort to encircle China, whether or not it is just a coincidence that the Americans are building a series of bases that track the same route as the proposed pipelines for gas and oil, whether the increasing blurring of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is part of a softening up of the public for increased military actions against Pakistan, and how long are we going to tolerate videos of the long dead bin Laden being used like a latter day Goldstein to frighten us all into ever more repressive measures as part of the phony ‘war on terror’?
Benazir Bhutto ( when she was alive ) also claimed the CIA stooge, Bin Laden, was long dead.
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=10179
I can’t add a syllable to J O’N. Precise, concise & mordant.
Keeping in mind 157K ha is not so huge over a big country. To get a sense of perspective NSW – which is big – is 80M ha area. You could probably find a few thousand hectares of dope in there, and it’s definitely illegal, but not the case with poppies there?
Also never had nor expect to partake in herion but I recall a nurse relative saying once it’s not particularly addictive – implication being you have to really work at the stuff to be genuine f*ck up. Can this possibly be true? Sure enough Health Report 30 June
Err sorry reference is Health Report 30 January 2006 with Norman Swan quoting a UK study like this:
“There’s a common belief that it is very easy to get addicted to Heroin and the addiction occurs very fast. A new study from the UK says that this isn’t so.”
Then combine this with the fact the country has a population almost certainly suffering painful medical ailments all the time. Well you can see how a strong pain killer is less of an obvious evil except to us f*cked up westerners perhaps (?).