Empire In Search Of Graveyard Signals Faux Concern For Afghan Women

Source: "The War In Afghanistan Is Bad Politics And Bad Foreign Policy" Defense One  October 7, 2018

One of the few good things the Trump administration did in office was enter into the Doha pact to end the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. They did so by negotiating with the odious Taliban, insurgents riding on religious extremism in their quest to rid their country of foreign invaders. 

Now the Biden administration is signalling that the May 1 withdrawal date is a non-starter. No surprises there: challenging China is unlikely to include abandoning military outposts right on their border. 

Biden et al. are also signalling their deep concern for the well-being of Afghan women. Because decades of military occupation have made Afghanistan literally the worst place on the planet to be female. Wait...

Source: "Once Upon a Time In Afghanistan" by Mohammad Qayoumi in Foreign Policy 

For those with a historical perspective, memories of Afghan women attending universities and working as professionals under a Soviet-sponsored regime endure. The proxy war between the U.S.-sponsored mujahadeen and the Soviet-Afghan government in the 1990's began to erode quality of life for women and girls who were bombed, forced to flee as refugees, and trafficked for sex. Repression of women's rights under the pretext of Islamic law was the icing on that particular cake.

The CIA has actually been bragging on Twitter lately about supporting the mujahadeen "freedom fighters" against the USSR.

As we know by know, the CIA has spent decades arming militias around the planet in order to topple governments that are resistant to capitalist exploitation by the U.S. and its allies. They used to do this covertly, but in the declining days of empire, chest thumping displays of prowess are in order I guess.

Predictably, the corporate press have chimed in to manufacture consent for continuing the U.S.'s longest war.

Because, really, things have been going so well in Afghanistan under military occupation. Maybe the U.S. should just stay because deciding to withdraw could be "complicated" right?

From an Associated Press article dated April 8:

Afghanistan, a country in turmoil, has been trying to inoculate millions of children against polio but the recent killing of three female vaccinators has put the country's campaign in doubt. However, brave women of the country remain determined to continue efforts in the face of danger and violence.

Unknown gunmen shot vaccination workers at two separate locations in the eastern city of Jalalabad on March 30 killing two volunteers and one supervisor in the polio immunization program, all of them women, as they carried out door-to-door vaccinations.

That's right. Afghanistan is struggling after 20 years of military occupation, preceded by 10 years of civil war, preceded by 10 years of proxy war, to vaccinate for a disease eradicated in my childhood (and I am old). That's how poor they are, and that's how low quality of life has sunk on our watch. Life expectancy for Afghans born in the 21st century is less than 65, retirement age for those of us in the heart of the evil empire. 

Biden won't get out of Afghanistan for the same reason Trump, Obama, and Bush didn't: there's plenty of good money to be made supplying the army with the tools of the trade, to quote Country Joe and the Fish. His gargantuan $715 billion "defense" budget request exceeds that of Trump by an inflation index and will no doubt pass with little debate and bipartisan fealty from the corporate flunkies in Congress.

A nation enduring a pandemic without universal health care, in which 25% of brown and Black children experience hunger each week, with millions literally unhoused, is in a very insecure position. Imperial expansion will not remedy what ails us, but most dying empires continue trying to expand right up to the moment when they hit the wall. Often, in Afghanistan.

"Government Small Enough To Fit In Your Vagina"

You want to shame me for having a female body? 
Shame on you for thinking that way about my body.
                                     -- women everywhere, 2013

Mindy I-B is a young woman I was lucky enough to meet recently. I blogged about her first 13 hour vigil to honor Texas Senator Wendy Davis' 13 hour filibuster blocking passage of draconian restrictions on women's access to safe, legal abortion on demand. 

On August 15, Mindy again took to the busiest intersection in Waterville, Maine to stand for 13 hours, communicating with the public about the need for women to have control over their own bodies and their own reproductive destinies. I was able to join her for a couple of hours in the middle of a hot summer day; I was pleased to see her wearing the orange t-shirt I had given her which I purchased from women in Texas, the sale of which benefits Planned Parenthood.

Here Mindy is joined by Linda Vayo, her former high school English teacher, who said she might have expected one of Mindy's older sisters to protest, but that Mindy had been so quiet during the years she was in school.  Mindy agreed, but she's concerned about ongoing attacks on women's reproductive rights.

She was also wearing tampons as earrings, to honor the Texas women who had their sanitary supplies confiscated when they wanted to enter their state legislature during the debate over the law. 

And, her sign had the "V" word!

When I arrived just after noon, Mindy said she had started at 7am and that within the first hour she was there two male police officers approached and complained about the verbiage on her sign. 

Did she think it was appropriate? one officer asked. Yes, completely appropriate, Mindy told me she replied.

