|
Last week John Key announced that he was authorising the deployment of the New Zealand Special Air Services, better known as the SAS, to return to Afghanistan. This will be their 4th deployment since the war began.
John Key made what I suspect will become the most infamous of understatements “There's no getting away from the fact that Afghanistan is a dangerous place”. Presumably, by this he meant dangerous for the tens of thousands of foreign troops occupying the country. Presumably, he doesn’t mean for the nearly 33 million people of Afghanistan, over 30,000 of whom have died in the last 8 years as a direct result of the conflict, nor for the tens of thousands more who were dubbed enemy combatants – a significant proportion of whom are likely to have been little more than terrified peasants attempting to defend their homes and their families from invading foreigners.
In the past the labour governments that have argued for the sending of troops to Afghanistan have claimed to have humanitarian interests at heart – calling them peace keepers or reconstruction forces. John Key didn’t bother with this pretence. Why? Because there is no peace to keep and the SAS are not going to be helping the people of Afghanistan.
The SAS are the mostly highly trained soldiers in the New Zealand defence forces, and considered some of the most efficient killers in the world.
On their previous deployments they routinely conducted assassinations, illegal abductions, laser painting targets for US bombing runs and are widely known to have turned over abducted persons to US interrogators in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Their mission is not to help Afghani’s, it is to Kill Afghani’s.
One of the myths about the Afghan war is that it is “the good war”; that we are helping bring democracy and peace to the country. We especially were told that
We would be bringing rights and dignity to the millions of women who were denied both under the Taliban. 8 years on, “mission accomplished” and this has proven to be a boldfaced lie. The majority of Afghan women are still considered sub-human, or property, in their own country. They are still being raped, beaten, even killed on a daily basis but now it is the US backed Northern Alliance who is sanctioning it. This shows the lie that invasion can bring anything other than misery to a country. Liberation can only come from the people themselves.
This has been greatly emphasised by groups like RAWA, the revolutionary association of the women of Afghanistan. This is an independent democratic, secular political/social organisation for Afghani women, fighting for human rights and social justice. Despite the oppression, first from the Soviet occupation, then from the Taliban and now the US and its allies, RAWA has established schools for both boys and girls, hospitals, medical clinics as well as nursing, literacy and vocational training courses for women in both Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. All this while leading campaigns for true democracy.
It is groups such as RAWA that are the best chance for democracy in Afghanistan. And they speak for the vast majority when they have staunchly demanded that all foreign troops be removed.
We don’t want to see the return of fundamentalism to Afghanistan. There are no truly large, influential democratic secular organisations in Afghanistan today, but as long as the troops remain, there never can be.
A few years back on one of these protests we confronted Pete Hodgeson about our involvement in Afghanistan and he said (and I paraphrase) “we made the mess, now we have the responsibility to clean it up” – but “cleaning up” this mess is costing tens of thousands of Afghani’s their lives, and millions more have been driven from their homes. Regardless of the consequences, they want us out, and the least we can do is respect their wishes.
The Greens have been quick to jump up in protest of this deployment – MP Kennedy Graham said the SAS should stay at home as New Zealand was not at war -- "with terrorists or anyone else". "All deployments of our armed forces should be in self-defence or explicitly authorised by the United Nations Security Council,"
This is interesting, considering that the Greens were fully in support of sending troops over when they were in government. In fact they were one of the loudest voices in their call for supposedly humanitarian intervention. Any reluctance on the part of Labour is even more hypocritical, as they oversaw the first 3 deployments of the SAS, as well as the sending of the so called Provincial Reconstruction Team, (who by their own admission have little to do with reconstruction and a lot to do with “Security” aka they are combat troops, a mini occupying army, all sanctioned, and even heralded by the former labour administration).
It is truly remarkable that in the middle of this recession, with thousands of kiwi’s losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet, that the 40 million dollars required to send the SAS on their 18 month deployment just magically appeared. Indeed, it was only a few weeks back that it was announced that 30 million dollars had to be cut from the Adult Community Education budget. Community education is a New Zealand institution, night school classes in all manner of subjects, partaken by hundreds, if not thousands, of adults every year. In many respects even worse is the axing of the Training Incentive Allowance which allowed people on the Domestic Purposes Benefit – largely single mothers – to get extra assistance while studying: Paula Bennett herself acknowledged the significance of education in helping people get off the benefit, she herself having been a recipient, even as she defended its removal as fiscally responsible. Add to that the 20-25 million per year spent on the PRT deployment, and you have enough money to not just cover the cuts to education, but a fair bit of change as well.
Conclusion:
Even leaving aside the very suspect moral and political basis of our involvement in the afghan war in general, the idea of spending tens of millions of dollars on waging war is completely ludicrous. It is truly remarkable how the national government invariably manages to find money for things like defence, ministerial benefits and law and order ($400M on prisons!), and yet there is no money for social welfare or education.
So we need to say No to sending the SAS and we need to demand that the PRT be brought home too. We need to build groups that can fight for real democracy here, just as we support those who struggle for democracy in Afghanistan.
The ISO is one of those groups, and we will always oppose war, no matter who is responsible. So if you also wish to see a democratic, secular Afghanistan in our lifetime, you should seriously consider joining us.
|
