"Time" exploits victim to promote Afghan war

The August edition of Time magazine published a shocking cover picture of a young Afghan woman who had her ears and nose cut off, accompanied by the title : ‘What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan’.
The story, Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban, begins :

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. They dragged her to a mountain clearing near her village in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that her in-laws had been abusive ... Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved.

And then her husband sliced off her ears and nose.

A note from Time's managing editor explains "how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival."

I would rather confront readers with the Taliban's treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan.

The much publicized release of classified documents by WikiLeaks has already ratcheted up the debate about the war. ... What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead.

About that "emotional truth"...
Here's RAWA, which has been fighting the Taliban a lot longer than Time magazine :
"Time" exploits victim to promote war

In return for allowing Time to publish her photo, Aisha was flown to the US for reconstructive surgery. However, although Time ensured her mutilated face was seen worldwide, they appear less keen for her voice to be heard.

"I heard Aisha's story from her a few weeks before the image of her face was displayed all over the world", Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, wrote in the August 12 Nation. "She told me that her father-in-law caught up with her after she ran away, and took a knife to her on his own; village elders later approved, but the Taliban didn't figure at all in this account."

The Time story, however, attributes Aisha's mutilation to a husband under orders of a Talib commander, thereby transforming a personal story, similar to those of countless women in Afghanistan today, into a portent of things to come for all women if the Taliban return to power ...

Afghan feminist Malalai Joya : "During the Taliban’s regime such atrocities weren’t as rife as it is now and the graph is hiking each day."

The article cites a March 11, 2010 CIA document on spinning the war, published by WikiLeaks : CIA Red Cell

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.

"Emotional truth".

h/t Rabble.

Malalai Joya - Canadian book tour

Suspended from the Afghan parliament in 2007 for speaking out against the warlords and drug traffickers who comprise Afghanistan's government, Malalai Joya, elected on a platform of womens rights, now lives like a fugitive in her own country. What does that tell you?

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Joya's cross-Canada speaking tour and book release begins Friday in Vancouver at the Sun Yat Sen Gardens and then Saturday at St. Andrew's Wesley Church at Nelson and Burrard.

Itinerary details.

Update : Very good interview with Joya at The Tyee

Afghanistan's election day

For the cheerful side of the Afghan election, here's the BBC :

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western allies have pronounced the country's election a success, after voting passed off largely peacefully

including a helpful vid on how the indelible ink used to mark the index finger of people who have already voted won't wash off for four to five days. The UN rep said so.

Or you could go to the Guardian : Presidential poll day sees low turnout amid bombings, fraud claims and 'indelible' finger markings that wash off

where a voter turns up half an hour after voting with his finger washed clean.

A week ago a BBC reporter bought several ballots cheaply at a local market and reported that most Afghan women would not be voting as the country was short over a thousand female scrutineers to search those women who had not already been forbidden to vote by their families and husbands. Rural elders were also advised that things would go badly for them if people in their villages did not vote as instructed and ballot boxes were delivered to polling stations pre-stuffed.

Two days ago Democracy Now carried the news that a warlord reputedly responsible for the "death by container" of 2000 supposed Taliban who foolishly surrendered to Afghan and ISAF forces in 2001 had returned to Afghanistan to enlist support for Karzai :
Eight Years After Orchestrating Massacre at Dasht-e-Leili, Afghan Warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum Returns to Afghanistan to Campaign for Karzai

Reuters :

"My coming back will help peace and stability," he [Dostrum] said. "I want to sit with my American friends and make a plan so that within two or three years, we will secure all of Afghanistan."
Asked what type of job he would like if Karzai was to be re-elected, he said he was not interested in working as a cabinet minister, but would be interested in a security-related role.
He said he had repeatedly turned down offers to be one of Karzai's two vice presidents.
"I have a lot of experience dealing with terrorism and if Karzai wants it, or our international friends who are battling terrorism want, I am prepared to work. Other than this, I'm not interested in becoming this or that minister," he said.