Did she think that the word vagina might be offensive since it could be seen by children and women? the officer asked.  Mindy said she just let the absurdity of thinking that vaginas offend women sink in for a moment, and she thought that the officer seemed to realize how silly that sounded almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

Was there any chance they could convince her to put away her sign? he asked. Mindy replied in the negative, and he said he would consult his superiors before doing anything else.

By the time I got there just after noon, no police had returned. Apparently someone higher up in the chain of command had heard of the 1st amendment. Yay!

Mindy and I had time to talk about lots of things, including the self-education she has been engaging in around women's issues. Movies like the UnSlut Project and Miss Representation are some examples we discussed. Also The Invisible War, about sexual assault and its cover up in the military. And the Eve Ensler play, Vagina Monologues.

The shaming of women for their bodies figured largely in our conversations. Young women in particular are just plain refusing to be shamed, and I know that's another thing that her sign and her earrings were about.

I wasn't crazy about the GOP reference in Mindy's sign, because I don't like the false dichotomy we're always being sold where the other party in our corporate government is supposed to be seen as the champion of the people. Of course, they are better where reproductive health is concerned, but have bowed many times to pressure from conservatives to restrict access to both contraception and abortion where federal funds are concerned. (Apparently Democrats feel it is much better to use the funds to kill people who are already born in, say, Yemen.)

We talked about Mindy's sign and I shared that the "small enough" part of the slogan refers to conservative ideology about shrinking government down to a size small enough to drown it in a bathtub. The irony of government that aspires to be small while trying to legislate what women can do with their own wombs and vaginas was not lost on Mindy.

Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights (GRR!) members in yellow shirts, me and my sister Hope Savage in pink, plus Mindy and her friend Jessica Balucas in orange, all supporting Planned Parenthood in Portland, Maine July 30, 2013.

Mindy and I were also in action together at Portland City Council hearings recently on creating a safety buffer zone around the Planned Parenthood clinic there. Patients entering the clinic must contend with protesters who say vicious things, for example, (as the chief of police testified): "We will wrap your legs in barbed wire, and you will burn in hellfire."

I predict that the world will be hearing a lot more from Mindy.

Afghan mothers say they are losing their minds despite "humanitarian" war on their behalf

In light of news that the president of Afghanistan has appointed a notorious torturer to head up that country’s national intelligence service, I recommend this powerful, insightful interview with Kathy Kelly. As a peace activist who has spent several months living in Kabul over the past few years, Kelly focused on Afghanistan in particular, but also spoke generally about why U.S. citizens stand passively by as their government bombs the world. And what do do about it.

CODEPINK Portland coordinator Pat Taub is a skilled interviewer who was able to frame questions eliciting an amazing amount of connected information in 28 minutes. One of the best Q & A exchanges concerned Hillary Clinton's and Amnesty International’s narratives that the U.S. military is in Afghanistan to protect women’s rights there.

Kelly responded that women from every ethnic group have personally told her they feel they are losing their minds from the stress of not being able to feed their children, and when told the U.S. State Department claims the military is there to protect women's rights, they are “mirthful.”

Later she offered a succinct analysis of the root problem:

If you can convince the U.S. public that there’s a humanitarian purpose…what you’ll win is a level of indifference, because people feel uncertain and they’ll be more cautious about opposing the war. Even though rationally they know there’s something fundamentally flawed about wars.

Fomer FBI agent turned peace activist Coleen Rowley published a related article this week, "Are Human Rights Becoming a Tool of US "Smart Power"? She wrote:

Sadly, Amnesty is far from being the only human rights or peace and justice organization being misled in varying degrees by the U.S. State Department’s newly minted “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” doctrine — otherwise known as “humanitarian intervention” — and its newly created “Atrocity Prevention Board,” chaired by Samantha Power, one of the main architects of U.S.-NATO’s bombing of Libya.
Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the Peace Alliance, Citizens for Global Solutions, Think Progress, and AVAAZ are just some of the groups that seem to have swallowed that particular Kool-Aid.

She also noted the changes apparent in 21^st century global geo-politics:

U.S. violations of ... international law of war, as well as violations of its own Constitution have, paradoxically, served to further erode whatever legitimate, pre-existing “Soft Power” it once possessed. America’s “moral authority,” its legitimate ability to educate, its leadership by example in pushing other countries to adhere to international law was quickly sacrificed by the deceitful means it used to launch the bombing of Iraq and Libya, as well as its institutionalizing an endless, ever-expansive “global war on terrorism.”...

