Invisible War v. Military Reconstruction

Joy Gordon has released her new book Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. She is touring. Check here to see if she is coming to your community.

There is a connection to be made between the international consensus on comprehensive economic sanctions against the people of Iraq and the ‘stated’ inverse of military led reconstruction to mitigate the humanitarian crisis of war.

The lesson from Iraq should be never again, the lesson from Afghanistan is you can't militarize relief and reconstruction and not expect a military response.

Invisible War | Joy Gordon

The economic sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1990 to 2003 were the most comprehensive and devastating of any established in the name of international governance. The sanctions, coupled with the bombing campaign of 1991, brought about the near collapse of Iraq’s infrastructure and profoundly compromised basic conditions necessary to sustain life.

“In one of the bitter ironies of our time, the UN Security Council--under the influence of the United States--destroyed a country in order to save it from its leader. In vividly portraying and thoroughly documenting the history of the Western decapitation of Iraq through economic sanctions Joy Gordon fills a huge gap in the literature. Her penetrating research reveals the purposefulness of punishment, complicity, rationalization, and outright deception as standard practice in the role played by the United States, which lacked critical self-reflection and any clear sense of rules or the relationship between means and ends. This book will become a foreign affairs classic.”— George A. Lopez, author of The Sanctions Decade

“In a powerful, original book, Gordon offers the most sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of the origins, administration, and impact of the Iraq sanctions regime. This is a damning account of how international administration was used by the U.S. and the UK for policy ends. Despite the rhetoric of humanitarianism, the sanctions were, in Gordon’s term, a humanitarian catastrophe.”—Neta C. Crawford, Boston University

Lessons for Afghanistan

The US military effort to use humanitarian agencies and humanitarian work as ‘force enhancers’ on the battlefield has blurred the lines between military strategy and humanitarian action. The military run Provisional Reconstruction Teams are seen as ineffective use of resources, creating parallel power structures in the country, and ultimately part of the international forces military strategy.

In November 29 aid agencies working in Afghanistan released the report Nowhere to Turn: The Failure to Protect Civilians in Afghanistan. Deeply concerned about the impact of the escalating violence on civilians, they had this to say about the Provisional Reconstruction Teams.


Provincial Reconstruction Teams

NGOs have long expressed concerns that PRT projects are often poorly executed, inappropriate and do not have sufficient community involvement to make them sustainable. There is little evidence this approach is generating stability and, in many instances where PRT projects have been implemented in insecure areas in an effort to win “hearts and minds,” they put individuals and communities at risk. A study conducted by CARE, the World Bank and the Afghan Ministry of Education in 2009 found that many community members believed that PRT-constructed schools in insecure areas were at higher risk of attack by AOG than other schools.

Most Afghans live in extremely difficult conditions and will often accept whatever support they can get. However, PRT and other military-dominated structures delivering aid must ensure that their actions do not put civilians in harm’s way. Yet despite the mounting evidence, PRT lead nations have done little to address these concerns.

Overall, the quality and type of work, impact and sustainability of PRTs varies greatly among lead nations. There has been little to no success in coordinating the work they do as a whole and the majority of PRTs still do not even report to the Afghan government, at national or provincial level, on their activities. PRT expenditures amount to hundreds of mil-lions of dollars in provinces such as Kandahar and Helmand. But in the relatively secure province of Bamiyan, PRT expenditure is estimated to comprise more than half the development budget for the entire province.

It may be too late to effectively coordinate the work of many PRTs, but it is not too late to plan for a responsible phase down of their assistance activities. As many PRT lead nations are likely to begin pulling out their troops in the near future, a transition strategy must be developed now to mitigate any potentially adverse effects.

ISAF’s rhetoric around PRT transition has become “civilianize, nationalize, Afghanize.” However, it is unclear what this actually means and whether each PRT lead nation agrees with this imprecise approach. There has been recent talk of “handing over” PRTs to the UN or “evolving” PRTs into civilian units under the control of the Afghan government, which is somewhat perplexing given that PRTs have only an interim security mandate and were never intended to be permanent institutions.

