Ukraine and Afghanistan

The double standards of the West

An Afghan woman in a blue burqa begs in the snow dust at a checkpoint on the road from Kabul to Pul-e Alam, watched by an armed Taliban.

Early on, Washington knew that the war against the Taliban could not be won - and still pressed on, Michael Lüders criticizes. © Getty Images / Scott Peterson

A commentary by Michael Lüders

[This commentary published on 4/6/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/afghanistan-ukraine-doppelmoral-100.html.]

The war in Ukraine and the suffering of the people there receive so much attention in the West as if it were "our" war. The deaths of hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan are a completely different story: they are either suppressed or we are largely unconcerned about them, criticizes Michael Lüders.

At a recent conference in Doha, Qatar, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was asked why Pakistan had not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her answer: Pakistan, like its western neighbors, has been experiencing acts of violence by another world power for decades - with devastating consequences for the people in the region. She was obviously referring to the United States, but she did not mention it by name.

The war in Afghanistan alone has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and millions of Afghans have fled from war and hunger to Pakistan and Iran. The destruction in Afghanistan exceeds that in Ukraine many times over. If the decision-makers in the West now see Russia as the great enemy, that is their decision. Pakistan, like Turkey, is instead counting on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

The failure in Afghanistan is suppressed

If someone in this country were to hold views like those of Hina Rabbani Khar, the result would probably be an unprecedented shitstorm. But in essence, she is probably right: Who in Berlin, at NATO in Brussels or in Washington is still interested in the lost war in Afghanistan?

This war began in October 2001 as American retaliation for Nine Eleven. Although 15 of the 19 attackers came from Saudi Arabia and the attacks were largely planned in Hamburg, it seemed more politically opportune to the Bush administration to topple the Taliban, which had given Osama bin Laden refuge.

This was achieved within a short period of time, but Washington's and its allies' attempt, within the framework of the International Stabilization Mission (ISAF) and NATO, to establish a pro-Western government in Kabul failed.

The West knew the war could not be won

After 20 years of war, the longest U.S. military deployment ever, supported also by the Bundeswehr, the Taliban again took power in Kabul on August 15, 2021. To the great horror of Western actors, how could this happen?

Although those in charge in Washington knew as early as 2005 that they could not win the war against the Taliban - translated: religious students - they continued it undeterred, hoping to end it without losing face.

Instead, the hasty withdrawal occurred last summer. Thousands and thousands of local Afghan forces were left to their fate, and Afghan girls and women in particular once again face an uncertain future.

Afghans are held collectively responsible

Nowhere in Western politics is there any sign of a willingness to subject oneself to critical self-examination in this regard. One would almost like to say cynically: the war in Ukraine has turned attention in a completely different direction at the right time.

In the meantime, the U.S. government has frozen all foreign assets of the Afghan central bank and excluded Afghanistan from the SWIFT banking payment system. As a result, the Taliban government can no longer pay salaries, import medicine or food.

This decision is largely responsible for the rampant famine that has again forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to flee to Pakistan or Iran. In February, President Biden confiscated nearly half of the U.S.-frozen Afghan funds, some .5 billion, by presidential decree to distribute among the victims of Nine Eleven. This is not only theft, but at the same time takes all Afghans into collective custody for the terrorist attacks of that time.

War crimes go unpunished

Which brings us back to Pakistan's former foreign minister, the constant double standard. For example, behind the scenes, Washington has ensured that all pending cases against the United States for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan at the International Criminal Court in The Hague have been dropped.

Will Russia have the same privilege?

Michael Lüders is a journalist and author living in Berlin. He has lived in the Middle East for many years, as a student of Arabic literature in Damascus and as a longtime Middle East correspondent for the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" in Cairo. His most recent publication is "Hybris am Hindukusch. How the West Failed in Afghanistan" by C.H. Beck.

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"... that Putin will be defeated"

by Lorenz Glatz

[This article published on 4/5/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.streifzuege.org/2022/dass-putin-besiegt-wird/.]

At the recent meeting for EU heads of state and government, Council President Charles Michel formulated as the current main task of the EU "that we must first and foremost ensure that Putin is defeated." This is essential for future security in Europe and in the world. (Wiener Zeitung, 3/24/2022). In view of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this almost sounds like a "hot war."

Who is threatening whom here?

Victory over Russia, whoever happens to be ruling it, has become easier to imagine with the end of the "Cold War" thirty years ago. The rather shadowy state capitalism in Eastern Europe, called "real socialism" by its operators, had failed in competition with the classical capitalist "market economy" of the economically far stronger West and was heavily in debt. The Eastern bloc's superpower, the Soviet Union, had disintegrated; its Russian heartland was still a nuclear power with an arms industry, but otherwise already almost only a producer of raw materials. The Soviet military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, had dissolved. And all this had taken place within three years from 1989 to 1992 and was extensively celebrated as the end of the danger of a "war of the superpowers," as a "new world order" of peace in "democracy and a market economy," as the goal and "end of history," and was exploited as an opportunity for a profitable takeover boom economically, politically and militarily.