If war is a lie generally, if institutional wars have historically been instigated, ratcheted up, waged, and later falsely ennobled through pretext and propaganda, if “Smart Power,” “Responsibility to Protect” and “humanitarian intervention” serve as little but better rhetoric and therefore an effective guise to sell military force to American citizens as a “last resort,” after having checked off diplomatic efforts (set up to fail) and harsh economic sanctions that starve civilians and kill children, doesn’t it make sense for human rights and peace and justice groups to renounce instead of embrace attempts of powerful governments to use them as “tools” of such policies?

Is there any hope for us?

What would truly be smart and could reduce atrocities in the world would be for “nongovernmental” groups and organizations professing human rights and peace as their cause to regain their independence by disentangling themselves from U.S.-NATO governments’ national interest agendas and reliance on military force. Once that’s accomplished, it might be easier for civil society to reverse direction away from the use of war and might-makes-right to what is actually smarter: the power of ethical and legal norms.

Because if Afghan mothers and their children don't have due process -- that is, are killed by drones in the absence of any recognizable legal proceeding -- ain't nobody got due process.

Barack Obama, Suzanne Nossel, and the Janissaries

Source: Wikipedia, U.S. Military bases in 2007

Empires come and empires go, and history shows that, while they try to stay, they will use a variety of methods to maintain their grip on power. Soft power, hard power or so-called “smart" power -- whatever it takes to keep tribute flowing in from the subjugated people and colonies, and to keep the populace at the heart of the empire placid.

The Ottoman empire ruled for five hundred years in the part of the world that the U.S empire has been focused on mastering for the last several decades. Southwest Asia with its fossil fuel reserves, Northern Africa with its access to that rich continent plus proximity to all that oil, and Europe on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, a central waterway. The Ottomans losing their grip at the end of the 1800's was the catalyst for a scramble by European nations and the U.S. for the prize of the fading empire's colonies -- leading to WWI, which led to WWII, which led to the Cold War, which led to the long, long war on terror. The Ottoman decline is hardly ancient history, and I think of it from time to time as I watch the U.S. play clumsily at empire building.

To catalog the brutality and intrigue the sultans used to stay in power for so long would require a volume, if not several. For now, let's focus attention on their immensely successful scheme of co-optation. As a method of heading off the growth of viable resistance movements in the hinterlands, the Ottomans had a brilliant idea: have their provincial administrators identify promising young males in the colonies at an early age. These gifted youth would be taken from their families and communities and whisked away to the capital at Constantinople to be trained as janissaries. These were the elite palace gurads and government administrators who served at the seat of empire. They enjoyed prestige, privilege, an elegant life, and no doubt the sense of being on the inside of the most powerful empire on earth. They were playing on the A-team, as it were.

Barack Obama as the handpicked celebrity spokesman for the U.S/NATO empire would have made a fine janissary. With one African parent, he offers visible diversity. Brought up by a single mom on the white side of his family, he talks a good working class perspective. Scholarship-educated at elite private schools, he can talk that talk, too; as a tall, slim athlete, on television he looks like a star. Ditto the beautiful, brainy wife and darling children.

Elevating Obama to the highest office in the land represented a brilliant strategy on the part of the 1% doing business as the military-industrial-media complex. His position as figurehead of the Democratic Party provided unprecedented leverage to neutralize liberals and progressives while continuing to wage wars of domination across the globe. When Obama got elected, the millions who filled the streets during the Bush W. administration opposing the wars just went home. 

Relying on their sanitized information streams – NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post – they know little of drones or of Bradly Manning, nor could they care less about what he represents. The passage of the NDAA 2012, and its signing by Obama, granting the executive branch the power to indefinitely detain anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise, indefinitely without due process or right of habeus corpus, is not even a blip on most liberal screens these day.

Many of the pacified liberal class rely on human right organizations, to which they contribute regularly to be the watchdogs. Organizations like Amnesty International rely on their robust branding as watchdogs to solicit that trust and those donations.

If you were the Ottomans and it was 2012, which threats might you be focused on neutralizing? Possibly you would be looking over your shoulder at any sector of society likely to mount a credible resistance to your legitimacy as the self-proclaimed champion of democracy, with a special emphasis on women's rights, around the globe.

Enter Suzanne Nossel. The new executive director of Amnesty- USA worked at the U.S. State department (think Hillary Clinton, Suzanne Rice, and Madeleine Albrigh)t. Before coming to AI-USA Nossel published in journals such as Foreign Affairs and Dissent, articles defending, among other things, “RECLAIMING LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM,” “smart power,” sanctions, and the cover of diplomatic engagement prior to attacking Iran. She also gave an interview, which you can see here on Mondoweiss, debunking the Goldstone report which found human rights violations during Israel's Operation Cast Lead intensive bombing of Gaza.

