One of the Major Displacement Crises in the World: Help the Swat Refugees

As you are probably aware, the US-Pakistani attack on the Taliban in the Swat Valley has lead to a mass exodus of approximately 3 million people from that district.

There are no estimates on the numbers of civilian deaths, as journalists and human rights monitors have been barred entry by the military. It is estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 people are still trapped in Swat, likely owing to the persistent use of curfews by the Pakistani military. Human Rights Watch have said they’ve ”continued to receive persistent reports of ongoing civilian casualties from Pakistani artillery shelling and aerial bombardment as desperate civilians break the curfew in search of food and water or to flee hostilities.”

Those in the refugee camps are facing a dire situation, lacking food, water, and sanitation. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said:

“The international community needs to realise this is becoming one of the major displacement crises in the world. The needs will be enormous, so we need to plan. We need money now for what’s going to happen through the summer.”

Please help the displaced people of Swat by donating whatever you can to organisations that are having a real impact on the ground:

UNHCR:

http://www.unhcr.org.uk/index.html

Oxfam:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/emergencies/pakistan-swat-conflict.html

Please give generously.

Explaining Obama’s U-Turns

J. L. Austin once remarked that in philosophy, there’s always the bit where you say something, and the bit where you take it back. The Obama administration, it seems, is doing its best to adapt Austin’s dictum to the process of policy-making. Having recently consigned the polar bear to virtual extinction, after only last month pretending that they would be breaking with Bush-era environmental policies, the Whitehouse yesterday decided that they won’t be releasing those pictures of prisoner abuse after all, and – significantly more serious – announced that they will be reversing their previous opposition to Guantanamo-style military trials.

Moreover, this is only a small example of the kind of fundamental dishonesty the Obama administration is capable of. After promising “change”, they have essentially operated a policy of continuity. For example, as the excellent Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, although Obama opposed Guantanamo Bay’s existence on the grounds that he rejected “the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole” based on “a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus”, his administration has upheld a Bush-era policy that maintains that detainees in Afghanistan, in particular at Bagram Airbase, have no right to challenge their detention. This is particularly significant because after Boumediene v. Bush, which ruled that the Guantanamo detainees have the right to habeas corpus under the constitution, the Bush administration dodged the legal issues involved in kidnapping people and flying them to Guantanamo to be held without trial by kidnapping them and flying them to Bagram, to be held without trial. Obama’s decision to maintain Bush’s denial of fundamental rights has been opposed by a right-wing, Bush-appointed federal judge, who ruled that the principle behind Boumediene applies to those held at Bagram, a charge that the Obama administration have dismissed.

Another key tenet of the Bush administration which Obama’s lot have taken up is that the economy is to be run in favour of big business, to the detriment of the American public if need be. After appointing self-serving multimillionaires, who knowingly destabilised the economy to make themselves rich, as his top economic staff and advisers, Obama has concentrated on continuing Bush’s tactic of using the economic crisis as a pretext for massive transfers of wealth to the very bank executives and managers responsible. Two Nobel Prize winning economists have attacked the various permutations of the Obama-Geithner plan in much the same terms:

What the Obama administration is doing is… ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess. (Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism’)

Every plan we’ve heard from Treasury amounts to the same thing — an attempt to socialize the losses while privatizing the gains. (Paul Krugman, ‘Zombie Financial Ideas’)

Of course, this stands in sharp contrast to his campaign trail attacks on the continued lack of regulation in financial markets, and the culture of protecting the interests of the financial elite at the expense of the American public, e.g.:

[McCain's economic philosophy] says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down. It’s the philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise. It’s a philosophy that lets Washington lobbyists shred consumer protections and distort our economy so it works for the special interests instead of working people… [This] economic philosophy … has completely failed.