Asked about the massacre at Dasht-e-Leili, the investigation of which has been repeatedly derailed by the Bush government while witnesses to the massacre continue to be killed off, Dostrum said :

"The United States of America, international friends, they should put together a group, a strong commission, to ask the truth," he said. "It wasn't just General Dostum."

Malalai Joya, today : Don't be fooled by this facade of democracy

"We Afghans know that this election will change nothing and it is only part of a show of democracy put on by and for the West, to legitimize its future puppet in Afghanistan. It seems we are doomed to see the continuation of this failed, mafia-like corrupt government for another term.

Democracy will never come to Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun, or from the cluster bombs dropped by foreign forces. The struggle will be long and difficult, but the values of real democracy, human rights and women's rights will only be won by the Afghan people themselves.

So do not be fooled by this façade of democracy. Your governments in the West that claim to be bringing democracy to Afghanistan ignore public opinion in their own countries, where growing numbers are against the war. President Obama in particular needs to understand that the change Afghans believe in does not include more troops and a ramped up war. "
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Joya notes Karzai has implemented the infamous law allowing Shia women to be starved for disobedience to their husbands and quotes Human Rights Watch : "Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election."

It's almost enough to make you long for 2006 and the days of Josee Verner's platitudes about little girls and their little schoolhouses and Steve's warmongering about his place on the world stage :

"I can tell you it's certainly engaged our military," the Prime Minister told CBC. "It's, I think, made them a better military notwithstanding — and maybe in some way because of — the casualties."

Harper added that Canada's current role in Afghanistan is "certainly raising Canada's leadership role, once again, in the United Nations and in the world community."

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Malalai Joya...

"After 9/11, unfortunately the United States and its allies like Canada pushed us from the frying pan into the fire, by putting in power the Northern Alliance criminals and warlords. As long as they follow this wrong policy, the situation in Afghanistan will become more disastrous.

Canada should not continue its current policy until 2011. Canada should act independently of the United States and find an alternative policy if they really want to be an honest friend of the Afghan people and improve this catastrophic situation.

Today, in the name of bringing human rights, women's rights and democracy, our country has been occupied.

You cannot bring values like democracy and human rights by supporting the sworn enemies of these values."

Continued at Rabble

Which "course" are we "staying" till 2011 exactly?

A 23 year old Afghani journalism student has been sentenced to death for downloading material about women's rights off the internet.
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was convicted of blasphemy by a religious court for distributing "a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed."

The Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence. The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Mr Kambaksh is a key ally of Afghan President Karzai.

Malalai Joya : "The majority of seats in Afghanistan's parliament are occupied by some kind of warlord, who is doing crimes under the name of Islam.We can start right now, taking power away from the warlords. Instead, they give them more power. Countries like the US have their own strategic policies in Afghanistan ... As long as [they] support the Northern Alliance with the mask of democracy, there will never be improvements in Afghanistan."

Insert obligatory remark here from any Canadian Con MP about all our wonderful work painting the little Afghan schoolhouses for the little Afghan girls.

Then go and sign the petition at the Independent to free a young journalist who will otherwise be executed for the crime of passing around a paper about women's rights to fellow students and teachers at his university. Go.

Feb.2 Update : 38,000 signed the petition, and along with support from Reporters Without Borders, Malalai Joya, and some British MPs, successfully pressured the Afghan Senate to withdraw its confirmation of a death sentence on Mr. Kambaksh.
Score one for petitions.

There were tens of us...

I hate protest rallies.

I hate the boring repetitive speeches, the completely off-topic signs from supporters of other causes, the waiting, the not high enough numbers, and the songs dear god the songs!

But I'm going.

After I wrote something about Afghanistan a couple of years ago, I got a message from RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan - not a personal message, a reprinted one I think. It died with my old pooter but this is the part I remember :

"Thank you for your interest in our country and our fight for freedom.
Last week we held a protest outside the Ministry of Vice and Virtue.
There were tens of us. We are hopeful."

It was that "There were tens of us. We are hopeful."

I have to go every time now.

We can do it with hope.

We can do it without hope.

It only matters that we do it.