Operation Cast Lead victims. Source: http://www.socialistunity.com/operation-cast-lead-was-a-war-crime/

Nossel's advertising campaign “NATO: keep the progress going!” ran in Chicago during the NATO summit last May, supporting a shadow summit on maintaining the alleged progress there for women, with panelists such as Albright and current State Department staff, and an open letter on the subject to presidents Obama and Karzai, signed by Albright and various other celebrity liberals.

This dovetailed nicely with NATO's official proclamation signed by heads of state in Chicago, claiming “In the ten years of our partnership the lives of Afghan men, women and children, have improved significantly in terms of security, education, health care, economic opportunity and the assurance of rights and freedoms. There is more to be done, but we are resolved to work together to preserve the substantial progress we have made during the past decade.” 

Nothing subtle about NATO's propaganda approach: tell a big lie, loudly and often. Even better, get others to tell it for you.

Nossel's role in getting Amnesty-USA to play a more subtle game providing a pretext for military force on behalf of women's rights requires a bit more investigation to be discovered. The 21st century version of janissary recruitment may very well consist of luring young, talented players like Nossel into the fold under cover of do-good, feel-good, non-profit organizations. This provides good cover and keeps lots of well-meaning people busy writing checks and feeling useful while the real powers meet discreetly in Tokyo in July to hash out who is splitting the bills for continued “development" in Afghanistan.

Development as in 300,000 Afghan troops and national police, consuming 90% of the funds flowing towards continuing to secure the graveyard of empires.

There will be many Nossels and Obamas in the years to come. Until the end of an empire there is never any shortage of fat checks for serving empire, never any shortage of ambitious young people, whether willingly or reluctantly, to play the only well-funded game in town.

A strong effort by several national organizations, including CODEPINK (of which I am a member) to pressure Amnesty-USA to re-examine their policies and Nossel's leadership, may or may not succeed. She has already made a lot of enemies recently by removing 20% of Amnesty-USA's staff, including all the regional directors, and the staff who headed up work on Guantanamo. (Word is that new hires will be working more on "women's issues.") 

Even if it does work, Nossel will find another job, and Amnesty will find another executive director, and that person may also enjoy close ties to the US government or other branches of the empire.

Why write and talk about the whitewash of U.S. global ambitions by Amnesty-USA? So a few more liberals may wake up, smell the oil burning, and turn off the propaganda feed. They would do well at that point to consider joining those who Occupy public spaces to witness for the power of non-cooperation, civil disobedience, and solidarity over prestige, creature comforts and a shiny resumé

"Protecting" Afghan Women: Longest U.S. War About To Get Longer

June 6, 2012: Afghan villagers with the bodies of children reportedly killed in a NATO air strike. (Photo: Sabawoon Amarkhil/AFP) BBC news

For U.S. citizens, Afghanistan flip flops between being the forgotten war -- during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, for instance -- to being the "smart" war with lots of rah rah around surges, signature strikes with drones, and faux "progress" for security. And for women. Lots and lots of progress for women and girls, if you believe NATO and the U.S. State Department's official pronouncements on the matter.

I spent many hours last week with people who feel, as I do, that U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a festering sore at the heart of that post-9/11 disease, the war on terror. We were looking into what evidence there is for progress, or the lack thereof, for women's rights, health and prosperity. 

(It is hard to use the word prosperity right now because the vast majority of Afghans are extremely poor. The children collect scraps of plastic to burn for cooking. The average life expectancy is 48 years for all, 51 years for women. We are not talking here of the wealthy elites with millions in offshore bank accounts, or even holding citizenship in other countries, who are in Parliament and other branches of the national government. Whose daughters fly to Dubai to get their wedding make-up professionally done.)

On a June 27 conference call, we heard from some speakers who had been to Afghanistan multiple times in the past decade. Fahima Vorgetts of the Afghan Women's Fund shared her observations: 

• Violence against women has escalated in the last two years. 
• Women are attacked from 3 sides: by NATO, by insurgents, and by their own government which has many warlords in positions of authority, some with private militias.
• There are now laws protecting women’s rights, but they are not implemented or respected.
• There will likely be no meaningful withdrawal in 2014, because right now the U.S. military is buying large parcels of land and expanding construction of huge bases in various parts of the country e.g. a dining hall that will seat thousands. There are now 400 bases (my note: HOLY CRAP! JUST IN AFGHANISTAN?) but many of those will be turned over to the Afghan military.

Lots of contractors with big fat contracts paid by the American taxpayer will try to continue extracting wealth and keeping transport corridors open, no doubt. Worked splendidly in Iraq didn't it? Now the U.S. has Iran surrounded, and gives the appearance of beginning to circle in for the kill. Prize? Control of the Persian Gulf.