It is an impressive feature of Obama’s (continued) brand-marketing campaign that he and his legion of PR-goons are able even now to convince liberal journalists that his presidency marks a sharp break from the Bush-era. Because that is what this is: a PR exercise. He must make token gestures towards environmentalists, civil liberties and human rights campaigners, global justice campaigners, etc., so that the PR campaign can carry on rolling, and he doesn’t alienate his supporters. It is no accident that Obama was awarded a major marketing award, voted on by top marketers and agency heads, for his electoral campaign (in which he just managed to pip Apple Inc. to the post!); he was consciously sold, like a product, to the American public. But the fuzzy message of hope and change belies a reality of transferring wealth to the top; extending Bush’s protection of a secret surveillance industry; sheltering torturers with flimsy rhetoric about looking forward (see previous posts); expanding an occupation that has killed tens of thousands (and uses illegal incendiary weapons near civilian settlements); and fighting a covert war based on a virulent campaign of disinformation. Obama’s U-Turns, then, are actually the manifestation of a conflict between the image and the reality of his administration. As he switches from gesturing towards his supporters at one moment to pursuing his actual objectives the next, the resulting impression is of someone flip-flopping about, or changing their mind. But this should encourage us. It at least means that Obama is concerned not to alienate the public entirely, unlike the previous administration which didn’t seem to care if the whole world was against it. This is a useful trait, which can be exploited by activists seeking to change his policies. If we are able to resist the media’s unrelenting cheerleading, and the propaganda of our leadership, there is now the opportunity to bring about real change. But that, as always, is up to us.

Police Fire On Demonstrators Protesting US Attacks

Following on the heels of the single most deadly airstrike by US forces in Afghanistan, up to 2,000 people have taken to the streets today, protesting both the killings and the occupation of Afghanistan in general. The US attack, launched on the evening of May 4th, decimated the village of Granai, in the western Farah province, and is believed to have killed over 100 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians. Demonstrating in response to the attacks, protesters threw stones at government buildings, only to be fired upon by the police. The deputy governor of the province has claimed that police only fired into the air, but the local health director said that at least one person was admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds, and others were admitted with injuries from being trampled in the ensuing chaos.

So far the only British media outlet I can find that has reported this demonstration is the BBC, who do not mention that demonstrators were shot at, but rather insinuate that any injuries were caused by the protesters. Of course, this is in line with the media’s generally positive portrayal of the “Good War”, in which they align themselves with the Obama administration’s rhetoric about destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban, ending the oppression of women, and restoring regional stability. This is likely to be, however, only the first major expression in a new wave, fuelled by a groundswell of anti-coalition sentiment. Obama’s planned troop surge will bring thousands more civilian deaths, deepening the resistance to the occupation and making his goal of pacifying Afghanistan even more unachievable than it already was. And with Pakistan being rapidly brought into the centre of the conflict, Obama’s war is apt to escalate into an all-out large-scale regional conflict, somewhat resembling the sprawling campaign waged by the US in South-East Asia in the 1960s. This can only entail further loss of life, destruction, and persistent instability.

A child injured by the bombings

Torture Used To Justify Iraq War

As if things couldn’t get any darker, the recent Senate Armed Services Committee report on the genesis of torture techniques deployed under the Bush regime provides evidence that the techniques were established in part to get statements on the existence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda — a link which administration officials knew did not exist. Despite there being absolutely no evidence for the non-existent link, it was insinuated over and over again by senior members of Bush’s regime in order to link Saddam Hussein to the perpetrators of 9/11, and thus to attempt to justify the illegal and immoral war of aggression waged against Iraq.

Incidentally, the report definitively sinks Obama’s (already legally empty) argument that the CIA should be shielded from prosecution for torture, as they were only working on legal advice from the Justice Department: the CIA deployed torture tactics even before the OLC gave them the greenlight in August 2002.

Obama’s Nuremberg Defense

Obama has recently announced that the US Attorney-General Eric Holder will be considering whether to prosecute those who — in memoranda recently made public — gave distorted legal advice to CIA operatives that authorized the use of torture. However, he remains firm on his position that those members of the CIA responsible for overseeing and implementing the torture regime will not be prosecuted, as, in the words of the Attorney-General: “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.”

