Call for the United States to End Its Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

[Magda Hassan]

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[B]Call for the United States to End Its Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan[/B]

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Dear Friend,

As you know, the President and Congress are reviewing U.S. policy on the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we are writing you at this critical moment to invite you to sign the Campaign for Peace and Democracy emergency statement below calling for an end to military intervention in both countries. Your support can make a real difference: it will add to the impact of the statement at a time when public opposition to these disastrous wars.

A list of the initial signers and the text of the statement are below. We aim to collect a large number of signatures very quickly, and then publish the statement and list of signers as widely as possible, both in this country and internationally. If you would like to add your name, see the emerging list of signers, or make a tax-deductible donation to publicize the statement, please go to http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1014/stmt.shtml

You do not have to donate in order to sign, but please give if you can, as generously as possible. If you have already signed the statement but not yet contributed to our publicity efforts, please go to our website now to make a donation.

If for any reason you have difficulty at the website, just send us an email at cpd@igc.org. Please circulate the statement to your colleagues and friends.

In peace and solidarity,

Joanne Landy Tom Harrison
Co-Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy

INITIAL SIGNERS: Bashir Abu-Manneh, Michael Albert, Kevin B. Anderson, Bettina Aptheker, Anthony Arnove, Stanley Aronowitz, David Barsamian, Rosalyn Baxandall, John Berendt, Norman Birnbaum, Blase Bonpane, Laura Boylan, MD, Jeremy Brecher, Stephen Eric Bronner, Richard J. Brown, MD, Leslie Cagan, Roane Carey, Tim Carpenter, Donna Cartwright, Adam Chmielewski, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Willig Crane, Hamid Dabashi, Gail Daneker, Richard L. Deats, Bogdan Denitch, Manuela Dobos, Tina Dobsevage, MD, Ariel Dorfman, Martin Duberman, Steve Early, Carolyn Eisenberg, Michael Eisenscher, Zillah Eisenstein, Daniel Ellsberg, Gertrude Ezorsky, Samuel Farber, Mansour Farhang, Thomas Fasy, MD, Liza Featherstone, John Feffer, Adam M Finger, Barry Finger, Harriet Fraad, David Friedman, Bruce Gagnon, Barbara Garson, Jack Gerson, Joseph Gerson, Jana Glivicka, Jill Godmilow, Linda Gordon, Suzanne Gordon, Greg Grandin, Arun Gupta, E. Haberkern, Mina Hamilton, Thomas Harrison, Howie Hawkins, Tom Hayden, Doug Henwood, David Himmelstein, MD, Michael Hirsch, Nancy Holmstrom, Jonathan House, MD, Doug Ireland, Marianne Jackson, PhD, Melissa Jameson, Mark C. Johnson, PhD, Alice Kessler-Harris, Assaf Kfoury, Jack Kurzweil, Leslie Kielson, Dan La Botz, Micah Landau, Joanne Landy, Marc H. Lavietes, MD, Nydia Leaf, Roger E Leisner, Jesse Lemisch, Sue Leonard, Rabbi Michael Lerner, John Lindsay-Poland, Martha Livingston, Catherine Lutz, Norman MacAfee, Jan Majicek, Don McCanne, MD, David McReynolds, Nasir Mansoor, Margaret Melkonian, Martin Melkonian, Marilyn H Morehead, Roger Morris, Erika Munk, Mary Nolan, Mary E. O'Brien, MD, David Oakford, Rosemarie Pace, Ed.D., Mike Parker, Christopher Phelps, Frances Fox Piven, Danny Postel, Len Rodberg, Ruth Rosen, Elizabeth R. Rosenthal, Peter Rothberg, Matthew Rothschild, John Sanbonmatsu, Ajamu Sankofa, Jennifer Scarlott, Jay Schaffner, Ellen Schrecker, Jason A. Schulman, Peter O. Schwartz, Stephen R. Shalom, Adam Shatz, Alix Kates Shulman, Alice Slater, Stephen Steinberg, Cheryl Stevenson, David Swanson, William K. Tabb, Jan Tamas, Hoshang V. Tarehgol, Jonathan Tasini, Peter Tatchell, Meredith Tax, Chris Toensing, Immanuel Wallerstein, Lois Weiner, Peter Weiss, Steve Weissman, Naomi Weisstein, Suzi Weissman, Chris Wells, Cheryl Wertz, Cornel West, Julia Willebrand, Reginald Wilson, Sherry Wolf, Emira Woods, Kent Worcester, Leila Zand, Michael Zweig

We Call for the United States to End Its Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan!

