Different Stans

Indian Revisionism; American Revisionism

I find a lot of revisionism of history by the Twittering masses, especially about the war in Afghanistan.

The average idiot on social media believes that the US has killed the most people in the world (false) and that the US has especially killed a lot of the people in Afghanistan (false) which was all our fault because we somehow lured the Soviets into the war (false), supported Osama bin Ladn against them (false) and then caused the Taliban to be born as well (false).

All of these anti-American fictions never start with a firm grasp of the Soviet communist terror, where some 50 million people were killed, and never have a handle on the 10 years of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where one million civilians were killed.

Here's a simple powerpoint in case you never studied history.

In 1999, the largest number of refugees in the world were from Afghanistan. That's before 9/11, that's before the US invasion of Afghanistan, that's due to the Soviet war which ended in 1989.

One of the things I find most irksome is a certain kind of leftist Indian revision about the Soviet Union, the war in Afghanistan, and the United States.

Of all people, they should know better, as they were right there in the region, and knew exactly what was going on all around them. Indeed, there are intellectuals who do grasp it.

But there's a concerned faction that for all kinds of domestic and international political reasons is trying to shift the focus to the US.

So you get an article like this in the New Yorker by Pankaj Mishra.

When, during the short ensuing war between India and Pakistan, Nixon implicitly threatened India by ordering a nuclear aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Enterprise, into the Bay of Bengal, millions of Indian minds went dark with geopolitical paranoia. Nixon and his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, became, as Mistry puts it, “names to curse with.” Mistry’s protagonist amplifies a commonplace conjecture: “The CIA plan” involves supporting Pakistan against India, because India’s friendship with the Soviet Union “makes Nixon shit, lying awake in bed and thinking about it. His house is white, but his pyjamas become brown every night.” . . .

Yes, Kissinger and Nixon did bad things, we all recognize that. Yes, they are responsible for wars and loss of life. A huge protest movement was mounted against them, successfully, in the end, by the way.

But let's put this era in a much more credible perspective, shall we?

The reason the nefarious Kissinger and Nixon could get other members of government and the general public to be reluctant about India, and support its enemy Pakistan strategically, is because India was busy friending up the Soviet Union then, as the author admits.

That was a bad thing the author doesn't admit.

At that time not only did the Kremlin preside over a vicious system responsible for the unjust jailing and torture of tens of thousands, it had behind it the millions of people massacred by Lenin and Stalin. Some friend. Friending that friend would rightfully make anyone else who wanted freedom and liberty for all to be cold, i.e. as in Cold War.

You can point to all kinds of things the US did wrong in Pakistan. But if you airbrush out of your analysis the fact that the Soviets KILLED ONE MILLION AFGHANS AND FORCED FIVE MILLION TO FLEE during their war, you are completely dishonest intellectually.

Friending Pakistan to address Afghanistan is the least bad of a lot of bad options. You know, there's friending Uzbekistan, too. Or Iran. Okay, then. Least bad.

In the New Yorker piece, the author makes it seem as if Jimmy Carter somehow "lured" the Soviets into this war because he was happy to seem them "mired down" as the US had been in Viet Nam. It implies there was something the US could do to stop that war. Um, what would that be, a resolution at the UN Security Council?! The US role in funding the rebels was hardly significant -- like I said, ONE MILLION were killed. If the US were able to do more, obviously so many wouldn't have been killed. But it was pin-pricking the opposite nuclear power and never going to do much.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, you get the same context-free thinking, blaming Bangladesh entirely on Kissinger and Nixon, when even Wikipedia doesn't do that. Supporting murderous Pakistani generals isn't the same thing as committing massacres -- which in fact were set in motion by factors outside of the US -- and start with India's partitioning out of Muslims.

Writes Bass:

As recently declassified documents and White House tapes show, Nixon and Kissinger stood stoutly behind Pakistan’s generals, supporting the murderous regime at many of the most crucial moments. This largely overlooked horror ranks among the darkest chapters in the entire cold war.

Of course, no country, not even the United States, can prevent massacres everywhere in the world — but this was a close American ally, which prized its warm relationship with the United States and used American weapons and military supplies against its own people.

