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Can the Aggressors be Peacemakers in Iraq and Afghanistan?
By Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
Wars are planned and orchestrated by the few, the privileged ruling elite; the humanity becomes the targeted victims of the few for global hegemonic governance. Throughout the ages, the conscientious mankind searched for ways to undo the war and strive for peace, the real aim for the establishments of international institutions. But now the global institutional capacity to deal with peace and conflict management appears in ruin with the continued onslaught of the American led War on Terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like the failed League of Nations, the UNO is an umbrella institution for debate and time consuming dialogue – a new nuisance model of the 21st century institutional failure. Most UN funding is covered by I.O.U. paper notes by the leading powers. They decide and control what the UN can and should do, not the UN itself. It is a dummy and silent spectator organization witnessing all the global catastrophic disasters in progress. A global puppet show to deceive the humanity with visual illusions of intentions, discussions, complemented by lies and deceptions assuming new titles for the international politics. Bush and Blair have been replaced by Obama and Cameron to overtake the wars of aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan. With changed faces, strategies and aims remain the same to continue the war against Islam. In the recent past, the allied nations coerced by the US to participate in the wars, have held global conferences to talk about the reconstruction and future peacemaking. The question is why was Afghanistan invaded and destroyed in the first place? The fully intact graveyards created by the former USSR invasion are still in existence and there was no chance or even an illusion that the destitute people of Afghanistan could have posed any threat to the transitory and diminishing “superpower” status of the US.
Realizing the eminent defeats by the handful forces of Talaban, the allies get together to make their presence known for propaganda purposes to the beleaguered people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and global audience. Talaban fighting the intruders are not the foreigners but people of the Afghan land. The US, British and others paid agents are foreigner mercenaries fighting in a foreign land, culturally unknown and unconquerable by their armed forces. Virtuous peacemaking vis-à-vis aggression and wickedness cannot be combined as credible attribute in one mindset and one character. Now, the issue is, how conveniently, the aggressors want to redefine their strategic role and ambitions in Afghanistan as peacemakers as if they have achieved the goals of their aggression. Imagine, Adolph Hitler while occupying France and continuing bombing of London, wanted to organize a peace conference. Would it have been a logical discourse for the French and British people to talk peacemaking with the aggressor? Bush and Hitler had lot in common as both claimed to have the divine support for their mission. Both tried to destroy the living humanity but fell in disgrace and met defeats.
A week earlier, Talaban while talking to the BBC reporter in Kabul, made it clear that they believe in peacemaking but all the foreign forces must leave Afghanistan. The same logic that French and British politicians would have implied to Hitler. Could the facts of human life be changed, be it Iraq, Afghanistan or the occurrences of the 2nd World War?
The “war on terror” was a bogus war planned by the US neoconservatives to occupy Iraq and other oil rich Muslim countries for their strategic goals. Both the US and its allies failed miserably to conquer the people of these lands. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan need change for peace and normalcy. The change can only happen if the US led occupying forces leave immediately and compensate the victim nations for their cruelty and the war damages. The same formula used at the end of the WW2. The same legal principle is needed that the aggressors be brought to legal and political accountability in an international war tribunal such as Nuremberg tribunal after the end of the WW2. E. H Carr, the famous historian, had emphasized that history has learning role for the future. Those who defy the logic of learning were lost without a trace.
Would the aggressors tell the humanity, when would they end the aggression? And when would their armed forces finally leave Iraq and Afghanistan? So that the victims could think openly and plan for change and peaceful transfer to making of their own future. This is the issue that the US led allied gathering of the 70 or so nations avoided to discuss. The assemblies were not for peacemaking but for prolonging the failing war efforts to ensure that the gas pipeline is completed from Central Asia. The leaders wanted to discuss the developmental aid, a typical western materialistic scenario to help the impoverished nations. The aid gimmick is an attractive illusion to entrap the poor nations and exploit their resources for the good of the colonial masters. The US and Britain survive on borrowed money from the future generations as their own financial institutions have collapsed and so are the political powerhouses and working agencies. But the aid’s long term purpose is to create more beggars and poverty and dependent nations asking for external aid and to survive on borrowed future and resources. The discussion developmental aid and withdrawal of the foreign forces from Afghanistan sends a clear signal of defeat and prospective surrender to the Talaban fighting for the freedom of their homeland.
Future must be anew, not the repetition of the past. Future making does not lie with the aggressors nor with the failed international institutions, it is with the will and resolve of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to oust the aggressors and recover their homes and habitats for rebuilding of their lives and human dignity. The US led forces went to Iraq and Afghanistan in pursuit of freedom, liberty and justice for the people. Instead they planned and developed the institutions of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Belgrham prison in Afghanistan and many unknown secret terror cells across Europe. Facts speak for themselves. All you need to do is to see the outcomes, the triumphs of the American version of liberty, human rights and justice role models, the inhuman treatment and horrifying photos of the prisoners are easily available from the internet, and the photos speak their own language depicting the American-British civilized achievements in the Arab-Islamic world. Mr. Karzai, the self-made president of Afghanistan, claimed that he and the participating members of the Arab-Islamic world represent the Islamic version of the civility and not terrorism. Mr. Karzai or others in attendance, the Arab-Muslim staged actors do not represent the interest and priorities of the Muslim Ummah. The people of the Islamic world see them all as a pan on the global political chessboard being financed, supported and kept in office to steal the future of the people of Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He is viewed as part of the problem, not part of any workable solution. If the US and its comrades in arms the UNO, NATO and others were honest and responsible institutions, they should have outlined the priorities for immediate withdrawals of the forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. More importantly, if there are concerned Arab-Muslim leaders, they should set the agenda for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli problem, the making of an independent State of Palestine and the removal of the illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. Apparently, there is no conference scheduled to deal with the real issues facing the global humanity. The states, the main puppet actors in the global political arena can be found existing on legal papers, not in the real world actions, and certainly not in a responsive manner to the concerned international community.
The abstract phenomenon of the State – the sitting members of the UNO, lack any human conscience to be accountable to the global humanity already in great distress and sufferings. The UNO, the US and other intransigent state actors feel no shame for their atrocities against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the US forces have massacred more than three million innocent civilians and millions displaced or forced to become refugees in foreign lands. Afghan landscape tells its own story with million uprooted from ancestral homes and forced to go to foreign countries in search of protection and human survival. The aggressors do not wish to see the problem, that they are the real problem, not otherwise. Sooner they leave Iraq and Afghanistan, the better. The ancient and civilized people of Iraq and Afghanistan know it well what is peacemaking and who are the aggressors. The aggressors appear desperate to quit and the Kabul conference seems to explain that urgent necessity but intellectually confused, morally corrupt and militarily exhausted, and not sure how best to get out of the terrible mess they have created for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the whole of the humanity in turmoil.
A century earlier C.E, M. Joad (Guide to Modern Wickedness), captioned the human tragedy in these words:
“….Human nature is at least in part wicked and in part foolish, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly? ….Men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. They think on occasion that it is necessary and wise and honourable, for war is not the work of bad men knowing themselves to be wrong, but of good men passionately convinced that they are right.”
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