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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E, MARPRIL 2002
Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a
common bond —they have to live with the phenomenon of blind,
unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs dropped on Aghanis-
tan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria
in America about anthrax and other terrorist acts.
There is no easy way out of the spiraling morass of
terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time
now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of
collective wisdom, both ancient and modem. What happened on
September 11 changed the world forever Freedom, progress,
wealth, technology, war — these words have taken on new
meaning Governments have to acknowledge this transform
ation and approach their new tasks with a modicum of hostility
and humility Unfortunately, up to now there has been no sign
of any introspection.
The International Coalition Against Terror is a large
cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them they
manufacture and sell almost all of the world’s weapons, they
possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction
— chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most
wars, account for the most genocide, subjection, ethnic cleans
ing and human rights violations in modern history, and have
sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and
despots. Between them they have worshipped, almost deified
the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins the Taliban
just wasn’t in the same league
The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible
of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold
War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are
disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg.
They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.
Between the Soviet Union and America over a period
of 20 years, about $45 billion (£30 billion) worth of arms and
ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry
was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly
medieval society.
Young boys — many of them orphans — who grew up
in those times had guns for toys, never knew the security and
comfort of family life, never experienced the company of
women. As adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stoned and
brutalized women — they didn't seem to know what else to
do with them. Years of war stripped them of gentleness, inured
them to kindness and human compassion, and they turned their
monstrosity on their own people. They danced to the percussive
rhythms of the bombs raining down around them.
After all that has happened, can there be anything
more ironic than Russia and America joining hands to re-destroy
Afghanistan? The question is, can you destroy destruction? The
desolate landscape of Afghanistan was the burial ground of
Soviet communism and the springboard of a unipolar world
dominated by America. It made the space for neocapitalism and
corporate globalization, again dominated by America.
With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the
world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the U.S.
government. All the beauty of human civilization — our art, our
music, our literature — lies beyond these two fundamentalist,
ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the
world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that
they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not
about good versus evil or Islam versus Christianity as much as it
is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to
contain the impulse toward hegemony; every kind of hegemony,
economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.
Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile
a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a govern
ment without a healthy opposition. It becomes a dictatorship. It
is like putting a plastic bag over the world and preventing it from
breathing. Eventually it will be torn open.
One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in
the 20s years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan
was reduced to rubble, and now the rubble has been pounded
into finer dust. Reports trickle in about civilian casualties. For
every “terrorist" or his “supporter” killed, hundreds of innocent
people have also been killed. And for every hundred innocent
people killed, there is a good chance that several future
terrorists will be created Hate and retribution don’t go back
in the box once you’ve let them out. Far from stamping it out,
igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism.
Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the
fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of
what “terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another’s
freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world’s deep-
seated ambivalence towards violence.
Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political
instrument then the morality and political acceptability of
terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious,
bumpy terrain. The U.S. government itself has funded, armed
and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.
The CIA and Pakistan’s ISI trained and armed the
mojahedin who, in the 1980s, were seen as terrorists by the
government in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan
— America’s ally in this new war — sponsors insurgents who
cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as
“freedom fighters.” India calls them “terrorists.” India, for its part,
denounces countries that sponsor and abet terrorism, but the
Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels
asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka — the LTTE, responsible for
countless acts of bloody terrorism.
(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahedin after they
served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE
for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide
bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi in 1989.)
1287 COMMERCIAL ST.
ASTORIA 325-5221
JUANITA HUEBNER
It is important for governments and politicians to
understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings
fortheir own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but ,
eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences
Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of
political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that govern
ments or politicians can bequeath to any people — including
their own.
People who live in societies ravaged by religious or
communal bigotry know that every religious text — from the
Bible to the Bhagavad Gita — can be mined and misinterpreted
to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate
globalization.
This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated
the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and
brought to book. They must be. But is war the best way to track
them down? Will the burning haystack find you the needle? Or
will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all
of us?
At the end of the day, how many people can you spy
upon, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many
conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many E-mails
can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many
phones can you tap? Even before September 11, the CIA had
accumulated more information than is humanly possible to
process. (Sometimes too much data can actually hinder
intelligence — small wonder the U.S. spy satellites completely
missed the preparation that preceded India’s nuclear tests in
1998.)
