[Nettime-bold] A view from Afghan writer in NYC

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Afghanistan already is in the Stone Age - there is not much that 
US Air Force could do any more to help getting it there: that's 
precisely why Osama Bin Laden chose it as a staging ground. 
Taliban have nothing to lose, since they have no perishable 
material possesions. They only have the grip on the people and 
their spirits, that can't be destroyed by cruise missiles. It is ironic 
that for the hi-tech American military the most difficult is to fight a 
stone-age war.

ivo
 
 >The following was sent to me by Tamim
 >Ansary.  Tamim is an Afghani-American writer.  He is
 >also one of the most brilliant people I know in this
 >life.  When he writes, I read. When he talks, I
 >listen.  Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole
 >mess we are in.
 >* Gary T.
 >
 >Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:
 >
 >I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing
 >Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO
 >Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing
 >innocent people, people who had nothing to do with
 >this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept
 >collateral damage. What else can we do?"  Minutes
 >later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we
 >"have the belly to do what must be done." And I
 >thought about the issues being raised especially hard
 >because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've
 >lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of
 >what's going on there.  So I want to tell anyone who
 >will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.
 >
 >I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin
 >Laden.
 >
 >There is no doubt in my mind that these people were
 >responsible for the atrocity in New York.  I agree
 >that something must be done about those monsters. But
 >the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan.
 >They're not even the government of Afghanistan.  The
 >Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took
 >over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political
 >criminal with a plan.  When you think Taliban, think
 >Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And
 >when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the
 >Jews in the concentration camps."   It's not only that
 >the Afghan people had nothing to do with this
 >atrocity. They were the first victims of the
 >perpetrators.  They would exult if someone would come
 >in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats'
 >nest of international thugs holed up in their country.
 >
 >Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow
 >the Taliban?  The answer is, they're starved,
 >exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years
 >ago, the United Nations estimated that there are
 >500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan - a country
 >with no economy, no food.  There are millions of
 >widows.  And the Taliban has been burying these widows
 >alive in mass graves.  The soil is littered with land
 >mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets.
 >These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people
 >have not overthrown the Taliban.
 >
 >We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan
 >back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done.
 >The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans
 >suffer?  They're already suffering. Level their
 >houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble?
 >Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done.  Destroy their
 >infrastructure?  Cut them off from medicine and health
 >care?  Too late.  Someone already did all that.  New
 >bombs would onlystir the rubble of earlier bombs.
 >Would they at least get the Taliban?  Not likely.  In
 >today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they
 >have the means to move around.  They'd slip away and
 >hide.
 >
 >Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled
 >orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even
 >have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping
 >bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the
 >criminals who did this horrific thing.  Actually it
 >would only be making common cause with the Taliban -
 >by raping once again the people they've been raping
 >all this time.  So what else is there?
 >
 >What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true
 >fear and trembling.The only way to get Bin Laden is to
 >go in there with ground troops.  When people speak of
 >"having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're
 >thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many
 >as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral
 >qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our
 >heads out of the sand.  What's actually on the table
 >is Americans dying. And not just because some
 >Americans would die fighting their way through
 >Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout.  It's much bigger
 >than that folks.
 >
 >Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to
 >go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely.
 >The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first.  Will
 >other Muslim nations just stand by?  You see where I'm
 >going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam
 >and the West.  And guess what: that's Bin Laden's
 >program.  That's exactly what he wants.  That's why he
 >did this.  Read his speeches and statements. It's all
 >right there.  He really believes Islam would beat the
 >west.  It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he
 >can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's
 >got a billion soldiers.  If the west wreaks a
 >holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with
 >nothing left to lose, and that's even better from Bin
 >Laden's point of view.  He's probably wrong -  in the
 >end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but
 >the War would last for years and millions would die,
 >not just theirs but ours.
 >
 >Who has the belly for that?  Bin Laden does. Anyone
 >else?
 >
 >Tamim Ansary
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >__________________________________________________
 >Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help?
 >Donate cash, emergency relief information
 >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/
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 >
 >-----------------
 
 
 
 
 
 


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