End of an era

Few suppose Joe Biden will lose any sleep over the concerns of his European allies who are now bleating on about America’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan, let alone the wails of their expendable Afghan servants left stranded at Kabul airport when the last US troops pull out at the end of the month.
    The last few days have been a bitter lesson in real-politik for British politicians who still talk, at least in public, about a “special relationship” with the USA, whilst there’s a growing realisation amongst the movers and shakers of the European Union (EU) that their supposed ‘super-power’ status is just another Brussels pipe-dream.
    Britain, which still has the fifth greatest economy in the world, can of course stand on its own two feet. But Johnson prefers to spout nonsense about “Global Britain” rather than take any serious steps to break the slavish dependency on the USA, scrap the £billions spent on the useless US Trident nuclear weapons system and use the money saved to develop a truly independent economy for the benefit of the millions who live here.
    Tony Blair and his kind can drivel on for as long they like about “human rights” and “imbecilic” US decisions, but no-one takes them seriously – least of all anyone who counts in America’s ruling circles. The Americans are leaving Afghanistan because they’ve lost the war. Crocodile tears are the most that the Afghans left behind to the tender mercies of the Taliban can expect.

opportunity knocks

Sharon Graham has won the election to be the next general secretary of Unite. She succeeds the 70-year-old veteran Len McCluskey, who prolonged his stay at the top table but finally stepped down this year after 10 years in office. Unite’s first woman leader received almost 5,000 more votes than her nearest rival in a three-horse race that ended this week. She will now take over from Len McCluskey as leader of the second biggest union in the country.
    As usual these days the race to the top was, in practice, confined to three full-time officers and the factions they head. Whilst all three claimed to be following in the footsteps of Len McCluskey the only one who had their old chief’s blessing was Steve Turner – and that was only grudgingly given after Len’s chosen man, Howard Beckett, dropped out when he realised he couldn’t win. Turner – the official broad left ‘United Left’ candidate – came a credible second whilst Gerard Coyne – the right-wing ‘moderate’ – was well behind in third place.
    Sharon Graham coyly says she’s “not a member of any Unite or Labour faction – other than my own supporters group”, which though technically true masks the fact that her ‘Workers Unite’ group has built up a very powerful left-leaning platform supported by some Trotskyist movements within the union and focused on grass-roots issues to get the vote out.
    Turner relied on a run-down broad left machine that simply could not cope with the demands of social media or the lock-down restrictions imposed on public work during the campaign, while Coyne mistakenly hoped that the backing of the Murdoch press and dog-whistle support from Starmer & Co would be enough to turn the tables on his ‘left’ rivals.
    Sharon Graham says: “My slogan all along has been ‘Back to the workplace’ to build the union to fight for jobs, wages and conditions.” Let’s hope she does so.

End of the road in Afghanistan

As the last American troops withdraw from Afghanistan the sectarian Taliban Muslim militia has seized nine provincial capitals in an offensive than now directly threatens what poses as the national government in Kabul. In 2001 an American-led invasion drove the Taliban out of Kabul to install a puppet regime in the “war on terror” that the imperialists launched following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The invasion of Iraq soon followed along with “regime change” in Libya and a less than covert bid to do the same in Syria that was thwarted by the steadfastness of the Syrian people and the timely intervention of the Russian air force.
     American forces, and those of their NATO allies including Britain, installed a puppet regime in Kabul which they said would bring prosperity and democracy to Afghanistan.
    Twenty years later the Americans and their allies are leaving with their tails between their legs while the Taliban, which is backed by Pakistani intelligence, battles it out with northern and western war-lords who can count on the support of Russia, India and Iran.
    Some 2,300 American soldiers were killed in the Afghan campaign and over 20,600 wounded. Hundreds of mercenaries called “contractors” also died at the hands of the Afghan militias and while no-one in the West bothers to accurately count the Afghan losses most observers believe that about 241,000 people were killed in the Afghan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed were civilians.
    Some senior British officers and Tory politicians who really should know better are now bleating on about the “betrayal” of the Afghans, They would be better advised to heed Kipling’s words after the illusionary British victory in the Boer War: “Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should. We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good”.

Afghan victims of war

Book review

By Daphne Liddle

The Displaced:£10 Published by Guy Smallman (guysmallman.com)

GUY SMALLMAN is a rare kind of photojournalist; he is a freelance who is not sponsored by any of the big media corporations or press barons but he gets to places in the world where there are important stories to be told about the impact of war and conflict on local people’s lives that western governments would prefer were not reported.

He is funded by a group of fellow left-wing journalists known a Reel News, and has been visiting Afghanistan regularly since 2008; he now has a network of friends there.

Guy does not make judgements or long political comments – he lets his camera do the talking and leaves us to make up our minds.

Last Tuesday, he launched a new booklet of stunning photos of “the displaced” – Afghan people who have been forced from their homes by the wars and are refugees in their own country, scraping by from one day to the next on next to nothing.

The biggest killer among them is cold and young children are the most vulnerable. One of the most poignant pictures is of a man carrying the small body of his 18-month old niece, Saiyma Gadazia, to bury her among the graves of other children after she froze to death on the floor of her home in Char-e-Qamba camp last January.

Her father, Safarali Gadazia, an unemployed labourer, had reluctantly moved his family to colder, more polluted Kabul as the Sangin district of Helmand province became intolerable.

Without an ID card he could not get work and would be arrested by the police or army on suspicion of being a “foreign fighter”. If he carried an ID card he risked being detained and beaten by the Taliban as a “government spy”.

Many of the pictures are children playing in the rubble of bombed buildings in Kabul, or huddling round small heaters for warmth.

Conditions are about to get worse as neighbouring Pakistan is carrying out its threat to expel three million Afghan refugees, many of whom have to homes or land to return to.

The book launch in Shoreditch, east London, was packed. Guy made a very short speech and Elsie Bowerman, whose group Voices For Creative Non Violence runs loads of projects for disadvantaged kids in Afghanistan, spoke of the reality of being a woman in modern Afghanistan and the extra difficulties they face in making a living because of the religious restrictions on women going out alone.