Source: http://www.oneangryman.com/ken/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/military-spending.jpg

Fahima's observations seemed to accord with the findings in “Progress for Afghan Women” a WAND webinar by David Cortright on June 27 in the area of rights for women:

• De jure important legal & political rights are now guaranteed to women in Afghanistan, including 25% representation in Parliament.
• Except: Taliban has regained control in some areas, and women's rights have suffered.
• Also, the national govt is full of misogynist warlords.

This reminds me of reading descriptions of the Afghan police taking bribes, practicing extortion, and routinely brutalizing prisoners.  Lt. Col. Daniel Davis made a year long-study traveling in Afghanistan, interviewing and observing at multiple locations, hoping to conclude that the army and police were doing a credible job of security. Although it was his job to do so, he was unable to find evidence for this. Quite the contrary.

This makes me think, Is it any wonder women in Afghanistan are in jail for adultery after being raped? 

Rules of law is on paper only, was the consensus of all three sources.

Mariam Raqib, of Afghanistan Samsortya spoke on the conference call primarily of environmental degradation:

• Sever negative impacts of landmines, IEDs, unexploded bombs from NATO, and the effects of aerial bombing that penetrated deep into the ground.
• Miscarriages and birth defects are reported on the rise by women in eastern Afghanistan, possibly due to the type of weapons being used there.
  Crop dusting the poppies also poisons people. 
  
• Poor record keeping and health research amid the ongoing disruption of civil society makes health issues hard to quantify or study systematically.
• Children gather scraps of plastic from enormous trash heaps that are everywhere, and women burn plastic to cook food for their families -- a highly toxic health hazard.
• Samsortya establishes tree nurseries to support reforestation due to dramatic loss of forests and orchards over 30+ years of war, and the resulting dust and lack of cooking fuel.

Yup, big progress for the environment after ten years "stewardship" by NATO, the biggest polluter on the planet.

There was some evidence for progress presented in Cortright's webinar. He said that education has been a huge priority of the Afghanistan government and of international donors.

• 900,000 students enrolled in primary and secondary schools in 2002, all male
• 8.4 million enrolled in 2012, 39 percent female

• Possible because of $$ from World Bank, UN, donor states, and USAID.

I question the statistics for 2002, because to say that zero girls were being educated in school in 2002 is implausible. Schools during the Taliban era were held in households secretly so they could appear to be doing something else if militants arrived. People never stop trying to educate their children. Again, nearly impossible to quantify, because of the continuous disruptions of war.

There were no sources on the slides, but David mentioned a recent major national health survey conducted with rigorous scientific methodology, which seemed to him to be the most reliable current source. He noted that most statistics on public health in Afghanistan are irregular, coming from various sources.

• There are now 22,000 trained healthcare workers, including 3,275+ trained midwives. Skilled birth attendance now is at 34 percent, up from 14 percent

• Child mortality has been cut by half, and there are 1 in 50 maternity deaths, a decrease.

  

In economics, a so-called National Solidarity Program offers microfunding to local Community Development Councils, has 35% female participation. 

(Smell the whiff of World Bank there? If you can't get on the gravy train of taking protection money for not attacking NATO supply convoys, maybe you can get credit to start a bakery.)

David's outlook on security were as dismal as the other experts: Leaders say it is improving, but the facts are to the contrary. He estimated insurgents number around 20,000. He noted that Gen. Petraeus stated in 2010: We're facing an industrial strength insurgency – there is no win here on a military basis.  

Cortright's own conclusions: The longer we pursue this war the more it seems to strengthen the insurgency. As long as foreign forces are in Afghanistan, this provides a boost to the insurgents. Women told us: it's the presence of foreign forces that is one of the driving forces in the insurgency.

And if that weren't enough to keep the longest war in U.S. history going, I bet we could pledge to hang in there in an "advisory" capacity until Afghan women finally get their rights. Which at this rate could take another 1,000 years.

Besides, if women got their rights, and sat down at the tables where peace treaties and post-hostilities are hammered out, the chances of war continuing would decline drastically. That's why the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325, based on studies of conflicts around the world, in which it called for full participation by women in peace talks and negotiations. 

Like the rights of Afghan women, UNSC Res. 1325 remains, at this point in time, empty words on paper.

In 10 years security conditions have worsened for Afghan women

Tree nursery worker, Surkhrud --  Source: AfghanistanSamsortya.org

by Dr. Mariam Raqib 
Dr. Raqib's work conducting forest and orchard restoration projects as director of Afghanistan Samsortya took her to Kabul, Jalalabad and Surkhrud during Sep.-Nov., 2011. During the trip she also interviewed clients of the Afghanistan Women's Council, which provides basic goods and training to people around the country, including in Ningrahar province where she interviewed villagers.

