Writings by Kathy Kelly

Cold, Cold Heart

Mary — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:32:30 -0600

Short Information Teaser

Writing about Afghanistan and Bahrain by Kathy Kelly

Excerpt

Body

It’s Valentine’s Day, and opening the little cartoon on the Google page brings up a sentimental animation with Tony Bennett singing “why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart.”

Here in Dubai, where I’m awaiting a visa to visit Afghanistan, the weather is already warm and humid. But my bags are packed with sweaters because Kabul is still reeling from the coldest winter on record. Two weeks ago, eight children under age five froze to death there in one of the sprawling refugee camps inhabited by so many who have fled from the battles in other provinces. Since January 15, at least 23 children under 5 have frozen to death in the camps.

And just over a week ago, eight young shepherds, all but one under 14 years of age, lit a fire for warmth on the snowy Afghan mountainside in Kapisa Province where they were helping support their families by grazing sheep. French troops saw the fire, and acted on faulty information, and the boys were all killed in two successive NATO airstrikes. The usual denunciations from local authorities, and Western apologies, followed. (Trend News, February 10, 2012).

So I’m thinking about warmth, and who we share it with and who we don’t.

This is an unexpected trip for me. I had first planned to spend this week at home in Chicago, and then, rather suddenly, agreed to join a group of informal human rights observers traveling to Bahrain for the one year anniversary of their brutally repressed “February 17th Revolution” (please follow events there, and demand that the U.S. cease arming Bahrain’s dictatorship, at witnessbahrain.org). Bahraini authorities declined to issue me a visa, and so I asked the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers if I could change my plans and spend the coming week with them.

My friends tell me that the apartment where I’m headed has been without electricity for several days in a row. The pipes have frozen, so there will be no running water. But in spite of the cold, it’s an especially good time to visit them because twelve of them will be there, on winter vacation from school, including two 14 year old boys I couldn’t meet during my last visit who spent much of the last year away from the others, back home in Bamiyan province, in their mountain villages, supporting their families.

One father left the family to find work elsewhere and is now living in Iran. My young friend doesn’t hear from his father much, but I wonder what he must think as war threatens to move there. The mother launders clothes to help make ends meet, but with one weak arm due to a history of polio, she can’t earn enough for the family’s food. Her son is an excellent student, but she’s had to ask him to give up school and start adult work full time. Older members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have worked hard finding him odd jobs in various shops, hoping to put off the day when he will have to start full time work as a shepherd.

I’ve just, by coincidence, read the story of another young man, training for work in the mountains: the article reaches me from friends I have just left in Colorado Springs, and begins: “Pfc. Josh Harris pulled the charging handle of a grenade launcher on Thursday, leaned back and peered through the sights. His orders were clear. “All right,” said Spc. Michael Breton, moments earlier. “There is an ice cream truck out there. So shoot it.” Pressing down with his thumbs, the MK-19 — a machine gun equipped with grenades instead of bullets — launched four training grenades 300 meters down a Fort Carson range.” (www.gazette.com/articles/gis-133359-through-peered.html) This is last-minute training before shipping out with the Fort’s 4th Brigade Combat Team. “By March,” the reporter continues, “he’ll likely be watching grenades sail into the hillsides of eastern Afghanistan.”

Everyone knows that these attacks will kill civilians - will kill children. If you fire enough bullets where there are children you’re going to hit them. A few days back filmmaker John McHugh described his twelve day stint embedded in the U.S.’ “Operation Mace” in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province: “Over the course of my stay on Mace, I witnessed the truly awesome firepower that the U.S. military brings to a fight. Between their helicopters and jets they had dropped 19 bombs, fired two Hellfire missiles, 205 rockets, 500 rounds of 20 millimeter, and 210 rounds of 30-millimetre cannon. They also discharged 3,750 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun ammunition. And yet, only once, could they confirm that they had killed a single Taliban fighter.” McHugh wrote this for Mideast-based broadcaster Al Jazeera (“The Winter War,” February 9, 2012). Would a Western media outlet have bothered covering the story?

It’s hard to fathom the vast indifference of Western observers to what their militaries are doing in Afghanistan - to the lives lost, the futures broken, the families and friendships and loves torn apart - all of which will occur in the next country we collectively agree to demolish, and the next. Our apathy surely makes it easier for military and political elites to wage multiple wars. They count on us to look out at a world that we have been told is barbaric and feral, addled (unlike ours) with terrifying fundamentalism driving them (unlike us) to incessant violence.

We lull ourselves into a comforting delusion that we’re waging humanitarian wars, and then wonder why people aren’t more grateful. Thinking of ourselves as exceptionally noble, we’re lost in denial masked as civilizing virtue as we hum along with Tony Bennett’s puzzled lyrics:

“I tried so hard my dear to show that you’re my only dream Yet you’re afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme. A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart. Why can’t I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold, cold heart?”

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Assembly Time

Gerald — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:29:54 -0600

Short Information Teaser

Kathy Kelly Writing from Kabul

Excerpt

December 27, 2011

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Voices for Creative Nonviolence celebrate Maya Evans’s birthday in Kabul photo credit: AYPV

Kabul—Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers” who’ve risked so much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

Body

December 27, 2011

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Voices for Creative Nonviolence celebrate Maya Evans’s birthday in Kabul photo credit: AYPV

Our apartment doesn’t have indoor heating or hot tap water. We bundle up, overnight, in blankets, quilts and sleeping bags, and the Westerners, unaccustomed to the indoor cold, wear at least five layers of clothing during the daytime. Tap water is contaminated, electricity shortages are frequent, and internet access is spotty, but compared to those who live in Kabul’s refugee camps, we’re ensconced in plenty of creature comforts.

What’s more, we are warmed by a sense of shared purpose, our spirits high, building and exploring relationships which are a model and a hope to us, in these dark warlike times, of peaceful futures. Parts of each day are dedicated to informal language exchanges, studying Pashto, Dari, and English. I know it’s a temporary experience, for me, but I feel intensely grateful for the chance to be part of this all-too unusual community. We make our own hope. It’s a cold world but the work to bring each other through it, itself is warming.

Recently, I read a young U.S. activist’s reflections about whether or not to continue a Washington, D.C. Occupy encampment through the cold winter months. He describes the hardships of winter camping in an urban area. Surviving in the rain and the cold while trying to be inclusive of people who have no place to live was becoming a major focus of the occupiers. The author weighs options for developing a sustainable Occupy movement and suggests that it may be time to call for General Assemblies in workplaces, schools, among faith based groups, and in neighborhoods. Grassroots democracy: so difficult, at times, to organize, but at the same time a no-brainer. It can be very hard work, much harder than we find it here, talking to each other, taking charge of our lives and our responsibilities.

Yesterday, I met with three young people who’ve sustained an inspiring example of community formation. Weeda Ahamd directs the Social Association for Afghan Justice Seekers, with help from Basir and Riha, her co-workers.

They welcomed us to their small, tidy director’s office, another chilly room with two desks, a heater(!), and enough chairs for twelve of us to sit down for a two hour conversation.

During their University years, Weeda and her colleagues had become impassioned on behalf of achieving social justice for those brutalized and bereaved by the violent forces at work within Afghanistan. “We realized that many young people who were thinkers had sacrificed their lives” said Weeda. “They refused to say anything but the truth, and there are so many of them to remember. Whereas the war criminals in power will not remember any of these people, we will hold up the pictures in walks. Some of them are people whom family members have not seen for a long time. These are the heroes whom people of Afghanistan should remember.”

Since 2007, Weeda and her colleagues have worked to gather information about people killed, imprisoned or disappeared by armed forces. They go to villages and talk to families who have lost loved ones to Taliban fighters, US/NATO forces, warlords and druglords. They carefully preserve the data. Once it became public that they intended to issue their report, they received threats from several warlords. The report should appear in the near future.

Not only do Weeda and her co-workers assemble stories, documents and pictures from the families of victims of war, they also help build supportive communities amongst the families whose trust they have gained through their repeated visits. Then they invite the families to form larger networks and come together for public protests and demonstrations, demanding an end to the wars. Grassroots democracy is even harder work at gunpoint.

“It’s always a present reality that we could die tomorrow or be killed,” said Basir, “but we would rather do that than have people remember us in the future as people who didn’t live in a principled way. We hold on to truth and justice principles. We’d rather live this way than live under the control of those who commit the crimes.”

“Crimes are not only crimes of the past,” Weeda explains. “War criminals are continuing to commit the crimes, and the US and NATO give military, political and financial support to the war criminals. Their militaries commit crimes as well.

