# Mullaaaah, Just Killed a Man; Put a Gun Against His Head, Pulled the Trigger, Now He’s Dead; Mullaaaaah, oooooohh # posted by Richard Seymour

What I Learned From This Week's New Statesman

Afghanistan will soon be a holidaymaker’s dream. Women’s’ rights have “categorically improved” according to Charlotte Ponticelli, the senior co-ordinator for international women’s’ issues at the State Department (yes, the State Department is big on women’s’ rights). According to the Bush government, elections will soon be held to validate the Presidency of Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan will have been delivered from medieval-style tyranny to modern, enlightened democracy. Kabul already has its own Internet café – the very hallmark of modernity and free speech. It has restaurants, and new homes being built all the time. Girls may now attend school. Refugees have returned to Afghanistan in their droves (2 million is the figure usually cited).
Few have noticed this stunning renaissance outside of Afghanistan, with all eyes fixed on the interminable crisis unfolding in Iraq (yeah, sure, they’re rebuilding schools and reconstructing the infrastructure and everything will be fine in a few months. Scouts honour.) What is even more remarkable is that few have noticed this stunning renaissance inside Afghanistan either. Yes, new homes are being built in Kabul – but they are for the aid agencies to live in. Afghans are obliged to make use of the bombed out houses without roofs or windows. True, girls may now attend school (and, if they are lucky enough to live in Kabul, they can also attend a beauty school sponsored by Western cosmetics companies). But they may not sing on television, and pretty soon they will be prevented from driving if the country’s chief justice, Fazl Hadi Shinwari gets his way. They can still be stoned to death, too, and find themselves forced into marriages, subjected to torture, sexual violence or traffick. Elections may be imminent, but with less than 10% of the electorate registered to vote, and a third of the country is locked in perpetual war, these will only happen over the objections of the UN, international aid agencies and half the Afghan leadership. The Taliban’s resurgence in the south and east of the country may also make some impact on how people vote, as will Karzai’s complete lack of any political base in the country. (He is so popular among his fellow countrymen that no Afghan can be found to defend him, so he is protected night and day by a crew of mercenaries from Dyncorp).
It is also true that refugees have been returning to Afghanistan – but not always willingly. Uzbekhistan and Britain have both insisted on returning refugees compulsorily, while Amnesty International describes the situation they are being compelled to return to as extremely dangerous. The point about refugee returns would also be more compelling if there had not been enormous waves of refugee returns to Afghanistan while the Taliban were still in power. Or indeed, if a very large component of the refugee problem were not the result of US bombing.
I might also be inclined to make almighty fist out of the steep rise in opium production (to 76% of the total world output) since the fall of the Taliban if heroin addicts did not make up the bulk of my readership, and I did not consider the ‘war on drugs’ a hypocritical façade for clamp-downs on individual freedom (specifically that of the poor and the marginal). US troops don’t seem particularly adored in some parts of the country – and the reasons were made clear by Human Rights Watch, who accused the soldiers of being “cowboy-like”, targeting people who “generally turn out to be law-abiding citizens”. It is alleged that there are torture centres in Kandahar and Kabul, but it would be irresponsible of me to mention a thing like that without hard evidence, so I won’t mention it. Suffice to mention that at least one man, who was recognised by the Karzai government as an opponent of the Taliban, has disappeared into one of these whatever-centres and subsequently been shipped of to Guantanamo Bay where torture is alleged by recently returned inmates. That could in some small way contribute to resentment in areas on the border of Wiranistan where locals put up notices offering rewards in the thousands of dollars for the heads of US soldiers and their collaborators. Bombing children probably doesn’t help either. Book with Thomas Cook today.