Nixon and Kissinger were not just motivated by dispassionate realpolitik, weighing Pakistan’s help with the secret opening to China or India’s pro-Soviet leanings. The White House tapes capture their emotional rage, going far beyond Nixon’s habitual vulgarity. In the Oval Office, Nixon told Kissinger that the Indians needed “a mass famine.” Kissinger sneered at people who “bleed” for “the dying Bengalis.”

They were unmoved by the suffering of Bengalis, despite detailed reporting about the killing from Archer K. Blood, the brave United States consul general in East Pakistan. Nor did Nixon and Kissinger waver when Kenneth B. Keating, a former Republican senator from New York then serving as the American ambassador to India, personally confronted them in the Oval Office about “a matter of genocide” that targeted the Hindu minority among the Bengalis.

After Mr. Blood’s consulate sent an extraordinary cable formally dissenting from American policy, decrying what it called genocide, Nixon and Kissinger ousted Mr. Blood from his post in East Pakistan. Kissinger privately scorned Mr. Blood as “this maniac”; Nixon called Mr. Keating “a traitor.”

All of this may well be true, but Bass must never have ready any other divulged Kissinger comments if he thinks this represents a special animus; Kissinger also infamously suggested that even if the Soviet Jews were killed in large numbers as in the Holocaust, it would not be a fight for the US due to Soviet nuclear power.

See, when a scholar like this cannot accept the reality of the massive crimes against humanity of the Soviets, their invasions of countries and coercive sphere of influence and their war in Afghanistan, then I find myself wishing for a second opinion. This scholar dismisses concerns about India's pro-Soviet leanings.

But these are real concerns. It doesn't matter if Nixon is cynical about them; they are real. They are about mass crimes against humanity and a bloody oppressive system that you deter, and do not let spread if you value freedom. Scholars like Bass don't have a feel for this reality.

I'm happy to remember what Nixon and Kissinger did in those horrible days if Prof. Bass will zoom out and remember what the Soviets did in their terrible days before and during this period.

Amy Goodman and Alan Nairn place the darkest hour in a different place -- Indonesia, and the massacre of East Timor by the generals backed by the US. It was their direct experience in those atrocities that set them up for a life-long career of anti-government activism and the creation of Democracy Now! which champions Manning and Snowden.

So for them, too, nothing exists but the sins of US pragmatism backing up this or that awful regime in the Cold War, but the back story to that -- the Soviet Union and the worst crimes against humanity -- never exist. It's those crimes that enabled both sincere and cynical reactions including the backing of autocratic regimes.

I could add that Amy, Jeremy Scahill and the rest of this crowd could care less when the US backs the Russian regimes, responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of Chechens. And of course they were all MIA and preoccupied only with the one-sided peace-movement in the Soviet era and never did anything about the previous war in Afghanistan.

Those like Bass who focus only on American evils in a complex story like Bangladesh and tend only to worry about due process for Islamists rather than justice for all also leave out the work of feminist scholars such as Gita Sagahl.

In openDemocracy recently, I argued that Bangladesh was the forgotten template for 20^th century war. Long before the killings and mass rape that took place in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Bangladesh showed what happens when militias allied to the army are involved in a conflict[4].  Although contemporary witnesses, including a number of US diplomats[5]  were convinced that they were witnessing genocide[6] – that is the deliberate destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group; by the twenty first century, the conflict in Bangladesh had largely disappeared from international concern.   A BBC website defining genocide, for instance, failed to include Bangladesh even among a list of possible genocidal campaigns. Since 1972, not a single human rights organisation has done any investigation of the conflict, although they have been harsh in their comments about the establishment of an international crimes tribunal to try alleged war criminals.

