Another Resister

Afghanistan: US soldier says sorry for occupation’s crimes


Tony Iltis
16 May 2009


At an April 5 anti-NATO protest in Strasboug, Matthis Chiroux apologised to Afghan feminist Malalai Joya for the crimes of the US-led occupation of Joya’s country.


Chiroux is a US soldier facing prosecution for refusing to be deployed to Iraq on the grounds that the US-led occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are unjust and criminal. Joya is an opponent of the foreign occupation and an elected representative in Afghanistan’s parliament unable to take her seat due to death threats from US-backed Islamic fundamentalists.

Common Dreams said on April 15 that Chiroux, who served in Afghanistan in 2005, told Joya: “I want to tell you, Malalai, how sorry I am for the violence that my Army has done to your people, to your country. I want to apologize to you for the role that I played in it.”

He presented Joya with a dove pin to symbolise peace.

Joya accepted the apology, but said: “It is your government that must apologise first of all to great people like you: they are deceiving you and they use you for not a good cause; they use you for a war which only adds to the suffering of my people.

“And it is your government that must apologize to the Afghan people for invading their land and imposing a mafia government of warlords and drug-lords on them.”

This was echoed in a statement by Kabul students read at a May 10 demonstration against US air strikes in Bala Boluk that killed 147 people on May 4: “Our people are fed up with Taliban beheadings and suicide bombings. On the other hand, the massacre of civilians by the American forces is a crime that our people will never forget.”

Killing surge

The impact of US President Barack Obama’s “troop surge” in Afghanistan was felt in the May 4 Bala Boluk massacre of 147 civilians, including 95 children. While the monthly numbers of Afghan civilians killed by occupation forces has increased under Obama, so has the number of insurgent attacks.

The US military has denied claims that it used white phosphurus in the air strikes, despite reports by Afghan doctors of “highly unusual burns” in some of the victims. The use of white phosphorus as a weapon is banned under international law. However, its use by US forces was documented in November in Fallujah, Iraq.

The extra 21,000 soldiers deployed by Obama brings the US-led occupation force to 70,000. Australian PM Kevin Rudd has had his own mini-surge on April 29, increasing the Australian contingent by 450 soldiers to 1550.

The political endorsement contained in the increase is helpful for Obama, who has had difficulty persuading Washington’s NATO allies to increase the size of their contingents in Afghanistan.

The website of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), , said on April 30 that the number of Afghan civilians killed by occupation forces in the first three months of 2009 was 10% higher than the same period in 2008.

Air attacks were responsible for 80% of these deaths. US air strikes increasingly use unpiloted drones, responsible for 46% of Afghan civilian deaths caused by the occupation forces in 2009.

Facing re-election in August, US-installed President Hamid Karzai has tried to distance himself from his sponsors.

In a May 8 CNN interview he said: “We demand an end to these operations, an end to air strikes ... We cannot justify in any manner, for whatever number of Taliban or for whatever number of significantly important terrorists, the accidental or otherwise loss of civilians.”

The December report by European think-tank International Council on Security and Development said the Taliban held a permanent presence in 72% of Afghanistan, compared with 54% a year earlier.

Far from weakening the Taliban, the US-led occupation is gaining it recruits.

The December 16 Guardian quoted Mullah Zubiallah Akhund, a Taliban leader in Uruzgan, as saying: “The people who are fighting with the Taliban are the brothers, uncles and relatives of those killed by the Americans. They have joined the Taliban and are fighting because they want to avenge their brothers, fathers or cousins.

“There are now Taliban in every village; many of them have rejoined the movement after the savage attacks carried out by Americans.”

Pakistan

Pakistan has remained a base of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Pakistani military and political elite has tried to stay engaged with both sides in the Afghan conflict, receiving military aid from the US while still sponsoring the Taliban.

Both sides have killed Pakistani civilians: the Taliban through terrorist attacks and brutal practices in areas it controls, and the US through drone attacks.

In February, Pakistan’s government made a peace deal that surrendered territory in the Swat Valley to the Taliban. However, after Taliban infiltration came within 100 kilometres of the capital Islamabad, Pakistan's army began an offensive in April that has displaced about 1 million civilians, a May 14 BBC report said.

The US invasion of Afghanistan came with a propaganda offensive portraying the war as a fight for democracy, development and gender equality (claimed as “Western values”). The reality is the Afghan pro-occupation forces are identical to the Taliban and their allies in ideology and practice.

The Karzai government’s recent Shia Marriage Law, which legalises rape in marriage, is evidence of this.

Statistics published by RAWA on April 30 said Western development aid spending in Afghanistan was only one 20th of expenditure on the military occupation. Much of that goes to Afghan warlords, Western corporations or the bloated expat community in Kabul — whose uncommonly high wages have pushed up rents in the impoverished, war-ravaged city.

Rejecting foreign occupation as a solution to Afghanistan’s problems, Joya called for “support for the democratic-minded people of Afghanistan, who are the only alternative for the future of Afghanistan: they alone are able to fight against terrorism and fundamentalism.

“The suffering people of Afghanistan, nobody listens to their voice — while [occupation] troops are killing our innocent people, most of them women and children, and on the other side these Taliban and the Northern Alliance terrorists are continuing their fascism under the rule of the US/NATO.”


From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #795 20 May 2009.