http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,593706,00.html
Blasting our way to peace
Justice has been redefined as success in a war that is sounding a
retreat from civilisation
By
George Monbiot
The Guardian,
Thursday November 15
2001
The armchair warriors have proved no more merciful in victory than the
Northern Alliance. Yesterday's Sun gave two pages to an editorial
entitled "Shame of the traitors: wrong, wrong, wrong ... the fools who
said Allies faced disaster". Christopher Hitchens raised the moral and
intellectual tone of the debate in the Guardian yesterday with this
lofty sentiment: "Well, ha ha ha and yah, boo - It was ... obvious
that defeat was impossible". Such magnanimity suggests that it is not
Afghanistan which we have bombed into the stone age, but ourselves.
But almost everyone now agrees that this is the end of history, all
over again. The sceptics have been routed as swiftly as the Taliban.
George Bush and Tony Blair, with the help of their daisy cutters and
cluster bombs, have ushered in a new, new world order, the long
awaited golden age of democracy. But have the warriors of the west,
both actual and virtual, really won? And if so, what precisely is the
prize?
There's no question that the rapid advance of the Northern Alliance
took hawks as well as doves by surprise. All of us, warriors and
sceptics, overestimated the difficulties of capturing Kabul. But the
Telegraph's repetition of Mrs Thatcher's injunction
- "just rejoice, rejoice" - may prove to be a little premature.
It would be rather easier to measure the success of the west's war
aims if those aims had not shifted with every presidential
announcement. But a few key questions may help us to determine how
much the B-52s have achieved. The first and most obvious is: will the
advance of the Northern Alliance lead to the overthrow of the
barbarous Taliban? The answer is, almost certainly, yes - although
they may persist as a guerrilla force. The question this then raises
is, will it improve the lives of the Afghan people? Almost everyone
appears to believe that it will. But we would be foolish to forget
that just five years ago both Afghans and western diplomats welcomed
the Taliban's capture of Kabul, as it relieved the inhabitants of the
murderous dominion of the men who now run the Northern Alliance.
Yesterday the Telegraph claimed that the Northern Alliance's "fearful
violence" towards Arab and Pakistani soldiers "is a shocking reminder
of the fact that Bin Laden's zealots have been a hated army of
occupation". Well, perhaps. But it is also a shocking reminder of the
fact that the Northern Alliance can be just as brutal as the hated
regime it has displaced. To the claim Polly Toynbee made on these
pages yesterday that "nothing could be worse" than the Taliban, one
can only respond: don't tempt fate.
The Northern Alliance's willingness to cooperate with western plans
for Afghanistan is also questionable. Four days ago, we were told
that its soldiers had been persuaded not to advance on Kabul, and this
was judged a victory for the west. Now they have taken Kabul, and this
too is hailed as a victory for the west. That the military action has
not gone according to plan, in other words, is presented as a
vindication of the plan.
Given that the Northern Alliance has so far shown little interest in
doing as the west requests, why should we assume that it would be
prepared to abandon its military gains for a "broad-based" political
settlement? Countless comparisons to the outcome in Serbia have been
made, as if this somehow offers proof that armed intervention leads
inexorably to democracy. But Serbia, unlike Afghanistan, already
possessed a mature democracy movement. Where is the Afghan
equivalent? Where are the moderate leaders with whom the west wants to
replace the Taliban? Who among all the named credible candidates does
not have blood on his hands? And will the fiercely independent
Afghans accept the writ of the UN? Or, given that both Russia and the
west have strategic and energy interests in central Asia, will it come
to be seen in the same light as the Soviet occupation?
Will the advance of the Northern Alliance save people who are at risk
of famine in Afghanistan? It will almost certainly save some of them.
Much more aid is now entering the areas which have come under Northern
Alliance control, though, like the retreating Taliban, the Alliance
fighters have been looting supplies and commandeering UN vehicles. But
for thousands the help is likely to have arrived too late. The
interruption of supplies during the eight weeks in which they should
have been stockpiled for the winter means that many of those living in
the valleys made inaccessible by snow will die before they can be
reached.
Will it lead to the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden? Possibly.
Will it free the world from terrorism? No. Will it deliver regional
or global security? Probably not. The Northern Alliance's gains
represented a bounty for Russia and a blow for Pakistan, whose
government is now facing a far graver test in victory than it would
have faced in defeat. Even in Britain, a new poll by the Today
programme shows 80% of Muslims opposed to the west's war.
But, as well as asking what this war has done to Asia, we must also
ask what it has done to us. And here, it seems to me, the bugles
sounding victory for civilised values are also sounding a retreat.
The first and most obvious loss is our repudiation of the very basis
of civilisation: human rights. The new terrorism bills in America and
Britain have required the suspension of both the US constitution and
the UK's human rights act - it seems that in trying to shut the
terrorists out, we have merely imprisoned ourselves.
One of the last smart bombs deployed in Kabul destroyed the offices of
al-Jazeera, the only truly independent major television station in the
Arab world. Al-Jazeera has consistently provided a voice for Muslims
opposed to US military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as airing
Bin Laden's inflammatory videos. A few weeks ago Colin Powell sought
to persuade the emir of Qatar to close it down, without success. Its
destruction suggests that free speech and dissent have now joined
terrorism as the business of "evil-doers".
The second loss to the west is the triumph of war-war over jaw-jaw.
The partial victory in Afghanistan appears to have convinced both
governments and commentators that we can blast our way to world peace.
No serious attempt was made, before the bombing began, to
differentiate between just and unjust war. Justice in war, as almost
every philosopher since Thomas Aquinas onwards agrees, requires that
the peaceful alternatives should first have been exhausted. There is
plenty to suggest that the initial aim - to capture Bin Laden - could
have been achieved without recourse to arms. The Taliban twice offered
to hand him over on receipt of evidence pointing to his guilt: a much
lower barrier to extradition than western governments would have
raised. We appear to have made no attempt to discover whether or not
they could have been taken at their word. Now justice appears to have
been redefined as success, and war as the only route to peace.
This new triumphalism is sliding effortlessly into a new imperialism.
It conflates armed and ethical success, munitions and morality. If
this is a victory for civilisation, I would hate to see what defeat
looks like.
www.monbiot.com