“If a government were formed by the people of Afghanistan,” says Weeda, “we wouldn’t find Afghans easily accepting permanent military bases. Nor would they accept warlords in positions of power.”

“America is in Afghanistan to gain strategic control against China, Iran and regional countries,” she continues. “On top of power and strategic control, we know that America is here to tap on resources that may be present in Afghanistan, or Afghanistan may be a strategic route for the transport and sale of raw materials.” Estimates say these materials may have a net worth of one trillion per year.

She wishes that activists beyond Afghanistan, whose governments are occupying and fighting in her country, would pressure their own governments to stop interfering in the affairs of other countries.

“Any human with a conscience needs to consider himself or herself as a member of the larger human family,” says her colleague, Basir. “I feel I am a member of every family that has become a victim of war. Hundreds of mothers have buried their children with the beautiful white burial cloth. Hundreds walk the streets without a father.”

Weeda is aware that a solution is not easy. She says it may take a long time and insists it must come from the people themselves. Uprisings in the Middle East have encouraged her. “We need to get out into the streets,” she says, recalling images from Cairo. “There, people filled the streets as far as you could see.” Smiling softly, she mentioned the “Occupy” movement. “Maybe they will highlight the crimes that their governments are committing here,” she said, “and speak out against them — call on them to end complicity with war criminals.”

It’s hard work in the winter, and it seems like winter everywhere, but we create small patches of warmth to get us through the winter. All around us, people are finding hope in new connections and in their own startling example of the determination to create hope for others; fear is being traded in for ardent compassionate service; visions are being exchanged, seeds planted beneath the snow, crossing borders and creating new, unprecedented circumstances.

The warmth we keep alive now, the fires we stoke in a dark season, are small, but they’re everywhere. There is simply no predicting what we may be building with the work we do now to keep ours lit, guarding precious human warmth as we move towards another astonishing Spring.

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Reflecting on Occupations

Mary — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:00:48 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Kathy Kelly writing about Afghanistan

Excerpt

“Occupy Together” efforts proliferating across the world may yet help young friends in Afghanistan find reasons for hope.

Body

Reflecting on Occupations
October 17, 2011

In Kabul, Afghanistan’s beleaguered capitol city, a young woman befriended me during December of 2010. She was eager to talk about her views, help us better understand the history of her country, and form lasting relationships. Now, she is too frightened to return a phone call from visiting westerners. The last time I saw her, during the spring of 2011, she was extremely anxious because, weeks earlier, U.S. Joint Special Operations Commandos (JSOC) had arrested her brother-in-law. The family has no idea how to find him. Once, someone working for the International Commission of the Red Cross called the family to say that he was still alive and in the custody of the International Security Assistance Forces, (ISAF). Numerous families in Afghanistan experience similar misery and fear after night raids that effectively “disappear” family members who are held incommunicado and sometimes turned over to Afghan National Police or the dreaded National Directorate of Security, (NDS).

An October 22, 2011 New York Times report about the findings of UN researchers who interviewed 324 Afghans detained by security forces, found that half of those who were in detention sites run by the NDS told of torture which included beatings, twisting of genitals, stress positions, suspension, and threatened sexual assault. Of the 324 interviewed, 89 had been handed over to the Afghan intelligence service or the police by U.S./NATO international military forces.

Even though high commanders in the ranks of the U.S. JSOC acknowledge that 50% of the time the night raids and drone attacks “get” the wrong person, (Washington Post, September 3, 2011), the U.S. war planners have steadily escalated reliance on these tactics.

Consider the killing of three brothers in the Nemati family who lived in the Sayyidabad village in Afghanistan’s Wardak province. Ismail, age 25, and Buranullah, age 23, had returned from their studies in Kabul to celebrate the start of Ramadan with their family in August of 2010. With their brother Faridullah, age 17, they went to the family guest room to study for exams. They were joined by their younger brother, Wahidullah, age 13.

An initial U.S. military press release on August 12th, 2010, indicated that U.S. forces had captured an important Taliban figure nearby and had taken fire from the Nemati home where they believed Taliban fighters were being hosted as guests. Indeed, two Taliban fighters had stopped at the home two days earlier, asking for food. Fearful of repercussions if they didn’t feed them, the family had given them food.

According to a report from McClatchy News, (August 20, 2010), the youngest brother, Wahidullah, said that American soldiers burst through the guest room door around 1:30 a.m. and started firing. As Buranullah and Faridullah lay bleeding to death Ismail tried to speak with the soldiers in English. Wahidullah said Ismail was still alive as the assault force led him out of the room, but he wasn’t sure whether all three brothers had been hit during the initial shooting.

Photographs which the family provided and the U.S. military verified show three distinct bloodstains on the floor where the U.S. forces shot the brothers.

Later, U.S. military forces admitted that they had no evidence that the man they captured nearby was actually a Taliban fighter, and they weren’t able to produce a weapon in the Nemati family compound.
McClatchy News interviewed a friend of Ismail Nemati: “He was not Taliban,” Omid Ali, 21, said in broken English about his school friend. “I want to say to President Obama: Afghanistan doesn’t have hostility towards foreign forces, but, these mistakes, that is how they will be defeated in Afghanistan.” Another student asked why the U.S. would kill innocent people and young people who are the future of the nation.

Our friend Hakim, coordinator of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, writing in the imagined voice of a 10 year old girl from Kandahar, sent us these lines, reflecting on 10 years of U.S./NATO warfare in Afghanistan:

Who says this must be so? Who cares that this is so? I shudder that the raids and bombs have made us less than human. I wish to go to our deserted schools to understand why we are like this.

I used to dream of spaces, blue skies and gentler people. I heard mother through her burqa pleading please “Stop! Stop the money. Stop the killing. Stop.”

Another local explosion, more international lies. Our global problem is that guns impose greater force than common sense or vision which tells me that my mother’s world is crashing.

If Afghans are ever to rebuild their world, we in the United States must stop afflicting them with U.S. strategies to control their resources, use their land for geopolitical influence, and perpetuate violence as a justification for maintaining 200 U.S./NATO forward operating bases, three major bases, an ever expanding U.S. Embassy designed to become the largest in the world, and three major prisons as well as an unspecified number of detention sites.

“Wars are always futile and counterproductive,” says Dr. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, a professor and peace activist in Minneapolis, MN. “We attack other people and they attack us back and then we pour money into our military accelerating our financial decline.”
We’re living in an exciting and hope-charged time as people worldwide are stretching their wings, testing their capacities to confront greed and disparities in political power between haves and have-nots. Many have marched against the Afghan Occupation, against a dictatorship of night raids and shootings, disappearances and checkpoints, a dictatorship- never mind the fraudulently elected local government or how it won its scant power - of the ultimate “have” nation over a nation that has never had less. Protesters’ demands are criticized in the press as being vague and all-encompassing. But I hope the occupiers of town squares and plazas continue sensing and communicating the vastness of the problem while retaining their inspiring power to change it. Many who are led to protest in the U.S. may understandably want tax reform, better jobs, higher salaries and more lucrative “occupations” for people. But we have an opportunity to ask even more important questions by seeking work that is truly useful, as well as production of goods and services that won’t serve military causes and won’t be used for war, destruction, and bloodshed.

A statement from the Las Vegas Catholic Worker gathering, issued on the tenth anniversary of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, called on U.S. people to convert our war-based economy to one centered on serving the common good, alleviating poverty and protecting the environment. “As we hear the cry of the suffering and the poor of our country and world,” the statement says, “we demand that all resources being squandered for weapons and war be instead spent to meet urgent human needs.”

“Occupy Together” efforts proliferating across the world may yet help young friends in Afghanistan find reasons for hope. Innocent youngsters may not be forced to feel that their world is crashing.

The Predators: Where is Your Democracy?

Joshua Brollier — Mon, 09 May 2011 10:00:56 -0500

Short Information Teaser

By Kathy Kelly

Excerpt

Juma Gul, 9 years old, survivor of a drone attack

May 9, 2011

On May 4, 2011, CNN World News asked whether killing Osama bin Laden was legal under international law. Other news commentary has questioned whether it would have been both possible and advantageous to bring Osama bin Laden to trial rather than kill him.

World attention has been focused, however briefly, on questions of legality regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden. But, with the increasing use of Predator drones to kill suspected “high value targets” in Pakistan and Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by U.S. military forces have become the new norm.