However, the counterpart of the Eastern military pact, NATO, which likes to call itself a Western defense alliance, was maintained "for security" without much opposition. It has now moved about a thousand kilometers eastward to Russia's border, to within 150 road kilometers of St. Petersburg. By 2004, parallel to the economic takeover of these countries by the EU and Western investors, the "reunified" GDR, Hungary, Poland, the now split Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, and thus all former allies of the Soviet Union, were fully joined to NATO and the EU. In the same year, they also extended to the former Baltic Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as to Slovenia, a constituent state of the non-aligned Yugoslavia, which was not blown up without the intervention of the NATO countries. By 2020, Croatia, Montenegro and northern Macedonia had been joined by further splinters of that defunct state, as well as Albania, which had previously been equally non-aligned. Bosnia-Herzegovina has only just emerged as a candidate for accession. Serbia, the core state of the filleted Yugoslavia, remains reserved; after all, it was bombed by NATO as recently as 1999 because of its efforts to keep the province of Kosovo in its federation by force (permitted under international law). The breakaway province now hosts a U.S. base for 7,000 troops even without a NATO umbrella.

If one measures the economic potency of the NATO countries and that of the new Russian military alliance with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in terms of gross domestic product, their strength, calculated in terms of purchasing power parity, is one tenth, and in terms of U.S. dollars one twentieth, of that of the NATO countries. As for the ratio of the leading powers Russia and the USA in this respect, Russia's economy is one-eighth and one-fifth of that of the USA, respectively; even in comparison with Germany, Russia's is only about 45 and 90 percent, respectively. And in terms of defense spending, the U.S. alone spends more than ten times as much as Russia.

Russia and Ukraine

"Without Ukraine, Russia is no longer a Eurasian empire," wrote U.S. President Jimmy Carter's advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997. At the latest since the turn of the century and Putin's presidency(s), the patience of the U.S. in particular with Russia's approach to its subaltern "right place" in the world system of capital utilization has come to an end. The hitherto somewhat respected "red line" of Russia's imperial claim to Ukraine as its "zone of influence" was increasingly crossed. Ukraine's path led from the "Orange Revolution" of 2003/4 to the "Euromaidan" nine years later, with quite a few breaches of law and a certain number of corpses, but with a lot of (credit) money, to the West, to a kind of cold NATO connection without an umbrella, but with intensive training and armament of the army.

In contrast, the Russian response - for lack of other means - is one with bombs and shells: fomenting the uprising in the Donbass, annexation of Crimea, and finally the invasion of Ukraine. Russia was punished by the West with stranglehold sanctions. - So much for the news from the world of small and big powers and the capital they serve.

Lack of perspective is spreading

For the people of Ukraine, whether they are more Russia-oriented or more West-oriented, the competition between the powers had and has no prospects, even after long years of negotiation. In the prevailing decline of capitalism, jobs - other prospects for life are no longer in mind - are threatened by a free trade zone with the EU, because then the products of the chemical and machine industry, steel production and those of construction products cannot be sold well in the economic zone dominated by Russia - and vice versa.

For loans merely to pay outstanding debts to the same IMF, the International Monetary Fund is demanding a near doubling of tariffs for housing and municipal services and - with inflation averaging over 12 percent a year since the "orange revolution" in 2004 - a freeze on salaries, pensions and social benefits, as well as a significant reduction in government spending and an abolition of tax breaks for farmers, as well as adjustments in monetary policy.

EU rapprochement and an economic community with Russia were about equally (un)popular among the population and were generally not considered particularly important. The emergence of an immensely wealthy oligarchy from the former party hierarchy in transition to private capitalism, on the other hand, aroused deep resentment, tore open a deep and growing gap between rich and poor, and allowed corruption to run rampant in all areas of life.

The promise to fight against this intolerability of everyday life eventually made comedian and actor Selenskyj win the 2019 presidential election against incumbent President Poroshenko with a result of 73 (!) percent. That approval rating dropped in polls to a disillusioned 25 percent by the time of the Russian invasion in late February 2022, only to rise steeply again to a desperate 90 percent with the president's patriotic speeches and theatrical gestures.

Selenskyi's war speeches before soon all parliaments of the West do not even shy away from the constant repetition of the demand for a direct confrontation of NATO with an equally nuclear-armed Russia. As long as it is considered reasonably certain that the first to detonate nuclear missiles will merely be the second to die, the U.S. and its NATO will prefer to turn Ukraine into a battlefield and a shambles, and its young men into cannon fodder for the West's "victory over Putin." But who knows exactly when the development of the nuclear powers' "mini-nukes" will have progressed to the point where they are considered battlefield-ready.