Aid money, not PRTs, must be demilitarized. PRTs have, and are likely to continue to have, a strong military, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism association in the minds of Afghans. This severely impairs their ability to deliver effective assistance and support rural development activities in which communities participate. In accordance with their interim status, PRTs should be gradually phased out while civilian forms of assistance are gradually increased as appropriate.

Recommendations
• Establish and implement a plan to gradually phase out PRT-provided and other militarized forms of aid, enabling military institutions to return to a focus on security and security sector re-form.
• Donors should seek to increase the capacity of and funding for national and international civilian organizations, instead of through PRTs or other military-dominated structures.
• In line with this, donors and international NGOs must also do more to increase the ability of local organizations to design and implement development projects over time.

If I… Youth Video Contest

A contribution from the American Friends Service Committee and National Priorities Project video contest that asked young people how they would spent the $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You will find all the videos here.

Amanda Terkel looks at yesterday’s quarterly report on the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan released by the White House. Violence is likely to increase….

The New School Year in Afghanistan

Dr. Zaher Wahab is a professor from Lewis and Clark College who spends four months of the year in Afghanistan teaching at the Teacher College in Kabul. An institution he helped to establish. He is an example of Afghan professionals returning to create a better future for the country. It is inspiring work with daunting challenges.

He comments that "[T]he education system, the country's only sure hope, is itself a disaster zone, and the millions of young Afghans with no education, employment or hope, a time bomb." This is the first reflection from his most recent trip. You can follow him on his blog Dispatches from Afghanistan where he offers snapshots of the impact of war and his work.

* In March Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency issued an advisory recommending the use of masks or other protective devices during the morning and evening rush hours in Kabul.

I arrived in Kabul on March 8 for my 14th visit to Afghanistan since early 2002. Safi airline from Dubai, touched down at Kabul international airport at 7AM. The airport, opened about a year ago, already feels small, congested, and old. The passengers were mostly non-Afghans of all types, races, and nationalities. Security was tight throughout, with exceptions for VIPs and Afghans with connections, who were spared standing in line, passport checks, or baggage inspection.

I was immediately impressed by the extreme air pollution, heaps of garbage by the road side, overwhelming signs of poverty, beggars everywhere, mud everywhere, crowds, monstrous traffic jams, and construction. Over the last decade, Kabul has grown from about half-a-million people, to 4.5 million; from a few thousand vehicles to a million vehicles; little waste to mountains of waste by the some 200,000 foreigners and the small over consuming Afghan class. The city still does not have a sewage system, any waste management, or regular garbage collection. And there is no urban planning. People just build any and everywhere, including the surrounding hills and mountains. Only the main roads are paved. People, dogs, cats, and animals are constantly going through the piles of globalized garbage spreading if further.

The predatory wealthy class builds gaudy Dubai-style mansions, without paving the sidewalks, or even cleaning up the trash with the work is finished. Most vehicles are second hand and all the fuel is leaded, mixed, and of the lowest quality. Most people still use wood, coal, cow dung, or plastics for cooking and heating. The foreigners, and the wealthy use generators fueled by gasoline, diesel, or kerosene. Very few structures have indoor plumbing or septic tanks, most use latrines, pits, or just nothing.

Since there is no sewage or draining system, since most roads are unpaved, and since it is windy in Kabul, you can get an idea what people breathe, eat and walk in. It is impossible to keep filthy dust and/or mud away. You can clearly see the thick air pollution affecting visibility. Consequently Kabul is probably the most polluted, filthy, toxic, and unhygienic capital in the world. Everyone, it seems, suffers from respiratory, skin and/or other illness, which prompted the previous minister of public health to state that pollution kills more people than the insurgents. This, after the US-NATO-Allies have been here for about ten years spending about $370 billion so far, and $3 billion per week currently.

Nouroze Start of the School Year

Monday March 22, marked the nouroze (new day) of the Afghan New Year--1390. Usually, this is a day of picnics, celebrations, festivities, visiting relatives, kite flying, and farmers showing/doing their stuff. Big festivals occur at the tomb and shrines of Imam Ali, Islam's fourth caliphate, cousin and son-and-law of the prophet Mohammad, in Mazari-Sharif and Kabul. This year, fear of violence, bombings, explosions and trouble kept most people away from public gatherings, though due to exceptional security measures, the day passed without any major incident.