Body

Juma Gul, 9 years old, survivor of a drone attack

May 9, 2011

Just three days after Osama bin Laden was killed, an attack) employing remote-control aerial drones killed fifteen people in Pakistan and wounded four. CNN reports that their Islamabad bureau has counted four drone strikes over the last month and a half since the March 17 drone attack which killed 44 people in Pakistan’s tribal region. This most recent suspected strike was the 21st this year. There were 111 strikes in 2010. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that 957 innocent civilians were killed in 2010.

I’m reminded of an encounter I had, in May, 2010 ,when a journalist and a social worker from North Waziristan met with a small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation in Pakistan and described, in gory and graphic detail, the scenes of drone attacks which they had personally witnessed: the carbonized bodies, burned so fully they could be identified by legs and hands alone, the bystanders sent flying like dolls through the air to break, with shattered bones and sometimes-fatal brain injuries, upon walls and stone.

“Do Americans know about the drones?” the journalist asked me. I said I thought that awareness was growing on University campuses and among peace groups. “This isn’t what I’m asking,” he politely insisted. “What I want to know is if average Americans know that their country is attacking Pakistan with drones that carry bombs. Do they know this?”

“Truthfully,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Where is your democracy?” he asked me. “Where is your democracy?” Ideally, in a democracy, people are educated about important matters, and they can influence decisions about these issues by voting for people who represent their point of view.

Only a handful of U.S. officials have broached the issue of whether or not it is right for the U.S. to use unmanned aerial vehicles to function as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in the decision to assassinate anyone designated as a “high value target” in faraway Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Would we want unmanned aerial vehicles piloted by another country to fly over the U.S., targeting individuals deemed to be a threat to the safety of their people, firing Hellfire missiles or dropping 500 pound bombs over suspected “high value targets” on the hunch of a soldier or general without evidence and without any consideration of which innocent civilians will also be killed?

Fully informed citizens might be invited to consider the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but they would certainly be involved in the debate over how we will be treated in future years and decades when these weapons have proliferated. In 1945, only one country possessed the atomic bomb, but within decades, the “nuclear club” had expanded to five declared and four non-declared nuclear-armed states in a much less certain world. Besides the risk of nuclear war, this weapon proliferation has consumed resources that could have been directed toward feeding a hungry world or eradicating disease or easing the effects of impoverishment.

As of now, worldwide, 49 companies make 450 different drone aircraft. Drone merchants expect that drone sales will earn $20.2 billion over the next 10 years for aerospace war manufacturers. Who knows? One day drone missiles may be aimed at us.

Also worth noting is the observation that drones will make it politically convenient for any country to order military actions without risking their soldiers’ lives, thereby making it easier, and more tempting, to start wars which may eventually escalate to result in massive loss of life, both military and civilian.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence believes that standing alongside people who bear the brunt of our wars helps us gain needed insights. Where you stand determines what you see.

In October and again in December of 2010, while in Afghanistan, I met with a large family living in a wretched refugee camp. They had fled their homes in the San Gin district of the Helmand Province after a drone attack killed a mother there and her five children. The woman’s husband showed us photos of his children’s bloodied corpses. His niece, Juma Gul, age 9, had survived the attack. She and I huddled next to each other inside a hut made of mud on a chilly December morning. Juma Gul’s father stooped in front of us and gently unzipped her jacket, showing me that his daughter’s arm had been amputated by shrapnel when the U.S. missile hit their home in San Gin. Next to Juma Gul was her brother, whose leg had been mangled in the attack. He apparently has no access to adequate medical care and experiences constant pain.

It’s impossible to conjecture what would have happened had Osama bin Laden been apprehended and brought to appear before a court of law, charged with crimes against humanity because of his alleged role in masterminding the 9/11 attacks. But, I feel certain beyond doubt that Juma Gul posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S., and if she were brought before a court of law and witnesses were helped to understand that she was attacked by a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle for no reason other than that she happened to live in proximity to a potential high value target, she would be vindicated of any suspicion that she committed a crime. The same might not be true for those who attacked her.

Kathy Kelly () co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Visit www.vcnv.org for a resource packet on drone warfare http://vcnv.org/drone-resisting-sanitized-remote-control-death

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

“One Blue Sky Above Us.”

Joshua Brollier — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:13:26 -0500

Short Information Teaser
by Kathy Kelly
Excerpt
Kabul—Before coming to Afghanistan, I spent a week with students and teachers from a Colorado College nonviolence class who invited me to join them for their retreat near Crestone, Colorado, in an area of the Rocky Mountains described as one of the ten most peaceful places on earth. Coyotes, woodpeckers, and songbirds were easily audible. We reveled in the quiet beauty of an area that is home to 23 spiritual groups, all of whom prize the valley they share as a sacred space.

Body
March 18, 2011

Kabul—Before coming to Afghanistan, I spent a week with students and teachers from a Colorado College nonviolence class who invited me to join them for their retreat near Crestone, Colorado, in an area of the Rocky Mountains described as one of the ten most peaceful places on earth. Coyotes, woodpeckers, and songbirds were easily audible. We reveled in the quiet beauty of an area that is home to 23 spiritual groups, all of whom prize the valley they share as a sacred space.

The area is also home to Canon Air Force Base, Fort Carson and several other military installations. Before leaving Colorado, I visited the U.S. Air Force Academy’s chapel, one of the state’s largest tourist attractions. Pasted on the back of every hymnal in the pews of the Protestant chapel is a prayer that reads, in part, “Make me a channel of your peace that I may defend the skies which canopy free nations.” Ironically, some Coloradans are petitioning the state government to stop the Air Force military flights over their peaceful valleys, and ranchers are likewise insisting that their land shouldn’t be used for combat training. The U.S. military greatly disturbs the fragile ecosystems that are important for ranchers and spiritualists alike.

Peace activists with a long history of opposing war preparations, in Colorado Springs, are protesting a USAF plan to acquire a new Combat Aviation Brigade, consisting of 120 helicopter gunships. Of all the airborne vehicles in the U.S. military’s arsenals, the attack helicopters create the most harm to the environment, guzzling fuel and spewing out contaminants. To accommodate training operations, 16 landing pads have already been carved out in the mountains surrounding Colorado Springs and Crestone, CO. Two thousand Joint Special Operation Forces (JSOF))are also in these mountains, training for work in rugged winter conditions. Their activities include organizing and carrying out night raids, assassinations and death squads.

The 120 attack helicopters are requisitioned for use in Afghanistan. It seems likely that the JSO forces are also training for deployment to Afghanistan.

The Washington Post recently reported that 75% of the U.S. public supports a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. On March 12th, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, extending condolences to families of nine children gunned down by a U.S. attack helicopter, expressly asked that the U.S. end operations in Afghanistan. The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have carefully documented NGOs in Afghanistan with a long history of humanitarian work who have rebuked the U.S. and NATO forces for human rights abuses and for killing civilians.

The most recent attack against Afghan children happened on March 15th, when two children helping their parents clean out irrigations systems were killed by an aerial attack. On the day following the March 1, 2011 attack that killed nine children who were collecting wood on a mountain side, General Petraeus apologized to the families. But, the U.S. has yet to acknowledge the deaths and injuries inflicted on civilians in February, 2011, when, according to President Hamid Karzai’s official report, at least 65 civilians were killed by a U.S. assault. Instead, General Petraeus utterly shocked people in President Hamid Karzai’s presidential palace, on February 19th, 2011, when he suggested that injured children might have been burned by their own parents as a measure of discipline. A month earlier, on January 19th, General Petraeus had remarked that “we have our teeth in the jugular,” referring to Afghanistan, and the U.S. isn’t going to quit now.

Testifying before the U.S. congress, in mid-March, General Petraeus spoke of the fragile and reversible gains the U.S. has made in Afghanistan. He asks the U.S. people not to undermine the “progress” the U.S. war is achieving. We’re urged to treat the military with kid gloves, to handle with care their fragile progress, and not to dwell, unpatriotically, on the war crimes that massacre children.

Twenty seven international peace activists, most of them from the United States, have come to Kabul to hear youngsters whom they’ve begun to regard as brothers and sisters speak about their experiences living in a country ravaged by warfare for the past three decades.

Last evening, they showed us photos of an unusual walk they’d held in the streets of downtown Kabul that morning. Dressed in white, with the young women wearing sky blue veils and the young men in the same color neck scarves, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers carried sky blue and white banners proclaiming that Peace is a Pre-Requisite for Progress. They are seeking an end to wars in their country. “Why did you choose sky blue?” I asked. “Because it shows that there is just one sky over all of us,” Chahara replied. Although they came from different ethnicities and various provinces, they walked shoulder to shoulder, 40 of them, on a bright, warm day.

