[Reader-list] WAR IS PEACE

[Harsh Kapoor]

http://www.outlookindia.com/
Outlook Magazine | Oct 29, 2001    
FRONTLINES

WAR IS PEACE
The world doesn't have to choose between the Taliban and the US 
government. All the beauty of the world-literature, music, art-lies 
between these two fundamentalist poles.
ARUNDHATI ROY

As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday, October 7, 2001, the 
US government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror 
(the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air 
strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on 
computer-animated images of Cruise missiles, stealth bombers, 
Tomahawks, 'bunker-busting' missiles and Mark 82 high-drag bombs. All 
over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped 
clamouring for new video games.
The UN, reduced now to an ineffective abbreviation, wasn't even asked 
to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "The US 
acts multilaterally when it can, and unilaterally when it must."

	People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People 
get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They first 
use flags to shrink-wrap peoples' minds and suffocate real thought, 
and then as ceremonial shrouds to cloak the mangled corpses of the 
willing dead.

) The 'evidence' against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in 
the 'Coalition'. After conferring, they announced that it didn't 
matter whether or not the 'evidence' would stand up in a court of 
law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly 
trashed.
Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is 
committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's 
resistance movements-or
whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised 
government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York 
and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of 
the world. Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not 
set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York 
and Washington.
People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get 
killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They first use 
flags to shrink-wrap peoples' minds and suffocate real thought, and 
then as ceremonial shrouds to cloak the mangled corpses of the 
willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, 
civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments. 
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 that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched 
by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about 
anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.

There is no easy way out of the spiralling 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 modern. 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

	President George Bush said, "We're a peaceful nation." 
America's favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the 
portfolio of Prime Minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful 
people." So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is Peace.


this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of 
honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no 
sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International 
Coalition. Or the Taliban.
When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said, "We're 
a peaceful nation." America's favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who 
also holds the portfolio of Prime Minister of the UK), echoed him: 
"We're a peaceful people."
So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is Peace.
Speaking at the FBI headquarters a few days later, President Bush 
said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States 
of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on 
fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects 
murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."
Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with-and 
bombed-since World War II: China (1945-46, 1950-53); Korea (1950-53); 
Guatemala (1954, 1967-69); Indonesia (1958); Cuba (1959-60); the 
Belgian Congo (1964); Peru (1965); Laos (1964-73); Vietnam (1961-73); 
Cambodia (1969-70); Grenada (1983); Libya (1986); El Salvador 
(1980s); Nicaragua (1980s); Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia 
(1995), Sudan (1998); Yugoslavia (1999).And now Afghanistan.
Certainly it does not tire-this, the Most Free nation in the world. 
What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of 
speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, 
sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, 
wonderful things. Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, 
humiliate and subjugate-usually in the service of America's real 
religion, the 'free market'. So when the US government christens a 
war 'Operation Infinite Justice', or 'Operation Enduring Freedom', we 
in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.

	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. Now, as adults and 
rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women; they don't 
seem to know what else to do with them.

Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite 
Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring 
Subjugation for others.
The International Coalition Against Terror is largely a 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 most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic 
cleansing 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 
isn'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 20 years, about $45 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.
Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and 
brutalise women; they don't seem to know what else to do with them. 
Years of war have stripped them of gentleness, inured them to 
kindness and human compassion. They dance to the percussive rhythms 
of bombs raining down around them. Now they've turned their 
monstrosity on their own people.
With all due respect to President

	The issue is not about Good vs Evil or Islam vs Christianity 
as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how 
to contain the impulse towards hegemony-every kind of hegemony, 
economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.

Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the 
Taliban and the US government. All the beauty of human 
civilisation-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'll all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is 
not about Good vs Evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is 
about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the 
impulse towards 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 government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind 
of dictatorship. It's 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 20 years 
of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to 
rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the 
second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their 
bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot 
put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press 
briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, was 
asked if America had run out of targets.

"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're 
not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with 
gales of laughter in the Briefing Room.
By the third day of the strikes, the US defence department boasted 
that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan". (Did they mean 
that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's 
planes?)
On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance-the Taliban's old 
enemy, and therefore the International Coalition's newest friend-is 
making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let 
it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very 
different from the Taliban's.


	The fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing 
uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to 
matter hardly at all. Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.

