Defeat looming for Tony Blair's Afghanistan jihad
By Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, 29 July 2009. Cartoon by Leon Kuhn
Fact is that Tony Blair's vainglorious jihad against the Pashtun insurgency is not succeeding, and British commanders, diplomats and politicians know it. After three years of "inkspots", hearts-and-minds and take-hold-and-build, that battle-weary siren of defeat, talking to the enemy, is back onstage.
Cartoon by Leon Kuhn
While on Monday the prime minister was greeting Operation Panther's Claw with a parody of Lady Thatcher's triumphalism, "Rejoice, just rejoice", the deputy chief of the defence staff, Lieutenant-General Simon Mayall, was bizarrely declaring that the current Afghan war was "not against the Taliban".
Other British ministers suddenly went anthropological. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, professes to detect not just good Taliban and bad Taliban but "three tiers" of Taliban. His colleague, the development secretary, Douglas Alexander, has newfound friends in the "moderate Pashtun", allegedly eager to do something called "renunciate violence". The defence minister, Bill Rammell, wants to "peel away the footsoldiers" and rebuild trust in government institutions.
This awayday at the school of oriental studies cannot conceal the fact that we have been here for years. The one thing you know (and the enemy knows) about a named military operation is that it ends, which is one thing counter-insurgency can never do. All talk of talking to the Taliban forgets that Americans were talking to the Taliban before 9/11. Indeed, they spent a fortune training and arming them against Russia. Britain's first Helmand offensive in 2006 concluded that the Taliban would not be beaten and was followed by talking and a "cessation of hostilities", involving a series of local deals with (good) Taliban and a joint withdrawal agreement. It was later regarded as a disaster.
Advocates of such a strategy are scrupulous to plead cases where it seems to have worked. The first British commander in Helmand, General Sir David Richards, insisted that he was merely repeating the Malayan inkspot strategy, apparently unaware that Pashtun were no more akin to Malays than they were to Geordies.
Afghanistan is not Ireland
Now we are told by Miliband "the lessons of Northern Ireland" should be applied to Helmand. For years, Ulster secretaries refused to talk to Sinn Féin "until the men of violence lay down their guns". Yet eventually there were talks and they duly laid down their guns. Now that Johnny Taliban has had a right drubbing, the Foreign Office implies, if he promises to stop shooting at us he should be offered a loya jirga a dozen cows and honorary membership of the Travellers Club. Then we can go home.
The comparison is false. Sinn Féin never laid down its guns before talking. Had it done so, it would have split and continued to be worsted at the ballot box by the government's preferred Catholic party, the non-violent SDLP. Sinn Féin fought on and, though it did not win a united Ireland, its use of violence was effective. The SDLP was all but wiped out and Sinn Féin emerged as the voice of nationalist Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin leaders were in government and enjoying a de facto veto over its decisions. Whitehall can rewrite history, but Northern Ireland showed violence works.
Anyway, Afghanistan is not Ireland. Britain is not the sovereign power in Kabul, nor is the Taliban a single political entity. Its disparate warlords and commanders owe allegiance to different factions under the Pashtunwali umbrella. The one thing that unites them is anger at the British ending their tolerated domination of southern Afghanistan in 2006 and a desire to rid the country of westerners. That is not negotiable.
Any reader of Ahmed Rashid's study of the Taliban will attest that the movement is little more than a religious banditry, motivated by tribe, war, pride, money and Allah, roughly in that order. After Mullah Omar took power in Kabul in the mid-1990s, the one moderating force was the exigences of that power. Taliban leaders were forced to co-operate with the Northern Alliance, treat with the CIA on drugs, and appease its Pakistani and Saudi sponsors. Younger bloods were also unhappy at hosting Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida Arabs.
Foolish 2001 invasion
All scope to manipulate that leverage after 9/11 was swept away by the foolish 2001 invasion. Lines that might have been put out to "moderates", even after the invasion, were abandoned in favour of what amounted to an Anglo-American war of eternal occupation. The drone bombing of Pashtun villages is said by intelligence reports to have wiped out roughly half the established Taliban leadership, mostly those with whom the west might now be "talking".
Each assassination brings a hothead to command, eager to prove his anti-Nato spurs and less inclined to negotiate. Each recruits dozens of fighters and provokes a furious revenge. The drone killings are directly counter-productive to Miliband's stated policy, yet he supports them. It makes no more sense than Gordon Brown's belief they have something to do with "terror on Britain's streets".
Any dispassionate observer returning from Afghanistan reports the same message. This is not working. People do not want their hearts and minds bribed or their infrastructure rebuilt. The money just gets stolen. They want their poppy crop left in peace and they want to know which sheikh or Taliban warlord will rule their lives a year from now. After years of being bombed, bankrupted and betrayed, they wonder who can offer them security. The answer is neither the British nor the regime in Kabul.
When Britain ruled the adjacent Punjab, its power was based on a large land army and the belief that it would never leave. It sent out its brightest and best. They stayed, and those who collaborated with them prospered. Today those who collaborate are murdered and night letters are pinned to their doors.
Everyone knows that the British will go but the Taliban will stay. That is why the strategy of take, hold and build is mere pastiche imperialism. It relies on the palpable nonsense that the Afghan army, a drugged militia of little competence and less loyalty, will fight and defeat its Pashtun cousins. It will not.
All wars end in talking, even if the conversation is usually brief and one-sided. Such will be any deal with the Taliban, good or bad. As the Canadians and most Europeans have realised, Afghanistan is essentially a war of American vendetta, and the more stupid for it. Yes, it will end in talk, but how many more must die first?
