Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
In the last week we have been able to see the shape of a
new World Order emerging from behind the dust of Manhattan.
It is clear that the US is determined to pursue the
infrastructure of al-Qaida, which they now claim is the
organisation behind the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
There is an apparent agreement amongst the Western European
powers that the Bush Administration will have to take some
major military action against at least Afghanistan - the
country most associated with Osmah-bin-Laden's movement - if
not a number of other Islamic nations. What constitutes a
'justified response' of course, depends on to whom you
speak, or whom you listen to. It was apparent within hours of the attacks that the Bush
Administration, for reasons obvious to anyone who has
studied the CV's of those ageing and paranoid Cold War
warriors who constitute the greater part of his cabinet, was
determined to 'up the ante'. From being regarded as a
murderous act of terrorism, which was crying out for
justice; we were hearing within hours that the attacks were
'an act of war,' crying out for revenge. The history of How the West was Won; and the US
Government's continuing, widespread use of mass imprisonment
and the death penalty as methods of social control are not
the only reasons that the reaction reached that point, so
fast. Any country suffering such a human loss in so short a
time; as well as the obvious wounding of its prestige in the
face of an unbelieving world, would have been tempted to
intemperate overreaction. The United States, however, is not
'any' country, and the dangers inherent in any response it
makes, both for the American people and their society, as
well as the rest of us who share this tiny globe, are
obvious. Firstly, by calling the attacks 'an act of war', Bush has
unwittingly perhaps walked into the very paradox - some
would say trap- that the Thatcher regime in 80's Britain
were so anxious to avoid when dealing with the IRA. The issue was personified by Bobby Sands, who led the
hunger strikers in the Maze Prison. He and others died in
the determination to win political status, rather than
criminal; and be recognised as 'prisoners of war". The British Government did not want to give legitimacy to
a struggle which was clearly based on political objectives -
as has been proved in subsequent years, when they finally
grasped the nettle and engaged in dialogue with people they
once regarded as criminal terrorists. The difficulty with the Bush Administration's rhetorical
rush to war; is that in a typical piece of fuzzy logic the
followers of bin-Laden are now seen by many in the Southern
Hemisphere as they no doubt see themselves anyway; soldiers
engaged in a holy war. It has also elevated an act against a purely civilian
target, which by all previous international legislation
would be mass murder and a war crime, into a frame of
reference we know as war. The obverse side of this is, of
course, the difficulty determining what constitutes war, and
what constitutes terrorism. It will be hard to watch replays of cruise missiles
exploding in the side of TV stations without unconsciously
referring back to the dreadful footage of the South Tower
being engulfed in a fireball as the 767 hit the side. After
all, terrorism could be defined as an act of terror
perpetrated on a civilian population for the pursuit of
political or ideological aims. The difference between war and terrorism has only really
existed since the emergence of the Nation State. The First
World War was instigated by a Serb asassinating an Austrian
aristocrat; a people whose country had disappeared into the
sprawl of Empire. It was the redrawing of those maps and
borders after 1918 which left many peoples divided across
nations; and others with no recognition at all - especially
in the oil-rich Middle East; which perhaps generated the
most bitterness amongst unrecognised and unrepresented
peoples. This of course allowed those that distributed the
remains of the old Ottoman Empire to pursue a policy of
divide and rule by the new imperial masters of the region -
the British, French and Americans, who had co-incidentally
redrawn the maps. The problem was further compounded with the imposition in
the area of a new State in a country already inhabited. The
Allies, and especially the British who were driven to the
negotiating table by Zionist terrorism, imposed on the
indigineous Christian, Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the
country called Palestine, the new exclusively Jewish State
of Israel. This not only left the original inhabitants of that
country as stateless wanderers, replacing them with the
desperate survivors of the European Holocaust and later
large numbers of expansionist, American zealots; but also
led to the emergence of what we now perceive as modern
'internationalterrorism'. Two other major concerns in the Arab /Muslim world are
the continuing bombardment of Iraq by US/British airforces,
and the US deployment of up to 20,000 personnel in the
Islamic homeland of Saudi Arabia; which controls 25% of the
world's oil supply. To begin to eradicate it, we must understand it.
