[WCUSP] RAWA: America's Great Game: The 2001 invasion was planned before 9-11

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

New Statesman, January 10,  2008

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News  Archive of the «Revolutionary Association of the Women of  Afghanistan» 
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America's great game: The 2001 invasion was planned  before 9/11 
RAWA's understanding of the designs and hypocrisy  of western governments 
informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from  news 

John Pilger 
The US and Britain claim  defeating the Taliban is part of a "good war" 
against al-Qaeda. Yet there  is evidence the 2001 invasion was planned before 9/11  
 
"To me, I confess, are pieces on a chessboard upon  which is being played out 
a game for dominion of the world."   
Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, speaking about  Afghanistan, 1898 
I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the  safety of the Intercontinental 
Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but  she said no. She had been there 
once and government agents, suspecting she  was RAWA, had arrested her. We met 
instead at a safe house, reached  through contours of bombed rubble that was 
once streets, where people live  like earthquake victims awaiting rescue.  
RAWA is the Revolutionary Association of the Women  of Afghanistan, which 
since 1977 has alerted the world to the suffering of  ! women and girls in that 
country. There is no organisation on earth like  it. It is the high bar of 
feminism, home of the bravest of the brave. Year  after year, RAWA agents have 
travelled secretly through Afghanistan,  teaching at clandestine girls' schools, 
ministering to isolated and  brutalised women, recording outrages on cameras 
concealed beneath their  burqas. They were the Taliban regime's implacable foes 
when the word  Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton 
administration was  secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company Unocal 
could build a  pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.  
Indeed, RAWA's understanding of the designs and  hypocrisy of western 
governments informs a truth about Afghanistan  excluded from news, now reduced to a 
drama of British squaddies besieged  by a demonic enemy in a "good war".  
When we met, Marina was veiled to conceal her  identity. Marina is her nom de 
guerre. She said: "We, the women of  Afghanistan, only became a cause in the 
west following 11 September 2001,  when the Taliban suddenly became the 
official enemy of America. Yes, they  persecuted women, but they were not unique, 
and we have resented the  silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the 
western-backed  warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and 
terrorise, yet  they hold seats in Karzai's government. In some ways, we were more 
secure  under the Taliban. You could cross Afghan istan by road and feel 
secure.  Now, you take your life into your hands."  
The reason the United States gave for invading  Afgh! anistan in October 2001 
was "to destroy the infrastructure of  al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11". 
The women of RAWA say this is false.  In a rare statement on 4 December that 
went unreported in Britain, they  said: "By experience, that the US does not 
want to defeat the Taliban and  al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse 
to stay in Afghanistan and  work towards the realisation of their economic, 
political and strategic  interests in the region."  
The truth about the "good war" is to be found in  compelling evidence that 
the 2001 invasion, widely supported in the west  as a justifiable response to 
the 11 September attacks, was actually  planned two months prior to 9/11 and 
that the most pressing problem for  Washington was not the Taliban's links with 
Osama Bin Laden, but the  prospect of the Taliban mullahs losing control of 
Afghan istan to less  reliable mujahedin factions, led by warlords who had been 
funded and armed  by the CIA to fight America's proxy w! ar against the Soviet 
occupiers in  the 1980s. Known as the Northern Alliance, these mujahe din had 
been  largely a creation of Washington, which believed the "jihadi card" could 
 be used to bring down the Soviet Union. The Taliban were a product of this  
and, during the Clinton years, they were admired for their "discipline".  Or, 
as the Wall Street Journal put it, " are the players most capable of  
achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history".   
The "moment in history" was a secret memorandum of  understanding the mullahs 
had signed with the Clinton administration on  the pipeline deal. However, by 
the late 1990s, the Northern Alliance had  encroached further and further on 
territory controlled by the Taliban,  whom, as a result, were deemed in 
Washington to lack the "stability"  required of such an important client. It was the 
consistency of this  client relationship that had been a prerequisite of US 
support, regardless  of the Taliban's aversion to huma! n rights. (Asked about 
this, a state  department briefer had predicted that "the Taliban will develop 
like the  Saudis did", with a pro-American economy, no democracy and "lots of 
sharia  law", which meant the legalised persecution of women. "We can live 
with  that," he said.)  
By early 2001, convinced it was the presence of  Osama Bin Laden that was 
souring their relationship with Washington, the  Taliban tried to get rid of him. 
Under a deal negotiated by the leaders of  Pakistan's two Islamic parties, 
Bin Laden was to be held under house  arrest in Peshawar. A tribunal of clerics 
would then hear evidence against  him and decide whether to try him or hand 
him over to the Americans.  Whether or not this would have happened, Pakistan's 
Pervez Musharraf  vetoed the plan. According to the then Pakistani foreign 
minister, Niaz  Naik, a senior US diplomat told him on 21 July 2001 that it had 
been  decided to dispense with the Taliban "under a carpet of bombs".   
 