By releasing the torture memos of the Bush-era Justice Department, Obama has publicly confirmed what was already known by human rights agencies over two years ago, but only recently leaked to the public. Predictably, the media apologists for state terror and violence are presently in full swing. The Independent argues that pursuing the culprits in the CIA and Justice Department would be a “distraction” from the “vital … challenges” of fixing the economy and fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan; “plainly”, it seems, we are not to prosecute those who “operate in an ill-defined no-man’s-land, between orthodox diplomacy and overt war”, and therefore “must be offered some degree of protection” when things take an “unsavoury” turn. The Telegraph is slightly more brazen in their defense of torture, arguing that Obama should not have taken the “unnecessary decision”, which was clearly an attempt ”to score cheap political points” by revisiting what is by now “ancient history”; meaning that if it weren’t for Obama, it would be down the memory hole where it belongs.  The Times currently sees fit to primarily echo the concerns not of human rights organisations, but of the intelligence services under scrutiny, focussing on the CIA’s threat that Obama has ”undermined” their ”ability to extract vital intelligence from America’s enemies”, therefore “putting the US in danger”, and worries amongst British intelligence agencies that they’ll be next. The BBC’s coverage has also been dire, expressed as per usual in hedged language: apparently only “[c]ritics of the programme say the methods used amounted to torture”; as though there were a serious argument to be had about it.  The Guardian seems to be the honourable exception here, with an editorial that argues “[o]ne way or another, those who ordered the abuses, from the president and vice-president down, must answer for them”; although it does not depart from the party line that Obama “may also be right” to shield CIA operatives who carried out the torture.

The bulk of media opinion thus wavers between praising Obama’s “forthright and brave response”, but urging that he go no further; and attacking him for compromising national security in a cynical bid ”to heap humiliation on his predecessor”. However, it is questionable how “forthright and brave” his response is when one factors in that Obama was extremely reluctant to release the memoranda, and was pressured into doing so by court action taken by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) under the Freedom of Information Act. This fact also somewhat undermines the claim that the ersatz revelations are a cynical bid, gleefully undertaken, to smear the former regime.

There is no doubt amongst reasonable people that interrogation techniques listed in the memos violate legislation against torture. As the Red Cross report points out, “torture” and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” are illegal under the Third Geneva Convention, to which the US is bound; in addition, the techniques violate the 1984 Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, as well as the 1996 War Crimes Act.

The “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Justice Department include:

• Waterboarding (simulated drowning and suffocation by water)
• Beatings, including slapping in the body and face
• “Walling”, whereby the detainee is slammed forcefully into a wall
• Cramped confinement in boxes
• Prolonged nudity and forced wearing of a diaper
• Withholding solid food
• Sleep deprivation of up to 180 hours
• Forced shaving
• Prolonged shackling of limbs combined with “stress standing”
• Exposure to the cold, including dousing with and immersion in water a few degrees above freezing
• Confinement with insects to induce fear and panic

As they are coolly and clinically described in the memos, these procedures sound less depraved than they actually are (at least, if the ICRC report is to be believed). To take the most notorious example, waterboarding is far from a harmless “dunk in the water”, to borrow Cheney’s expression. Rather, the detainee is strapped down to a bed with belts, a black cloth placed over their face, and water poured over them for several minutes, inducing an intense impression of imminent death. In the panic, the detainee struggles against their restraints so forcefully that it causes lasting injuries. The fear of death can be so great as to induce the detainee to vomit and urinate on themself. To increase the level of humiliation, the detainee is kept naked during this procedure, and made aware that they are being watched by a female interrogator.

Or to take another seemingly ”soft” procedure: so-called “stress standing”. This “enhanced technique” involves the detainee having their limbs shackled outstretched, in the same position for up to a week before being allowed to rest for a couple of days. This procedure, it is reported, would be applied for up to two to three months in this way. During this period the detainees would sometimes be released briefly to defecate in a bucket, but not to clean themself afterwards. However, much of the time they were not allowed out of the position, and so had to urinate and defecate on themselves, and remain, shackled, covered in their bodily fluid and excrement.