The Pakistan military, one of the chief perpetrators of the conflict, is out of reach of the Bangladeshi authorities.    Nine men have been charged and numerous others, including at least two men resident in Western countries, are being investigated. All those charged are Bengalis. They are opposition leaders mostly of the Jamaat e Islami, a transnational fundamentalist political party, allied to the Muslim Brotherhood and often seen by Western governments as ‘moderate Islamists’. In Pakistan, in Britain and in the US, those accused of grave crimes enjoy almost complete impunity[7]. It is only in Bangladesh that there is an attempt at holding them accountable.  A mass movement, conducted almost entirely by survivors of the genocide, and energised by a new generation of younger activists, made the trial of alleged war criminals a major issue in the last elections.

I'm not an expert on this region or these wars. I'm reading along with everyone else. But I see revisionism when I see the context of Soviet crimes against humanity and the genuine and legitimate reasons for the Cold War always left out. I'm happy to see wrong where wrong is done and don't have a problem joining in the condemnation of Nixon and Kissinger. But it's a one-sided story when it's only about them, and the Cold War is seen as merely an attempt at American hegemony instead of engendered by really serious crimes against humanity. If you don't make this part of the analysis, then you set up the next time when the crimes of communism or extremism or terrorism -- real an actual crimes -- are used to justify something the left finds wrong. Why can't the left be against both things?

Look how many of these children were injured or killed by suicide bombs and Taliban-placed IEDs...

 

The Misery of Afghanistan

The Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), R.Gil Kerlikowske meets Afghan and American officials at a dinner held at the U.S Ambassadors residence on Feb 01, 2010. The third day in Afghanistan, Kerlikwoske visited the Sanga Amaj Treatment Center run by Social Services for Afghan Women (SSAW). This drug treatment center is populated by Afghan women addicted to opiates and their children that they bring to stay with them through-out their inpatient treatment. Photo: US Embassy Kabul, 2010.

As we get ready to pull out all our troops...

Insider attacks continue in Afghanisan:  Robert Tilford reports:

Insider attacks in Afghanistan continue to occur however but at a much reduced rate from 2012, according to a new Pentagon report.

There have been “nine insider attacks against ISAF thus far in 2013 compared to 35 during the same period in 2012″, the report notes.

Insider attacks risk “undermining international support for the mission and long-term support for the Afghan government, which could pose a threat to the transition process and stability beyond 2014.”

“The mitigation measures adopted by ISAF and the ANSF since the surge in attacks during  summer 2012 appear to be making a difference, and to date, the rate of attacks against ISAF is significantly reduced. That said, these mitigation measures continue to diminish ISAF resources  and hamper movement, speed, and activity on the tactical level. Attacks against the ANSF  continue to rise, however, and may continue to do so as the ANSF assume greater responsibility  for the security of Afghanistan”, according to a new Defense Deaprtment report  http://www.defense.gov/pubs/October_1230_Report_Master_Nov7.pdf).

More than 590,000 Afghans displaced by Taliban oppression and fighting, says the Wall Street Journal:

More than 590,000 Afghans had been displaced from their homes by fighting and Taliban threats by late August, according to the United Nations, a 21% increase since January and more than four times the number in 2006, when the insurgency began in earnest. Wazira, who like many Afghans goes by one name, is one of more than 12,000 displaced people from Wardak province alone who now share homes around Kabul, according to the U.N.

U.N. officials worry that widening violence could kick off an exodus abroad when American-led forces leave the country next year.

For those trying to leave Afghanistan altogether, the first stop often is neighboring Iran or Pakistan. Some who are wealthy or lucky enough head for Europe or Australia, which already is coping with an influx of Afghan boat people. Some 38,000 people from Afghanistan have managed to get into industrialized nations to apply for asylum last year, more than from any other country, according to the U.N., and the highest figure since the U.S. invasion in 2001.

That Other Big Afghan Crisis, the Growing Army of Addicts, says the New York Times.

The number of drug users in Afghanistan is estimated to be as high as 1.6 million, or about 5.3 percent of the population, among the highest rates in the world. Nationwide, one in 10 urban households has at least one drug user, according to a recent report from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In the city of Herat, it is one in five.

From 2005 to 2009, the use of opiates doubled, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, putting Afghanistan on par with Russia and Iran, and the number of heroin users jumped more than 140 percent. Most drug experts think the rate of drug use has only increased since then.