I’m guessing that many people in Colorado’s Air Force Academy chapel feel calmed and pleasantly righteous when they read the prayer posted on the back of the hymnal. “Make me a channel of your peace,” the prayer begins. The line comes from the St. Francis Peace Prayer which prays for the ability to sow love rather than hatred. The Air Force prayer seeks, instead, to be involved in “defending skies that canopy free lands.”

Rather than invoke the false image of separated skies that distinguish between those who have a right to live and those who live in lands where they can’t escape our terrifying helicopter gunships, drones, night raids, and death squads, we do well to hear Pete Seeger crooning “One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping at our shores, …”

And take a look at youngsters in Kabul, wearing sky blue, who even believe in love of enemy.

On March 19th, in Kabul, Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers will hold a candlelight commemoration, remembering the children recently killed in Afghanistan. Following this ceremony they will plant saplings as a symbol of their dedication to a nonviolent future. Their compassion extends beyond Afghanistan to young people in other lands, some of whom they will connect with through a “Global Day of Listening,” a 24 hour Skype communication which they’ll host on the first day of spring, Afghanistan’s “Nau Roz” (New Year’s Day) holiday. Colorado College students, on their spring break, plan to participate (see: www.livewithoutwars.org and www.ourjourneytosmile.com or email to arrange participation for yourself and/or your community.

Kathy Kelly () co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, www.vcnv.org

VCNV Author
Kathy Kelly

Banning Slaughter

Gerald — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:23:17 -0500

Short Information Teaser
An awakening from the meat-packing floor
Excerpt
In the early 1970’s, I spent two summers slinging pork loins in a Chicago meat-packing factory. Rose Packing Company paid a handful of college students $2.25 an hour to process pork. Donning combat boots, yellow rubber aprons, goggles, hairnets and floor length white smocks that didn’t stay white very long, we’d arrive on the factory floor.

Body
Banning Slaughter
September 13, 2010

In the early 1970’s, I spent two summers slinging pork loins in a Chicago meat-packing factory. Rose Packing Company paid a handful of college students $2.25 an hour to process pork. Donning combat boots, yellow rubber aprons, goggles, hairnets and floor length white smocks that didn’t stay white very long, we’d arrive on the factory floor. Surrounded by deafening machinery, we’d step over small pools of blood and waste, adjusting ourselves to the rancid odors, as we headed to our posts. I’d step onto a milk crate in front of a huge bin full of thawing pork loins. Then, swinging a big, steel T-hook, I’d stab a large pork loin, pull it out of the pile, and plop it on a conveyor belt carrying meat into the pickle juice machine. Sometimes a roar from a foreman would indicate a switch to processing Canadian pork butts, which involved swiftly shoving metal chips behind rectangular cuts of meat. On occasion, I’d be assigned to a machine that squirted meat waste meat into a plastic tubing, part of the process for making hot dogs. I soon became a vegetarian.

But, up until some months ago, if anyone had ever said to me, “Kathy Kelly, you slaughtered animals,” I’m sure I would have denied it, and maybe even felt a bit indignant. Recently, I realized that in fact I did participate in animal slaughter. It’s similar, isn’t it, to widely held perceptions here in the United States about our responsibility for killing people in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq and other areas where the U.S. routinely kills civilians.

The actual killing seems distant, almost unnoticeable, and we grow so accustomed to our remote roles that we hardly notice the rising antagonism caused by U.S. aerial attacks, using remotely piloted drones. The drones fire missiles and drop bombs that incinerate people in the targeted area, many of them civilians whose only “crime” is to be living with their family.

Villagers in Afghanistan and Pakistan have little voice in the court of U.S. public opinion and no voice whatsoever in U.S. courts of law. Aiming to raise concern over U.S. usage of drones for targeted killings, 14 of us have been preparing for a trial here in Las Vegas, where we are charged under Nevada state law with having trespassed at Creech Air Force Base, in nearby Indian Springs, Nevada.

The charges stem from an April, 2009 action when several dozen people held vigils at the main gate to Creech AFB for ten days. One of our banners said, “Ground the Drones, Lest Ye Reap the Whirlwind.” Franciscan priest Jerry Zawada’s sign said: “The drones don’t hear the groans of the people on the ground, —and neither do we.” Jerry carried that sign onto the base on April 9, 2009 when 14 of us attempted to deliver several letters to the base commander, Colonel Chambliss. Nevada state authorities charged us with trespass. We believed that international law, which clearly prohibits targeted assassinations, obliged us to prevent drone strikes. “It is incumbent on pilots, whether remote or not, to ensure that a commander’s assessment of the legality of a proposed strike is borne out by visual confirmation,” writes Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, “and that the target is in fact lawful, and that the requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination are met.”

The United States isn’t at war with Pakistan. U.S. leaders repeatedly stress that Pakistan is our ally. Nevertheless, U.S. operated drones are used for targeted killing in North and South Waziristan. “Targeted killing is the most coercive tactic employed in the war on terrorism,” according to the Harvard Journal. “Unlike detention or interrogation, it is not designed to capture the terrorist, monitor his or her actions, or extract information; simply put, it is designed to eliminate the terrorist.” http://www.harvardnsj.com/2010/06/law-and-policy-of-targeted-killing

The Pentagon claims that the drone attacks are an ideal strategy for eliminating Al Qaeda members. Yet in the name of bolstering security for U.S. people, the U.S. is institutionalizing assassination as a valid policy. Does this make us safer?

General Petraeus may perceive short-term gains, but in the long run it’s likely that the drone attacks, as well as the night raids and death squad tactics, will cause blowback. What’s more, drone proliferation among many countries will lessen security for people in the U.S. and throughout the world.

With the usage of drones, the U.S. populace can experience even greater distance and less accountability because U.S. armed forces and CIA agents, invisible to the U.S. populace, can assassinate targets without ever leaving a U.S. base. Corporations that manufacture the drones and technicians who design them celebrate cutting edge technology and rising profits.

Recalling my own involvement in slaughter, I’m ashamed that I took the job for no other reason than to earn a few dimes more, per hour, than I might have gotten at a job which didn’t involve killing. It took me four decades to realistically assess what I’d done. Will it take 40 years for us humans to acknowledge our role in slaughtering other human beings who have meant us no harm?

In a Las Vegas courtroom, on September 14, 2010, the judge who hears our case has an unusual opportunity to help accelerate that process by allowing expert witnesses to speak about citizen obligations under international law and our protected rights under the constitution of the U.S., all in relation to our duty to abolish drone warfare.

VCNV Author
Kathy Kelly

The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection

Gerald — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:03:25 -0500

Short Information Teaser
...drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small “ground zeroes" in multiple locales on an everyday basis.
Excerpt
General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it’s unsafe for them to gather in the schools.

Body
September 8, 2010

Libby and Jerica are in the front seat of the Prius, and Mary and I are in back. We just left Oklahoma, we’re heading into Shamrock, Texas, and tomorrow we’ll be Indian Springs, Nevada, home of Creech Air Force Base. We’ve been discussing our legal defense.

The state of Nevada has charged Libby and me, along with twelve others, with criminal trespass onto the base. On April 9, 2009, after a ten-day vigil outside the air force base, we entered it with a letter we wanted to circulate among the base personnel, describing our opposition to a massive targeted assassination program. Our trial date is set for September 14.

Creech is one of several homes of the U.S. military’s aerial drone program. U.S. Air Force personnel there pilot surveillance and combat drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with which they are instructed to carry out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan and Iraq. The different kinds of drone include the “Predator” and the “Reaper.” The Obama administration favors a combination of drone attacks and Joint Special Operations raids to pursue its stated goal of eliminating whatever Al Qaeda presence exists in these countries. As the U.S. accelerates this campaign, we hear from UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, who suggests that U.S. citizens may be asleep at the wheel, oblivious to clear violations of international law which we have real obligations to prevent (or at the very least discuss). Many citizens are now focused on the anniversary of September 11th and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should be built near Ground Zero. Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small “ground zeroes” in multiple locales on an everyday basis.

Libby, at the wheel, is telling Jerica about her visit to Kabul, in 1970. “I worked for Pan Am,” said Libby, “and that meant being able to stay for free at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. After landing in Pakistan, we hired a driver to take us across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. All along the highway we saw herds of camel traveling along a parallel old road. I wonder if the camel market in Kabul is still there?”

