From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: AUT: Re: some thoughts on the war - continued
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 06:28:25 +0100


Bob and Gra ...
My reservations are more along the line there are already others doing
this work  better than we are capable of here and now in terms of aid
as food, medicine, etc. Apart from the more known institutions as Red
Cross etc, in Scandinavia, Afghanistan commitees  have been active
on this front since the USSR invasion (even if originally with their roots
in more than doubtful Maoist politics and a support to the Mujaddin.)
Secondly, the overwhelming problem _here and now_ is logistical due
first and foremost to the terror from the skies but also the indigenous
terror on the ground.
        An important difference would be a different and more explicit
(anti- or nonstatist) political position on the basis of genuine
emancipatory
popular forces as RAWA, whatever it shortcomings may also be, is an
expression of. They do not, as you say have a catechism, and are to my
somewhat limited knowledge also in fact opposed to having one. If you
ask "them" what each one of them on a personal level dream of beyond going
beyond all the existing poltical forces of Aghanistan towards conditions
where women play a real role within society and war-lords and the factions
of religious-fascist police none  – which is what unites them on a very
concrete level of survival and resistance – you will get different answers
depending on who you talk to, just as what was the case with the Liverpool
dockers, the workers of Tuzla or within the so-called "anti-globalisation"
movement. That is my impression.


Efforts to strengthen RAWA and other more explicite anti-hierarchical
social revolutionary forces  _within the region_   – be they within or
outside
of RAWA and Afghanistan –  and enter into a critical but also as far
as possible practical dialogue, is essentally sound.


As for pipelines, they are certainly also in the minds of the forces
spreading
death from the skies. This is a banality just as it is a banality that this
is _not_
the primary reason for the present US and UK military intervention in
Afghani-
stan. Ironically one of the most heard critiques of people within the region
is
that US did not go for the pipeline when they easily could have, had they
wanted
it enough, that is at the time of USSR withdrawal. It is all too typical for
the left
that they do not even ask themselves such elementary questions. None of this
however makes it less true that to enforce an imperial order in the region
is on
the agenda, and the question of pipelines is an integral part behind this.
The
objectives of Imperial (dis)order however does not necessarily extend far
beyond
imposing conditions of "business as usual"  beyond the sphere of heroin
and weapons smuggling. One question to be asked in this context is the
stupe-
fying effect of this order at its very center  – or rather its main center
and to the
degree to that a center really exists –  and how this works to make this
disorder
even more deadly. There is certain quality of short-sighted instant politics
of
ignorance in US foreign policies which differs from those of the old British
Empire. If are to believe the news-reports, CIAs lack of agents with
language
and cultural skills is an expression of this central power also being a
victim of
the very order it tries to impose on its subjects.

The pipeline focus of the left however tends to become an excuse for non-
thinking and a refusal of critical thought in favour of the intellectual
lazi-
ness of repetiton. Worse, it tends towards a politics of moralism and to
avoid what should be the main focus: a politics of libertarian communist
constructive resistance. The conditions of struggle withing the working
classes should be immensely more important to us than restating over
and over again the corruption of our masters.

Harald









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