A Statement from the Campaign for Peace and Democracy October 2009

you can add your name at
<http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1014/stmt.shtml>

This may be a turning point for the expanding U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a time when speaking out clearly and unambiguously against war can make a crucial difference. Today we see signs all too reminiscent of the step-by-step deepening of the U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam in the 1960's. In response, we declare ourselves firmly against military escalation in the region and for the withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Pakistan now. We also call for an end to drone attacks in both countries.

There are currently 108,000 U.S./NATO troops in Afghanistan. President Obama has authorized increasing U.S. forces by 21,000, which will mean more than 68,000 U.S. troops by the end of 2009. In view of the war's growing unpopularity, Obama may very well abandon troop escalation. Reportedly, some in the Administration even recommended reducing U.S. forces and focusing more on strikes against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But even a scaled-back military presence constitutes an illegitimate occupation, one that wreaks havoc on the lives of innocent civilians and can only strengthen the Taliban and terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda.

Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the war. According to an August CNN poll, 57 percent oppose the Afghan war, a 9 percent increase since May, and there is growing unease in Congress. The cynical spectacle of Afghanistan's fraudulent presidential election has further eroded what little domestic and international credibility the corrupt Karzai regime retained.

In both Afghanistan and Pakistan the actions of the United States and its allies serve to strengthen fundamentalist forces. Fearing unpopular NATO troop casualties, the U.S. relies heavily on air power, which inevitably results in the death of innocent civilians. Far from eliminating terrorist networks, these air strikes only deepen popular hostility to the U.S./NATO war effort, pushing growing numbers of Afghans and Pakistanis toward the Taliban. Already fully a quarter of the Afghan population thinks that attacks on U.S./NATO forces are justified.

In Pakistan, the war is now being fought with the open and heavy involvement of U.S. Predator and other drones. Because of the frequent killing of civilians by the drones, on top of the resentment caused by Washington's long support of the dictator Musharraf, Pakistani public opinion now rates the U.S. as the number one threat -- ahead even of India, Pakistan's long time enemy.

U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan take place in the context of a global military system much more massive and far-flung than most Americans realize. Officially, over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are stationed in approximately 900 military facilities in 46 countries and territories -- and the actual numbers are far greater. U.S. military spending of more than $600 billion a year, in the words of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "adds up to about what the entire rest of the world combined spends on defense."

The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan have been part of a comprehensive effort to assert U.S. strategic power and credibility, in the Central and South Asian region and globally -- the power to control energy supplies, to overawe rivals, to intervene wherever Washington deems necessary, and to engage other countries in U.S. power projection. Since 2001, the United States has established 19 new bases in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, inserting a military presence into an area that Russia and China also seek to influence.

Afghanistan was a devastated nation even before 2001, due to the destruction wrought by the Soviet occupation and the subsequent civil war. Since then the Afghan people have endured eight more years of war and misery.
Many Afghans felt a sense of liberation when the Taliban was driven from power, but it soon became clear that one set of oppressors had been replaced by another: by the warlords and drug traffickers of the former Northern Alliance and the U.S. /NATO occupiers.

The Taliban's misogyny was vicious and extreme, but the situation of women remains horrific. Although a large number of Afghan girls did go to primary school after 2001 and a handful of women did get elected to the parliament, the vast majority of women are still confined to their homes, unable to work, too fearful to attend school and forced into marriages, often as children. Many women who would prefer not to wear their burqas are afraid to be seen without them.

According to Afghan feminist leader Malalai Joya, "Victims of abuse and rape find no justice because the judiciary is dominated by fundamentalists. A growing number of women, seeing no way out of the suffering in their lives, have taken to suicide by self-immolation." President Karzai signed a disgraceful law earlier this year, applying to Shia women, that gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, requires women to get permission from their husbands to work, and effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to his victim.