As usual, there were many messages on the radio stations for the missing loved ones.

To "celebrate education," schools did not start on the day after New Year, instead they started on Wednesday, March 23. President Hamid Karzai rang the starting bell and gave a speech at the Amani School (first-twelfth grade) very near the urg, the presidential palace. Since he hardly ever ventures out, people call him a prisoner, the mayor of Kabul and/or the clown, and out of touch with the country. Needless to say all the talk on Thursday March 23 was about education. Officially eight million children, 387 of them girls, will attend 14,000 schools taught by 190,000 teachers. Since 65% of the country's population is under 20, about 7 million school-age children will not be in school. Half of the schools have buildings. There are no girl's schools in half of the country and there are very few, if any, women teachers outside the cities, where 75% of the people live.

Urban schools operate 2, 3, or even four shifts per day, reducing the school day to about 4 hours and the school year to about five months at best. Only a fourth of the teachers are considered qualified. Many children lack textbooks. There are no labs, libraries, cafeterias, athletic facilities, technology, indoor plumbing, or even electricity. School curriculum is old, bloated, and largely irrelevant to the needs or realities of Afghan life. Teaching consists of dictation, memorization, regurgitation and examination. There is little or no homework. Class size can range from 30-100.

There is an explosion of private schools, 450 schools and 36 tertiary institutions nationwide, without effective government oversight or quality control. As for "higher" education, there are 22 public postsecondary institutions enrolling some 90.000 students, 20% of them women. There is an explosion of private tertiary institutions too, again without any quality control by the ministry of higher education. Karzai chastised the substandard private sector. An estimated 1% of the population is enrolled in higher education.

The school year has begun, but the government has yet to announce the results of last year's university entrance exam (the concore), or the allocation of entrants to various institutions. 120,000 took the entrance exam, but only 60,000 will enter. Higher education too is beset with large classes, under-qualified faculty, lack of facilities and resources, old, incoherent, bloated and irrelevant curriculum, lack of funds, centralization, poor quality, lack of academic freedom, ethical issues, corruption and nepotism, and unequal access. Again, the occupation forces have been here for about ten years, spending $370 billion so far and $3 billion per week. The education system, the country's only sure hope, is itself a disaster zone, and the millions of young Afghans with no education, employment or hope, a time bomb.

Zaher Wahab
March 26, 2011; Hamal 6, 1390

Conscience Speaks - King's Legacy

Watch a provocative animation from Sharif Ezzat.


Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

To learn more about the extraordinary legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visit the Tavis Smiley archive.

Here is the text of the message delivered on April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York.

Silence is Betrayal

A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities over the pursuit of war.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, clan, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

May our country, on the brink of war, take to heart the final refrain of "America, the Beautiful": "America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law."

For Teachers and Activists

How do you start a discussion about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? After all, teenagers and young adults have only known our country at war. Growing up in the shadow of 9/11 their lives have been shaped by ‘terrorist plots’, homeland security, and troops being sent to war. Faith community and activists across the country are working to change that.

This was one of our ideas.

On May 20 last year, the combined costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars passed the $1 trillion dollar mark. In anticipation we began working with the National Priorities Project to reach out to young people with a simple question.

How would YOU spend $1 trillion?

The response was remarkable. Students groups, community centers, Quaker meetings, classrooms, individuals and AFSC staff with partners wrestled with the question. Some sought to illustrate just how much $1 trillion dollars really is, some talked about the human cost, many made the connection that money spent on war – and militarism – steals the resources needed for communities in distress here.

These videos are great ways to stimulate conversations. Show one, three, six, and you will find people have a reaction and want to talk.

Additional Resources: Curriculum guide, tool-kit and hand out of frequently asked questions.

Before You Enlist

Looking at the root causes of violence.

Our government spends $2.1 million every minute of every day on the military. We are deeply concerned by the recruitment of young people into that structure of violence. Before You Enlist has straight talk by veterans and their families – filling in the gaps – on what is missing from the sales pitch presented by recruiters and the military marketing machine.