Women in Afghanistan are concerned with issues that are universal in nature. They want their basic needs and the basic needs of their loved ones satisfied. Food, shelter, clothing, security, and the freedom to be mobile are of primary importance. They want to feel safe, they want to feed their children, provide them with medication, and send them to school. But Afghan women are not in control of their destinies; others – the Taliban, NATO, the U.S., and other international aid agencies -- are self appointed guardians, and advocates of women.

Health indicators are dismal. Life expectancy for men is 49 and for women 51 years. According to UNICEF, 68% of children under five suffer from either stunting or wasting due to malnutrition. One in five children die before their fifth birthday. Access to clean water is very limited.

Literacy rates are among the lowest in the world, 28% overall and 13% for women. This is closely related to lack of security and safety in the country. Yes, there are schools. But where is the security to leave the house to go to those schools? Many schools also existed during the time Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban also, but in secret. What keeps people at home not going to school? Lawlessness, gender related violence, threats from fundamentalist elements, including the Taliban and Northern Alliance gangs and militias, suicide bombings, land mines, and bombings by foreign militaries prevail and continue to threaten the population.

PTSD is not a disease that exclusively plagues soldiers. Women complain of extreme levels of stress regarding uncertainty in their lives and in the lives of their family members. They fear for their children, husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. They are not safe from atrocities from the Taliban, nor from the occupiers.

House to house searches are brutal, dehumanizing, and they instill fear in the population, including young children. Soldiers break into homes in the middle of the night, yelling and screaming obscenities at the residents, separating fathers from their children. The children are traumatized as they watch the soldiers rummage through their belongings, breaking things, disregarding the impact on the people.

Other hardships regarding women include cooking food using plastics, like bits of old slippers and other items that children collect from trash piles. While cooking they inhale the poisonous smoke, and which also contaminates the food. Lack of wood and fuel can be addressed, and in fact, an inspiration for establishing Samsortya's tree nurseries was when I witnessed women cooking in such conditions.

Women report having miscarriages at high rates, and this is likely connected with both pollution and the use of various weapons such as depleted uranium. I was told of fetuses with such strange defects that they are unrecognizable as human. In addition, people say Afghans are dying of cancer at a much higher rate than before. Sadly, there is very little documentation – scientific, or otherwise -- regarding these tragedies, due to the disruptions of war.

One of the worst effects of the war for women and everyone is pollution. Dust fills the air all the time because of the lack of trees and bushes. But even worse is the noise pollution. For example, drones make a very penetrating noise that goes on and on.

Helicopters make an enormous roar traveling in pairs. Helicopters, because the elites do not travel by roads, they go by air. They are especially large and very dark, like vultures. Also there is the noise of tanks and trucks rumbling by, which rattles the buildings you are in. Lines of sand colored trucks as big as a room go by, with modern day cannons on top. The soldiers have on helmets and body armor, but one can still sense their fear. Something about the posture. Everywhere is tense.

Now women do not feel safe leaving the house, and if they do leave the house, they don't feel safe without wearing the burqa. Even in Kabul this is now the case. My friend and I went to meet a woman from the U.S. State Department and she said to my friend, “Why do you wear the burqa? Why not be modern?” She had no idea how bad the security situation is for women in Afghanistan.

Bottom line on whether women have made progress under NATO? The United States is in Afghanistan to promote its own policies, and establish military bases from which they can control Asia. Afghan women, and children are not of any concern. They are used as political tools to pacify and, even more importantly, to deceive the American public.

The United States has done a fantastic job of building alliances with warlords, purchasing them with money and using them as proxies. In ten years security conditions have not improved and have, in some cases, even worsened for women.

---

Dr. Mariam Raqib conducted research trips to Afghanistan over six years of graduate studies in Political Science at Northeastern University, 2005-2011. She is working on a book about the success of the Taliban movement in using religious symbolism to channel the frustrations of a grieving population.

"Hidden under the blue scarf, her eyes are black with hot shouting"

Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

Revisiting the Afghan Women's Writing Project as part of my research into the real state of affairs in that NATO infested country, I found this gem posted December 6, 2011 by an anonymous member of the Kabul Writing Collective:

Violence Against Women Feels Like…

Violence burns like a piece of wood in the wood stove
Hidden under the blue scarf, her eyes are black with hot shouting

Sounds like there has been a lot of "progress" for women doesn't it?

Here's another author, writing in January, 2010 I Am For Sale, Who Will Buy Me? about her struggle to escape a forced marriage: "Running away is not an option because girls who run away here are raped by men and spend years in jail, and I am not such a girl."

Overblown claim? Not according to MADRE's December, 2011 blog post "US No Help to Afghan Rape Survivors."

