Subject: The Anguish of Afghanistan [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- US and UK Bombs Create Terror in Afgahnistan by Heather Cottin Bombing Mud Houses, Buses and Hospitals The war in Afghanistan is creating what United Nations official Stephanie Bunker is calling, "the most serious, complex emergency in the world ever." "As many as 100,000 more children will die in Afghanistan this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient quantities in the next six weeks," said Eric Laroche, UNICEF spokesman in an interview with the Times of India on October 29th. "If you have turned on the television over these past few days, you have seen injured bodies of young children, I ask you all: What could be worse?" "If you are a child born in Afghanistan today, you are 25 times more likely to die before the age of five than an American or a French or a Saudi Arabian child." Laroche said. More than half the children in Afghanistan were already malnourished and 300,000 children died each year from preventable causes inside the country. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries of the world. Their infant mortality rate is 165 per 1000 births. Their life expectancy is 46. UNICEF statistics show the problem of stunting affecting over 50% of all children. The American press is nearly devoid of information about the conditions of the impoverished Afghanis. The British press is slightly better. The British tabloid, The Mirror is usually supportive of British foreign policy. But author and former Mirror editor John Pilger wrote a scathing critique of Downing Street's Afghan policy. "One of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorized by the most powerful - to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious "military" targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries (buses) carrying refugees". The London Observer on October 28th, reported that US warplanes hit a residential area in the Afghan capital of Kabul killing at least 13 civilians and virtually wiping out one family. In Islamabad, Stephanie Bunker confirmed that a hospital was hit in the Afghan city of Heart in an air raid carried out by American military aircraft. Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Sallam Zaeef, stated that there were around one hundred victims among the doctors, nurses, and patients when the hospital received a direct hit from a bomb dropped during a US air raid over the city. Every time the Afghanis claim that there are civilian casualties, the United States government discounts the reports. Yet According to United Nations officials up to 70 percentof the populations of the towns of Herat and Kandahar have now fled from bombing raids. Agence France Presse reported on October 12 that Britain's International Development Secretary Clare Short on Friday denied Taliban reports that the US-led bombing campaign in Afghanistan had killed hundreds of innocent civilians. The staff of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) countered that claim. People arriving at the Pakistan border told of seeing dead and starving children and many homeless and desperate families. And they expect the situation to worsen. According to UNHCR spokesman Yusuf Hassan, the 60,000 refugees presently fleeing will climb to 300,000 within weeks and up to 1.5 million in the longer term. When the snows begin and temperatures plummet to 20 degrees below zero, the situation for those who remain in their homes and for the refugees on the run who are now starving and homeless will be horrific. Already, conditions in the villages where poor peasants and workers live far from Taliban positions have become nightmarish. By October 25, stories began to emerge which horrified the British. "Not long after 7 PM on Sunday, Oct. 21 the bombs began to fall over the outskirts of Torai village. Mauroof saw a massive fireball rising from the ground." He realized that "bombs had fallen over the little cluster of houses a mile away where his sister and his other relatives were living." So wrote the Times of London, describing the destruction of an entire family. "The roll call of the dead read like an invitation list to a family wedding: his mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, three brothers-in-law, and four of his sister's five young children, two girls and two boys, all under the age of eight.". A Killing Field in a Canister The agony of Afghanistan is intensified by the use of weapons known as cluster bombs. The Times of London writes, "Prime Minister "Tony Blair constantly parades his humanitarianism. This must extend to the choice of bombs. Of choice in the US/UK bombing raids "is a CBU-87/B, containing bright yellow submunitions. for attacking soft target areas (including human beings) with detonating bomblets". The cluster bombs also serve as land mines and detonate later, even years later, when they are unearthed. The Times noted that the US lobbied at a landmine conference some years ago against classifying cluster bombs as landmines. But they serve this secondary and murderous purpose. "35,000 unexploded bomblets in Kosovo still kill one person a week." They are still killing people in Laos, 30 years after the war there ended. The Times added. "Unexploded cluster bombs are a horror, (since) the bright yellow coloring of the canisters makes them horribly appealing to children. As reported in The Times, these weapons are "a killing field in a canister, designed to massacre anything within 100 feet." Such a massacre took place in the village of Shakar Qala. The UN confirmed that eight people had been killed immediately when the village was attacked. A ninth person died after picking up the parachutes attached to the cluster bombs. "He went to look at the object, touched it and it blew up," Stephanie Bunker said. Fourteen others were injured and 20 of the village's 45 houses were destroyed or badly damaged. The endless exodus from major cities and little hamlets of Afghanistan is growing. As a "humanitarian gesture," the United States has dropped approximately one million packages of food on the refugees. But because it is wrapped in yellow packaging, and because US planes have also bombed refugee columns, unsuspecting and starving refugees have grabbed yellow cluster bombs, thinking they were food. The result has been death and dismemberment. To counteract this, the US has dropped pamphlets explaining the difference between the bomb canisters and the food packets, said the BBC. Since most Afghanis are illiterate, it is doubtful they understand the written instructions., which begin, "Attention, noble Afghan people," and conclude with the statement." Do not confuse the cylinder-shaped bomb with the rectangular food bag," Reports on Refugees To make the situation more