Events across Canada

Malalai Joya to speak at Vancouver rally

Bring the Troops Home Now
Pan-Canadian Day of Action
Against War: October 27
In Vancouver :
Gather at Waterfront Station
12 Noon for Rally at 2pm
at the Vancouver Art Gallery
Featured speakers will include Malalai Joya.

In Victoria the rally will be held at 1pm Oct 28 at the Cenotaph
Malalai Joya will speak there too.

For other cities : more event listings

Malalai Joya ousted

Malalai Joya has been suspended from the lower house of the Afghan parliament.

Not for calling for war crimes trials against both the Taliban and our allies, the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, which the western media prefers to call the Northern Alliance.

Not for referring to Karzai as a U.S. puppet and her fellow MPs as drug lords and war criminals, specifically the vice president, named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal; the minister of water and power; the anti-corruption chief, a convicted drug trafficker who served time in a Nevada state prison; the deputy interior minister in charge of the anti-drug effort, a famous drug-trafficker; the chief of staff of the Afghan army, also named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal; and various senators and advisors to Hamid Karzai.

Not for speaking out against the increasing violence towards women and children as perpetrated by the Afghan state.

Not for her speaking engagements abroad, in which she argues that "Afghans are deeply fed-up with the current situation and every day that passes they turn against the government, the foreign troops and the warlords, and the Taliban make use of this resentment to increase their influence amongst the commom people."

Not even for calling the US-installed Afghan government a "B52 democracy".

No, Malalai Joya has been ousted for referring to parliament on national television as "a zoo", or in some other translations, as "a stable of animals".

That, apparently, was just too much for them.

On her return to Afghanistan after visiting Canada in September last year, Joya was at pains to explain to her countrymen that support for the US invasion of Afghanistan was not the fault of the Canadian and American people.
"I didn't realize how much they don't know," she said. "Their government lies to them, and the media."
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(cross-posted at The Galloping Beaver)

How long will Canada put up with this?

G&M : When does an Afghan become a detainee?
" The Defence Department's latest statement about an Afghan man whose mistreatment by local police caused an uproar in Parliament last week has done little to clarify the incident, according to critics of Canadian detainee policies - and may also expose gaps in the newest agreement on the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan."

I thought we settled this already.
The Afghan people are "insurgents" until such time as they are killed or handed over to Afghan authorities to be tortured, at which point they become "scumbags", terrorists, and Taliban.
How many times do we have to go over this?

And about those "gaps in the newest agreement on the treatment of prosoners" :

Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun :
"How did Canada, one of the world's most respected, law-abiding nations, become a party to the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan and a violator of the Geneva Conventions?
The story begins in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The Soviet KGB created a mirror-image secret police for its Afghan puppet government, KhAD.
CRUELTIES
KhAD sought to eradicate all opposition to the Communists. It also ran the education system and religious establishment. KhAD quickly became notorious, even in a famously brutal society, for its cruelties.
All political prisoners -- that is, anyone who opposed the Communists -- were subjected to systematic tortures. These ranged from garden variety beatings, pulling of fingernails, near-drowning and electric shocks to more refined cruelties.
Prisoners were flayed alive, thrown into vats of sulphuric acid, blinded, buried alive, burned with gasoline, or slowly frozen in refrigerated rooms."

Ok I'm going to skip some of this part.

"The Communists killed two million Afghans.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the newborn Taliban movement drove the remaining Afghan Communists -- rebranded the Northern Alliance -- into the far northeast.
U.S. INVASION
In 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, allied itself to the Northern Alliance, and overthrew the Taliban. A figurehead, Hamid Karzai, was put in power. Real power, however, was held by the Communist-dominated Northern Alliance.
Once the Northern Alliance took Kabul, the KhAD, rechristened NDS, was quickly re-established. The old Communist torturers and war criminals went back into business.
Today, an estimated 60% of NDS personnel are former KhAD agents. Canadian and U.S. forces fighting to pacify southern Afghanistan have been routinely handing captives and suspects over to the NDS secret police -- in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.
This dirty secret was finally exposed to Canadians by a major Globe and Mail investigation.
It exposed Ottawa's childish claims of having assurances from the Afghan Communist secret police -- which had murdered or maimed tens of thousands of victims -- to treat prisoners humanely."