And a recent Al Jazeera article on photographers in Afghanistan included the shadowy portrait of just such an unfortunate woman -- raped, and then jailed for adultery. (All under NATO's "protection" of course.)

Farzana Wahidy published this photo which Al Jazeera ran with the caption "An Afghan woman in Parwan prison, convicted of adultery. Wishing to remain anonymous, she says she was raped by a man in her neighborhood, and gave birth to her child in prison."

In a related article, "Q&A: Al Jazeera meets photojournalist Reza", author D. Parvaz wrote:  

After witnessing inequality, veteran photojournalist Reza started Aina, a media training NGO to empower Afghan women...

Parvaz: What is the future for women in Afghanistan? 

Reza: It will be very tough. They were given false signals by the coalition forces that they would get freedom - same for Afghan men, but women suffered more.   

Cowardly Warriors Hiding Behind Women in Afghanistan

Source:  RAWA photo 2002 "Many of the over 70,000 war wodows in Kabul make a living by begging in the streets."

Afghanistan and Pakistan share an unlucky geographic fate, placed as they are up against the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas, straddling the Indus River (once part of Afghanistan, before Great Britain made it part of their colonized India). Currently they are the gateway to the riches of Asia's gas fields and oil fields; overland transport to the port of Karachi the prize.

Source: Lonely Planet

Other occupiers have included Alexander of Macedonia, the Roman Empire, the Parthian Persians, Genghis Khan, the U.S.S.R. and, most recently, the U.S.A. doing business as NATO. All have struggled to subdue the indigenous people who, like the Vietnamese, have been invaded so many times that they imbibe legends of resistance with their mother's milk.

So much for the prologue. The story of NATO hiding behind women's skirts begins during the Cold War, 30+ years ago, when the communist regime of of Soviet Russia held sway. Quaintly, leaders in the U.S.S.R. seemed to believe that progress in the form of education, industrialization, infrastructure building and research & development would solidify their hold on Afghanistan.

source: "Biology class, Kabul University." From a book published by Afghanistan's planning ministry in the 1960's.

Ok, the image above is from pro-Soviet government propaganda. But it was digitized and published online by a professor who grew up in Kabul and remembered it thus. In 1980, when I visited Kabul, I waited to cross the street next to a woman in a burka holding a child by the hand. A taxi pulled up and another woman got out, dressed as if for lunch in Manhattan: Chanel suit, pumps, and a mane of glossy, dark hair. The Soviets had just invaded, there was a military curfew at night, and tanks rolled through the streets outside our hotel.

Invisible U.S. tax dollars were already flowing to the mujahadeen, Islamists also allied to Arab investors eager to compete with Iran's influence in the region. The U.S. was determined to give the Soviets "their Vietnam" i.e. a debilitating, unwinnable war against insurgents defending their hard-to-conquer homeland. The Soviet's puppet regime, the PDPA, used heavy handed tactics typical of one patriarchal system trying to oust another:

From the Afghan Web's women's history timeline:

Alongside the rapid modernization and reform agendas, the communist ideology was also forced down on people, many times using brutal violence. There was very little tolerance for tribal and religious customs. In rural areas, PDPA was seen as disregarding sensitive tribal values and traditions, and thus caused resentment and backlash.

Ten years of proxy war ended in Soviet defeat, followed by a decade of civil war between warlords of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, or "students", fundamentalists trained in the refugee camps of Pakistan. Then came 9/11 in which not a single Afghan participated. But did that stop the U.S. from bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age" ostensibly to squelch the very mujahadeen they and the Saudis had been funding for twenty years?

Urbanite and president of California State University, East Bay Mohammad Qayoumi wrote in Foreign Policy:

Remembering Afghanistan's hopeful past only makes its present misery seem more tragic. ... it is important to know that disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable. I want to show Afghanistan's youth of today how their parents and grandparents really lived.  

From a self-help group, operating in both Kabul and the countryside, the Revolutionary Assoc. of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA):

There has been no improvement in lives of this the most miserable and ill-fated portion of Afghan society since the establishment of transitional government...

The people of the world should know that though the disgusting, ludicrous and oppressive rule of Taliban was over in our ill-fated Afghanistan, but this never means the end of the horrible miseries of our tortured women. 

Because contrary to the aspirations of our people and expectations of the world community, the Northern Alliance, these brethren-in-creed of the Taliban and Al-Qaida are again in power and generously supported by the US government. 