ghastly, US planes is dropping food into the largest minefield in the world, a leftover from the mining done during the ten years of war the US funded against the Marxist government of Afghanistan. Pravda reported that "refugees arriving in the Pakistani city of Qetta yesterday claimed that a column of refugees trying to escape the bombing after their houses had been destroyed was strafed, also by American aircraft, and that 20 members of the column, including nine children, had been killed. The incident took place at Tarine Khot, near Kandahar. One refugee who witnessed the event stated that there were no Taliban bases within a radius of three kilometres from where the homes were destroyed. Eyewitnesses stated that a 1,000-pound bomb had been dropped on October 23rd in a field near an old people's home near Kandahar. The British Ministry of Defense admitted that there had been military activity against Taliban camps in the area on that day. Although Pravda calls reports by the Taliban suspect, labeling the "Taliban pathological and compulsive liars," the paper admitted, "reports of collateral damage are true." The Times of India reported on Thursday, November 1 that 'The Kajaki hydro-electric power station in Helmand province was bombed on Wednesday afternoon," October 31. "So far water has not started gushing out of the dam but any further bombing will destroy the dam. It may cause widespread flooding, putting at risk the lives of thousands of people," said an Afghani spokesman. The electricity the dam generated has been cut. So now Afghanistan is without electricity to two major cities, and water processing facilities have also been destroyed. When the death toll reached 1500, the United States began to complain about the unreliability of the reports, and CNN began to downplay the visual depictions of the anguish of Afghanistan. As US military action in this beleaguered nation intensifies, as Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld escalate their shrieks for revenge, the victims multiply. Collateral damage The weapons the US is using in Afghanistan are already causing injuries consistent with those caused by Depleted Uranium and other chemical weapons used in Iraq and Yugoslavia. Pravda noted "Deputy public health minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, said the government did not having testing facilities," and urged outside observers to view the injuries from the bombing attacks. The Pentagon has admitted this week bombing an old people's home in Herat but claimed a "targeting error". Two weeks ago, bombs killed dozens in the village of Karam. Steven Gutkin, Associated Press writer, reported Thursday, Oct. 25 from KORAK DANA, Afghanistan of a U.S. attack on Kandahar which hit a bus at the city gates Thursday, killing at least 10 civilians in a fiery explosion. The AP reported on October 26. "In separate raids late Thursday and early Friday, F/A-18 jets dropped two one-ton bombs on the Red Cross warehouse complex, the Defense Department said in a statement." They claimed this was an error, but the bombing took place in broad daylight and the Red Cross was clearly painted on the roof of this building. This was the second time these facilities had been bombed, and the supplies, now destroyed, would have fed and clothed many Afghans. The genocidal bombing and heartless devastation of the Afghani people is part of the "great game" of the great powers, which has nothing to do with "fighting terrorism." As Pilger points out, "The "war on terrorism" is a cover for this: a means of achieving American strategic aims that lie behind the flag-waving facade of great power." The Great Game In the book, The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski urged a major role for the US in Central Asia and the Middle East. Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, and was he who instigated the CIA's arming and training of the Mujahadeen in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was his policy that helped to create those fundamentalist pawns including the Taliban. They were organized to overthrow Afghanistan's Marxist government and to draw the USSR into a terrible quagmire. This policy was instrumental in fomenting the destruction of socialism in the USSR. "For America" after the Cold War, Brzezinski wrote, "the chief prize is Eurasia." Why? Because it contains the "Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin, known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." Brzezinski warned against "a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran" as "the most dangerous scenario." What nation stands in the middle of those three nations? Afghanistan. It was Brzezinski who was a leading architect for the expansion of NATO. He wrote, "A comprehensive U.S. policy for Eurasia as a whole will not be possible if the effort to widen NATO, having been launched by the United States, stalls." So the war in Afghanistan is a continuation of the wars on Yugoslavia. And it continues to expand the reach of NATO eastward. Brzezinski even called Central Asia the "Eurasian Balkans" and noted that they are "infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold . . . " John Pilger in the Mirror wrote, "the overwhelming majority of the Islamic peoples of the Middle East and south Asia have been victims of the West's exploitation of precious natural resources in or near their countries." As George W. Bush and Tony Blair blather on about terrorism, millions of people are watching them murder Afghani children. The war is one month old and a peace movement is burgeoning in over 20 countries. This is an anti-imperialist movement which understands this war is about the profits of British and US oil companies. It is clear to all who look: the Great Game is based on murder of innocents and plunder of resources. In the 19th century Britain attempted to take over Afghanistan. It bogged down and one of its leading generals said, "Mark my words, it will not be long before there is some signal catastrophe." The war for Central Asia may prove to be imperialism's "signal catastrophe." Pilger writes, "the British Royal Marines, who will do the real dirty work, will be little more than mercenaries for Washington's imperial ambitions." The British 19th century poet,Thomas Campbell, writng about another imperialist war and the men who died for Britain penned, "The snow shall be their winding sheet, And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulchre." As the snows of winter descend on this tragic nation, they may well prove to be the winding sheet of imperialism. Support for the US/UK war in Afghanistan is waning worldwide as the death count rises. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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