In a country troubled by adversity, from its long-running war to rampant corruption, drug addiction ranks low among national priorities. Government funding for treatment and outreach is less than $4 million a year. There are just under 28,000 formal treatment slots available nationwide, officials say, and such programs rely heavily on roughly $12 million a year in extra international funding for treatment.

The focus of the international community and the Afghan government has instead been on reducing opium production. Since the beginning of the war in 2001, the Americans have spent more than $6 billion to curb Afghanistan’s opium industry, including eradication and alternative crop subsidies. The effort has struggled, and in many areas eradication efforts have been unofficially abandoned as too costly in terms of lost public support for government.

This last article I almost missed because like a lot of people, I tend to read the news that other people have already pushed through links on Facebook and Twitter first, then on various email services next, and then only later go through to the actual pages of news sites I might have book-marked or in readers. I might even actually visit the front page of the New York Times electronic version, but perhaps a story isn't on the front page.

I only saw the story of the addicts because my aunt still gets the hard copy of the Times delivered to her home and I read it there. I keep discovering every other week how many things I've missed in the next pages, the back pages, the pages in between a link or a tweet.

I cite these stories because these are all functions of the Taliban, and our withdrawal.

So much revisionism goes on now -- just as with the Soviet era -- focusing on US killings of civilians or blaming the US. The Taliban has massacred 85% of the civilians killed in the war; Karzai and his allies the other 15%. ISAF is considered among Karzai's allies, but is responsible for a tiny fraction  of the deaths.

Nevertheless, the Nation obsesses one-sidedly in articles like this only about the US.

Yes, nearly 6500 people killed in 10 years is indeed an awful thing and if troops are responsible for unlawful killing, by all means,punish them.

But let's contrast that with the MORE THAN ONE MILLION CIVILIANS KILLED BY THE SOVIETS IN THE 1980S IN AFGHANISTAN.

My God, why should I even have to explain this?

 

Uzbekistan's Delegate Pounds the Table at the UN -- Denies Ample Evidence of Torture

Elena Urlayeva and Abdujalil Boymatov call for resignation of Karimov on Nov. 7, 2010. Photo by p de la Fuentes.

The extraordinary scandals and dramas in the presidential palace and halls of the national security ministry in Uzbekistan lately seem almost larger than life. There are lurid tales of voices raised as the First Daughter wages a war against her sister and fights for a cousin arrested by the secret police, flinging ashtrays and slapping people -- all leading to the aging and weakened president weeping in the garden.

But all that is hard to confirm because it's hear-say and gossip, although the Christian Science Monitor and other mainstream newspapers are reporting some of it.

Meanwhile, on a lesser stage at a UN panel, you could see the dramas actually playing out, with shouting and fists banging on the table.

Long-time UN watchers are calling it the most incredible thing they've ever seen -- well, none of them are old enough to remember Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN Security Council.

The normally smooth-tongued and placid Akmal Saidov, chairman of the official National Human Rights Center, was literally shouting and pounding the table at a recent session of the UN's Committee Against Torture, the body charged with assessing countries' compliance with the Convention Against Torture.

Uzbekistan is notorious for torture in its prisons and other facilities of incarceration, and also notorious for backing and filling and double-talking its way out of pressure from the international community. Tashkent is infamous for perpetuating old Soviet methods; when the International Committee of the Red Cross came to visit a prisoner who had filed complaints of torture, the wardens simply substituted the real prisoner with a prompted fake who said everything was fine. Relatives were able to uncover the deception, and eventually this fraud and other difficulties -- like not being able to obtain conditions usually required by the Red Cross for visiting prisoners privately -- led the ICRC finally to withdraw from Uzbekistan.

If you have patience to work with a laggy video and know Russian -- or even if you don't -- you can get a gander at all this emotional defensiveness here.

Although this is a bit simplified, Steve Swerdlow of Human Rights Watch was live-tweeting the session which will give you the flavour. The UN, particularly under pressure from Russia, China and other major-league human rights abusers is always trying to take away NGO privileges at the sessions, but cell phones, lap-tops and i-Pads are allowed in the session, mainly because the UN diplomats and experts refuse to do without them.