Now comes Amnesty International to claim otherwise. During the recent NATO summit in Chicago they used your contributions and mine to fund bus kiosk advertising with this misleading headline:

Source: Amnesty International

Activists present in Chicago were shocked to see what many at first took as satire. It was the same old "protect the women" line trotted out by Hillary Clinton and others when the incoming Obama administration surged more troops and drones into Afghanistan. But WTF was human rights organization Amnesty International thinking? Are the burkas supposed to represent the progress or ?

Amnesty International USA has a new executive director, Suzanne Nossel, who formerly worked for the State Dept. and as Vice President of Strategy and Operations at the Wall St. Journal. Hmmm....

Today, Afghans have an average life expectancy of 48 years. According the UNICEF, 68% of children under five suffer from either stunting or wasting due to malnutrition. For a detailed examination of claims that key indicators of progress such as maternal mortality have improved, see this article by researcher Tim Anderson published on Stop the War Coalition Sydney's website.

Hiding behind the skirts (and burkas) of women to control key territory is like hiding behind drones to kill without risking your own life. As the patriarchy spirals violently downward, making war has never looked more cowardly.

A good reason to go to war?

April vacation, 2009, with Martha and Liz -- same problem, higher cost every day.

I am in Washington DC for some citizen lobbying during my week of school vacation. Ok, I'm also here because pea-size hail was falling on my husband in Maine as we spoke on the phone yesterday. I admit, the warmth and cherry blossoms do beckon in April.

To get up to speed on events around town I called Medea, and she pointed me toward a public policy discussion of the current situation in the graveyard of empires, Afghanistan War: Containing or Leveraging U.S. Power? The Afghanistan Study Group has a good report just out and executive director Matthew Hoh was one of the panelists; Ray McGovern was in the audience, and there were also a number of right wing types who hate the war in Afghanistan. That is, they hate it now that it's Obama's war; before that, they loved it.

CODEPINK wants to pressure the president to bring troops home in large numbers in July, like he promised. So I went to see who else wants to do the same.

Ann Coulter might say that's what she wants to do, but I doubt that she's clear on that point.

During the panel discussion previous to hers, wonky types served up the usual hash of conflicting priorities and unintended consequences. Hoh, a former Marine officer who resigned from the State Department in protest of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, was a beacon of clarity, describing the current situation as a "stalemate" and pointing out that the U.S. is neglecting political efforts in favor of just applying force -- which has not, and will not, get the job done.

Georgetown assistant professor C. Christine Fair participating via video link made some good points,  describing what she termed "the certitude surplus," ridiculous in the face of a lack of real intelligence about Al Qaeda or for that matter the Taleban in Afghanistan. She also wondered how apologists for the war could talk about supporting women's rights "when there are basic human rights lacking. And I say this as a full ovulator." LOL

Malalai Joya (with C.J. Minster) April 7, 2011 in Los Angeles: “War will never help Afghan women. If we have the opportunity, I am sure Afghan women will liberate ourselves with the support of progressive Afghan men.”

By the time Ann came on I'd been listening for a couple of hours, so although she was both as vapid and as snarky as the meanest cheerleader at your high school, her performance was good comic relief.

McGovern, a former CIA analyst, had earlier asked the panel if the fact that there are significant natural gas deposits north of Afghanistan might be driving policy. You think? If Ann believed him, she'd probably be all gung-ho for Afghanistan conquest (again) because she did say of the "good" war, Iraq: "Of course we shuld go to war 'just' for oil -- it's like going to war 'just' for oxygen."
Coulter's bewildered main message on Afghanistan (or maybe it was Libya): Could there be any explanation for why the Democratic party supports wars (she used to support) that serve no American interests? Other than that liberals are totally disloyal and hate our country?

I was pretty sure I knew a reasonable explanation so I put my hand up several times and eventually got called on. Did I mention that when I entered wearing a pink Bring Our War $$ Home t-shirt the event hosts became visibly nervous, and a journalist asked me point blank if I planned to create a disturbance?

Me: "In attempting to understand U.S. foreign policy under a succession of administrations, I'm curious why you overlook the role of the immense profits for corporations that build weapons systems, contract security services, and so forth? It seems to be a very large factor, yet I'm not hearing that."

Coulter's snappy comeback: "That would be one of the advantages of the war." Then apparently sensing that she had just dealt Obama a backhanded compliment, she added: "Obama's spending all this money on, on, on stimulus bills -- oh we're providing jobs for public school teachers, if that were true I'd be more in favor of it --  except, alas, it doesn't serve the United States national security interests."

How did she know I was a teacher? Perhaps because mean cheerleader types have a 6th sense for potential areas of vulnerability. Then again, maybe it was my apron.

Joan, Josie, Larry, and my apron March 19. 2011 Wash DC

5/1 NOTE: Amended my blog to more accurately quote myself and Ann Coulter after I was able to view an online video of our exchange here, starting at 49:41.