Otherwise, for every Osmah-bin-Laden we asassinate, another
will spring up, with hundreds more young people ready to
kill in self-sacrifice for a dream. It is excusable in the Western Nations, especially the
superpower US, for the people to not comprehend what makes
someone feel so powerless and frustrated that they need to
do this; but we have armies to protect us and are recognised
as citizens of powerful nations whose lives are worth
significantly more than those of people from less fortunate
places. (Recent reports in The Guardian concern the ongoing
compensation scandal for victims of the Bhopal disaster,
caused by yet another global US corporate giant that
disappeared in the poison mist and left a legacy of death
and mutilation. If I told you that individual lives have
been compensated to the princely sum of $1500, would you
believe me? Seventeen years on from the 1984 Union Carbide
plant's chemical spill which killed 2000 people in one
night, and left over 600.000 others directly affected and
still awaiting compensation, the victims are still pursuing
their cases through the Indian and US Courts .) Unless we can make this leap of the imagination; and
begin to redress the inbalance somehow, this will indeed be
a war without end. The merging of war and terrorism was
extended beyond the horror of the Second World War -
instigated perhaps by the first "rogue nation", Germany, who
brought terror to civilian populations across Europe and
Africa. Unfortunately, most of the world regard what happened in
the secret undeclared war by Kissinger's US Bomber squadrons
against the people of Laos and Cambodia, in which 600,000
people died during constant carpet bombing, as acts of
international terrorism, for which no-one has been brought
to justice. Indeed, the ugly old spectre reared his head again last
week; leading one to ask why does he have this continuing,
pernicious influence on US foreign policy, never having been
elected for anything; and more to the point, why isn't he
sitting in a cell at The Hague next to our old friend
Slobodan. Many in the Middle East believe that Isreali Premier
Sharom should also have been brought to justice for the
Falange massacres in the refugee camps in the Lebanon. It is apparent too, that war is always talked better than
walked by people who have never been in one. Never known the
nightmare of walking through landscapes of the dead where
the only thing that you see moving will be something that
just tried to kill you. Many Washington insiders point to a division in the Bush
Administration between hawks like Condoleeza Rice (academic
background) and Dick Cheney (rich bastard oil baron
buy-yourself-a-government background) on one side; and Colin
Powell (professional soldier) on the other. Continual war is a different thing completely from
isolated acts of terrorism. The terror felt by people in the
Blitz, in London especially, was a result of night after
night, week after week of World Trade Centres. And for the
purposes of history as remembered by people who were there -
not Tony Blair - the US did not stand side by side with us
during the Blitz. It is not forgotten here that many individual Americans,
as well as Canadians, Commonwealth citizens and Poles did
come to Britain's defence; but it is also remembered that
Britain stood alone on the international stage in that
crucial time against Nazi Germany. It was the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour that
encouraged a reluctant US establishment to agree with
Roosevelt that war was inevitable. The people, who are always the first to be sent to the
field of slaughter, were of course reluctant to get involved
in another European War; but as it turned out later many
industrialists and bankers (including Senator Prescott Bush,
George W's grandfather) were making money out of both sides
for as long as it lasted. Indeed, American Capitalists had been so friendly to
Hitler's brand of corporate fascism that Henry Ford -
himself a noted anti-semite - invested vast amounts of money
in Nazi Germany, and was rewarded with his portrait being
given pride of place on Hitler's study wall. More to the point perhaps, it is now a well documented
fact that various US Corporations were receiving royalties
paid into Swiss Bank accounts from the production at their
plants in Occupied Europe; with the full knowledge that
slave labour was employed there. Perhaps WWII should have alerted the US Establishment to
the concept of 'blowback'. The rush to war, as well as the mass media's
concentration on the more personal, and often sensational
aspects of the tragedy have obscured or submerged other
elements of the news which are not only interrelated, but
intertwined. These are the acceleration, in the US and Britain in
particular, of what will ultimately end up as technological
police states, with the movements and freedom of expression
of its citizens being more severely proscribed by the state
than ever before. The restrictions on immigration, introduction of identity
cards and vastly increased powers of the intelligence
agencies and police in these countries will probably have
little effect on determined terrorist cells , but will
undoubtedly increase the control and surveillance of the
citizens themselves. For instance, the introduction of identity cards in
Britain - every little bureaucrat and secret policeman's
dream since Winston Churchill abolished them - would have
little effect at routing out determined terrorists in our
crowded inner cities. It would no doubt provide a steady income for forgers and
dodgy Government clerks - the availability of Irish
passports in South London pubs in the Eighties, the ink
still damp on the cover, was a standard gag on the comedy
circuit. It would soon become another reason to stop and harass
anyone who did not fit into the narrow parameters of police