RFE/RL also covered the story of the yelling and fist-banging.

Saidov accused committee members of using outdated information.

"You also refer to 'systematic torture' -- an antiquated, hackneyed expression that has long been thrown in our faces," he said. "There is no such phrase as 'systematic torture' in international law. That's not my conclusion, but that of the former UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak."

After Saidov's angry outburst, Felice Gaer, vice chairperson of the UN committee and the country rapporteur for Uzbekistan, said the committee dealt only with the facts. She recalled the saying, "If you can't cite the facts, you cite the law, and if you can't cite the law, you bang the table," and said that's what the committee had witnessed at the review.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights produced a rather sanitized version of the session, without the histrionics, but everyone knows they were there.

There were some other highlights -- CAT has repeatedly asked for what was being done in terms of redress for families of victims of the Andijan events, the massacre by Uzbek troops in 2005 of hundreds of civilians who came out on the public squares to demonstrate, following a jailbreak by armed opposition, the murder of several policemen, and the taking of hostages. (Human rights NGOs tend to emphasize the first part of that sentence and not mention or minimize the second part, but the two have to be mentioned together -- violence did beget violence.) Saidov's answer: "Andijan is a closed subject for Uzbekistan. It's over." Once again, he claimed that the fact that Human Rights Watch could send observers to the trials of some of the people in the Andijan case was somehow the same thing as providing a full and frank report and permitting impartial investigators. It was not.

Another creepy note was sounded when the Chinese member of CAT -- this is the UN, and any country can run for elections and be voted into these bodies -- praised Uzbekistan for "making so much progress" -- why, it already had drafted several "national plans of action" -- which is the usual sop to UN requirements -- avidly encouraged by the UN bureaucracy -- to try to do something about bad human rights records.

Saidov responded: “We’re studying the Chinese experience” and “Your experience is highly valued by us.”

Ugh. Nobody wants to think about what it means in real terms when China buys up half the gas and mineral companies and such in Central Asia. Well, that's what it means.

The official summary record also failed to mention all the names of the cases -- representing every issue from absence of lawyers to coerced confessions from torture to unjust imprisonment, etc.  brought to Uzbekistan's attention, which I obtained:

1^st day

Ruhiddin Komilov, Rustam Tyuleganov and Bakhrom Abdurakhmanov

Vahit Gunes

Solijon Abdurakhmanov

Turaboi Juraboev

Sergei Naumov

Zahid Umataliev

Dilmurod Saidov

Azam Turgunov

Bobomurad Razzakov

Gaibullo Djalilov

Rasul Khudoynazarov

Norboy Kholjigitov

Yusuf Jumaev

Elena Urlayeva

Tatiana Dovlatova

Azam Formonov

Rayhon, Khosiyat, and Nargiza Soatova

Gulnaza Yuldaseva

Mehrinisso and Zulhumor Hamdamova

Katum Ortikov

Mutabar Tajibaeva

2^nd day

Erkin Musaev

HRDefenders :

Nosim Isakov

Ganihom Mamatkhanov

Chuyan Mamatkulov

Zafarjon Rahimov

Nematjon Siddikov

Batyrbek Eshkuziev

Ruhiddin Fahruddinov

Hayrullo Hamidov

Bahrom Ibragimov

Murod Juraev

Davron Kabilov

Matluba Karimova

Samandar Kukanov

Gayrat Mehiboev

Rusam Usmanov

Rashanbek Vafoev

Akram Yuldashev

The Uzbek delegation didn't have any answers, but apparently they may provide them in writing later.

Kyrgyzstan will be reviewed November 11th and 12th at the UN CAT.

 

Uzbek Teachers Tell Students What to Say to ILO Inspectors

Fifth-grader in Karalpakstan, Uzbekistan picking cotton. Photo by Uzbek-German Forum.

The Cotton Coalition (where I worked as a web editor for two years) regrettably pulled their punches when it came to the ill-advised ILO mission to Uzbekistan this year.

The mission shouldn't have gone, because they couldn't get all the conditions they needed to do a proper independent monitoring without interference. They then participate in the sealing of a bad situation instead of maintaining standards.