Already, however, the war cries are catching on outside the Ukrainian cities. Overnight, Germany increased its military spending by 100 billion euros, and even the neutral countries of Europe are clamoring for NATO membership and rapid rearmament. A whiff of July 1914 is blowing through the continent.

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Make Villages Not War!

by Franz Nahrada

[This article published on 3/25/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.streifzuege.org/2022/make-villages-not-war/.]

Since February 24, 2022, not only is there bombing and shooting in Ukraine, but also the intellectual buildings, insights and world views that have been painstakingly built up over generations are collapsing like houses of cards. Just a moment ago, many knew that the existing political, social and economic order of the world is a hundred percent guaranteed way not to cope with our planetary problems and to fail in the project of humanity. Not so few also thought that this order is collapsing, that only a global cooperative project of total transformation can still remedy this. And some already knew that the collapse starts from the edges of the commodity-producing world system, there where the losses and damages accumulate and destroy meanwhile not only the life of humans, but the planetary metabolism par excellence. And they also knew that a hegemonic world order watches over the fact that all this remains so, that superior violence is the condition of all business and that this world order is based on the fact that all natural and social wealth worldwide has to serve the increase of capital.

Very many knew at least this: that in case of failure of the mutual use of states, the denunciation of the state called peace, in which all reasons for war are created, is always an option. That states maintain armies and, in case of failure, are able to abolish all private relations and private conditions established by them by state order. That states, for the preservation of their power, which is the ultimate condition of all business, can also prevent this business, compel all social wealth, including the life and limb of their subjects, to defend themselves, enforce obedience internally by brute force and declare any objection to be high treason.

And of all things the foreseeable "preventive" revolt of a state - namely the Russian - will to assert itself, which is in possession of the necessary means of force including atomic bombs and whose local imperialism vulgo "sphere of influence" has been denied for decades by a consistent policy of encirclement, i.e. the Russian invasion of Ukraine, seems to bring down these insights! Of all things, because one is shaken by the state-sanctioned killing, it is supposed to be the only appropriate reaction to be deep inside for the one - namely the "dear NATO", as young girls chanted at the Vienna demo, and against the other - "monster Putin" - side? One learns what the private person counts in the war, namely nothing, and wishes the war not the immediate end, but the intensified continuation with the right outcome? Is it still possible? Suddenly the existing world order, which we have seen strike with all its brutality in the last decades, is supposed to be a positive condition for all that it is just putting off the agenda with all its force, because it does not depend on "Sustainable Development Goals" or anything else. More aggressively than ever before - at least since the 1960s - we are being asked to take sides in throwing gasoline on the fire, supplying weapons and not even considering any compromise with "Putin" as desirable. Enough with Russia!

One thing is certain: rearmament will not secure peace, but will finally prevent us from decisively transforming our way of life on this planet. Seriously: the time of the world powers, which have procured themselves in overabundant measure means of force and have already planned and prepared their employment, in order to kill on a final stage as "collateral damage" of their warlike collision a majority of mankind and to destroy the living conditions on earth - an "escalation", of which both sides assure that it may never take place and with which exactly in such a way constantly one threatens - this time of the world powers should rather come as fast as possible to an end, before it is finally too late. Because there is no greater danger for nature and mankind than the struggle of the empires, their claims, their means of business and violence and their total ruthlessness in their mutual confrontation. Instead of it now Hinz and Kunz longs for a "world power Europe"! Allegedly because it is so "without alternative"! And to make the measure full, it is the left and the Greens, of all people, who, in full awareness of their duchblickertum and their superior values, are the greatest agitators.

I have withdrawn from the organized and also discursive left for decades, because I am of the firm opinion that it is not sufficient for the overcoming of the ruling consciousness to point out the deficits of the existing order. Criticism remains impotent if it is not accompanied by a vision and a pragmatic perspective for implementing that vision. And the vision as well as the criticism must be supported by expertise, by scientific insights combined with a solid imagination. They must include the roots of the future, its germinal forms in the existing, just as they must keep in mind the deficits, the tasks still to be accomplished for the world to be built. They must have a strong and convincing basic shape that can carry solutions for a whole world. And they must be brought into the world with all the means of political art, from diplomacy to non-violent resistance.

This basic shape consists for me in the planetary cooperation for the work on the local, as it expresses the apparent oxymoron of the "global villages". Increasing attention to the shaping of the local, of our living spaces, is the only long-term prospect of peace this world has. For when we see our neighborhood, our village, our community, and our region as representative of a cell or cellular tissue in a healthy earth, and work to set an example, we help to create models of a good life for all everywhere. Never before have we been able to work better together as a global brain to solve the most diverse local problems, and never before has it been so obvious to share all knowledge, because this allows all communities and societies in the world to develop ever better and more intensively inwards. In this sense: Make Villages, Not War! We will rebuild a peaceful world from the grassroots !