Nation Topics - Afghanistan | The Nation

Refutes ten points in favor of the U.S.-led Iraq War. Criticism of claims that link the Taliban in Afghanistan to the Baath Party in Iraq; Discussion of relations between Libya and the United States; Discussion of whether Iran has violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Benefits brought to the Iraqi Kurds through the Iraq War; Discussion of the democratization of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon; Criticism of the claim that the U.S. killed thousands of Osama bin Laden infiltrators in Iraq and Afghanistan; Discussion of the impact of the Iraq War on U.S. soldiers who fought there.

Presents letters to the editor in response to articles in previous issues of "The Nation." "Lookout," on the World Bank's funding of nongovernmental organizations that provide health care in Afghanistan, in the May 2, 2005 issue; "Imperial Reach," on future plans for U.S. bases abroad, in the April 25 issue; "Democrat Killer?," on how the Democrats diatribes against guns detract from real issues, in the April 18 issue; More letters.

Focuses on the claims that a "Newsweek" article caused rioting in Afghanistan. Condemnation of the periodical, which published a story claiming the Koran had been flushed down a toilet in Guantánamo, by various government officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and White House spokesman Scott McClellan (citing U.S. President George W. Bush), which they claim caused the rioting; Claim by the senior commander in Afghanistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the Newsweek article had nothing to do with the riots.

Presents news briefs related to politics and government in the U.S. as of May 9, 2005. Efforts of several legislators to support passage of a bankruptcy bill that could favor credit card companies; Assessment of the voting records of Republican legislators by a nonpartisan public interest group; Report that the U.S. military completed a second investigation into the death of Pat Tillman, an Army soldiers, in Afghanistan.

The author comments on the United States' policy of torture in the War on Terrorism. On June 12, 2002, John Walker Lindh, the young Californian captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 and touted by John Ashcroft as an "American Taliban," was scheduled to take the stand in an evidence suppression hearing regarding a confession he had signed. There he would tell how he signed the document only after being tortured for days by US soldiers. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis had already said he was likely to allow Lindh to put on the stand military officers and even Guantánamo detainees who were witnesses to or participants in his alleged abuse. The Defense Department, which we now know had in late 2001 begun a secret, presidentially approved program of torture of Afghan and Al Qaeda captives at Bagram Air Base and other locations, had made it clear to the Justice Department that it wanted the suppression hearing blocked. Michael Chertoff, who as head of the Justice Department's criminal division was overseeing all the department's terrorism prosecutions, had his prosecution team offer a deal. Chertoff allegedly demanded--at Defense Department insistence--that Lindh sign a statement swearing he had "not been intentionally mistreated" by his US captors and waiving any future right to claim mistreatment or torture. At the time, few paid attention to this peculiar silencing of Lindh. In retrospect, though, it seems clear that the man coasting toward confirmation as Secretary of Homeland Security effectively prevented early exposure of the policy of torture, which we now know began in Afghanistan and later "migrated" to Guantánamo and eventually to Iraq.

The article discusses the reasons why torture is wrong. The war in Iraq has given birth to an issue that may one day be seen as more important than the war, the question of torture. Now the vote whether to confirm White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General will very likely be the key vote in regard to torture. In a memo to the President, Gonzales advised that the Geneva Conventions did not apply either to Al Qaeda or Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan. He opined that if the conventions were set aside by the President, any soldiers accused under the U.S. War Crimes Act might defend themselves against the charges of having committed war crimes under U.S. Code Section 2441 of American law. Can this nation now understand pain only if it is experienced by Americans or, through some chain of consequences, it rebounds upon the United States? Torture is not wrong because someone else thinks it is wrong or because others, in retaliation for torture by Americans, may torture Americans. Torture is wrong because it inflicts unspeakable pain upon the body of a fellow human being who is entirely at our mercy.

Looks at growth in the opium trade in Afghanistan. Size and scale of Afghanistan's opium trade; Increase in the growth of poppies, from which opium is produced; Contribution of the opium trade to Afghanistan's economy; Efforts of the British-led Counter Narcotics Directorate in Kabul to curb the opium trade; Comments of farmers involved with opium production in Afghanistan; Financial incentives of the poppy cultivation and opium trade for poor Afghan farmers.

Presents letters to the editor of "The Nation." Discussion of an article by Naomi Klein regarding the insurgency in Iraq; Response to the article "Letter From Afghanistan," by Ann Jones in the October 4, 2004 issue of the journal, regarding women's rights in Afghanistan; Others.

The article looks at social conditions and rights for women in Afghanistan as of October 2004. The United States President George W. Bush Administration claims to have established democracy in Afghanistan--but what can "democracy" possibly mean when more than half the population is property? Afghan girls and women are still bought, sold and traded as commodities. So far, the Bush administration has met that problem by ignoring it and spinning the official line that Afghan women were "liberated" when the Taliban dispersed, as if ideas of women and social control so deeply embedded in religion and culture could be thrown off like old burqas--which, incidentally, most women still wear. All of this is made painfully clear by the story of the Herati shelter girls. These twenty-six women first came to the attention of human rights workers in January of 2003 when a man reported to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) that refugee girls and women were imprisoned in a guesthouse belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held in "protective custody" by Ismail Khan, the notoriously dictatorial governor of Herat, in western Afghanistan. The UNHCR investigator found evidence of beatings by the guards, fights among the women, self-mutilations, repeated suicide attempts and profound psychological disturbance. International aid workers in Kabul have been warned not to raise the issue of women's rights before the Afghan presidential election, now scheduled for October, lest it spook a "conservative" reaction, topple the fragile Karzai government and reflect badly on the nation-building abilities of Bush.

In his now-famous report on Abu Ghraib prison, Major General Antonio Taguba identified Steve Stefanowicz, a civilian interrogator employed by CACI International, as having "allowed and/or instructed" United States soldiers to abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners and as giving orders that he knew "equated to physical abuse." CACI, which has twenty-seven interrogators working under Army command in Iraq, has taken a defiant stance on Taguba's allegations. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, CACI has emerged as one of the most unabashed corporate backers of United States President George W. Bush's foreign policy and a key supporter of the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of CACI's specialties is "social networks" analysis, which involves mapping relationships among terrorist networks and their civilian supporters--exactly what the U.S. Army interrogators at Abu Ghraib were after. When he was elected a CACI director in 1999, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and president of Armitage Associates, a consulting firm with a long list of powerful clients that included Boeing, Unocal, Texaco, Goldman Sachs and the Brown & Root subsidiary of Halliburton. In 2003, CACI earned $507 million in information technology revenues from the government, making it the country's seventeenth-largest federal information technology contractor. Sixty-five percent of its revenues came from the Defense Department, where CACI's clients include the Army's Intelligence and Security Command and V Corps, which has several units in Iraq that have been deeply involved in U.S. counterinsurgency operations. Any investigation of CACI should also focus on the higher-ups who approved these contracts, as well as any Administration officials who may know about CACI's relationship with military intelligence.