>From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> > Local tyrants who fell out of favor with the American Empire, with
>> all their brutality and cruelty, are better antagonists of the masses
>> than the American Empire and its new lackeys, for the simple reason
>> that the latter have bigger guns & more ammunitions and are thus
>> harder for the masses to overthrow and expel.
>> --
> > Yoshie
>
>You underestimate both the brutality and durability of local tyrants.
>And I wonder, especially in the cross-cutting internal conflicts that
>is Afghanistan, who might pose as an acceptable stand-in for the
>masses?
Have you (or anyone here for that matter) taken a look at "The Political Economy of Peace and War in Afghanistan" by Barnett Rubin, available at <http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/afghanistan/links/rubin99.shtml>, & posted to LBO-talk by Stuart323 at aol.com on Fri, 23 Nov 2001? Compare the picture of the Taliban & the political economy of Afghanistan in Rubin's article with that of the US-backed oppositions to the Taliban in the New York Times article below:
***** New York Times 23 November 2001
ANOTHER WARLORD
Gun Control Policy, Jalalabad Style: He Who Grabs All the Rifles Writes the Rules
By TIM WEINER
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 - A sound truck rumbles down the street, blaring a message from Hazarat Ali, the new sheriff: "Don't carry weapons, night or day. If you are found with a weapon, you will be punished, no questions asked."
Gun control is not in the Afghan tradition. When the Taliban's local leaders fled last week, gunmen loyal to old rebels took to the streets. Many belonged to Mr. Ali, the law-and-order minister for the Eastern Shura, which controls this city and three surrounding provinces.
Today, some of 6,000 gunmen allied with Mr. Ali are riding around enforcing the law in four-wheel drive trucks they stole from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and other major international aid agencies in the city. One truck stolen carried the loudspeaker broadcasting Mr. Ali's message.
"Some people looted vehicles," Mr. Ali said with a shrug. "No problem. We'll find them and give them back."
But lawlessness and murder in the cities and roads of Afghanistan are slowing or stalling deliveries of food, clothing and shelter to hundreds of thousands of Afghans.
Hundreds of aid workers have decided not to return yet to to Jalalabad, the only major Afghan city on the road from Pakistan to Kabul. The looting stripped almost every aid office in Mazar-i-Sharif, and highwaymen stole nearly 200 tons of wheat from trucks outside Kandahar.
"It's disastrous," said Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International, a private group. "The insecurity and lack of safety is preventing aid organizations from getting aid to the people who need it."
Many relief agencies are calling for the immediate creation of an international security force to allow aid to flow freely.
The tension in Jalalabad's streets reveals how raw and deep the wounds in Afghan society are. There is peace, outwardly, but there are also young men with a half-crazed look patrolling the streets.
They are the law, and their guns say so.
A generation of men born since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 has lived only by the gun. Only the supremely severe rule of the Taliban brought a semblance of order.
Highway robbers, rapists and murderers in the rebel commanders' ranks met swift justice, usually by public execution. Until their regime started crumbling, and the Taliban started stealing from foreign aid agencies themselves, they never would have tolerated the thievery rampant in Jalalabad this week.
At the United Nations World Food Program headquarters in Jalalabad, where no foreign workers had returned as of this week, Omary, the chief caretaker, said he was warning his bosses to stay away.
"We were unhappy with the Taliban regime," he said. "But we are also unhappy with these irresponsible armed people. When the Taliban were here there was not any robbery. Then these people started pillaging. They have no plan for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Now every night we have threats from these armed people patrolling the road."
In the 1980's, the strongest personal and political bonds among Afghan men were forged when commanders handed out weapons, often arms bought by the United States for use fighting the Soviets. From 1989 to 1996, those commanders and their political chiefs made war on one another to win dominion over their nation, their province, their city, their village, or a crossroads in a wasteland.
"These youngsters have had no school - they know only fighting," Haji Abdul Qadir, the new governor of Nangarhar Province, said.
Mr. Ali, his chief law-enforcement officer, concurred. "We have a lot of soldiers who are illiterate," he said. "Sometimes they commit crimes."
Mr. Ali swore he would disarm the citizenry. "Any man who wants to show off with weapons - he knows what will become of him. People here know who I am. They know what I will do."
People here know, and fear, Mr. Ali, and have reasons to take his law-and-order pledge with a large serving of salt.
After all, those are Mr. Ali's men riding around in the pilfered Land Cruisers, and he apparently has no intention of disarming them. "If we just take their guns away, they will be unhappy," he said.
Mr. Ali won his new job because he controls more gunmen than anyone else around here. He was able to assign 6,000 to the government, leaving several thousand for himself. He won those men's allegiances by distributing weapons during and after the resistance war against the Soviets. People here said he made some of the money to buy those weapons years ago by cultivating a certain flower whose bulbs have a powerful narcotic effect.
He fought the Taliban in recent years, but he also had many friends inside the movement, said his cousin, Haji Noor Baig.
While nobody here is terribly nostalgic for the Taliban's local leaders - although many residents still hew to the movement's religious and political tenets - there is no huge affection for their replacements, either.
"We have a saying here," said Omary, of the World Food Program. "Thieves cannot protect us."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/international/asia/23JALA.html> *****
On the scale of brutality & cruelty, my ranking is the USA > the US-backed outlaws > the Taliban > the Soviets. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Anti-War Organizing in Columbus Covered by the Media: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/media.html>