Jerica says she’ll look for it. She and I have been hard at work to obtain visas and arrange flights for an October trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. [Libby is exceptional in that she hasn’t tried to talk Jerica out of the dangerous travel.]

Conversation switches to whatever CD has just come on, and I tune out, wondering if I’ve done my share of issuing warnings to Jerica about traveling in a war zone.

Tinny music and rural Texan countryside blend together.

My thoughts drift to the Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War, in Kabul. A little over two months ago, Josh and I met Nur Said, age 11, in the hospital’s ward for young boys injured by various explosions. Most of the boys welcomed a diversion from the ward’s tedium, and they were especially eager to sit outside, in the hospital garden, where they’d form a circle and talk together for hours. Nur Said stayed indoors. Too miserable to talk, he’d merely nod at us, his hazel eyes welling up with tears. Weeks earlier, he had been part of a hardy band of youngsters that helped bolster their family incomes by searching for scrap metal and unearthing land mines on a mountainside in Afghanistan. Finding an unexploded land mine was a eureka for the children because, once opened, the valuable brass parts could be extracted and sold. Nur had a land mine in hand when it suddenly exploded, ripping four fingers off his right hand and blinding him in his left eye.

On a sad continuum of misfortune, Nur and his companions fared better than another group of youngsters scavenging for scrap metal in the Kunar Province on August 26th.

Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to “engage” the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children.

General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it’s unsafe for them to gather in the schools.

I think of Nur, trapped in his misery, at the Emergency surgical center. He’ll be one among many thousands of amputees whose lives are forever altered by the war and poverty that afflict his country. Many of these survivors are likely to feel intense hatred toward their persecutors. 300 villagers in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province took to the streets in protest on August 12, following an alleged U.S. night raid. “They murdered three students and detained five others,” one of the protesters said. “All of them were civilians.” Villagers, shocked by the killing, shouted that they didn’t want Americans in Afghanistan. According to village eyewitnesses, American troops stormed into a family home and shot three brothers, all young men, and then took their father into custody. One of the young men was a student who had returned to the family home to celebrate the traditional “iftar” fast at the beginning of Ramadan. Local policemen are investigating the allegations, and NATO recently conceded that they may have killed some civilians. (see www.vcnv.org Afghanistan Atrocities update).

The drones feed hourly intelligence information to U.S. war commanders, but the machinery can’t inform people about the spiraling anger as the U.S. conducts assassination operations in countries throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world. “Sold as defending Americans,” writes Fred Branfman, “(it) is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come.”

The Prius is comfortable, but my side of the backseat has become a makeshift office. The most important file contains Bill Quigley’s comprehensive argumentation as to why the court should allow us to present a necessity defense based on international law. Bill is the Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. On September 14, we want to call on him as an expert witness. We and our codefendants have chosen to mount a pro se defense to try to persuade our judge that far from committing a crime we have exercised our rights and our duties, under international and U.S. law, to try to prevent one and to raise public opposition to usage of drones in “targeted” assassinations.

Jerica hands me the questions we can use to elicit Bill’s testimony. We try to word our questions so that the evidence will be admissible in court. “Could Bill please inform the court about citizen’s responsibilities under international law, could he explain to the court what articles and statutes we will be invoking?” To a layperson, it seems like an elaborate game of “Mother May-I,” and we haven’t even started developing questions to ask Col. Ann Wright, the former U.S. diplomat, who had helped re-open the U.S. Embassy in Kabul shortly before resigning her job in a refusal to cooperate with buildup toward the May 2003 U.S. Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq.

Rounding out our trio of expert witnesses is former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. We hope his personal experience within the U.S. government might arouse the court’s more careful attention to the seldom-discussed legal issues that are fundamentally at stake here. However, the judge has already indicated that his calendar only allots one day for our trial.

Libby, Jerica, Mary and I have blocked out at least ten days, inclusive of travel, for our small contribution to an ongoing effort of people around the world working to put drones on trial. We’re in New Mexico now. I feel cramped and restless, and I wonder if Tucumcari, where we plan to stop for lunch, has internet. We can’t possibly bring the testimony of Afghans and Pakistanis to court this Tuesday. Their testimony, borne on bodies scarred and mutilated and harbored in memories of nightmare, will never be given away and cannot be given in court. Extrajudicial killings are killings without rule of law, without trial. Few if any Afghan or Pakistani civilian survivors of U.S. wars will ever travel to a U.S. court of law for consideration of their grievances.

And at this moment I realize that if we were four Afghans or Pakistanis or Iraqis traveling in a war zone, we’d have spent this entire trip watching not the Southwestern landscape, but the skies.

Kathy Kelly (kathy[at]vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams, is available through Counterpunch www.counterpunch.org

VCNV Author
Kathy Kelly

Unrest in Pakistan

Joshua Brollier — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:34:22 -0500

Short Information Teaser
Moving Beyond the U.S. National Interest
Excerpt
Workers fired from the Bureau of Statistics

Moving Beyond the U.S. National Interest

by Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly

June 18, 2010

“The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”

Body
Moving Beyond the U.S. National Interest

by Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly

June 18, 2010

“The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”

Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won’t coalesce into a people’s revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States’ War on Terror.

Dr. Hassan, a co-founder of the People’s Party of Pakistan, is a respected scholar and statesman. Last year, when we met with him, he had just returned from a visit, in the U.S., with Professors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, his contemporaries in seeking to build just and fair social structures. Last month, in Lahore, he spoke with us about U.S. interference in the region and changing dynamics in Pakistan.

A snapshot of unrest in Pakistan offers a framework for outsiders to understand why it is unfair to insist that Pakistan “do more” to fulfill the United States’ vision for fighting extremism. It may also suggest why strong anti-American sentiments prevail, in Pakistan, among the peasantry, the middle class, religious and secular groups, and the highly educated and privileged classes.

Throughout the past several months, demonstrators burned tires nearly every day in the streets of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore and other population centers as they voiced their opposition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it’s insistence on the implementation of a Value Added Tax (VAT) along with a proposed 11.3 billion dollar bailout package. In a special meeting convened by the Farmers Association of Pakistan, (FAP), participants said that the VAT would “totally kill the farmers and cause irreparable damage to the agriculture sector by making inputs more expensive. This would, in turn, increase the prices of agriculture produce, adding to the miseries of both the farmer and consumer, who are already facing extreme economic depression.”

Ashraf Javed, writing for The Nation, reported that economic experts estimated that the IMF and the Pakistani government’s original plan for the VAT would increase the prices of over 122 major categories of items, including food, by at least 15 percent.

These proposed policies led to protests by the All Pakistan Organization of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, the Pakistan Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islami, textile workers, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and even spawned a nationwide mobile phone boycott. Because of the immense pressure put on the government to reject the VAT, Pakistan decided to postpone implementation of the tax from July to October. The government, under the leadership of the People’s Party of Pakistan, has also come up with plans to incorporate many of the IMF’s demands for the VAT into the General Sales Tax (GST), which already sits at about 16 percent. In response, the IMF has threatened to freeze future disbursements coming to Pakistan if the VAT is not implemented by July 1st along with a “power tariff,” or 6 percent increase in electricity rates.

As the IMF and World Bank are insisting on a 6 percent hike in electricity rates, there has been nationwide upheaval over increased “load shedding,” the term for scheduled power outages in Pakistan, which sometimes last for 10-12 hours per day. Protests against the power cuts, often quite militant, have consistently erupted in major cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Demonstrators in other provinces and cities including Hyderabad, Multan, Quetta, Bahawalnagar, Sukkur, Badin, Mirpur Khas, Larkana, Thatta and Ghotki, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, Kurk, Swat and Muzaffarabad have also registered their outrage. Textile mills, manufacturers, the agricultural sector and traders are among the hardest hit by load shedding which limits the hours of operation, disrupting production and interfering with worker schedules. Protesters have created roadblocks, burned tires, gone on strike and organized massive sit-ins.

In Punjab, Pakistan’s most densely populated province, the Tenants Association of Punjab, (AMP), demands “Ownership or Death.” Involving 1 million landless tenants, based in villages stretching over 15 districts, AMP is one of Pakistan’s largest political movements. For ten years, the AMP has struggled to secure ownership rights for poor families that have tilled their land for over four generations.

The military is one of the largest landholders in Pakistan, and military agencies such as the

Remount Veterinary and Farms Corps (RVFC), Military Seed Corporation, Livestock Agricultural Department and Dairy Farm, and the Seed Research Farm have been claiming ownership and collecting revenue from tenants. The Punjab Board of Revenue has ruled that these military companies have no legal claim to the land or its revenue, but tenants have faced campaigns of intimidation, coercion, cruelty and murder by armed police and paramilitary forces.

