Afghan youth: "We want you out"

The following open letter, from Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (left) and Afghans for Peace, was sent to us by Kathy Kelley of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Below the letter is a video from Afghans for Peace.

To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the ‘Taliban/Al-Qaeda’ and regional countries:

We are intolerably angry.

All our senses are hurting.

Our women, our men and yes shame on you, our children are grieving.

Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.

President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?

America’s 250-million-dollar annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anaemic mother.

We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.

Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly un-equal, they do not listen, do not think and worst, they do not care.

We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.

We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.

We are not beasts.

We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.

Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, labourers, teachers, doctors….., people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide. ( Open Letter to our World Leaders)

This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you. Come arrest us all.

Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.

We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.

We refuse you.

Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.

Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for non-violence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.

We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another’s pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us!

We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of non-violent resistance.

How can we do any less?

14-year-old Abdulai’s father was killed by the ‘Taliban’ and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.

But, he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that ‘something is very wrong with the world I’m caught up in’, ‘these elders of the world are not getting it…..’.

How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?

How does it make anyone safer?

How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?

Your policies, skewed-ly ‘diagnosed’ and ‘reviewed’ in a cold clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people, thus we endeavour to have a People’s Afghanistan December Review, because that’s what ordinary people can do.

We would try not to ‘throw’ our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner’s tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.

We want peace.

We want you out.

With singular sincerity,

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace

Below is a video from Afghans for Peace:

Kathy Kelly: Hunger and Anger in Afghanistan

The Obama administration has announced the imminent release of a December Review which will evaluate the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. The military has yet to disclose what the specific categories for evaluation will be. Yet many people in Afghanistan might wish that hunger along with their anger over attacks against civilians could top the list.

In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.

“Do you think we like to live this way?” an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. “Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?” He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.

Standing next to him was a man who quietly handed me three crumpled photos, never lifting his eyes from the ground. The spokesperson identified the man as his cousin. The first picture showed his cousin’s ruined home. A U.S. aerial bombardment had destroyed the dwelling. The next pictures were of two bloodied children. “All of his children were killed,” the spokesperson said. “All his family, his wife, his five children, by an attack from the air.” He went on to explain that they had been goat herders in the San Gin province of Afghanistan. They were happy with their lives, selling yoghurt and fattening their animals. A Taliban fighter had come to their village at night. The U.S. apparently wanted to kill this fighter, but instead they destroyed his cousin’s family. “We couldn’t stay there,” the spokesperson said, pointing to a picture of the debris that was once his cousin’s home. “We were afraid we might be hit again, so all of us left. We are four families.”

Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.

Days earlier, in far more comfortable setting, students at the Bamiyan University, located in the central, mountainous province of Bamiyan, had prodded us to comprehend their anger. In a straw poll, several dozen were unanimous in stating that they want the U.S. to leave their country. Several insisted that most U.S. people don’t understand or care about the impact of U.S. warfare in Afghanistan. An engineering student held up a copy of the Time Magazine cover which showed a young Afghan woman whose nose was horribly mutilated, allegedly as punishment for defying men in her family. Time Magazine’s accompanying headline announced that the story would explain why U.S. troops must remain in Afghanistan. “Do Americans care more about noses than fingers?” the student asked. “Who will cover the stories about fingers that are cut off?!” I felt embarrassed not to know what he was talking about. Several weeks later, I read a New York Times article about a trial taking place at an army base in Washington State. The article shed light on the student’s question. A U.S. Staff Sergeant from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division was charged with leading a conspiracy to randomly target and kill unarmed Afghan civilians. He and four other soldiers faced murder charges. The staff sergeant is alleged to have planted evidence to cover up the murders and to have carved fingers off corpses which he kept as war souvenirs.

Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. “We’ve taken the gloves off,” said an unnamed U.S. military official, “and it has had huge impact.” The 68 ton tanks fire high-explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs $4.3 million and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.

The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, oneto each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. “When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,” says the Army Times, “raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.”

In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to “rapidly deteriorating” security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled “Nowhere to Turn.” Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.

Commenting on impoverishment and displacement caused by military offensives, a Pakistani op-ed recently compared hunger and anger to two live wires. When the wires touch, they create an incandescent and uncontrollable flash.

It’s hard to imagine the extent of explosive popular rage that would result if the shoe were on the other foot, if U.S. people were subject to aerial bombing, night raids, destruction of civilian homes, displacement and starvation.. In reality, the live wires of hunger and anger could exist in our lives too; we could be angry, very angry, about this war, angry enough to make it a political issue. But if our hunger were for an end to the war, if our hunger even signaled a desire to rethink and repent our murderous policies, if we honestly sought forgiveness from Afghan civilians who’ve borne the brunt of our war of choice, then perhapsan uncontrollable and incandescent flash of fairness and peace could govern our future.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) From December 11 – January 2, she will be part of a Voices delegation in Afghanistan, meeting with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. To join them in a 12/19/2010 global skype call, write to youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com gmail

Steve Burns: Why wasn't the war a factor in the election?

"I have no hope, energy or optimism that we will ever be heard. I no longer stand vigil against war. Neither war was even an issue in the election."

The above quote is from a message sent to us by one stalwart peace activist explaining why her local peace group is disbanding. At a recent Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice Board meeting where this quote was read, many of those present expressed a similar sense of frustration about the lack of attention paid by the public, the media and by the candidates to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And how can you not be outraged and frustrated when construction of a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan draws more attention than wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, killed as many as a million Iraqi and Afghan citizens and squandered trillions of dollars that could have been better used at home?

