Fw: Afghan Boomerang - A Marxist view of the current crisis

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 19:24:24 +0200
 From: wac <asafadiv at netvision.net.il>
 Subject: Afghan Boomerang - A Marxist view of the current crisis
 To: wac - nasira <wacnas at zahav.net.il>
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 Challenge # 70 includes a special supplement -

 Afghan Boomerang

 America's nurture of militant Islam and the miscalculations of Osama Bin
 Laden

 By Yacov Ben Efrat

 for the full text see :
 http://www.odaction.org/challenge/70/afghan.html
 http://www.odaction.org/challenge/

 Following is the introduction:

 ******
 Until recently, the name "Afghanistan" had an exotic ring to many, but
 not to US policy-makers. For a decade (1979-1989) they backed the Afghan
 war against the Soviet Union, contributing to the latter's collapse. The
 new world order had its start, one might say, in this desolate country,
 although it reached its heyday a short time later in the Gulf War.
 Among the "Mujahidin" who fought the Soviet Union were some who refused
 to accept the new world order. They saw the Afghan victory as a sign of
 Islamic superiority. The anti-Soviet war was a struggle against an
 Infidel Empire. The support they had received from America seemed to
 them merely a temporary conjunction of interests.
 The existence of these maverick groups, with their offbeat
 interpretation, aroused no misgivings in Washington. There were two
 reasons for complacency. One was the lopsided balance of forces: a great
 world power could hardly feel threatened by scattered bands of lightly
 armed fighters. Secondly, these former allies continued to collaborate
 in the US campaign to smash the Yugoslav federation, first in Bosnia,
 later in Kosovo. They also inflamed the war against Russia in Chechnya;
 here they cooperated with American oil companies, which sought to secure
 the energy resources of the Caspian Sea.
 In Afghanistan, one of these groups, the Taliban, took power by force in
 1996. It sheltered and sustained Osama Bin Laden, who issued a religious
 decree in 1998 calling for jihad, holy war, against the US. Yet here an
 additional factor blinded Washington: its regional allies, Saudi Arabia,
 Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, all supported the Taliban with
 arms and money. Indeed, the sole recognition of the Taliban government
 came from these three.
 How could America's main Muslim allies support the Taliban, who backed
 Osama Bin Laden's decree of jihad? And why did America fail to take the
 threat seriously?
 In order to answer these questions, we need to examine the roots of the
 current war. Whatever may have been Osama Bin Laden's role in igniting
 the conflict, it is a mistake to attribute the unprecedented attacks of
 September 11 to his extremist views alone. Extremism thrives in a
 specific political, social and economic reality, which is that of most
 peoples today. It is by no means typical to Islam. We find it among
 those former Yugoslavs who have since become ultra-nationalistic, or in
 Italy and Austria, where Fascists are again in government, or among the
 perpetrators of massacre in Africa, and even in the US itself, among
 Christian fundamentalists eagerly awaiting Armageddon. Extremism is an
 epidemic of global proportions.

 for the full article go to http://www.odaction.org/challenge/70/afghan.html