Beatings, which the memos argue do not constitute torture as they do not cause “severe” physical harm, would involve being slapped, punched and kicked in the face and torso, often for up to half an hour, causing bleeding and lasting injury. In one case a detainee was tied by his neck to a pillar, before having his head repeatedly slammed into it. After being severely beaten, detainees would be photographed, and the photos used as threats to others. Threats themselves often involved the possible application of techniques far outstripping those actually deployed, including the threat of electric shock; infection with HIV; sodomy of the detainee; the arrest, rape and torture of the detainees family; and the threat of being brought close to death.

This is just a selective description of some of techniques used by the CIA interrogators, but it is enough to put to rest any question of whether or not their methods actually amounted to torture (at least amongst decent and reasonable human beings). In the light of this, it is particularly disturbing that some media outlets (such as the BBC) continue to put the word “torture” in scare quotes, as though the propriety of this term were in dispute.

There are several popular arguments used in the media to justify Obama not investigating, let alone prosecuting, those responsible for executing the torture regime authorized by Bush’s Justice Department. Frequently mentioned are: that pursuit of the guilty would not be “politically possible”; that it would “distract” Obama from getting on with achieving the key goals of his administration; that they were acting on the advice of the Office of Legal Counsel, and so are not responsible; and that the use of these techniques should not be criticised, but maintained in order to protect “national security”. The last of these arguments is an old canard used by tyrannical regimes, which I will simply pass over with the contempt that it deserves (anyone sufficiently interested, however, might like to take a look at a long but excellent piece by Jeremy Waldron against apologia for torture). The rest I will consider in turn.

The claim that a criminal investigation (or at the very least, an independent inquiry as a prolegomena to legal action) is “politically impossible” strikes me as odd. As early as February this year, Gallup polls showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans support either a criminal investigation or an independent investigative panel into the torture techniques propagated under the Bush administration (with the largest section supporting a criminal investigation). We can assume, then, “political possibility” in this sense is not meant to map public opinion, in which case the argument is rather cynically anti-democratic: the CIA’s interest in not being prosecuted is being counted as a weightier political factor than popular support for investigations.

Alternatively, the claim might be interpreted as saying that any such investigation could not focus purely on members of the intelligence community, but would have to extend to those higher up the chain, in Congress for example, who oversaw the implementation of the program. This, it is argued, would turn the legal proceedings into a partisan “witch-hunt”. However, the prospect of a partisan witch-hunt is quite unlikely given that key members of the Democrats are implicated in the scandal, having attended confidential Congressional Intelligence Committee  briefings on the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques”. 

As to the argument that any proceedings would be a “distraction” from Obama carrying out his Presidential duties, that seems very unlikely: Eric Holder could simply appoint a special prosecutor to investigate those responsible and bring them to court, as the ACLU have repeatedly demanded. Indeed, as civil liberties organisations have pointed out, any criminal investigation ought to be sharply independent of the Presidential Office, in order to ensure that it is conducted in an impartial, non-political manner.

The last defense of Obama’s decision not to prosecute is that the CIA were acting in good faith on legal advice from the Justice Department, and so cannot be held responsible for any illegality. This argument is flawed in several ways. First of all, it assumes that the CIA were acting in good faith, i.e. following their instructions to the letter, which looks incredibly unlikely when you read the details of how the interrogation techniques were implemented in the ICRC report, and compare it with the boundaries set out in the memos. In many instances the CIA appear to have gone well beyond their instructions on what was legally permissible, and even if you do not trust the details of the ICRC report, the allegations made it in ought to be investigated: it is wrong to simply assume CIA operatives acted “in good faith”.

Even if you ignore this, however, there is a deeper flaw in Obama’s argument. That is, the excuse that one was acting in accordance with orders does not mitigate responsibility for violations of international law, as was established in the Nuremberg tribunals at the end of the Second World War. Article IV of the Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal (1950) reads: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” And in case you are worried about the claim that the US torture techniques constitute a crime to which the same principles as were applied at Nuremberg ought to be applied, it is worth remembering that in the International Military Tribunals of the Far-East which tried Japanese war criminals, waterboarding was prosecuted as torture and a violation of international law.

