I once again have to commend the World Socialist Web Site for its well written and informative reporting of news that we’re not likely to hear so much in the mainstream press or even much of the “left” press. In yesterday’s edition, for instance, the WSWS shed some light on the success of the recent prison break in Afghanistan – not, as mainstream (and some left) news reports might portray, simply a result of the evil Taliban and the supposedly evil people who sympathize with them… Because, as the WSWS points out, this prison break was partly the result of the inhuman cruelties inflicted by the Afghan government, which are in many ways an extension of the behavior of the U.S. military and “intelligence” in the “war on terror.” As the WSWS relates in the article, Afghanistan: Mass prison break underscores crisis of US-backed regime:
While government and NATO officials reported that some high- and middle-level Taliban commanders were among the escapees, the Afghanistan Human Rights Organization (AHRO) said that many held there were merely caught up in security sweeps.
Several hundred prisoners had been on hunger strike, and approximately 40 had sewn their lips shut in protest over being held without charges, in some cases for two years or more, undergoing systematic torture.
AHRO representatives said that they had warned the Afghan regime that the anger and desperation of both the prisoners and their families in the surrounding area was creating a major security threat.
“Many of the prisoners who have now escaped from Sarposa suffered unimaginable torture and have severe mental problems as a result of the abuse,” said AHRO chairman, Lal Gul, an attorney. “Prisoners had complained of sexual abuse using trained dogs, and physical torture resulting in the loss of limbs or body parts. People in the region were understandably outraged by these abuses, and they felt increasingly desperate since most of the people being held there had nothing to do with the Taliban.”
The human rights representative said that the Taliban was gaining support in the area both because of these abuses and because of the stepped-up US bombing campaign that has claimed the lives of civilians, including women and children.
The Afghan regime has adopted the standards used by the Bush administration in the so-called “war on terror,” denying detainees labeled as Taliban supporters any rights either as criminal suspects or prisoners of war. The inevitable result has been their torture both in US and in Afghan custody.
Nearly seven years after Washington launched its “Operation Enduring Freedom” with air strikes and a ground intervention in Afghanistan, and with nearly 70,000 US and other NATO troops occupying the country, the insurgency is gaining strength. Popular hostility toward the foreign occupation and the Karzai regime has been fed by the killing of civilians in US air strikes, the government’s repression and corruption, and pervasive poverty and hunger.
We should emphasize the phrase “popular hostility toward the foreign occupation and the Karzai regime.” Beause, occupiers who talk about defending freedom aren’t going to make such a convincing argument when their own campaign exhibits complete denial of freedoms to such a great extent. Moreover, U.S. troops might find their efforts to be counterproductive as they become more violent, with their bumbling and bullying incursions across the border into Pakistan. When last I saw, even in the tribal regions, the Taliban and other fundamentalists (including the mysteriously hidden leaders of Al Qaeda) did not have majority support. They may have a frighteningly strong minority behind them (in some areas, I think I read, 40 percent), but many people still hate these groups. However, it often seems that the fundamentalists couldn’t have a better recruiting tool than the activities of U.S. and other western occupiers. This applies just as much in the supposedly “good war” in Afghanistan as it does in the “bad war” in Iraq. (Both wars were begun without legitimate reasons, of course. The invasion of Afghanistan was much more about the desire to secure control of a strategic region near important natural resources – pipelines, etc. – than about pursuing the criminals behind 9-11. )
And if the activities of troops and jailers are brutal enough and blatantly un-democratic enough to increase sentiment for the Taliban, then how will increasing the level of violence by the occupiers solve this problem? Maybe it would help if those who claimed to be defending freedom somehow behaved in a way that would better support that claim.
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P.S. Also in this edition of the WSWS, you can find an amusing article on the career of Tim Russert and the contribution that he made to the decay of the American media, as well as an article that continues the WSWS’ excellent coverage of the human rights abuses committed by the military and government of Sri Lanka.
And by the way, I know the WSWS is run by Trotskyists, and I don’t always agree with them, especially when they write “historical” articles about Kronstadt or the Spanish Revolution. (I could be more assertive in saying that I disagree with them, but I don’t even understand some of those articles; they just seem convoluted to me.) And since I don’t like their “historical” articles as much, I don’t promote them. I also have heard about some scandals within the history of the WSWS, reported by a rival leftist group (though when leftist rivals start maligning one another, it’s difficult to know how much to truly believe). But few leftist sites that I know of contain such well-written and well-informed news reporting, with so much information that fill in the gaps left by the mainstream news. That is what is important to me about the WSWS, especially in the present context, and that is what I will praise them for.