{"id":117544,"date":"2021-08-27T16:04:28","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T23:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=117544"},"modified":"2021-08-27T16:04:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T23:04:28","slug":"the-great-game-of-smashing-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/08\/27\/the-great-game-of-smashing-nations\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Game of Smashing Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Pilger: Courtesy The Consortium News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the U.S., Britain and their allies\u201d destroyed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A<\/strong>s a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians,\nhistory is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom,\nwhich the United States, Britain and their allies\u201d destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1978, a liberation movement led by\nthe People\u2019s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship\nof Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular\nrevolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreign journalists in Kabul,\nreported The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>, were surprised to find\nthat nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the\ncoup.\u201d The<\/em> Wall Street Journal <\/em>reported that\n150,000 persons \u2026 marched to honor the new flag \u2026 the participants appeared\ngenuinely enthusiastic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The<\/em> Washington\nPost<\/em> reported that Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be\nquestioned.\u201d Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the\ngovernment declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights\nfor women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files\npublicly burned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the monarchy, life expectancy\nwas 35; 1-in-3 children died in infancy. Ninety percent of the population was\nilliterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy\ncampaign was launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For women, the gains had no precedent;\nby the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up\n40 percent of Afghanistan\u2019s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent\nof its civil servants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Women at\nuniversity in Afghanistan in the 1970s. (Amnesty International U.K.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backed by the West<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So radical were the changes that they\nremain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female\nsurgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every girl could go to high school and university. We could\ngo where we wanted and wear what we liked \u2026 We used to go to cafes and the\ncinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday \u2026 it all started to go wrong\nwhen the mujahedin started winning \u2026 these were the people the West supported.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the United States, the problem\nwith the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it\nwas never the puppet\u201d derided in the West, neither was the coup against the\nmonarchy Soviet backed,\u201d as the American and British press claimed at the\ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zbigniew<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Zbigniew\nBrzezinski in 1977. (Library of Congress)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Jimmy Carter\u2019s secretary of\nstate, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: We had no evidence of any\nSoviet complicity in the coup.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same administration was\nZbigniew Brzezinski, Carter\u2019s national security adviser, a Polish \u00e9migr\u00e9 <\/em>and\nfanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on\nAmerican presidents expired only with his death in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 3, 1979, unknown to the\nAmerican people and Congress, Carter authorized a $500 million covert action\u201d\nprogram to overthrow Afghanistan\u2019s first secular, progressive\ngovernment.  This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The $500 million bought, bribed and\narmed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. <\/em>In\nhis semi-official history, Washington Post<\/em> reporter Bob\nWoodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a\nmeeting between a CIA agent known as Gary\u201d and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot\nstacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual\n$200,000, the best way to say we\u2019re here, we\u2019re serious, here\u2019s money, we know\nyou need it \u2026 Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million\nin cash.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recruited from all over the Muslim world,\nAmerica\u2019s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani\nintelligence, the CIA and Britain\u2019s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic\nCollege in Brooklyn, New York \u2013 within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of\nthe recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aim was to spread Islamic\nfundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilize and eventually destroy the\nSoviet Union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Larger Interests\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1985,\nAfghan mujahideen cross into Afghanistan from a border region of\nPakistan. (Erwin Franzen, CC BY-SA 1.0, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 1979, the U.S. embassy in\nKabul reported that the United States\u2019 larger interests \u2026 would be served by\nthe demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might\nmean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read again the words above I have\nitalicized. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as\nclearly.  The U.S. was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan\ngovernment and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six months later, the Soviets made\ntheir fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist\nthreat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and\ncelebrated as freedom fighters\u201d by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin<\/em> eventually\ndrove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mujahedin<\/em> were\ndominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorized rural\nwomen. Later, in the early 1990s the Taliban would emerge, an ultra-puritanical\nfaction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but\nbanished women from public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s, I made contact with the\nRevolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had\ntried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban\ntime they concealed cameras beneath their burqas<\/em> to film\nevidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the\nWestern-backed mujahedin<\/em>. Marina\u201d of RAWA told me, We took the\nvideotape to all the main media groups, but they didn\u2019t want to know \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

April 28,\n1998: Demonstration of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of\nAfghanistan in Peshawar, Pakistan, to condemn the sixth anniversary of\nswarming of fundamentalists into Kabul.\u201d (RAWA, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia\nCommons)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1992, the enlightened PDPA\ngovernment was overrun. The president, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the\nUnited Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a\nstreet light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Game<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I confess that [countries] are pieces\non a chessboard,\u201d said Lord Curzon in 1898, upon which is being played out a\ngreat game for the domination of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The viceroy of India was referring in\nparticular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used\nslightly different words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a moment to seize,\u201d he said\nfollowing 9\/11. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon\nthey will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Afghanistan, he added this: We\nwill not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your\nmiserable existence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

July 17,\n2019: Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, with U.S. Secretary of State\nMichael Pompeo. (State Department)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blair echoed his mentor, President\nGeorge W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office:\nThe oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we\nstrike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the\nstarving and suffering \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost every word was false. Their\ndeclarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery we\u201d in\nthe West rarely recognize as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orifa<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and\ndepended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan\nSteele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people\nas supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eighteen months later, I found\nunexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often\nmistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off\nforaging, hungry children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched\na woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet\nweaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two\nchildren who were killed next door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An American F-16 aircraft had come out\nof a clear blue sky and dropped an Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa\u2019s mud, stone\nand straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered\nthe body parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months later, a group of Americans\ncame from Kabul and gave her an envelope with 15 notes: a total of $15. Two\ndollars for each of my family killed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The invasion of Afghanistan was a\nfraud. In the wake of 9\/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama\nbin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the\nadministration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the\nbuilding of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a U.S. oil company consortium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had\nbeen invited to the U.S. and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in\nhis Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the\ndeal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush\u2019s vice president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010, I was in Washington and\narranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan\u2019s modern era of suffering,\nZbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted\nthat his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created a\nfew stirred up Muslims\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have any regrets?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we watch the current scenes of\npanic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV\nstudios bewailing the withdrawal of our protection,\u201d isn\u2019t it time to heed the\ntruth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Pilger\u2019s 2003 film, <\/strong>Breaking the Silence<\/strong><\/em>, about the war on terror\u201d is available to view here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Pilger: Courtesy The Consortium News More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the U.S., Britain and their allies\u201d destroyed. As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their allies\u201d destroyed. In 1978, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}