-Caveat Lector-
http://www.actionsf.org/ansfs0111.htm
Friends, due several requests for the source material for this fact sheet, we
are reposting a revised copy with sources included. Please call (415)
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purposes.
Question: Is the U.S. bombing campaign directed against "terrorists" or the
people of Afghanistan?
Answer: This is a war against the people of Afghanistan. The U.S. and British
are dropping thousands of bombs and firing missiles on homes, schools,
mosques, hospitals and villages throughout the country.
One-thousand-pound to 15,000-pound bombs are deliberately targeting every
major town and rural area. AC-130 Specter gunships filled with ammunition are
firing huge Gatling guns on the population in a steady stream of bullets. On
Oct. 22, in the village of Chowkar-Karez, dozens of civilians were killed.
CNN quoted an "unnamed" Pentagon official as saying, "The people there are
dead because we wanted them dead." (Toronto Globe and Mail, Nov. 3, 2001)
Wazir Akbarhan hospital in Kabul was bombed on the first day and 13 women
were killed in the gynecology department. 200 people were killed in the
hospital in Herat. Red Cross facilities were bombed twice in Kabul on Oct. 16.
Cluster bombs — one of the most terrifying and deadly of the U.S. weapons —
are now being used as bombing intensifies. Hundreds of small bomblets packed
with razor shrapnel are dispersed at super-high velocity over a wide area,
ripping into people with devastating damage. Cluster bombs are prohibited by
the Geneva Convention, because of their indiscriminate nature (Protocol 1,
Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts,
Article 51). A report from the Sydney Morning Herald (Oct. 26, 2001) quotes
Dan Kelly, head of UN mine clearing in Afghanistan: "These bomblets can
explode if the villagers so much as touch them. It is a very violent death.
You don't get arms and legs blown off like you do with anti-personnel mines,
you get killed." Civilians are being deliberately targeted throughout the
country. Another deplorable U.S. tactic is repeat bombing to kill rescue
personnel. In Jalalabad, the Sultanpur mosque was bombed during prayer. As
neighbors dug out 17 victims who were trapped, the plane returned to bomb
minutes later, killing 120 people ("Where the Bodies Are," Oct. 23, 2001,
Geov Parrish, workingforchange.com)
Cluster bombs, depleted uranium ammunition, 15,000-pound "Daisy cutter"
fuel-air explosives: this is the terror being unleashed by the biggest
military power in the world against one of the poorest and most
underdeveloped countries in existence. It's not just the bombs are killing
people. The dislocation and chaos of the war itself means huge numbers of
Afghan people will die from hunger, cold and disease. According to UNICEF
officials, more than 100,000 Afghan children will likely die from war-related
causes by the end of winter.
Question: What is the current state of the Afghan people?
Answer: The average life expectancy in Afghanistan is 43 years. Per capita
income is $180 per year. Only 13 percent of the entire population has access
to drinking water. Barely 12% of the population has sanitation coverage.
Literacy is only 20 percent. The infant-mortality rate is a shocking 247
deaths per 1,000 live births. On average, 16,000 mothers die in childbirth
every year, one out of every 17 births, the second worst maternal mortality
rate in the world.
It's not just the bombs that are killing people. The dislocation and chaos of
the war itself means huge numbers of Afghan people will die from hunger, cold
and disease. According to UNICEF officials, more than 100,000 Afghan children
will likely die from war-related causes by the end of winter.
Question: Isn't the war in Afghanistan a defensive reaction to the Sept. 11
attacks?
Answer: After Sept. 11, the U.S. immediately targeted all of Afghanistan and
added to its "enemies" list any country or organization that didn't fully
support the U.S. government on terrorism. Afghanistan agreed to negotiate but
asked for proof of the culpability of Osama bin Laden in the September 11
attack. The Bush administration responded that they wouldn't negotiate and
they refused to provide the evidence. Was it really because the U.S. wanted
to combat terrorism? Or is it because the U.S. made a calculated decision to
use the terrible Sept. 11 attack as justification for a Pentagon move to
expand its domination in the Middle East and South/Central Asia?
One only needs to look at the U.S. policy toward Iraq for a clue. The real
motive for the 1991 U.S. war on Iraq and continued sanctions against the
Iraqi people is to gain full control of the Persian/Arabian Gulf oil.
Two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves lie in that region. The U.S.
Gulf War allowed the Pentagon to establish numerous military bases in Saudi
Arabia, United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.
What is less known is the vast interests of U.S. oil, banking and military
corporations in South and Central Asia as the next strategic region for oil
and natural gas exploitation.
The Caspian Region — made up of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and
Azerbaijan — has a potential value in oil and natural gas of more than $5
trillion. These former Soviet states share a border with Afghanistan, and are
precisely the countries that the U.S. military has now established bases and
troops. The U.S. militarization of the region began before September 11; now
it is going full-scale. A Unocal Oil Corp. spokesperson, Vice President John
J. Maresca testified to the House of Representatives Committee on
International Relations, February 12, 1998. He said, "the Caspian region
contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves …proven natural gas
reserves … equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. … [oil reserves]
estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels."
The CIA "set up a secret task force to monitor the region's politics and
gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained petroleum engineers
had traveled through southern Russia and the Caspian region to sniff out
potential oil reserves. When the policy makers heard the CIA report, [then
Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright concluded that 'working to mold the
area's future is one of the most exciting things we can do.'" (Time Magazine,
May 1998)
The Pentagon has been seeking to link the region's governments into a
military alliance connected to NATO's so-called "Partnership for Peace."
