The US' war of aggression in Afghanistan
Under cover of darkness, US and United Kingdon (UK) warplanes started bombing Afghanistan's main cities on October 7. This was followed by further bombings in the next few days.
According to US propaganda, the bombings were aimed at "crushing the air defenses and command centers of the Taliban". Thus, "military targets" which were actually civilian airports and roads and other infrastructure were indiscriminately bombed.
The US bombed the village of Karam because it was allegedly a Taliban storage area for guns and ammunition. On October 16, US bombs hit the Red Cross' warehouses in the village. Two warehouses full of supplies that the Afghan people desperately needed were razed to the ground. A guard was also wounded. Another Red Cross warehouse was hit by the US in the fourth week of October.
In launching this war, the US flaunts its nonrecognition of a people's basic rights of sovereignty and independence against foreign intervention and aggression. It despicably uses the slogan "Enduring Freedom" even as it violates the rights and destroys the livelihood of the Afghan people, who are among the world's poorest and most oppressed. Prior to this, the slogan "Infinite Justice" was arrogantly used but later recalled after it reaped numerous negative reactions.
The US' haughty objective is to impose its imperialist power over Afghanistan and the Central Asian region.
The destruction wrought by the bombing campaign on what is left of Afghanistan's infrastructure has been thorough and extensive. Already backward conditions in cities have further deteriorated. As early as the second day of the bombings, US and UK warplanes had begun running out of targets.
Civilian targets. Contrary to US propaganda that bombs have precise targets, most of them actually miss their targets. As of the second week of the bombings, 400 civilians had been confirmed dead, including children and women and four United Nations workers. But according to witnesses, the number of dead has already reached 800 or more.
On the second week of the bombing campaign, the US deployed B-52 bombers to look for mobile targets (such as Taliban and al Qaeda "troops") and to drop cluster bombs, which scatter 150 smaller bombs upon impact. The Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations condemn and prohibit the use of cluster bombs because they affect large areas and because most of the smaller bombs do not immediately explode. They explode only if stepped on by a human or an animal. Compared to landmines, they kill more people because they explode over a wider area.
With the US' failure to kill bin Laden despite the all-out military campaign, the Pentagon has recommended the use of nuclear arms to bomb al Qaeda strongholds. The US insists that its use will only be "tactical" and against "specific" targets. The US last used nuclear arms when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, killing more than 100,000 people.
Starving and "feeding". The US boasts that its food and medicine drops are forms of "assistance" to civilians affected by their war. Within a week, military planes dropped 110,000 food rations (an average of 16,000 per day). In fact, this is a senseless campaign that can hardly meet the daily needs of eight million Afghans who will go hungry because of the war of aggression. There is likewise the danger of the packages landing in areas packed with landmines. There are more than 10 million landmines in Afghanistan.
The US has criminally ordered a halt in the distribution of food and other aid by international humanitarian organizations and neighboring countries to force the Afghan people to rely on aid provided by the US military. Because of this, an estimated one million Afghans will die of starvation and poverty in the coming winter. Even before the war of aggression, more than 3.8 million Afghans were already dependent on food aid. If the entry of new supplies is stopped, 320,000 Afghans will have nothing to eat within a week's time. In December, 1.6 million people will run out of food. The United Nations has already raised its estimate of the number of people who will be in need of assistance this year, from 5.5 million to 7.5 million (or a third of Afghanistan's population). The "first war" of the millennium is quickly turning into a genocidal war.
It is evident that the food drops are sheer military propaganda. The US does them to justify the bombings ("the Taliban's air defenses must be crushed before any food drops can be done peacefully") and cover up the violence wrought by its war of aggression on civilians. It is also using the food drops to woo the Afghan people. On the packaged food are the words "gift of the American people to the Afghan people". The US also drops pamphlets and wind-up radios along with the food.
The pamphlets carry the picture of an Afghan shaking the hand of an American soldier. On the other hand, the radios are designed to broadcast from only one station (which is run by the US military) to prevent the Taliban from using it for its own broadcasts.
Forced evacuations. At least 1.1 million Afghan are estimated to have left their homes immediately after the US declared war on Afghanistan. Most of them journeyed to the borders of neighboring countries to escape the US and UK attacks. But most of them will be refused entry and forced to return to congested refugee camps inside Afghanistan. Even before the bombings started, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan had already positioned soldiers along the Afghan border to block the flow of refugees. The US has ordered the Pakistani government to likewise close its own borders on the pretext that bin Laden's men might mingle with the traffic of refugees. Iran has also been pressured by the US to close its border with Afghanistan.
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