Led by peasant women organizers, AMP scored a major victory in March, 2010, after staging a long march and sit-in. Thirty-thousand tenants, women and children shut down the Multan-Lahore expressway for over ten hours and succeeded in securing ownership rights from the Government of Punjab. The government agreed that transfer of land ownership was to start with immediate effect and that a committee for monitoring of the process for transfer of land to tenants would include representatives of the Women’s Peasant Society and AMP.

While in Islamabad, we spent time with two groups of workers involved in long demonstrations for economic rights. The first was a group of nine men who, for the past month, had been occupying a tent outside the city’s Press Center. They represent 491 former employees of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, all of whom were suddenly fired from their jobs before their contracts were finished. They suspect that their jobs are now being filled with new employees hired on the basis of patronage and not merit. The nine we met with were all college educated and probably considered middle class before they lost their jobs. However, many of them were the sole providers for households ranging from 8-10 in number. The group aims to remain in the streets, in protest, until their jobs are reinstated.

Workers fired from the Bureau of Statistics

The second group of workers we interviewed was from the All Pakistan Clerks Association. The clerks were in their third month of public protest. They had moved, the previous day, to an encampment in front of the parliament where they demanded that Members of Parliament devise a budget that would give the clerks a pay raise proportionate to inflation and commensurate with salaries of the police, army and the judiciary. They explained to us that the army, police and judiciary have received consistent pay raises and healthcare benefits; meanwhile, civil society has been abandoned. One man said, “Our pay only covers utilities. We have no remaining money for health care or education. How can we care for our children?” Solidarity demonstrations with the All Clerks Association occurred across the country and picked up in number and intensity after June 3rd when the police baton charged the clerks and members of United Teachers Association in front of the parliament. The clerks intended to remain in protest until the announcement of the 2010-2011 budget on June 15th.

With the announcement by Pakistan’s Finance Minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, that the country’s defense spending will be raised to more than 5 billion beginning July 1st, a 17 percent increase from last year, it’s unlikely that the clerks will receive the raises and benefits they’ve sought.

All Pakistan Clerks Association protest in Islamabad

Since Pakistan’s inception, the military has been a dominant force in running both internal politics and foreign policy. In The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defense, Ayesha Jalal notes that the Pakistani government has faced a menacing set of challenges on the domestic, regional and international fronts that have tipped the balance in favor of the military and civil bureaucracies which were not elected democratically.

Additionally, as detailed in a recent report by Amnesty International, residents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) “continue to be governed by a colonial-era law, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901, which denies basic constitutional rights and protections for the residents of FATA, including their rights to political representation, judicial appeal, and freedom from collective punishment.”

Pakistan faced a considerable increase in external pressure from the United States after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s greater significance in Western security calculations bolstered Pakistan’s strategic defenses, leading to bloated defense budgets that the country didn’t have the resources and capacity to meet. Pressure to increase military spending and expand military powers “intensified Pakistan’s internal socio-economic and political dilemmas,” Ayesha Jalal writes. “The negative impact of economic policies geared to sustain the needs of defense and requirements of international allies contributed to a wide array of social disaffections.” The pattern has really remained largely the same ever since.

During the Bush-Mush years, (President George W. Bush and General Pervez Musharraf headed the U.S. and Pakistan, respectively), the U.S. gave Pakistan 11.9 billion dollars in assistance, 8 billion of which went directly to the military. Now, the Obama Administration is insisting on more military offensives in the northwest parts of the country while Pakistan wrestles with the aftermath of a 2009 military offensive that displaced 3.5 million people, hundreds of thousands of whom still live as refugees. Following the 2009 military operations in Swat and neighboring provinces, the Pakistani armed forces began attacks against alleged militant strongholds in North and South Waziristan, creating new waves of displacement as people were forced to abandon their homes. Continued military operations will require funding, which then diverts needed resources that might otherwise be used to assist remaining refugees, alleviate poverty and reduce wealth disparities.

The military operations are taking place in an almost total media vacuum, in an area which Amnesty International has called a “human rights free zone.” Amnesty has documented that over 1,300 civilians were killed in last year’s fighting in northwest Pakistan and that the Pakistani government has indefinitely detained some 2,500 people without bringing any charges against them. Thirteen hundred people killed? That’s nearly as many lives as were lost during the 2008- 2009 Israeli massacre in Gaza, and where is the outcry? 2,500 people detained and likely tortured? Guantanamo has a long way to go to catch up to those statistics. “It’s the opposite of enforcing the rule of the law,” says Saman Zia Zarifi, the director of Amnesty Asia-Pacific. “This is moving towards chaos.”

The U.S. has insisted that Pakistan undertake military offensives that attack their own people. Meanwhile, U.S. drone strikes kill and maim many hundreds of Pakistanis. Exactly how many? It’s difficult to say. “Killing or violating even one person is wrong,” Dr. Hassan advised us. “The use of weapons against non-combatants is wrong.” These wrongs fuel distrust and hatred of the United States across Pakistan.

Pakistanis also suffer as a result of U.S. and NATO supply convoys that travel through Pakistan en route to Afghanistan. Just outside Islamabad, on June 8, 2010, militants attacked 50 NATO supply trucks headed for Afghanistan. Seven people were killed and 20 trucks were set ablaze. Just as there is no accountability when the CIA destroys a family home from a drone strike, it is doubtful that the United States offers any compensation to those who are injured or have lost family members as a result of an attack on a supply convoy. In fact, we met a young Afghan man who was hired by NATO as a convoy driver three years ago and who, earlier this year, while driving with a NATO convoy, drove over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The explosion shattered his leg. He received no compensation whatsoever from NATO forces.

Pakistanis also face increased militant and terrorist attacks in their cities as a result of U.S. policy. Continued U.S. interference serves as a recruitment tool for extremists. Militant and religious organizations train others to attack population centers and marginalized minority groups within Pakistani society. Recently, a Taliban group attacked two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, killing over 80 people. Obviously, this kind of behavior cannot be attributed solely to the United States, but the U.S. government has to face its history of fostering and arming radical Islamic movements in South Asia when it suited U.S. geo-strategic interest. And after increased U.S. operations in the country since 2004, U.S. policy seems to be intensifying rather than decreasing militancy. Since the Pakistani government’s military offensives in the spring of 2009, launched under great pressure from the United States, hundreds of Pakistani civilians have been killed by retaliatory terror attacks.

With 60 million people living in poverty and many more living just above the poverty line, the people of Pakistan have priorities that do not include acting as a proxy to fight U.S. wars against purported terrorists. For many people, including those like Muhammad Akbar, a desperate rickshaw driver who committed suicide on Wednesday due to prolonged financial hardships, these priorities may be simply to put food on the table and to provide for their families. For others, including women’s and minority groups, fighting for their own political and human rights takes precedence.

People in the United States wishing to show solidarity with Pakistanis struggling to make ends meet should try to dialogue with Pakistani led grassroots movements. These indigenous efforts hold the keys to reducing poverty, ending discrimination and countering extremism in the region. We should also simplify our lifestyles and consumption patterns to require less of a share in the world’s resources, so that corrupt institutions like the U.S. government and the IMF do not have a pretext or a supposed mandate to continue interfering in the lives of others in order to serve the so-called U.S. “national interest.”

We would do well to heed Dr. Mubashir Hassan’s words. “Please leave us to our fate and to our devices,” he requested. “We’ll mess up, but we’ll get there.” He added that in spite of anxieties that his country is unraveling, there is still something hopeful. It’s this: perhaps people will be shown the result of violence and be prepared to believe that war doesn’t solve anything.

Joshua Brollier () and Kathy Kelly () are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. www.vcnv.org.

The world cup of economic and military warfare

Joshua Brollier — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:29:46 -0500

Short Information Teaser
Plausible alternatives to US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Excerpt
By Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

June 2, 2010

Islamabad— “Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around.” This sentiment, expressed by a young man from North Waziristan, has been echoed throughout many of our conversations with ordinary people here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Most are baffled that the United States, with the largest and most modern military in the world, can’t put a stop to a few thousand militants hiding out in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Body
By Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

June 2, 2010

Islamabad— “Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around.” This sentiment, expressed by a young man from North Waziristan, has been echoed throughout many of our conversations with ordinary people here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Most are baffled that the United States, with the largest and most modern military in the world, can’t put a stop to a few thousand militants hiding out in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Just about everyone we have spoken with, Pashtuns included, has little to no sympathy for the Taliban or their tactics. Many people have lost limbs, homes and loved ones to the brutal assaults of suicide bombers or the indiscriminate violence of IEDs. Yet, people expressed frustrated confusion over uncertainties regarding U.S. government goals in relation to the Taliban. Some believe that the United States might be working with the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Services) or at least not working against them, to enable continued Taliban resistance. If there is no resistance, according to this view, a military presence in the region cannot be justified. Nor can a so-called humanitarian presence further flood the Pakistani and Afghan economies with millions of dollars in aid that most often lines the pockets of the politicians, elite bureaucrats, and United States corporations involved in construction and security.