But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being 
glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the 
Alliance, Ahmed Shah Masood, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack 
early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle 
confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending 
clerics. It is a disparate group divided
along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.
Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5 
per cent of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the 
Coalition's help and 'air cover', it is poised to topple the Taliban. 
Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to 
defect to the Alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching 
sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this 
one, it seems to matter hardly at all. Love is hate, north is south, 
peace is war.
Among the global powers, there is talk of 'putting in a 
representative government'. Or, on the other hand, of 'restoring' the 
Kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year-old former king, Zahir Shah, who has 
lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game 
goes-support Saddam Hussein, then 'take him out'; finance the 
mujahideen, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see 
if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to 'put in' a 
representative government? Can you place an order for Democracy-with 
extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)
Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about 
cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which 
have been closed.
Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have 
experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food 
convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5 
million according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving 
to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days 
that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an 
attempt to reach food

	They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile. 
First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. 
More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk 
being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.


to the hungry. Not both.
As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US government air-dropped 
37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it 
plans to drop a total of 5,00,000 packets. That will still only add 
up to a single meal for half-a-million people out of the several 
million in dire need of food. Aid workers have condemned it as a 
cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that 
air-dropping food packets is worse than futile. First, because the 
food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, 
those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by 
landmines. A tragic alms race.
Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. 
Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, 
we're told, as per Muslim Dietary Law(!) Each yellow packet, 
decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, 
bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple 
fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette 
and illustrated user instructions.

After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal 
in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to 
understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty 
really mean, the US government's attempt to use even this abject 
misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.
Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban government 
was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target 
was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks 
between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets 
containing nan and kababs impaled on an Afghan flag.

	What if the Taliban was to bomb NYC and also drop packets of 
nan and kababs impaled on Afghan flags? Would the good people of New 
York be able to forgive the Afghan government?

Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to 
forgive the Afghan government? Even if they were hungry, even if they 
needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the 
insult, the condescension? Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of New York City, 
returned a gift of $10 million from a Saudi prince because it came 
with a few
words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is 
pride a luxury only the rich are entitled to?
Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates 
terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once 
you've let them out. For every 'terrorist' or his 'supporter' that is 
killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for 
every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that 
several future terrorists will be created.
Where will it all lead?
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 US 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 mujahideen who, in the '80s, were seen as 
terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. While 
President Reagan posed with them for a group portrait and called them 
the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers. Today, 
Pakistan-America's ally in this new

	People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal 
bigotry know that every religious text-from the Bible to the Bhagwad 
Gita-can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from 
nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

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 who 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 mujahideen after they had 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 1991.)
It is important for governments and politicians to understand that 
manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their 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 governments 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 Bhagwad Gita-can be mined and misinterpreted to justify 
anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

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 
burning the 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 on, 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.

	The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, 
ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean 
crazy. And freedom-that precious, precious thing-will be the first 
casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.


(Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence-small 
wonder the US 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 everybody clean crazy. And 
freedom-that precious, precious thing-will be the first casualty. 
It's already hurt
and haemorrhaging 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 
anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the 
printer of the leaflets was arrested. The right-wing government 
(while it shelters Hindu extremists groups like the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Students' Islamic 
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, mainstream media, particularly 
in the US, has more or less rolled over, allowing itself to be 
tickled on the stomach with press hand-outs from militarymen and 
government officials.
Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban 
has always been deeply suspicious of the Press. 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 rumours spread.
Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can 
hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat

	Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you 
can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. 
Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart 
missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole 
warehouses of suppressed fury.

of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people 
have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're 
blowing 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." President Bush should 
know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his 
missiles their money's worth. Perhaps, if only to balance his books, 
he should develop some 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 $12 billion under management. 
Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from 
military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US defence 
secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's chairman and managing director 
(he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other 
partners include former US secretary of state James A. Baker III, 
George Soros, Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An 
American paper-the Baltimore Chronicle and 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 
government-clients.

	Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has 
little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to 
do with its strategic interest in oil.

Ho Hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.
Then there's 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 US oil industry.
Turkmenistan, which borders the northwest of Afghanistan,
holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six 
billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet 
American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing 
country's energy 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 military 
presence in the 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 moves northward to 
European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are 
major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney-then 
CEO of Halliburton, 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 now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been 
negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil 
pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to 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 travelled to America and even met US State Department 
officials 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

	Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we 
stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until 
we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?

that they are now. Over the next six months, 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 US oil industry's big chance.
In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media 
networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the 
same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this 
talk of guns and oil and defence 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 
Civilisations' and the 'Good vs 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. 
Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare 
unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we 
retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?
As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one 
wonders-have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to 
re-imagine beauty? Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, 
amazed blink of a new-born gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the 
marmot who has just whispered in your ear-without thinking of the 
World Trade Center and Afghanistan?