The Obama administration have gone out of their way to protect the criminal operatives working in the CIA. Justice and the will of the American people will only be served if those who implemented the horrendous interrogation methods which developed under the Bush regime are prosecuted. Only then can the US truly, to borrow one of Obama’s present favourite slogans, look forwards to the future; a future free of the dark shadow that the Bush regime still casts across the American conscience.

 

EDIT: Not only does Obama’s argument undermine the principles of Nuremberg, but it is guarded against explicitly in the Convention Against Torture, Article 2.3 of which states: “An order from a superior officer or public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.”

It may also be worth noting that according to the judgement of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Obama is in violation of international law.

“The Day of Judgement in Fallujah”

Five years ago today, Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, announced to assembled reporters: “As of noon today coalition forces have initiated a unilateral suspension of offensive operations in Fallujah.”(1) He was lying. Although at that point over 300 Iraqis had already been killed, this was not even half the total body count from what turned out to be one of the worst massacres of the Iraq war. Indeed, Ahmed Mansur, a journalist who was in Fallujah at the time of the siege, said that April 9th “was really like the day of judgment in Fallujah.”(2)

The first siege of Fallujah in April 2004 was a response to the deaths of four mercenaries working for the notorious private military company Blackwater USA,(3) who on the 31st March were killed, burned, dragged through the streets, then hung off of a bridge. This attack, however, was not unprovoked. As Human Rights Watch have documented in their report, Violent Response, there was mounting tension in Fallujah owing to American aggression there since the beginning of the invasion.(4) By the time the 82nd Airborne’s Second Brigade rolled in to Fallujah on the 23rd April 2003, the population had already been bombed during the initial air strikes. The U.S. forces decided to set up a command centre in a local school, leading on 28th April to a protest of roughly 150 people. As the demonstration reached the school, U.S. forces opened fire on the crowd, killing 17 and wounding 70. Two days later, there was another protest, and more shooting by U.S. forces, with 3 dead and 16 wounded. This was the beginning of severe tensions, that lasted for the next year, and eventually boiled over in the wake of the deaths of the Blackwater mercenaries.

What is shocking about Fallujah is not just the utter depravity of the behaviour of U.S. troops (which I will come to), but the U.S. media’s complicity in that depravity. Reports about the killing of Blackwater’s hired guns misleadingly portrayed them variously as “consultants”, “contractors”, and even “civilians”.(5) By contrast, the portrayal of the Fallujans was not so flattering. The media ranted and raved about the “brutal outburst of anti-American rage” (New York Times), in which the “townspeople went on a rampage” (Washington Post); committing ”an act of savagery shocking even by the blood-stained standards of Iraq’s worst trouble spot”—”sheer bestial violence”(San Francisco Chronicle); and after they were through they staged a “macabre and murderous town fete”(San Francisco Chronicle again), in which the ”cheering crowds reveled in a barbaric orgy” (Washington Times); and so on, and so forth.(6)

The media further went on to support the assault on Fallujah, and characterise the city as a stronghold of pro-Saddam resistance to U.S. occupation. Far from supporting Saddam, however, “[m]any al-Falluja residents told Human Rights Watch that they considered themselves victims and opponents of his repressive rule.”(7) This campaign of disinformation continued right into the conflict, which was portrayed as a great success, and is still generally retold as such. However, others have told a different story.

Reporter Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq entered Fallujah on 3rd April, just as the siege was beginning. As they entered the hospital in Fallujah, Laith recalls “there was a lot of children in the hospital that were wounded. Some children were brought, and their families were dead already. Their fathers and parents were not accompanying them. That day shocked me terribly.”(8) The carnage continued unabated:

I could not see anything but like a sea of corpses of children and women, and mostly children, because peasants and farmers have usually a lot of children. So, these were scenes that are unbelievable, unimaginable… I was taking photographs and forcing myself to photograph, while I was at the same time crying… I could not really find any one human being in one piece or intact. They were cut up.