As I pointed out, no human rights groups should have endorsed this and should have loudly and forcefully condemned it.

That's what you do when you're an NGO and not a government.

To reiterate:

Yet, the Cotton Campaign (funded by the Soros Foundations, although EurasiaNet, also funded by the Soros Foundations doesn't tell you that) cautiously welcomed this rigged "monitoring" visit.

Human Rights Watch signed their cautious welcome, yet their Uzbek researcher still felt called upon to object to the conditions:

Campaigners are concerned that the observers will not gain unfettered access to the cotton fields. “It is essential that monitoring teams be comprised only of independent observers and not include any Uzbek officials,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia Researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch, told EurasiaNet.org.

Yet surely HRW knows that it's too late to insist on conditions when the mission is already deployed and the bad terms already set. While HRW received $100 million from the Soros Foundations to establish them as the leading human rights group in the world, they should have long ago told the Soros strategists that they were withdrawing from the Cotton Campaign because it was ineffective and wishy-washy when it needed to be strong.

I don't understand how it is that the Cotton Campaign couldn't keep its distance from both State and the ILO on this, but I think it has to do with a variety of factors:

o the wish to stay "engaged" -- these post-Soviet authoritarians are masters at guilt-tripping liberals into staying involved with them for fear that they are "missing opportunities" or "moving the goal-posts" or "never being able to say yes". The fact is, the only things these regimes understand is a consistent "no," pressure, and the refusal to legitimize

o possible promises from State that they'd either move Uzbekistan down to tier 3 on the trafficking report, or some other gesture -- I've been told by officials myself that "after 2014, things will get better" because the US won't be under pressure to maintain the NDN;

o former State Department officials who have revolved into Soros or Human Rights Watch or other groups who feel beholden to their old comrades and/or a perspective that says you must "stay engaged"; Tom Malinowski, the former advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, a former Clinton Administration official and great engager of Russia and the post-Soviet countries, is now Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; HRW received $100 million from the Soros Foundations;

o some members of the coalition, i.e. in the apparels industry, who don't want to appear too radical.

Well, all of these issues are endemic to any coalition that ranges from radical to conservative on an issue. There are reasons to keep coalitions like this going, but individual members should feel they can step out and criticize Uzbekistan when they need to.

Today the Chronicle of Forced Labor translated a broadcast from Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe's Uzbekistan service, Radio Ozodlik:  International Monitors are still in Uzbekistan:

International Monitors are still in Uzbekistan: Authorities are instructing students what to say to them

23.10.2013

A father whose child studies at Yangier Construction and Communal Services Vocational high school in Syrdarya region, called Radio Liberty. After requesting anonymity, he reported on a meeting between the international monitors and students of his child’s high school on October 22.

Prior to the meeting, all the first-year students (ages 15-16), who recently returned from one month picking cotton, received special training on what to say to the visitors and were thoroughly coached.

"My daughter told me that her teacher told them that a commission is coming to visit, so they need to teach the students what to say to the commission. The director himself came and taught the students what to answer if they are asked questions. While in the cotton fields, these children were taught what to say to anyone who asked. Back at the school, they were taught to say that they didn't go to pick cotton, that they studied, that their facilities are great and warm and they don't have any difficulties," said the father.

On October 22 a commission accompanied by government officials arrived to meet with students and schoolchildren in the Syrdarya region. Residents assume that the commission members were the international monitors, because since September these international observers have been monitoring across the country and researching the situation with child labour and forced labour.

Despite efforts by officials in Tashkent to keep children under the age of 18 from participating in cotton harvesting, the many fatal incidents involving students and schoolchildren who were forced to pick cotton is reflecting the real situation. Particularly, on October21, 16-year old Yuldoshev Erkaboy died. He had been forced to go to pick cotton and stay in Galaba village, Urganch district of Khorezm region.

It's highly troubling that so many deaths have occurred this year at a time when the government claims it is no longer using young children and international monitors are coming on the scene. That suggests a condition of pressure and disintegration. I wish the international community had more access. It doesn't and hasn't really sufficiently tried to get it.