But outrage and frustration alone don't cause peace groups to disband. For that to happen, we have go farther, to the belief that the American people are not capable of caring about deaths that occur in a war thousands of miles away, even when those dying are our own soldiers, or that the peace movement is so ineffective and incapable of forcing its issue on to the national agenda that "we will never be heard."

I won't take that extra step. I don't think the lack of attention to Afghanistan and Iraq in the mid-term elections reflects public indifference or peace movement ineffectiveness. And, to make my case, I don't have to reach very far -- just back to 2008, when the war was very much an issue in the election.

His early opposition to the Iraq war pushed Barack Obama, a relatively unknown one-term Senator, past Hillary Clinton -- who voted to authorize the Iraq invasion -- in the contest for the Democratic nomination. Iraq was a factor again in Obama's victory over war-supporter John McCain.

What changed between 2008 and 2010? First of all, let's remember that it was opposition to one particular war -- the war in Iraq -- that forced war on to the election agenda in 2008. By 2008, the peace movement has spent five solid years making the case against the Iraq war and occupation, with relatively little attention given to Afghanistan, which took on the name "the forgotten war." That steady work culminated in a level of opposition to the Iraq war that approached 70%, making the Iraq war the most unpopular in our nation's history.

But while we were all headed to the polls in November of 2008, negotiations between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government were underway on a withdrawal agreement that would require a complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. The agreement, signed in December of 2008, now forms the basis for troop withdrawals from Iraq that the Obama administration is now undertaking.

The Iraq withdrawal agreement is a major accomplishment for the Iraqi people, who successfully frustrated and defeated the most powerful military force on the planet and its plans for permanent military bases from which to dominate the Middle East. But it also had the effect of removing the Iraq war as a political issue within the United States. And because the basis for peace-movement growth during the Bush years was opposition to the Iraq war, and not the Afghanistan war or war in general, troop withdrawals from Iraq were bound to mean a loss of interest in the peace movement.

All of this was well understood at the time, and starting in early 2009, as the Obama administration began to couple withdrawals from Iraq with an escalation in Afghanistan, the peace movement turned its attention to Afghanistan. And turn it did, to the point where Iraq now seems to have inherited the title of "forgotten war" from its older (by thirteen months) brother.

But, while organizations and movements can change their focus relatively quickly, public opinion is another matter. While opposition to the Iraq war remains at the 70% level (despite the best efforts by General Petraeus and his supporters to spin the war as a success) opposition to the Afghanistan occupation has only recently broken the 50% mark.

In short, we find ourselves in a period where the most unpopular war is ending and the war that's continuing is not so unpopular -- a state of affairs that doesn't place the peace movement front and center in the public consciousness.

Events in Afghanistan, combined with the peace movement's new focus on that war, are now taking their toll on support for the Afghanistan war. The well-respected Quinnipiac University poll describes its latest poll results this way: "Support For War In Afghanistan Collapses." Here, "collapse" means a two-month change from 49% support for the war and 41% opposition in September to 44% support and 50% opposition in November -- a fourteen point swing in the antiwar direction.

That's a hopeful sign for those of us who want to the U.S. military to leave Afghanistan, but it's also an indicator of how far we have to go. The bias towards war among media and political elites in this country is so strong that 50% opposition to war -- or even 60% opposition -- doesn't buy you anything. Push opposition to the 70% level, however, and you'll start to see cracks in the bipartisan military-industrial-complex coalition that fuels our wars. In 2008, the split was expressed in the form of the Obama candidacy. A future split could express itself not only within the Democratic Party, but within the Republican party as well, given the increase in Tea Party candidates expressing isolationist views.

But why should it be the case, nearly ten years into the Afghanistan occupation, that we've only recently crossed the threshold into majority opposition? Here, we need to remember that Afghanistan is not Iraq, the war the peace movement chose to focus on, in part because it was the easier war to argue against. The Afghanistan war still enjoys some base of support within the U.S., for example, among political liberals who are concerned about the consequences for Afghan women if the U.S. military withdraws. There are good arguments against this point of view, but they need time to be made and to sink into the public consciousness.

We shouldn't doubt the peace movement's ability to "be heard" and move public opinion in an anti-war direction. The shift from 70% support at the beginning of the Iraq war to 70% opposition less than three years later is one of the most remarkable feats of public persuasion in our nation's history, vastly exceeding anything the Tea Party has ever accomplished or even attempted, and all the more remarkable given the near-total media blackout under which it was accomplished.

Nor should we doubt the American people's willingness to make war an issue, once they've made up their minds about a war. The war-makers understand very well that they don't need public support to continue the war, only public confusion. For now, they operate under a temporary reprieve, relying on moral confusion about a supposed "good war" in Afghanistan. But the confusion will be cleared away, and support for the Afghanistan war will trend in only one direction: down.

In conclusion, public interest in war and peace issues is at a low ebb right now partly as a consequence of peace-movement success in helping to end the war that drew the greatest public opposition. All successful social movements experience similar moments of let-down at the partial accomplishment of their goals. If we can take a moment to step back and recognize our partial success, we can fight off the depression and frustration that prevents us from replicating that success: first with Afghanistan, and then by using the Iraq and Afghanistan experience to build a permanent antiwar majority.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.