Some officials within the Bush administration and the interim government in Kabul complain that the CIA’s and the U.S. military’s continuing control of U.S. policy is hampering Afghanistan’s reconstruction. The continuing military emphasis on policy is thwarting the development of political and economic tactics that strengthen the interim government and promote reconciliation.
The arrival of U.S. troops in Georgia on April 29 raised as many glasses in Ankara and Baku as it did jitters in Moscow. Touted as a new front in the “war on terror,” the Bush administration is in reality scrambling for Caspian oil in a bid to oust Russia from its traditional backyard. Washington insists its “train and equip force'” of 10 combat helicopters and 150 military instructors is solely intended to help Georgia combat Islamic radicals in the lawless Pankisi Gorge, allegedly a safe haven for al Qaeda militants and their Chechen allies. But other motives became apparent, although largely unnoticed by the Western press when Georgian Defense Ministry official Mirian Kiknadze told Radio Free Europe on February 27: “The U.S. military will train our rapid reaction force, which is guarding strategic sites in Georgia–particularly oil pipelines.” He was referring to the embryonic Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) project, set to reduce Georgia’s and Azerbaijan’s energy reliance on Russia and bring the southern Caucasus into the U.S. fold.
Barcelona, Spain – This politically progressive, culturally distinct Mediterranean city served as host for Ubuntu, the latest international gathering of civil society. In contrast with the 60,000 people who converged on Porto Alegre, Brazil, in February for the second World Social Forum (WSF), less than 100 specially invited delegates participated in Ubuntu’s second annual constitutive meeting, held here March 1 and 2.
On March 12, President Bush plans to greet his Uzbek counterpart, Islam Karimov, in the White House. Uzbekistan has emerged as a key strategic partner to the United States after September 11, not only due to its frontier with Afghanistan. For years, some strategists in Washington have considered the Tashkent regime as an important regional player. It is the most populous nation in the region, with 24 million citizens, and serves as the homeland for significant Uzbek minorities in all its neighbors, including Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden and his supporters around the world are digging in for the long haul, waiting for the day when the United States can no longer afford the war on terrorism and begins to wilt under the weight of unilateralism.
The tragic events of September 11 have created unprecedented challenges for the peace movement, anti-interventionist forces, and other progressive activists. For the first time in the lives of most Americans, the U.S. has found itself under attack.
As the American and allied military forces continue to operate in Afghanistan, the world is increasingly getting dragged into yet another war–the war for food supremacy. And like the war against terrorism, the battle for food superiority is also going to be long drawn. With the battle lines already sketched and with the back-up support of international financial institutions, this war is being aggressively pursued on the trade front.
If former Enron boss Kenneth Lay were put in charge of the U.S. war on terrorism, he would probably conduct it much the same way his fellow Texas oilman and beneficiary of Enron largesse, George W. Bush, has.
It was a speech foretold. After being compelled to make the “Friend-or-foe” choice after the September 11 attacks, Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf in his policy address on January 12th set about redefining the role of religion in Pakistani society and its domestic and external politics, with a special reference to Kashmir and terrorism. Islam, he said, has been misused and the Pakistani people exploited in its name. The general condemned acts of terrorism and in particular September 11, October 1, and December 13–the last two dates are of suicide attacks in Srinagar the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir) and on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.
As the endgame nears in the fighting in Afghanistan, with Taliban power collapsed and Al-Qaeda members dead or on the run, it is tempting to believe that military success has decided the outcome of the war on terrorism. The Bush administration has already made it clear that it has limited interest in the long and arduous task of rebuilding Afghanistan. But Washington decisionmakers may want to heed this advice from a senior U.S. military officer and statesman from an earlier era, General George C. Marshall. In outlining the so-called Marshall Plan to rebuild a war-ravaged Europe on June 5, 1947, he warned that there could be “no political stability and no assured peace” without economic security. Europe, much like Afghanistan today, was torn by war, poverty, disease, and hunger, and risked “disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people,” and thus deserved American attention and funds to recover and rejoin the world community.