The reason the  United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 
was "to  destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11". The 
 women of RAWA say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that  
went unreported in Britain, they said: "By experience, that the US does  not want 
to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have  no excuse to 
stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realisation of their  economic, 
political and strategic interests in the region."   
 
New  Statesman , January 10,  2008


Acclaimed as the first "victory" in the "war on  terror", the attack on 
Afghanistan in October 2001 and its ripple effect  caused the deaths of thousands 
of civilians who, even more than Iraqis,  remain invisible to western eyes. The 
family of Gulam Rasul is typical. It  was 7.45am on 21 October. The 
headmaster of a school in the town of Khair  Khana, ! Rasul had just finished eating 
breakfast with his family and had  walked outside to chat to a neighbour. Inside 
the house were his wife,  Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his 
brother and his wife, his  sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft 
weaving in the  sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine 
people died in  this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only 
survivor was his  nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal.  
"Most of the people killed in this war are not  Taliban; they are innocents," 
Gulam Rasul told me. "Was the killing of my  family a mistake? No, it was 
not. They fly their planes and look down on  us, the mere Afghan people, who have 
no planes, and they bomb us for our  birthright, and with all contempt."  
There was the wedding party in the village of  Niazi Qala, 100km south of 
Kabul, to celebrate the marriage of the son of  a respected farmer. By all 
accounts it was a wonderfully boisterous!  affair, with music and singing. The roar 
of aircraft started when everyone  was asleep, at about three in the morning. 
According to a United Nations  report, the bombing lasted two hours and killed 
52 people: 17 men, ten  women and 25 children, many of whom were found blown 
to bits where they  had desperately sought refuge, in a dried-up pond. Such 
slaughter is not  uncommon, and these days the dead are described as "Taliban"; 
or, if they  are children, they are said to be "partly to blame for being at a 
site  used by militants" - according to the BBC, speaking to a US military  
spokesman.  
Return of  opium 
The British military have played an important part  in this violence, having 
stepped up high- altitude bombing by up to 30 per  cent since they took over 
command of Nato forces in Afghan istan in May  2006. This translated to more 
than 6,200 Afghan deaths last year. In  December, a contrived news event was the 
"fall" of a "Taliban stronghol!  d", Musa Qala, in southern Afghan istan. 
Puppet government forces were  allowed to "liberate" rubble left by American 
B-52s.  
What justifies this? Various fables have been spun  - "building democracy" is 
one. "The war on drugs" is the most perverse.  When the Americans invaded 
Afghanistan in 2001 they had one striking  success. They brought to an abrupt end 
a historic ban on opium production  that the Taliban regime had achieved. A 
UN official in Kabul described the  ban to me as "a modern miracle". The 
miracle was quickly rescinded. As a  reward for supporting the Karzai "democracy", 
the Americans allowed  Northern Alliance warlords to replant the country's 
entire opium crop in  2002. Twenty-eight out of the 32 provinces instantly went 
under  cultivation. Today, 90 per cent of world trade in opium originates in  
Afghan istan. In 2005, a British government report estima ted that 35,000  
children in this country were using heroin. While the British taxpayer  pays for a 
&! pound;1bn military super-base in Helmand Province and  the second-biggest 
British embassy in the world, in Kabul, peanuts are  spent on drug 
rehabilitation at home.  
Tony Blair once said memorably: "To the Afghan  people, we make this 
commitment. We will not walk away . . . some way out  of the poverty that is your 
miserable existence." I thought about this as  I watched children play in a 
destroyed cinema. They were illiterate and so  could not read the poster warning 
that unexploded cluster bombs lay in the  debris.  
"After five years of engagement," reported James  Fergusson in the 
Independent on 16 December, "the Department for  International Development had spent 
just £390m on Afghan projects."  Unusually, Fergusson has had meetings with 
Taliban who are fighting the  British. "They remained charming and courteous 
throughout," he wrote of  one visit in February. "This is the beauty of malmastia, 
the Pashtun  tradition of hospitality towards! strangers. So long as he comes 
unarmed,  even a mortal enemy can rely on a kind reception. The opportunity for 
 dialogue that malmastia affords is unique."  
This "opportunity for dialogue" is a far cry from  the surrender-or-else 
offers made by the government of Gordon Brown. What  Brown and his Foreign Office 
advisers wilfully fail to understand is that  the tactical victory in Afghan 
istan in 2001, achieved with bombs, has  become a strategic disaster in south 
Asia.  
Exacerbated by the assassination of Benazir  Bhutto, the current turmoil in 
Pakistan has its contemporary roots in a  Washington-contrived war in 
neighbouring Afghanistan that has alienated  the Pashtuns who inhabit much of the long 
border area between the two  countries. This is also true of most Pakistanis, 
who, according to opinion  polls, want their government to negotiate a 
regional peace, rather than  play a prescribed part in a rerun of Lord Curzon's Great 
Game.   
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sion-was-planned-before-9-11.html_ 
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