The fact that very little aid money has reached the impoverished and war weary people who need it most has been confirmed to us by members of the Afghan and Pakistani governments, human rights organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations and several very unfortunate families forced to live as refugees. As Hyder Akbar, a Pashtun working on NGO assessments in Afghanistan, said to us, “If you are pouring 100 million dollars into a tiny and impoverished province like Kunar and seeing no results, you’re obviously doing something wrong.” However, several seasoned analysts agree that money alone can’t solve problems faced by impoverished people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Both Dr. Mubashir Hassan, former finance minister of the Peoples Party of Pakistan, and Nur Agha Akbari, from the Ministry of Agriculture in Afghanistan, strongly believe that efforts to bring people out of poverty in South Asia must be initiated, at district and village levels, through consultation with grass roots, indigenous community groups. Mr. Akbari stressed that there is still an opportunity for the United States government and people to play a positive role in Afghanistan, but that role will not be possible until the United States stops giving orders and starts listening to community groups living in Afghanistan.

It’s also time that the United States drop the facade of humanitarianism that guides our national discourse concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan. For too long, most people in the United States couldn’t find Pakistani areas such as North Waziristan or Orakzai on the map. They had no idea where Helmand or Kandahar were located. Now, with our newspapers less preoccupied by Iraq, we learn to be worried for Afghan and Pakistani women if there is a Taliban take-over in the area. This isn’t to say that the United States should not care about the rights of women in both countries or the implications of a spread in extremist ideology. But, military intervention is not curbing the growth of Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and U.S. “strategic interests” in the area certainly guide most U.S. policy makers more than altruistic concern for women. For instance, the United States government seldom mentions the rights of women who are forced to live, as a result of U.S. policy, in refugee camps just outside of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Women and children almost always have less physical and food security in refugee camps, and they are easier targets for sexual violence.

One doesn’t have to spend much time in South Asia to find many people who feel that tactics like the U.S. offensive in Kandahar, torture and indefinite detention at Bagram, and the drone strikes in Pakistan are fanning the flames of resistance and increasing the ranks of violent groups that manipulate Islam for their own purposes. Muslims in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have asked that we tell people in the United States that Islam is a religion of peace. “A man who uses violence has no religion,” says Abbas, a young man from Islamabad.

Students, professors, and human rights advocates in both countries affirmed that relationships, independent of military force, could be built between the people of the U.S. and South Asia. Those who’ve told us that military force is necessary to confront extremism have invariably added that the timing and control of military action should be in the hands of those who live in the region and know the society.

The United States bears a huge responsibility to make reparations to people of Afghanistan and Pakistan after pursuing nearly 10 years of destructive warfare that has destabilized both countries. There is a looming fear that, in Afghanistan, the United States is going to abandon the country and its people, returning Afghanistan to a Taliban or pre-Taliban era. But the withdrawal of troops does not require the U.S. to abandon Afghanistan. There are models for securing development efforts, in conflict zones, that do not require hundreds of thousands of troops, networks of military bases, and the overwhelming force of aerial surveillance and bombing.

Mr. Abdul Rahman Hotaki, a lawyer and director of the the Afghan Organization of Human Rights & Environmental Protection (AOHREP), points out that, roughly, only 20 percent of the funds given the U.S. Army Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) ever reach the stage of investment in an actual project. Even when PRTs effectively build a road or a school, gaining the trust of a community is problematic because the lines between military and humanitarian work become blurred. Schools, roads and other projects are often sabotaged under the suspicion that the projects are built more to serve U.S. imperialistic interests than to help Afghans.

In Afghanistan, it’s helpful to evaluate the construction of schools by Community Development Councils (CDCs) which, from start to finish, included participation of people living in the locale where the school was being built. In the CDC model, communities start by putting put up some funds or guarantees in advance of the project and then provide their own security throughout the process. Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister of Afghanistan, initiated the setup of these CDCs under the National Solidarity Project, which was loosely based on a model proposed by Nur Agha Akbari and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Not a single school built by the CDCs has been attacked by Taliban or other forces. Hyder Akbar attributes this to the sense of ownership by the community which creates security for the schools. USAID and other international donors have lauded such models but then revoked funding before projects could get off the ground. Both Mr. Nura Agha Akbari and Mr. Abdul Rehman Hotaki expressed frustration about having been involved in extensive preparation for CDC modeled projects, only to see their communities let down when donors from the U.S. and Canada decided they had other priorities.

The Italian NGO, Emergency, provides another solid example of dedication to Afghanistan that both philosophically and practically surpasses the United States’ policy of continued warfare as a means to achieve security. Emergency’s goal is providing health care and medical treatment to civilian victims of war and poverty. And they do it well. Their involvement in Afghanistan first began in 1999 through construction of a Surgical Centre in Anabah, a village in the Panjshir Valley. Emergency has since developed three major hospitals and 28 first aid posts and medical centers, treating over 2.5 million people. They treat all sides in a conflict without discrimination and they charge nothing to their patients. Although they operate on a modest budget and can’t afford to pay the higher salaries offered by other NGOs, they attract and keep employees who admire Emergency’s work. Their employment rosters steadily show staffing that is half Afghan and half international. Most employees we met told us they are motivated by principle rather than profit. “Utopia? No,” says Emergency’s founder, Dr. Gino Strada, M.D., “We are convinced that the abolition of war is a political project to realize, with great urgency. For this we cannot be silent in the face of war, any war. We are guilty of proposing the abolition of war.”

Altruistic principles are evidently not driving the continued presence of the defense corporations operating in Afghanistan. As Bill Quigley, legal director of New York City’s Center for Constitutional Rights points out, executives for the three largest U.S. defense corporations, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, have received a combined 177 million dollars in personal compensation over the past three years. With profits rolling in at this rate, there is not much incentive for weapons suppliers to encourage the Obama administration to enact a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces and their weapons from Afghanistan.

Even the NGOs and aid organizations have something to gain from a continued war economy. Peter Marsden, author of Afghanistan: Aid, Armies and Empires, worked with British NGOs in Afghanistan from 1989 to 2005. His book describes the way in which the United States has provided money for its own NGOs instead of directing money to the Afghan government. This policy causes a flood of overpaid charity workers from all over the world, most of whom buy supplies from their own countries. Not only do they spend their money elsewhere, but these aid workers usually draw a salary as large as 150 to 300 times the average Afghan income, which sits around $200, per person, per year.

Though the United States constantly threatens and carries out drone strikes in Pakistan, the Obama Administration insists that it has goodwill towards Pakistan and that the U.S. economic and military presence in the country is intended to be mutually beneficial. In its most recent National Security Strategy outline, the White House proposes to build cooperation with its international partners through “governance reform of the IMF and the World Bank.” The administration also says it is renewing U.S. leadership in the IMF, leveraging its engagement and investments, to “strengthen the global economy” and “lift people out of poverty.”

This rhetoric falls short of reality in Pakistan where the IMF, under U.S. leadership, is pushing through an aid package of US$ 7.27 billion for the Pakistani economy. On the surface, $7.27 billion dollars sounds quite generous, but the deal will subordinate Pakistan to U.S. military and strategic interests and comes with another string attached, the Value Added Tax (VAT). Quite contrary to “lifting people out of poverty,” the VAT amounts to an additional 15% sales tax on Pakistani products throughout every step of production. Practically, it amounts to a tax on the poor in a country that already has 60 million persons living below the poverty line and inflation reaching 40%. There have been demonstrations against the VAT and U.S. interference in Pakistan nearly every day throughout the past month that we have been in the country.

There is no simple answer or brilliant conspiracy theory that sums up exactly why the United States is at war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. War profiteering, energy resources, the Trans-Afghan pipeline, strategic geo-political positioning and even the narcotics trade may all play a part. But whatever the case, it is clear that the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan have become a football to be kicked about by the powerful players in world politics. If the United States truly wants to move away from this sort of selfish strategy and be appreciated as a genuine partner in the region, it should move towards an approach that values the lives and input of those most vulnerable in Afghan and Pakistani society.