or state normality; e.g. anyone 'dark', 'dressed funny'
(eco-protestors). However, it would add to the paranoid tension of the
phoney never-ending war (see George Orwell,1984 - a
cliché, I know); and give the State one more tool to
suppress dissent, which in their imagination will always
lead to terrorism. Sadly, most terror in the World is perpetrated by the
governments against the very people they are meant to
protect; and the first indications of this is the supression
of dissenting voices. This situation reminds us of the old anti-Vietnam song
- One, Two, Three, Four What the hell are we fighting for ? It is heartening in this time of saturation coverage of
the forthcoming war, justified from every angle in a way
comparable to mass psychological conditioning, that already
a fairly organised peace movement has sprung up. This is not so surprising in Europe, which has a healthy
anti-war tradition; but US youth as well have started to
mobilise against the rush to war. After all, they will be
the ones who will be expected to die in some remote and
barren land whilst their political masters take the glory
for their sacrifice. (Any news about the march on Washington this weekend, or
further activism can be found at http://www.peacefuljustice.cjb.net) The other major news of the moment is the continuing
collapse of the financial markets; no doubt accelerated by
the attack on NYC; but well under way for the last six
months. I am sure that Flame was not the only publication to
point out that with Republican pResidents you get war and
financial collapse - especially one with the inheritance and
dubious electoral mandate of this one. In times of economic crisis, as we have seen in all of
the bump and grind , boom and bust since the beginning of
capitalism, the rich get richer and the poor get left
behind. For some of us the recession is always there, either
round the corner, or staring us in the face. Unholy Wars; Afghanistan, America and International
Terrorism by John Cooley. pub. by Pluto Press,
£12.99 One of the most shocking aspects of the attacks for the
people of the US is the failure of their intelligence
agencies to prevent such a large, well organised group from
perpetrating such a blatant atrocity so easily. We are used to seeing Hollywood films in which sad or
inconclusive endings have been banished - unlike reality-
and the consequences of the plot are neatly tied up within
the requisite 95 minutes. We only have to look at the involvement of the US
Government, and its intelligence branches over the last
thirty years to see how pro-active involvement in the
affairs of other peoples can return to haunt your
children. Tucked away In the back of the Guardian Books section
(September 15th,2001) the author Giles Foden,
whose book on the US Embassy bombings in East Africa is
published by Faber in 2002, lists five forthcoming books
which are all pertinent to the Afghanistan / terrorism
situation since September 11th. Using the books, and his own background knowledge, Foden
points to a sequence of interrelated activities dating back
to the Eighties, which demonstrate the clear links between
Western Intelligence and Special Forces and the Muslim
fundamentalists based in Afghanistan. Perhaps the most interesting background to the current
war effort is the material in Michael Griffin's book. An expert on Afghanistan and that area of the World,
Giffin points to the obvious detrimental effect on Russia's
control of Central Asian Energy prices if a trans-Afghan oil
pipeline was constructed. He claims that the Clinton Administration held back from
any antagonism towards the Taliban, in order to gain some
advantage in any forthcoming deal. Giffin also makes the interesting observation that the
main US oil company involved (Unocal), whose prospective
partners are the Saudi Royal family and BP, is closely
connected to the Bush family. Equally intriguing are claims in the book by John Cooley,
the ABC journalist, that CIA executive Casey (later found
floating downriver after going fishing in his pyjamas) was
involved in the whole scheme. Links between bin-Laden's father, oil broker Roy Furmark
and Casey also extended to Adnan Kashoggi - who also did
business with Mark Thatcher - and the Iranian businessman
Mauchehr Ghorbanifar. John Cooley also mention the promotion of fundamentalism
by US intelligence services within the US Muslim community
with the aim of recruiting support for the covert war
against the USSR. Mosques and rifle clubs were apparently
used. Thatcher's administration in Britain were even more eager
apparently, not only training mohajeddin fighters in
Scotland's more remote regions (Ken Connor), but sending
into Afghanistan units of SAS forces to give active support
to the fighters (ex-SAS soldier Tom Carew). Simon Reeves' book demonstrates the murkiness of a world
where Western agents traded guns for opium,and the vast
amounts of dirty money flowing both ways through so - called
financial institutions (as the BCCI scandal
demonstrated). It only remains to be seen in the future how many of the
young fundamentalists trained at the CIA Camp Peary in
Virginia in the dark arts of espionage, sabotage and murder
will be turning their skills back against those who nurtured
them as the God-fearing alternative to Communism.
Blitzing History
Sleight of Hand - Obscuring the News.
From Dust to Bust
Blowback and the shadows of war
Ghost Force; Secret History of the SAS by Ken Connors. pub.
by Orion. £7.99
Jihad; The Secret War in Afghanistan by Tom Carew. pub. by
Mainstream
The New Jackals; Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the
Future of Terrorism by Simon Reeves. pub. by Deutsch
£17.99
Reaping the Whirlwind; The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan
by Michael Griffin. pub. by Pluto Press £19.95.
Afghanistan by Chris Steele-Perkins. pub. by Westzone
£30