The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a
logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive every
body clean crazy. And freedom, that precious, precious thing,
will be the first casualty. It is already hurt and hemorrhaging
dangerously.
Governments across the world are cynically using the
prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of
unpredictable political forces are being unleashed In India, for
instance, members of the All India People’s Resistance Forum,
who were distributing antiwar and anti-U.S. pamphlets in Delhi,
have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested
The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu
extremist groups such as the Vishnu Hindu Parishad and the
Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of
India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist act which had been
withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it
had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are
Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?
Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are
being let loose into the world. The international press has little
or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, main
stream media, particularly in the U.S., have more or less rolled
over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with
press handouts from military men and government officials.
Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. In
the propaganda war there is no accurate estimate of how many
people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken
place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumors
spread
Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and
you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning
anger Enough people have died. The smart missiles are not just
smart enough They blow up whole warehouses of suppressed
fury.
President George Bush recently boasted, “When I take
action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty
tent and hit a camel in the butt It’s going to be decisive." Presi
dent Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan
to give his missiles their money's worth. Perhaps, if only to
balance his books, he should develop cheaper missiles to use
on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the
world But then, that may not make good business sense to the
coalition’s weapons manufacturers. It wouldn’t make any sense
at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group — described by the
Industry Standard as “the world's largest private equity firm,”
with $13 billion under management. Carlyle invests in the
defense sector and makes its money from military conflicts
and weapons spending
Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials
Former U S Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's
chairman and managing director (he was a college roommate
of Donald Rumsfeld). Carlyle’s other partners include former
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, George Soros and
Frank Malek (George Bush Sr.’s campaign manager). An
American newspaper, the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel, says
that former President George Bush Sr. is reported to be seeking
investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets. He is
reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make
“presentations" to potential governmental clients. As the tired
saying goes, it’s all in the family.
Then there is that other branch of traditional family
business — oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr.) and
Vice President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working
in the U.S. oil industry.
Turkmenistan, which borders the northwest of Afghanis
tan, holds the world’s 3rd largest gas reserves and an estimated
6 billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet
American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing
country’s requirements for a couple of centuries). America has
always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it
by any means it deems necessary Few of us doubt that its
presence in the Persian Gulf has little to do with its concern for
human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest
in oil.
Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently move
northward to European markets. Geographically and politically,
Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In
1998, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Haliburton, a major player in
the oil industry, said, “I can’t think of a time when we've had a
region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant
as the Caspian. It’s almost as if the opportunities have arisen
overnight.” True enough.
For some years an American oil giant called Unocal
has been negotiating (initially with the now deposed Taliban)
for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to
Pakistan and out into the Arabian Sea From here, Unocal hopes
to access the lucrative “emerging markets" in south and
southeast Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban
mullahs traveled to America and met U.S. State Department
and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's
taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women
were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they
are now, but even then pressure from hundreds of outraged
American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton
administration. Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal
And now comes the U.S. oil industry’s big chance
In America the arms industry, the oil industry, the major
media networks and U.S. foreign policy are all controlled by the
same business combines Therefore it would be foolish to expect
this talk of guns and oil and defense deals to get any real play in
the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose
pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been
tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities
about the “clash of civilizations" and the “god versus evil"
discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out
by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti
depressants Regular medication ensures that mainland America
continues to remain the enigma it has always been— a curiously
insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome,
promiscuous government.
And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this
onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda?
The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut
butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just
like those yellow food packets in Afghanistan. Shall we look
away and eat because we are hungry or shall we stare unblink
ing at the grim theater unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch
collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?
Arundhati Roy is the author of The God of Small Things
(Random House. 1997), which won the Booker Prize and has
been translated into 40 languages This article is an abridgement
of two articles which appeared in The Guardian of London.
Roger Hayes is an Astoria artist who often contributes
original work to the NCTE
Juanita Huebner is a poet, artist and teacher who lives
in Eugene after several years in Astoria She organized several
Times Eagle parties