Question to an MP on Afghanistan - the legacy of war

Dear Ms Drown, Labour MP for Swindon South

I am writing to you again both as a constituent and as secretary of Swindon Stop the war Coalition.

Obviously the issue of whether the Prime Minister lied about the alleged Iraqi weapons of Mass destruction is currently receiving a lot of attention. In particular I note that some relatives of British servicemen killed in Iraq are now speaking up saying that they consider that Blair betrayed their fallen loved ones.

Clearly if the Prime Minister did lie then this throws a shadow over the whole of our parliamentary democracy. It would surely be reprehensible in the extreme that politicians should make statements to influence public opinion in favour of war when they know those statements to be untrue or are reckless as to their truth.

On this question of recklessness with truth, I have one or two questions for you as well. At the meeting on 8th March at the Steam Museum (of which we have a video) it was put to you that the prospects for peaceful and democratic government in Iraq were poor given the desperate situation in Afghanistan following the US invasion.

You replied that in fact the situation in Afghanistan had considerably improved since the US invasion, particularly for women, and you quoted conversations with Afghani women as evidence for this. This has been a repeated theme of yours in defence of the war on Afghanistan in most of the meetings I have had with you, and it seems in correspondence with other constituents.

I am sure that you are aware that the terrible current situation in Afghanistan was raised in a letter last week from more than 80 aid organizations to the United Nations, on the eve of a Security Council meeting to discuss events in that country. They gave evidence that the position was so bad that people had started to reminisce about the "better days" under the ousted Taliban regime.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp...

You will of course also know that a few weeks ago the UN stopped aid operations in most parts of Afghanistan due to their inability to guarantee the safety of aid workers; a situation considerably worse than under the Taliban.

Some Afghan women are now receiving education who were not before, however the recent evidence given by the well respected American organisation Human Rights Watch to the House of Representatives (18th June 2003), suggests this is not widespread. I quote ". Most of the country is in the hands of warlords and gunmen-fighters in Afghanistan's past wars-who are now terrorizing local populations under their authority, robbing houses at night, stealing valuables, killing people, raping young women and girls, raping boys, seizing land from farmers, extorting money, and kidnapping young men and holding them until their families can pay a ransom. ... ... UNICEF estimates that in some provinces, the attendance rate for girls [at school] is as low as three percent. ... the United States has a split strategy in Afghanistan-supporting Hamid Karzai on the one hand, but cooperating with local warlords to hunt former Taliban on the other."

http://hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghanistan/testi...

According to Human Rights Watch the security situation, and therefore the physical safety of women and girls is worse than under the Taliban. Indeed well-founded fear of kidnapping, rape and ransom is given as the greatest reason why families do not send their children to school.

Although I have quoted to you the most recent sources, the situation in Afghanistan, and particularly the terrible plight of women following the fall of the Taliban had been widely reported much earlier. The tragic position of Afghan women post-Taliban was comprehensively documented, well in advance of your 8th March pronouncements on the subject. For example, Human Rights Watch produced a 52 page report in December 2002 by the respected expert Zama Coursen-Neff, explaining how women had not been liberated, and indeed the worst excesses are in areas controlled by warlords supported by the United States: "Human Rights Watch said that reports from around the country indicate that government troops and officials regularly target women and girls for abuse, often invoking vague edicts on dress and social behaviour. In many areas, local police and troops are enforcing Taliban-era restrictions, including banning music and forcing women and adolescent girls to continue wearing burqas. Human Rights Watch said that many of these local forces have received weapons and assistance from the United States"

http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/12/herat1217.htm

Therefore when you spoke in March 2003 to explain that the situation in Afghanistan had improved for women since the US invasion, it seems this was at variance with the facts. You were clearly and explicitly using the example of Afghanistan to bolster your argument that life in Iraq would also most likely improve following US invasion.

May I ask what research you had done to check what the situation was in Afghanistan to allow you to speak with such confidence in March 2003? May I also ask whether you consider your evidence to be superior to that of Human Rights Watch? If you had not recently checked the evidence then how do you answer the charge that you were reckless to the truth of your arguments in justification for war?

It is timely to look again at the Afghan war, to see the effectiveness of the so-called war on terror, and use that as a bench mark to assess whether the war was justified. The balance sheet: no capture of Bin Laden; widespread civilian deaths; no capture of Mullah Omar; increased international hostility to the US and UK; Al Qaeda still operational (Bali, etc); restoration of Afghanistan to the world's number one opium poppy producer (banned under the Taliban), and a humanitarian disaster for the Afghan people. I am interested in whether you still consider this a success? I would hate to see a failure. I would remind you that you were a strong supporter of the attack on Afghanistan, and yet all the calamities that the anti-war movement predicted for that benighted country have come to pass. Tony Blair's promises of reconstruction and security have been broken and innocent Afghan women, children and men pay the price with shattered lives in a devastated country.

The same lies the government told about Iraq, and that you promoted, are now being peddled about Iran: an alleged nuclear program, links with terrorists, etc. The lies are not even original. I hope that you have learned something from the sorry mess in Afghanistan, and that we can rely upon you to oppose spreading the war still further to Iran, Syria, North Korea, or wherever else George Bush decides.

Andy Newman
Secretary Swindon Stop the War Coalition
PO Box 1177, Swindon, SN1 4XB
http://freespace.virgin.net/swindon.stopwar/