Kathy Kelly () and Josh Brollier () are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org).

Unarmed and Courageous

Dan Pearson — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:01:42 -0500

Short Information Teaser
Emergency Workers in Afghanistan
Excerpt
by Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier

June 1, 2010

For six days in late May, 2010, Emergency, an Italian NGO providing surgery and basic health care in Afghanistan since 1999, welcomed us to visit facilities they operate in the capital city of Kabul and in Panjshir, a neighboring province. We lived with their hospital staff at both places and accompanied them in their weekly trips to various FAPs (First Aid Posts) which the hospitals maintain in small outlying villages.

Body
by Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier

June 1, 2010

For six days in late May, 2010, Emergency, an Italian NGO providing surgery and basic health care in Afghanistan since 1999, welcomed us to visit facilities they operate in the capital city of Kabul and in Panjshir, a neighboring province. We lived with their hospital staff at both places and accompanied them in their weekly trips to various FAPs (First Aid Posts) which the hospitals maintain in small outlying villages.

One morning, accompanying a field officer from the Kabul hospital, we pulled off of the main road and traveled over unpaved lanes, then walked a short distance to a shady grove outside a small Afghan village. Villagers, eager to welcome Emergency’s staff and drivers, served ripe mulberries and a salty cucumber yogurt drink. We sat in a circle, shaded by the trees. When breezes stirred the branches, we’d enjoy a momentary rain of mulberries, much to the amusement of little children nearby.

The five youngsters, age five – ten, smiled shyly at us, shook our hands, and then joined their older brother to systematically gather mulberries. Using a large hoe, the older brother slammed the tree trunk. The children caught the cascading mulberries in a plastic tarp. Then they sorted the fruits, seeming to take discipline and routine for granted.

Earlier, Felippo, an Emergency nurse in Panjshir, had told us about how hard life can be for Afghan children in rural areas. “They never get a day off,” exclaimed Felippo. “Never. If they attend school, and school is closed for a day, the kids join workers in the fields.” Felippo, who has been to Afghanistan for three six month rotations, fantasizes about building a theme park where kids could play and be entertained.

The majority of Afghanistan’s agricultural laborers, both children and adults, face harsh realities.

Many villagers have little access to health care or education. Diseases such as pneumonia, gastroenteritis, malaria, and malnourishment contribute toward the deaths of 850 Afghan children every day.

In rural areas, a family typically has 10 – 15 children. Not all are expected to survive. When a child is born, a ceremony to name the infant takes place several months later because the child’s survival of the first months of life is a cause for great relief and celebration.

Felippo’s supervisor, Micha, the Medical Director at the Panjshir Hospital, explains that malnutrition is a social problem. “Mothers aren’t instructed about nutrition,” she says. “Sometimes in large families, the four year old is in charge of the one year old. Or the mother doesn’t breast feed during the first month, - the most crucial month. If fraternal twins are born, the boy will be breast fed, but not the girl.”

“They don’t come to the hospital when symptoms of sickness appear,” Micha continues. “They wait till a child is near death. Malnutrition is difficult to manage. Children will become healthy, but the malnourishment recurs; it’s often fatal.”

“Poor hygiene is another serious problem, especially if families can’t provide clean water,” Micha pointed out, “and, you see, this is also related to poverty. Sometimes the children drink unclean water, causing gastroenteritis.”

Intent on helping solve these basic problems, Emergency workers use the FAPs to educate people about nutrition and basic hygiene. In winter months, the roads often become impassable. In some places, Felippo hikes for two hours beyond the point where a vehicle can’t continue, carrying medicine and supplies in his backpack.

“Can you imagine,” asked Felippo, “that last year, when I finished my term of service, in January, when it was my last visit to a First Aid Post that is furthest from our hospital, people walked four hours in the snow to say goodbye to me. Yes, I fell in love.”

It isn’t hard to imagine why the staff feels so loyal to Emergency’s patients and to the organization’s goals.

Emergency is treating war victims as patients, and won’t allow police or military to enter the hospital, carrying weapons. Circumstances that occasion an injury or a wound never determine whether or not the patient will be admitted. While neutral as regards offering medical treatment, Emergency has been clearly partisan in it’s rejection of all wars. Their literature and outreach clarifies that the most important preventive measure to safeguard against war related wounds and injuries is the abolition of weapons.

In a pediatric ward at the Emergency hospital in Kabul, doctors and nurses tend youngsters who’ve mainly been hurt by landmines. Sometimes the boys go outside and sit on the grass with older fellows. Many share in common the experience of having lost limbs or fingers or toes to land mine or remote controlled explosions.

One afternoon, we sat in the hospital garden listening to the director of an Afghanistan human rights NGO talk about plans for President Hamid Karzai’s peace jirga, scheduled to begin on June 2nd, in a tent outside of Kabul. 1600 people are expected to attend. We watched boys and young men assemble in a circle, all wearing thin hospital gowns, most with bandaged limbs and some having suffered amputations. They were each from different regions and likely held quite divergent views….a jirga of sorts.

Esmatullah, 7 years old, came to the hospital a month ago because of a mine injury. He is from the Paktika province. “He has never cried, not once,” said Anil, the hospital’s physical therapist. “Not while dressings were being changed, not during physical therapy. He’s a real Pashtun.” Esmatullah beamed when Anil patted him on the head.

Anidullah , age 11, suffered a bullet injury. He was studying inside the mosque, in his town in the Ghazni province, when a battle erupted between U.S. and Taliban fighters. He doesn’t know which side hit him.

Nur Said, a teenager, lost one eye and has only one finger on his right hand. He is learning to feed himself. An unexploded device exploded when he picked it up. Sometimes the children try to open up the unexploded devices and take out the brass so that they can sell it.

A young man, age 21, was injured when he was a driver for U.S. forces. He said that the U.S. convoys have GPS systems for the front car and the back car, in each convoy. He was driving a Land Cruiser, in the middle of a U.S. military convoy, without benefit of a GPS.

“I could tell a lot of stories,” he says. “Some people were killed for no reason.”

After he was injured, the U.S. forces brought him by helicopter to Emergency’s hospital in Lashkar Gah, where treatment, as in all Emergency facilities, is free of charge. Emergency staff then brought him to Kabul for surgery. The U.S. hasn’t offered this young man any compensation or assistance for future rehabilitation. He’s anxious not to talk more about his case for fear of being harmed.

But, asked what he would do if U.S. forces attacked his family, he said he would fight. “I would react against them if they killed my family. If I lose my family, I don’t want the life.”

Unlike ourselves on this visit, the Emergency staff doesn’t ask many questions about what brought patients to their hospital. Their all-consuming task is to help them leave, healed, and, as much as possible, physically rehabilitated.

Still, they can’t help but feel frustrations over problems that could be solved if the westerners who’ve come to Afghanistan would establish priorities more sympathetic to human needs.

“The price of fuel for one of the U.S. warplanes roaring overhead, on a routine flight between Bagram and Kabul, could allow many creative choices if it were made available to an Afghan village,” said Mr. Noor Akbari, an analyst working for the Ministry of Agriculture. “Villagers could build a health center, buy a communally owned pump, get assistance to spray the trees, hire a midwife, or organize agronomy training and literacy programs.”

Anil suggests that the concrete used for protective blocks surrounding U.S. bases and checkpoints could build as many as ten dams to provide electricity for people.

Felippo notes that the Italian government spends one million dollars, every day, to maintain Italy’s military presence in Afghanistan. “What could we do with just one day of their funds!?” asks Felippo. “We could build another hospital.”

As the eight year long war drags on, claiming more victims every day, the U.S. develops increasingly sophisticated means of surveillance, laser guided bombing, and robotized weapon usage. Meanwhile, Taliban bomb makers develop their expertise and teach new recruits to make and plant explosives. “In 2007 there were 2,600 attacks, in Afghanistan, using homemade bombs. In January alone, in 2010, there were 1,000 bomb attacks,” according to a May 30th report in The Sunday Times. “Over the past three years the US military has pumped more than £10 billion into research and technology designed to detect and neutralise the IEDs, (Improvised Explosive Devices) that cost the Taliban just £20 to make.”

If we want Afghans to reject the Taliban’s brand of weapon development and attacks, we in the U.S. need to show our own determination to foster the works of mercy rather than the works of war. The Emergency hospital staff, unarmed and courageous, provide a fine example.

Kathy Kelly () and Josh Brollier () are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)