Melville CookeYOU CANNOT liberate a person or country from an oppressive regime which you have created or helped others to impose upon them. The United States of America, therefore, cannot liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban. Neither can Russia, the punctured heart of the former USSR, which has been all too eager to facilitate another shot at a faction in a country which bruised their military ego. The two then superpowers, in their Cold War fervour, funded and armed factions to fight their proxy wars and skirmishes in Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Iran, Jamaica, Afghanistan, Grenada, Angola, Guyana, Vietnam, Korea and countries that I have not yet caught up with, rarely getting directly involved.
While the USA and the USSR largely spouted doctrine, made movies and ran an arms race via television, the wretched of the earth fought tooth and nail, M-16 and AK-47, in struggles they did not quite understand for ideologies which had them at the same position on their list of priorities. Last.
The descendants of those believers form a large part of those whom George W. Bush has vowed to hunt down, with the full or limited approval of long-time allies or former foes. They are all capitalists now. There is a name for those who turn their backs on and weapons on their comrades in ideology, if not arms. It begins with 't', has two 'r's, an 'i' and an 'o' and it is not terrorist. Martin Luther King Jr., addressing a gathering of Jews, said that the world is in greater danger from those who tolerate evil than those who actively practise it.
The United States was quite willing to tolerate the Taliban as long as it did not pop up on its danger screen. Those atrocities revealed in the CNN's documentary Behind The Veil were happening long before September 11. The repression of women, which is terrible and wrong, was happening long before the towers and all in them came tumbling down. What the United States has effectively said is that any regime anywhere in the world can brutalise anyone for as long as they wish, as long as American citizens and American interests are not threatened. If you are going to appoint yourself the world's police force, then you must patrol neighbourhoods outside your own. Otherwise, you are going to find that when the murderers move from say, Olympic Gardens to Cherry Gardens, they will have refined their methods and honed their brutality.
I am, therefore, not impressed by the US role in movie theatres reopening and music being played on radio in Afghanistan. While I am happy that these basic forms of entertainment and human living have resurfaced, and while the Taliban was at least as cruel as the Ton Ton Macoutes (who were allowed a free hand by the international community), I must ask one question. Would the repressive situation have existed without the United States? You cannot, I repeat, liberate a person or country from an oppressive regime which you have created or helped others to impose upon them. Afghan gratitude to the United States is as misplaced as black peoples gratitude to England for abolition.
And, truth be told, the United States has so far risked very little in this War on Terrorism. They have dropped many bombs, they have given the Northern Alliance a lot of logistical support and the propaganda mill, CNN, has been running flat out. In the beginning and the end, however, it is Afghans who have done the hard work. Not that you would have grasped this by watching CNN, which has about as much balanced news value as a paid announcement by the JLP or PNP. They have made a great hullabaloo about US troops on the ground, breathlessly informing Americans that one has died, another wounded and 1,300 marines are fanning out on patrols that are taking them from their base for many days at a time. Exciting, isn't it? The fact is that American troops have come in at the tail end of a conflict to pick over the still twitching carcass of a bloodied and battered foe and even then, they are not getting close enough to be on the receiving end of a last lick. Just in case there is a little life left, they are leaving the final slash of the throat to Afghans.
If Afghanistan had been united as they were against the USSR, the USA would have been in a hell of a pickle.
I have noticed that six US soldiers wounded in the prison uprising in which hundreds of Taliban soldiers were killed have been awarded Purple Hearts. For what, pray tell, for what? A few prisoners (one?) grabbed a gun, someone threw a rock (or grenade, as it later became) and Northern Alliance troops, along with special forces, quelled the revolt, killing hundreds. There is just one problem. They had to call in air strikes to do the job and scores upon scores of the dead prisoners still had their hands tied behind their backs. One US man was killed. So what were the Purple Hearts awarded for, to men who helped kill unarmed men who could not even use their hands? How were they wounded? Did they stub their fingers in the aeroplanes giving the thumbs-up as they celebrated bombing men who couldn't even run, much less fight back? Maybe yellow would be a better colour.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
