The war is continuing in Afghanistan between the NATO / EU / UN alliance and the Afghan, mainly Taliban resistance. This is raising several questions, including:
Firstly: Is this war justified in moral or legal or political terms?.
Secondly: Is it an evenly balanced war ? Are the means employed equal? Do both sides have evenly balanced media coverage?
Thirdly: How long will this war and the destruction of souls and property, crops, livestock last?.
Fourthly: Why has this war spread into Pakistan and causing great destruction to the poorest people who have become displaced and refugees?
Fifthly: Why is there universal silence about what is happening; does the blood and the wasted lives of the Afghans have no value? Where are the social movements and human rights organizations and why are they silent? Why are they not addressing these risks and horrors that the Afghan and Pakistan civilians are facing every day ?
The U.S announced that Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was behind the September 11th World Trade Towers tragedy a few days later and since then the issue has become confined between two parties: Osama bin Laden and the American administration, but then, the U.S. administration identified that the Taliban government as a third party because it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden , and the campaign to invade Afghanistan began which ended the rule of the Taliban which decimated thousands of people and the fate of bin Laden to this day is unknown. Whatever we say about the consequences of 11thSeptember, the main chapter has ended, and the outcome was an accused fugitive in an unknown place – So, what is required from the Afghan people?.
Why are they punished? We did not hear about any trials of American officials on charges of failure in security which led to the collapse of the World Trade Center and the death of innocent people. This was a crime that took place in America that took advantage of a deficient security system or perhaps involved internal conspiracy, but the consequence affected victims of hundreds of thousands , all outside the U.S. these victims never saw the United States and some of them do not know where America is located on the map!.
So the occupation of Afghanistan and seizure of its land and the colonization of its airports by NATO and its Allies has no legitimate or legal basis, but it was the right of force and the law of the strong enslaving the weak.
It is strange that President Obama who is partially from a race that experienced slavery is not paying attention to what is happening in Afghanistan, he has some resemblance to Bush in this part and perhaps even worse because here the victims are dying under aerial and ground bombardment which will be useless to take them in iron shackles to Guantanamo.. So there is almost no legal or political basis in what is happening in Afghanistan and to the Afghans.
The other question, is it an even sided war? At one side, the Afghan tribes only have secondary firearm, determination and perseverance to defend their land , honor and history until they die! And on the other side the U.S. bombers, cluster bombs, the latest destructive weaponry produced by humans including enriched uranium and radioactive bombs and prohibited weapons! Then you question the Media coverage … is it equal in fairness and legality of the war? Do the heads of Afghan tribes and their fighters get access to media and satellite channels to tell their story, their suffering and tragedies of war and crimes of the U.S. military?, How long will it depend on the resistance and the will and resilience of the Afghans? It surely will be a long and difficult war.
French colonialism in Algeria made the resistance last one hundred and thirty years, but at the end Algeria returned to its people after over 1 million deaths. The British who ruled Egypt (74) years at the end returned Egypt to the Egyptians also because of national struggle and resistance, and today, after fifty years of Israel’s occupation of Gaza , they were forced to exit it and only block it because of the resistance but still this story has not ended yet. Also Iraq is another example and there is no need to explain the dramatics.
So the survival and continuation of US, European/NATO forces in Afghanistan is subject to resistance, and as long as there is resistance, there is no survival of colonialism, and now, the British public opinion has begun to change. Also in the US, questions are being asked and self-criticism is evolving because of the increase in losses and cost of the war.
The on-going war in the tribal region of Pakistan is a pitiless strategy, with the only objective to weaken Pakistan and drive a wedge between the struggling resistant population and the army, the guardian of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The Pakistan army is losing popular sympathy, because the Pakistani army is changing the population under pressure of a weak government and the intervention of foreign forces into displaced peoples and refugees, will these refugees stand with the army in a time of need ? I don’t think so.