Mansur and Mushtaq are not the only ones to report such scenes. In his excellent Beyond The Green Zone, Dahr Jamail, who entered Fallujah as an unembedded journalist on 10th April, records the horror from a clinic, one of only two functioning medical facilities by this point, as the U.S. forces had bombed one hospital, and had a sniper shooting anyone who entered or exited Fallujah General Hospital. The first casulty he saw was a man carrying in his young boy, who had blood running down his arms, and notes “thus began my witnessing of an endless stream of women and children who had been shot by U.S. forces”.(9) Many of the casulties recorded by Jamail had been shot with sniper rifles, making it very unlikely that they could be dismissed as “collateral damage”. In one such case, he describes an old lady, a grandmother, who was shot as she attempted to evacuate her grandchildren from their home, and died clutching a white surrender flag stained with her blood.

Further tactics deployed by the U.S. forces that are described by Jamail include shooting up ambulances; calling a ceasefire, then shooting those who came out of their homes; dispersing cluster bombs throughout the city; and cutting the electrical supply, which lead one victim, a ten year old boy, to choke on his own vomit because the doctors could not vacuum it from his throat. All in all, Fallujah General Hospital records that 736 Iraqis were killed during the April 2004 assault, over 60% of which were women, children, and the elderly.(10)

What is the point of remembering such barbarity? To recover history from the self-serving distortions of the media and politicians, who like to talk about the promotion of liberty, democracy, and justice in Iraq. A doctor serving in the clinic from which Jamail was reporting puts it bluntly, but accurately:

For forty-seven years I had accepted the illusion of Europe and the United States being good for the world, the carriers of democracy and freedom… Now I see that it has all been lies. The Americans don’t give a damn about democracy or human rights. They are worse even than Saddam.(11)

 

References

(1) ‘Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing’, Federal News Service Defense Department Briefing, April 9th, 2004

(2) Democracy Now!, ‘Al Jazeera Reporters Give Bloody First Hand Account of April ’04 U.S. Siege of Fallujah’, (22/02/06)
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/22/exclusive_al_jazeera_reporters_give_bloody

(3) If you haven’t heard of Blackwater USA, watch the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqM4tKPDlR8

(4) Human Rights Watch, ‘Violent Response: The U.S. Army in al-Falluja’, (16/06/2003)
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2003/06/16/violent-response

(5) Dahr Jamail, ‘Vigilant Resolve’, (15/02/05)
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/vigilant-resolve. For Blackwater’s real role, see note 3.

(6) These quotes are assembled by Dahr Jamail, ibid.

(7) As in note 4.

(8) As in note 2. I have corrected the grammar slightly.

(9) Dahr Jamail, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket, 2008), p.137.

(10) Ibid., p.125.

(11) Ibid., p.139.

Goodbye Karzai?

Recently, much criticism has been levelled at Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, for signing a law which appears to legalise rape within marriage, amongst other things. Barack Obama has expressed his judgement that the law is “abhorrent”, and Gordon Brown personally phoned Karzai to register his own complaints. I doubt very much that these complaints actually have anything to do with Obama and Brown’s concern for basic human rights, which is conspicuously lacking in many of the decisions they make regarding international affairs (for instance, their completely uncritical, not to say supportive, stance towards Israel).

Moreover, this is only the latest in a series of spats between Karzai and his former Western allies. Earlier in the year, Obama attacked Karzai as ‘detached’ from the ’surrounding community’ he is supposed to serve, and Hilary Clinton labelled Afghanistan a ‘narco-state’ (with considerable gall one might add, given that opium production boomed as a result of the U.S.-led invasion). Obama, it seems, was already in a huff at Karzai before he was sworn into office, and did not have any communication with Karzai until a month after he was inaugurated.

So what did Karzai do to offend his masters in Washington? As The Guardian observes, “it is on the issue of civilian casualties that Karzai’s relationship with his western backers has hit rock bottom”. Karzai’s first move after Obama was elected was to demand that the U.S. put a stop to civilian deaths in Afghanistan. This fell on the heels of the bombing of a wedding party by the U.S., which killed 37 people, many children. Reportedly, the issue of civilian deaths also became a source of tension with the Bush administration towards the end of Bush’s last term, and after criticising the killing of 90 people in Azizabad, Karzai was pointedly warned by Condoleezza Rice that if he continued to criticise the U.S., they would “no longer co-operate” with him.