Malalai Joya, Afghan MP, speaking at McGill in Canada, back in Sept 2006:
Malalai Joya is famous worldwide for standing up during the Constitutional Loya Jirga and speaking out against appointing fundamentalist warlords to head planning groups. The men, Joya told the assembly, should be tried for their crimes and violations of human rights instead of being appointed to positions of power.
"Human Rights Watch has reported that "up to 60%" of deputies in Afghanistan's lower house are "directly or indirectly connected to current and past human rights abuses."
"All justice-loving people are calling for trials for the warlords," she said, noting that the Karzai administration--with US approval--"promotes war criminals to higher posts," most recently the police force. The majority of seats in Afghanistan's parliament are occupied by "some kind of warlord," who is "doing crimes under the name of Islam."
"We can start right now, taking power away from the warlords. Instead, they give them more power."

But the problem of the warlords, Joya suggests, comes from abroad.
"Countries like the US have their own strategic policies in Afghanistan ... As long as [they] support the Northern Alliance with the mask of democracy, there will never be improvements in Afghanistan."
"Canada must have its own policies in Afghanistan, and stop supporting fundamentalist warlords."

Back to Margolis :
"Ottawa's deal this week with Kabul for inspection of NDS prisoners is a sham. The KhAD had the same empty "agreement" with human rights groups in the 1980s.
It's bad enough Canada's troops are defending Afghanistan's warlords who run its booming heroin industry. Now Ottawa is hand in glove with the Communist Party's veteran torturers. Well done, Ottawa."

H/T Holly Stick for Margolis link.

Who is it playing political games here?

As Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe threatened to bring down the Cons with a non-confidence vote in the spring if the Afghan mission is not "rapidly and profoundly" retooled to focus more heavily on reconstruction instead of fighting, Harper stood in the House of Commons on Tuesday and said :

"The only problem here is the political opportunism of the leader of the Bloc Quebecois . . . He's just playing political games on the backs of our soldiers.''

Really? Remember this?

Harper on CBC- TV Sept. 18 2006 :
"I can tell you it's certainly engaged our military," the Prime Minister told CBC. "It's, I think, made them a better military notwithstanding — and maybe in some way because of — the casualties."
Harper added that Canada's current role in Afghanistan is "certainly raising Canada's leadership role, once again, in the United Nations and in the world community."

Busted, Steve. Buying yourself some world class prestige - on the backs of our soldiers.

And then we get this complete red herring, given that Duceppe is calling for more construction, not less from International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner with her little school girls routine :

"I'm thinking especially about the women. It's out of the question for me to return them to the darkness. We know what sort of horrific regime they lived under.
Little girls go to school today -- which they could not do when the mission started in 2001."

Newsflash, Josee :
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on March 6 2006 International Women's Day, :
"From fear of terrorism, from threats of the enemies of Afghanistan, today as we speak, some 100,000 Afghan children who went to school last year, and the year before last, now do not go to school."

And Karzai is a guy heavily invested in having us stay.
See, no one's asking you "to return anyone to darkness", Josee. We'd just like to stop propping up whoever is bombing the shit out of them.

Malalai Joya, 28 year old female Afghan MP addressing students at McGill this past September :

"Canada must have its own policies in Afghanistan, and stop supporting fundamentalist warlords."
Canada, said Joya, must "prove that it is a friend of the Afghan people." To do that, it must "act independently of US war policies," she said, adding that, "as long as Canada cannot act independently of the Pentagon," it will be inevitable that Canadian troops will die."
According to Joya, "the US is not concerned with the major causes of terror in Afghanistan--that is why my people do not consider them as liberators."
"All justice-loving people are calling for trials for the warlords," she said, noting that the Karzai administration--with US approval--"promotes war criminals to higher posts,” most recently the police force. The majority of seats in Afghanistan's parliament are occupied by "some kind of warlord," who is "doing crimes under the name of Islam."

Duceppe : "What we need is a rebalancing so that in three years we don't end up with a Baker report on Afghanistan, like we've got for Iraq now.''

Exactly.