We are witnessing this weekend one of the most epic events since the
Second World War, certainly since Vietnam. I am not talking about the
ruins of the World Trade Centre in New York and the grotesque physical
scenes which we watched on 11 September, an atrocity which I described
last week as a crime against humanity (of which more later). No, I
am
referring to the extraordinary, almost unbelievable preparations now
under way for the most powerful nation ever to have existed on God's
Earth to bomb the most devastated, ravaged, starvation-haunted and
tragic country in the world. Afghanistan, raped and eviscerated by
the
Russian army for 10 years, abandoned by its friends - us, of course
-
once the Russians had fled, is about to be attacked by the surviving
superpower.
I watch these events with incredulity, not least because I was a witness
to the Russian invasion and occupation. How they fought for us, those
Afghans, how they believed our word. How they trusted President Carter
when he promised the West's support. I even met the CIA spook in
Peshawar, brandishing the identity papers of a Soviet pilot, shot down
with one of our missiles - which had been scooped from the wreckage
of
his Mig. "Poor guy," the CIA man said, before showing us a movie about
GIs zapping the Vietcong in his private cinema. And yes, I remember
what
the Soviet officers told me after arresting me at Salang. They were
performing their international duty in Afghanistan, they told me. They
were "punishing the terrorists" who wished to overthrow the (communist)
Afghan government and destroy its people. Sound familiar?
I was working for The Times in 1980, and just south of Kabul I picked
up
a very disturbing story. A group of religious mujahedin fighters had
attacked a school because the communist regime had forced girls to
be
educated alongside boys. So they had bombed the school, murdered the
head teacher's wife and cut off her husband's head. It was all true.
But
when The Times ran the story, the Foreign Office complained to the
foreign desk that my report gave support to the Russians. Of course.
Because the Afghan fighters were the good guys. Because Osama bin Laden
was a good guy. Charles Douglas-Home, then editor of The Times would
always insist that Afghan guerrillas were called "freedom fighters"
in
the headline. There was nothing you couldn't do with words.
And so it is today. President Bush now threatens the obscurantist,
ignorant, super-conservative Taliban with the same punishment as he
intends to mete out to bin Laden. Bush originally talked about "justice
and punishment" and about "bringing to justice" the perpetrators of
the
atrocities. But he's not sending policemen to the Middle East; he's
sending B-52s. And F-16s and AWACS planes and Apache helicopters. We
are
not going to arrest bin Laden. We are going to destroy him. And that's
fine if he's the guilty man. But B-52s don't discriminate between men
wearing turbans, or between men and women or women and children.
I wrote last week about the culture of censorship which is now to
smother us, and of the personal attacks which any journalist questioning
the roots of this crisis endures. Last week, in a national European
newspaper, I got a new and revealing example of what this means. I
was
accused of being anti-American and then informed that anti-Americanism
was akin to anti-Semitism. You get the point, of course. I'm not really
sure what anti-Americanism is. But criticising the United States is
now
to be the moral equivalent of Jew-hating. It's OK to write headlines
about "Islamic terror" or my favourite French example "God's madmen",
but it's definitely out of bounds to ask why the United States is
loathed by so many Arab Muslims in the Middle East. We can give the
murderers a Muslim identity: we can finger the Middle East for the
crime
- but we may not suggest any reasons for the crime.
But let's go back to that word justice. Re-watching that pornography
of
mass-murder in New York, there must be many people who share my view
that this was a crime against humanity. More than 6,000 dead; that's
a
Srebrenica of a slaughter. Even the Serbs spared most of the women
and
children when they killed their menfolk. The dead of Srebrenica deserve
- and are getting - international justice at the Hague. So surely what
we need is an International Criminal Court to deal with the sorts of
killer who devastated New York on 11 September. Yet "crime against
humanity" is not a phrase we are hearing from the Americans. They prefer
"terrorist atrocity", which is slightly less powerful. Why, I wonder?
Because to speak of a terrorist crime against humanity would be a
tautology. Or because the US is against international justice. Or
because it specifically opposed the creation of an international court
on the grounds that its own citizens may one day be arraigned in front
of it.
The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept
rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second
World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters
that once graced Dodge City: "Wanted, Dead or Alive". Tony Blair now
tells us that we must stand by America as America stood by us in the
Second World War. Yes, it's true that America helped us liberate Western
Europe. But in both world wars, the US chose to intervene after only
a
long and - in the case of the Second World War - very profitable period
of neutrality.
Don't the dead of Manhattan deserve better than this? It's less than
three years since we launched a 200-Cruise missile attack on Iraq for
throwing out the UN arms inspectors. Needless to say, nothing was
achieved. More Iraqis were killed, and the UN inspectors never got
back,
and sanctions continued, and Iraqi children continued to die. No policy,
no perspective. Action, not words.
And that's where we are today. Instead of helping Afghanistan, instead
of pouring our aid into that country 10 years ago, rebuilding its cities
and culture and creating a new political centre that would go beyond
tribalism, we left it to rot. Sarajevo would be rebuilt. Not Kabul.
Democracy, of a kind, could be set up in Bosnia. Not in Afghanistan.
Schools could be reopened in Tuzla and Travnik. Not in Jaladabad. When
the Taliban arrived, stringing up every opponent, chopping off the
arms
of thieves, stoning women for adultery, the United States regarded
this
dreadful outfit as a force for stability after the years of anarchy.
Bush's threats have effectively forced the evacuation of every Western
aid worker. Already, Afghans are dying because of their absence. Drought
and starvation go on killing millions - I mean millions - and between
20
and 25 Afghans are blown up every day by the 10 million mines the
Russians left behind. Of course, the Russians never went back to clear
the mines. I suppose those B-52 bombs will explode a few of them. But
that'll be the only humanitarian work we're likely to see in the near
future.
Look at the most startling image of all this past week. Pakistan has
closed its border with Afghanistan. So has Iran. The Afghans are to
stay
in their prison. Unless they make it through Pakistan and wash up on
the
beaches of France or the waters of Australia or climb through the
Channel Tunnel or hijack a plane to Britain to face the wrath of our
Home Secretary. In which case, they must be sent back, returned, refused
entry. It's a truly terrible irony that the only man we would be
interested in receiving from Afghanistan is the man we are told is
the
evil genius behind the greatest mass-murder in American history: bin
Laden. The others can stay at home and die.
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