It's a great resource for reaching out to young people being targeted by the government to join the military. It’s peace work.

One group that helps veterans deal with what they have seen and done after joining is the Warrior Writers Project. Tina Garnanez has one of the many stories about the decisions people make. She was a medic. It’s a multimedia look at the need to end these wars and how she got there.

Additional Resource: The Recruiter (HBO Documentary Films)

Student Art from the Ashes of War

Last June, while teaching in Kabul, Professor Zaher Wahab asked Afghan High School students – boys and girls – to draw pictures of their experience with war. These powerful images have been incorporated into the traveling mural exhibit Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan.

In this interview, Wahab discusses why Americans need a visual reminder of the war in Afghanistan, now the longest war in U.S. history.

What kinds of experiences and emotions are the Afghan high school students expressing in these drawings?

I could see the expressions on their faces as they drew. They experience or witness war and violence all the time—it’s very normal—and the drawing gave them the opportunity to reflect on their condition. The drawings show details of their reality that most children here would not express: the airplanes are all bombers instead of passenger jets; there are a lot of amputees—Afghanistan has the most amputees of any country in the world. There are many Kalashnikovs, knives, and whips. You see a prevalence of pain, suffering, and anguish that comes from death, dying, and destruction.

When I asked the students to draw the pictures, I had no idea their drawings would end up in a nationwide exhibit in the United States—the students thought they were drawing for fun and self-expression. I didn’t give them any cues or leads. I just asked them to draw their thoughts and feelings about Afghanistan. The images they created are all about violence, war, and survival. There’s nothing there about play or kids having fun.

It’s very clear from many studies from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Afghan Ministry of Public Health and others that the vast majority of Afghan people suffer from some kind of mental illness because of the 34-year war, non-stop occupation, and violence. It’s a nation that is deeply traumatized. Most of the men, women, and children have had direct experience with violence from shootings, bombings, and/or roadside IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. It’s part of people’s thinking, and you can see it in the way people talk to each other. They worry about staying alive, staying healthy, having food, water, shelter, and other basic necessities. Children are robbed of their childhoods; adults are mangled. Only half of children go to school because of insecurity, lack of schools, or the need to work to support their families.

What kind of reaction is the exhibit receiving from American audiences?

People are stunned. Most are uninformed, misinformed, and propagandized. You can’t imagine the suffering that the murals and drawings portray. Some don’t see, and can’t see, beyond the drawing. Some people want to donate money. Students ask how they can organize for change, justice, and peace. The exhibit may also bring up the psychological and ideological baggage people carry with them like Islamophobia and xenophobia, which has developed because of the way Afghans are represented by mainstream media and spokespersons for the military-industrial-political complex.

How does this exhibit challenge Americans to accept their identity as a nation at war?

You would hope it would confront people. Art can be very eloquent and powerful. I’m hoping this whole exhibit will prick the conscience of the American people, confront them, make them uncomfortable, and induce them to pause and think about the country’s arrogance, violence, and indifference to human suffering. I hope they will begin to ask, “Is this moral? Productive? Should we end this? What is my role and responsibility as a citizen, a member of the human family?”

To voice your opposition to the war, you’ve offered public testimony, published op-eds, and blogged about conditions in Afghanistan. What inspired you to get involved in this visual art project, and how do you think this medium makes a different impact than others?

This society is so video-ized, so visual, so isolated from others. Imagination seems impaired. We are not a reading nation. Empathy and sympathy seem to have atrophied amongst many in this society, so it’s hard for people to relate to the severity of the human suffering in Afghanistan, 13,000 miles away. The Afghans had nothing to do with 9/11, and yet that point is forgotten. And they have nothing against this country. So, you just hope to educate people to relate to other people’s interests, needs, pain, and suffering.

I am hopeful that someday sanity will prevail. And we have to do the right thing regardless. I was raised and educated to do the best I can and make life better for others and change the world. It’s part of my constitution. Who knows how many people will see these exhibits—in seven cities in the country—and be informed and inspired by them.

This interview is currently on the college home page.

Slideshow of Student Art from the Ashes of War