Most Afghans lack access to safe drinking water and medical care. The country remains one of the world's poorest. The U.S. has done virtually nothing to alleviate this terrible poverty; instead, it has added to the suffering of the Afghan people, women as well as men, the constant threat of military violence. The Taliban gains strength in response to the grossly inadequate amount of foreign aid, as well as to the brutalities of the U.S./NATO war.

The Pakistani military and intelligence have long played a double game, taking military aid from Washington while simultaneously fighting and backing the Taliban. While the majority of Pakistanis oppose the Taliban today, underlying conditions enable it to grow stronger. Many of the country's poor live in near- feudal conditions. In the Swat Valley the Taliban was able to exploit the grievances of landless rural tenants for its own reactionary purposes. Unwilling and unable to address the social and economic realities that create support for or at least acquiescence to the Taliban among many in the population, the Pakistani military and elite may well make further concessions to the fundamentalists.

If the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan have any chance of defeating fundamentalism, fighting misogyny and winning genuine democracy, the U.S. can help mainly by calling off the inhumane and un-winnable "war on terror," by whatever name, and replacing it with a radically different policy of massive foreign aid and an end to support for elites and governments that perpetuate gross inequalities. Democratic forces may be weak, but they will never grow stronger while the U.S. occupies Afghanistan, sends missiles into Pakistan and bolsters corrupt governments in both countries.

Withdrawal should not mean that the U.S. abandons any effort to help the people of Afghanistan and neighboring states. Washington ought to lend political support to regional negotiations and to a broader settlement of the disputes between India and Pakistan, which continue to stoke the violence in Afghanistan.
Above all, the U.S. should provide large-scale humanitarian aid to the desperately poor Afghan population -- which, aid agencies note, is hindered by being intermingled with military operations.

Afghanistan is badly fragmented along ethnic lines. If there is any progressive solution to these divisions it probably lies in regional negotiations among Afghanistan's neighbors. We cannot foresee what form this solution might take, but we know it must not include any political dictation by Washington or the continuation of U.S. troops or military operations in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Ending U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan now is not only right in itself; it is also indispensable as a way to begin countering the bitterness and hostility in Muslim countries that breeds terrorist threats to our own security, threats that arise from networks that are not limited to any specific geographic location. In addition to ending military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States should withdraw its forces from Iraq, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. It must end all support to Arab autocracies and police states and give real support to Palestinian statehood. A truly democratic U.S. foreign policy is desperately needed to address the misery and inequity in Afghanistan, Pakistan and many other countries, but we can only begin to do so by diverting our country's vast wealth away from militarism and the drive for "full spectrum dominance" of the world. We, the undersigned, are dedicated to working for this new foreign policy.


NOTE: The following references are informational, and not a formal part of the above statement. For Afghan support for attacks on U.S. forces, see ABC News/BBC/ARD Poll, Afghanistan: Where Things Stand, Feb. 9, 2009, question 25, . This poll also shows growing opposition to U.S. forces and overwhelming opposition to U.S. air attacks. For poll showing that Pakistanis view the U.S. as the number one threat, see Al Jazeera/Gallup International survey of Pakistan, Aug. 13, 2009, . Afghan feminist leader Malalai Joya describes conditions for women on Znet, May 16, 2009 and in her book Raising My Voice. For details on the new law constraining the rights of Shia women, see the Human Rights Watch Report "Afghanistan: Law Curbing Women's Rights Takes Effect. President Karzai Makes Shia Women Second-Class Citizens for Electoral Gain," Aug. 13, 2009, . For an account of the Taliban exploiting popular grievances in the Swat Valley, see Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, "Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan," The New York Times, April 17, 2009 . On aid agency warnings against intermingling military operations and humanitarian efforts, see Kevin Baron, "Mixing fighting and food in Afghanistan," Stars and Stripes 2009 .

To sign the statement, please go to the
CPD website at www.cpdweb.org

Campaign for Peace and Democracy
2790 Broadway, #12,
New York, NY 10025.

Email: cpd@igc.org