The question of civilian deaths has also spilt over into the little matter of troop withdrawal. At roughly the same time he was asking Washington to stop killing civilians, Karzai told a UN delegation that a timetable for the withdrawal of troops needs to be set. This is essentially opposed to Obama’s plan to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan by mid-summer, plus a review to determine whether further troops need to be deployed later in the year. The two issues are linked, as a troop surge is almost certain to cause increased civilian casulties, as a critical report released by central aid agencies (ActionAid, AfghanAid, Oxfam, and many more), has argued:

Despite attempts to reduce civilian casulties, international military forces (IMF) caused 552 civilian deaths through airstrikes in 2008, which is up by 72% on 2007. IMF have also carried out or supported raids and search operations, a large number of which have involved an excessive use of force, including loss of life, physical assault, damage to property and theft, as well as aggressive and improper treatment of women… Furthermore, many individuals detained by Afghan and US forces are held for long periods without charge or trial, and there are allegations of mistreatment and torture. Social protection and access to basic services is also being adversely affected by the widening conflict, with significant levels of displacement and severe disruption to health and education services… Planned increases in troops and military operations during 2009 are likely to lead to higher levels of displacement, further restrictions to social services, and greater impediments for aid agencies to reach civilians in need of protection and assistance.

Thus Karzai is being attacked for resisting policies which will almost certainly lead to a greater loss of civilian life in Afghanistan. The example is instructive: if you criticise or otherwise get in the way of fulfillment of the master’s wishes, you will be punished. Moreover, despite his having criticised Karzai for being ‘detached’ from those he is supposed to represent, Obama’s troop surge policy is massively unpopular in Afghanistan, as The Washington Post points out:

In a recent ABC-BBC-ARD poll of Afghans, just 18 percent said the United States and NATO should increase their troop levels, and more than twice that number, 44 percent, wanted fewer outside forces.

It is only if you hold that Karzai is meant to represent the will, not of the Afghani people, but of his Washington masters, that it makes sense to accuse him of being ‘detached’.

It remains to be seen whether Karzai can rescue himself from Western criticism. It might be hoped that a popular election would boost his mandate and give him some diplomatic room to fight back against Washington et al. However, given that the election is being held in a country occupied by tens of thousands of foreign troops, and in large part controlled by warlords who are in thrall to whoever can give them the strongest support (that’ll be those foreign troops), this is an unlikely prospect. Thus, it seems that Karzai’s political survival might well rest on ignoring the will of his people.

A Fifth Estate?

The concept of the press as a “fourth estate” — a term coined by political theorist and statesman Edmund Burke — is meant to convey that the function of the media is to be independent from and critical of established political power. In his article, ‘Set the Media Free,’ Ignacio Ramonet argues that “this fourth estate has been stripped of its potential, and has gradually ceased to function as a counterpower.” There has been a concentration of media both functionally and economically. What used to be three separate spheres – mass culture, marketing, and news – have become intertwined, at the same time as information and communications outlets are consolidated in very few global corporate entities. The upshot of this has been that the interests of media outlets are bound up with the success of the political and economic globalisation project, and their content reflects this concern. When the task of safeguarding human welfare, liberties, and rights comes into conflict with forwarding the interests of big business and the governments that look after them (which happens quite often), the press predictably tend to support the latter.  In short, we can no longer rely on the press to act as a fourth estate.

Ramonet thus poses and answers a very important question:

How do we react to all of this? How can we defend ourselves? How can we resist the offensive of this new power that has betrayed society and gone over to the enemy? The answer is simple. We have to create a new estate, a fifth estate, that will let us pit a civic force against this new coalition of rulers. A fifth estate to denounce the hyperpower of the media conglomerates which are complicit in, and diffusers of, neoliberal globalisation.

This task has been taken up directly by some very significant organisations (the best of which in the UK is MediaLens), and runs parallel to the project of creating an alternative media (the best example of which is Z Net). In support of this goal of creating an alternative, critical media — the fifth estate — I’m launching a blog which will attempt to shed light on issues that have been distorted by the bulk of news coverage. If anyone wishes to become a contributor to the blog, simply e-mail me at jma71 [at] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk.