Let's give thanks for smaller stones...

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Some great improvements in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban--they're using smaller stones now to execute adulturers; the bodies of hanged criminals will only be left up for 15 minutes instead of four days, as used to be required by the Taliban; and instead of planting wheat for next winter's famine (who needs to eat anyway?), they're back to growing opium poppies! Yes, things are sure looking up. 



http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm

The War in Afghanistan
Excerpted from Lakdawala lecture, New Delhi 
Online version with notes,
prepared Dec. 30
By Noam Chomsky

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Signs were mixed, at year's end. As anticipated, most of the population was greatly relieved to see the end of the Taliban, one of the most retrograde regimes in the world; and relieved that there was no quick return to the atrocities of a decade earlier, as had been feared. The new government in Kabul showed considerably more promise than most had expected. The return of warlordism is a dangerous sign, as was the announcement by the new Justice Minister that the basic structure of sharia law as instituted by the Taliban would remain in force, though "there will be some changes from the time of the Taliban. For example, the Taliban used to hang the victim's body in public for four days. We will only hang the body for a short time, say 15 minutes." Judge Ahamat Ullha Zarif added that some new location would be found for the regular public executions, not the Sports Stadium. "Adulterers, both male and female, would still be stoned to death, Zarif said, `but we will use only small stones'," so that those who confess might be able to run away; others will be "stoned to death," as before.16 The international reaction will doubtless have a significant effect on the balance of conflicting forces.

As the year ended, desperate peasants, mostly women, were returning to the miserable labor of growing opium poppies so that their families can survive, reversing the Taliban ban. The UN had reported in October that poppy production had already "increased threefold in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance," whose warlords "have long been reputed to control much of the processing and smuggling of opium" to Russia and the West, an estimated 75% of the world's heroin. The result of some poor woman's back-breaking labor is that "countless others thousands of miles away from her home in eastern Afghanistan will suffer and die."17 

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U.S. and British intellectual opinion, across the political spectrum, assured us that only radical extremists can doubt that "this is basically a just war."19 Those who disagree can therefore be dismissed, among them, for example, the 1000 Afghan leaders who met in Peshawar in late October in a U.S.-backed effort to lay the groundwork for a post-Taliban regime led by the exiled King. They bitterly condemned the U.S. war, which is "beating the donkey rather than the rider," one speaker said to unanimous agreement.

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The issue of "just war" should not be confused with a wholly different question: Should the perpetrators of the atrocities of Sept. 11 be punished for their crimes -- "crimes against humanity," as they were called by Robert Fisk, Mary Robinson, and others. On this there is virtually unanimous agreement -- though, notoriously, the principles do not extend to the agents of even far worse crimes who are protected by power and wealth. The question is how to proceed.

The approach favored by Afghans who were ignored had considerable support in much of the world. Many in the South would surely have endorsed the recommendations of the UN representative of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association: "providing the Taliban with evidence (as it has requested) that links bin Laden to the September 11 attacks, employing diplomatic pressures to extradite him, and prosecuting terrorists through international tribunals," and generally adhering to international law, following precedents that exist even in much more severe cases of international terrorism. Adherence to international law had scattered support in the West as well, including the preeminent Anglo-American military historian Michael Howard, who delivered a "scathing attack" on the bombardment, calling instead for an international "police operation" and international court rather than "trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch."29

Washington's refusal to call for extradition of the suspected criminals, or to provide the evidence that was requested, was entirely open, and generally approved. Its own refusal to extradite criminals remains effectively secret, however.30 There has been debate over whether U.S. military actions in Afghanistan were authorized under ambiguous Security Council resolutions, but it avoids the central issue: Washington plainly did not want Security Council authorization,31 which it surely could have obtained, clearly and unambiguously. Since it lost its virtual monopoly over UN decisions, the U.S. has been far in the lead in vetoes, Britain second, France a distant third, but none of these powers would have opposed a U.S-sponsored resolution. Nor would Russia or China, eager to gain U.S. authorization for their own atrocities and repression (in Chechnya and western China, particularly). But Washington insisted on not obtaining Security Council authorization, which would entail that there is some higher authority to which it should defer. Systems of power resist that principle if they are strong enough to do so. There is even a name for that stance in the literature of diplomacy and international affairs scholarship: establishing "credibility," a justification commonly offered for the threat or use of force. While understandable, and conventional, that stance also has lessons concerning the likely future, even more so because of the elite support that it receives, openly or indirectly. 


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