Tackling the 'cancer' of BNP fascism
Salma Yaqoob
Wednesday 15th July 2009The election of two BNP MEPs has removed the cover on a political sewer that should have been sealed for all time. Nick Griffin, a man with a history of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial, now calls for "chemotherapy" against the Islamic "cancer" in Europe. The echoes of the past are deliberate. The choice of words is chilling.
Griffin's election has given the BNP unprecedented access to the media, and he is using it to promote the most vicious racism. His genocidal rantings towards Muslims followed his call for the sinking of ships carrying migrants from Africa to Europe - in other words the premeditated murder of men, women and children on a desperate voyage to escape poverty and oppression.
We should remind ourselves that almost 1 million people voted for the BNP in the European Elections. If there is a cancer in Europe, then it is the cancer of racism. Yet the response from the political establishment to Griffin's remarks has, so far, been less than overwhelming.
Defensiveness and political compromise has marked the response of mainstream parties to the rise of the BNP. It should be clear enough by now. This is not a temporary blip before we return to business as usual. Ignoring the BNP or playing down their successes will not make them go away. It is time for the anti-fascist movement to go on the offensive.
Griffin's Nazi-style outbursts cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant excess by a marginal figure. He knows what he is doing. He wants to make legitimate what was once illegitimate. He aims to shift the centre of gravity of political debate sharply to the right. He knows that his more extreme rhetoric is in tune with his party's membership, and large swathes of his voters. But he also knows that every time mainstream politicians bend to his agenda in an attempt to occupy ground he is staking out, that the racist argument is strengthened.
It is a pattern we have seen all too frequently in recent years. Faced with a rise in racism, politicians seek to ride both horses at once: deploring racism while conceding ever more political ground to the far right.
Isn't this exactly what Gordon Brown was doing when he called for "local homes for local people"? Concerns about housing are undoubtedly genuine. There are too few affordable homes. But that is because successive governments have relied on the market to provide what it patently cannot do. What should be done is to tackle this policy failure, which would provide affordable homes for all those in need. Furthermore, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has revealed that 9 out of 10 social housing residents were born in Britain, giving a lie to the BNP myths bout "local people" losing out to immigrants and asylum seekers. Instead of focusing on these realities, voters are told that their prejudices are justified and that the government will do what the BNP cannot. It is a tactic that is both cynical and ineffective.
Let us be clear. The response to Griffins call to "sink the boats" cannot be one of pledging to do everything possible to keep out immigrants short of launching missiles at defenceless people. His call for "chemotherapy" against Muslims must be met with robust challenge, and not by conceding that fears of Islam in Europe are justified. The alternative is to accept that ever more extreme and dangerous fascist rhetoric will define the nature of political debate in our society.
Those who promote fear and hatred of African immigrants knocking at our door, or of the Muslims already within the gates of Europe, have to be openly and directly confronted. Their arguments have to be dealt with head on.
It is not legitimate to blame migrants or refugees for the recession. They were not the ones who became rich beyond anyone's dreams while gambling away our economy. It is not legitimate to blame immigrants for rising unemployment. They did not close our factories and devastate our manufacturing base. It is not legitimate to blame ‘outsiders' for the housing crisis. They are not the ones who passed legislation that strangled the ability of local councils to build new housing on the scale we need.
And it is not legitimate to scapegoat Muslims, who represent just 3% of the population, for any supposed threat to British identity. The recent Gallup poll on Muslim integration revealed that while only half the UK population very strongly identifies with being British, 77% of Muslims did so. And only 17% of British Muslims wanted to live in an area consisting mostly of people of the same religious and ethnic background as themselves, compared to 33% of the population as a whole.
This is the positive side of our multicultural society. Being ‘different' is not a sign of alienation from society as a whole. Yet while Muslims increasingly identify with Britain and value its mix of people and faiths, more and more people conclude that Muslims are a breed apart. There is a gulf between the reality of our lives and the perception that is created by a constant stream of horror stories.
Today, it is anti-Muslim racism that is at the cutting edge of the fascist strategy. It is effective because it feeds on the suspicion and prejudice that is the theme of so much mainstream discussion of our lives as British Muslims.
Its consequences are real. Already, there are signs that attacks on mosques and individual Muslims may be rising. The police are warning of the danger of far-right terrorism. And, earlier this month we saw an openly racist provocation in Birmingham city centre, under the guise of a protest against "Islamic extremism" - a label that the organiser made clear applied to all Muslims.
We, as British Muslims, have a direct and immediate interest in defeating this fascist threat. The anti-fascist movement must reach out to Muslim communities who are at the sharp end of BNP attacks. But the rise in racism is not only a threat to Muslims. The BNP may be playing down their anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism in order to drive a wedge between Muslims and the rest of society. But to the BNP we are all "racial foreigners" - our very existence as British people denied.
We have to not only unite all those targeted by the BNP, with every possible ally who rejects racism and fascism. We have to also positively assert our multicultural and pluralist society. It is a message of hope that is in tune in an increasingly interconnected world. It is a source of strength and vibrancy. We are one society and many cultures. And we will only remain so if we are prepared to stand up and be counted.
Salma Yaqoob is the Leader of the Respect Party and a councillor for Sparkbrook
I visited Rymans,the stationers, on the Parade on Saturday to get a pen.
There by the counter was a large presentation of Michael Jackson posters selling for £3.99p each.
Rymans never EVER sold anything connected with Michael Jackson while he was alive.
Now he's dead these parasites can't wait to make some money out of him.