These former states of the Soviet Union became open to unbridled exploitation
for their oil and gas resources by firms whose directors are ex-U.S. military
and political leaders. Former Reagan, Bush and Clinton advisers like Gen.
Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former White House Chief of Staff
John N. Sununu; former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, Secretary of State
James Baker, former Clinton treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, all have
become oil and gas company executives involved in the Caspian Region.
(Washington Post, July 6, 1997)
Question: Isn't the U.S. trying to stabilize the region by eliminating a
"network of terrorists"?
Answer: This is the most dangerous myth of all. More war, bombing and
assassinations will only create more violence, death and economic crisis. The
death of thousands in New York must not be used to justify what the United
States is doing in Afghanistan and to hide what it has done and continues to
do to the Iraqi and Palestinian people.
There is enormous anger in the Middle East that every month, between 8,000
and 12,000 people — 5,000 of them children under five — die in Iraq as a
direct result of the U.S. sanctions. This has gone on for 11 years! This
crime of genocide has been hidden from the U.S. people but it is well known
among the people of the Middle East. And now U.S. officials are urging a new
war on Iraq.
Over 800 Palestinians have been killed and 16,000 seriously wounded since the
second Intifada began in September 2000. Their homes are bulldozed as they
try to defend themselves against the brutal and long-standing Israeli
occupation of their land. Every bullet, every helicopter, every F-15 and F-16
came from the United States. Every year, the U.S. continues to fund Israel by
$4 billion. This is unabashed terrorism, and more and more people in the
world are calling for an end to U.S.-Israeli oppression of the Palestinian
people.
Question: Why does the anti-war movement say that there is also a war at home?
Answer: Thousands of Arab people, South Asian people and Muslims have been
violently attacked inside the United States. Homes, mosques and stores have
been defaced. People of Arab and South Asian descent have been put off
airplanes. Main media outlets, like the Wall Street Journal, have called for
legitimizing racial profiling. This is racism pure and simple. After Timothy
McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal building in 1995, killing 168
people, there was no campaign to take white males off of airplanes because
people felt "uncomfortable in their presence." White men were not rounded up
and held without charges. Since September 11, however, more than 1,100
people, mostly of South Asian and Middle East origin, have been detained for
up to five weeks, many without charges.
Under the rubric of anti-terrorism, ultra-racist Attorney General John
Ashcroft has pushed through the so-called anti-terrorism bill, labeled USA
Patriots Bill. Only Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, voted
against this bill in the Senate, arguing that it allows unconstitutional
searches and punishes individuals for vaguely defined associations with
"possible terrorists." This bill legalizes racial profiling, eliminates due
process for arrested people, and allows the government to vastly expand the
definition of terrorist to potentially include millions of people who might
want to protest U.S. government policy, and allows the government to detain
immigrants without charges. In addition, it eliminates basic privacy rights,
allowing the government to have nearly limitless authority to carry out
electronic surveillance and wire taps of anyone it deems "suspicious."
U.S. plans for secret military tribunals of civilians is an extremely
dangerous precedent and must be opposed by all.
Question: Is it true that the U.S. is considering legalizing torture against
suspects in detention?
Answer: Shocking, but true. The FBI and the Justice Department under John
Ashcroft are considering using torture as an approved policy of the United
States against those in detention who assert their legal rights to remain
silent. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. government is discussing
using "pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli
interrogators to extract information." (See www.justiceonline.org for more
information.) Israeli-style pressure tactics is just a euphemism for torture.
According to a 1998 report by B'Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights
organization, interrogation tactics include a combination of sleep
deprivation, isolation, psychological torment and direct physical force,
including beatings, violent shaking, painful shackling and use of objects
designed or used to inflict extreme pain. A prisoner may be shackled to a
specially modified chair (to cause pain) with his or her head covered with a
filthy sack that has an overwhelming stench of vomit or human refuse.
Interrogations routinely span months, with constant intermittent periods of
interrogation and force lasting for days without interruption.
Question: Is the Pentagon censoring the news?
Answer: Almost all news presented on television and in the mass media is only
the information the Pentagon wants you to know. The Pentagon is well aware
that during the Vietnam War when the people learned the truth about the war
and that the government was lying to them (1970 Pentagon Papers, etc.),
people turned against the war. The U.S. government's National Mapping and
Imaging Agency has signed a contract giving it exclusive control over all
satellite imaging of the war in Afghanistan. They bought the commercial
rights to all satellites on October 7, the day the bombing of Afghanistan
began.
Question: If Bush's bombing war is not the answer, what is the answer?
Answer: The tens of thousands of troops that occupy Saudi Arabia and the
Persian Arabian Gulf should be removed. The people of the region perceive the
U.S. as an occupying, colonial-type force. The U.S. must immediately and
completely end the policy of sanctions on Iraq. It must stop providing Israel
$4 billion a year to occupy Palestine.
Instead of destroying pharmaceutical factories, like the Al Shifa factory in
Sudan that it destroyed with 17 cruise missiles in 1998, the U.S. should lift
its economic sanctions against Sudan and the other countries of the region.
If there is to be peace, the people of Palestine and the people who suffer
U.S. military occupation in the region must enjoy genuine self-determination
and justice.
(If you would like a formatted copy of this factsheet or more info about
available anti-war educational resources, please call the IAC at 415-821-6545
or e-mail us. Also, check our national website at www.iacenter.org.)
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