Afghanistan: Iraq All Over Again

We did not invade Afghanistan to help the Afghan people. So why are so many progressives buying into that myth?

Afghanistan: Iraq All Over Again
By Liliana Segura
AlterNet
August 5, 2008

Those who pretend to speak for what's best for the people of Afghanistan ought to consider the opinions of Afghans themselves, especially those who have been fighting for years for their country. Take the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), struggling for 30 years for human rights and self-determination for the people of Afghanistan:

Since the overthrow of the Soviet-installed puppet regime in 1992, the focus of RAWA's political struggle has been against the fundamentalists' and the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban's criminal policies and atrocities against the people of Afghanistan in general and their incredibly ultra-male-chauvinistic and anti-woman orientation in particular. … The U.S. "War on Terrorism" removed the Taliban regime in October 2001, but it has not removed religious fundamentalism, which is the main cause of all our miseries. In fact, by reinstalling the warlords in power in Afghanistan, the U.S. administration is replacing one fundamentalist regime with another. The U.S. government and Mr. Karzai mostly rely on Northern Alliance criminal leaders who are as brutal and misogynist as the Taliban.

RAWA believes that freedom and democracy can't be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to fight and achieve these values. Under the U.S.-supported government, the sworn enemies of human rights, democracy and secularism have gripped their claws over our country and attempted to restore their religious fascism on our people.

End the Occupation

If the United States really wants to improve the situation in Afghanistan, it should start by ending the occupation. It should then cough up money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. (One estimate puts the tab at $10 billion.) This is not just for the sake of Afghanistan, but for the sake of Americans as well, who are no safer today than they were when the planes hit the towers. Ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the first, crucial step in that elusive goal of "winning hearts and minds" that the United States claims to be so committed to in the region. As Iraq has demonstrated, occupying armies are not a deterrent to terrorism. Occupying armies breed terror.

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/93891/afghanistan%3A_iraq_all_over_again/?page=entire

And you might want to read "Afghanistan Women's Rights Leader Speaks Out Against Occupation" at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3712205

And please visit the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) website at:

http://www.rawa.org/index.php

RAWA is the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977.