Afghan refugees - BBC News
Nato's current offensive in the town of Marjah is being portrayed as a low casualty mission in the "good war" to get rid of the Taliban.
If you were to believe the news broadcasts, it's already a success.
Since the assault was always intended to be as much a publicity stunt as serving any military objective, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown will certainly be pleased at how the media have snapped into line and acted as stenographers for Nato press releases.
The truth is, most of the few hundred Taliban fighters in Marjah vanished well before the much touted offensive began, not being stupid enough to face up to 15,000 of the most heavily armed troops on the planet.
Much of what we've seen on the TV screens looks like random firing into empty space to give the cameras footage for the evening news bulletins.
But with very few enemy to engage it wasn't long -- two days in fact-- before tragedy struck when a missile attack looking for Taliban to kill managed to slaughter 12 civilians, five of them children -- the very people this war was supposedly tailored to keep out of harm's way.
The attack on Marjah is no different from the numerous other Nato "clear, hold and build" missions -- except in the amount of media ballyhoo.
And there's no reason why this should be different in the outcome, with the Taliban withdrawing tactically and biding its time, before infiltrating back into the town, once the overblown Operation Moshtarak, and its accompanying media circus, has moved on to some other flashpoint of resistance to foreign occupation.
The only reason the invading armies continue fighting a war that cannot be won is in the hope that some escape route can be found, from Obama and Brown's "war of necessity", which
will leave intact the credibility of the Western powers' ability to invade other countries with impunity.
The deaths of the 12 civilians this weekend is a brutal reminder of the heavy price many Afghans will pay in the months and years to come to save the face of those responsible
for prosecuting a futile and unjustifiable war.
[The current fuss about twelve civilians being killed is obviously a PR stunt, weighed against, for instance, the previous wiping-out of an entire wedding party and a delegation of churchmen and politicians en route to a peace conference.]
First published by Stop The War Coalition, 15 February 2010
How much is an Afghan life worth? In The Observer, 28.02.10, Mark Townsend wrote
ReplyDelete"In the past, Britain has paid an average of £7,300 for every civilian death in war, although the last figures available, for the year ending April 2009, show that figure had fallen to £2,900.
...A report by the New York- based Open Society Institute, which promotes democracy, has identified 98 civilians who were killed during night raids in 2009. The report also flagged allegations of ill-treatment, aggressive behaviour and cultural insensitivity.
'Afghans gave accounts of international forces tearing or chopping the Qur'an with an axe, taking women away in helicopters and returning them dead, and shooting babies or children at point-blank range.'"
All mainstream reporting on Afghanistan constantly refers to the 'enemy' as the Taliban. A more accurate description would be simply 'Afghans'. In his letter of resignation of September 10, 2009, Kabul-based US Foreign Service Officer Matthew P. Hoh challenged even the idea that Nato was fighting the Taliban:
ReplyDelete"The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The US and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.
"The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency."
More on this at http://bit.ly/aDxlD3