First of all, let me repent for a terrible, terrible past mistake. When certain warmongering activists, probably connected to big oil, conducted a very forceful blitz of an e-mail campign around 1999 which carried a petition to the UNHRC for outside intervention in Afghanistan, I blindly signed up. The petition did not specify that the intervention they had in mind was of a military character, but it purported to be taking the moral high ground of defending Afghan women who had become victims of obscurantist Islamists as a direct result of their radicalisation and rage deriving from the atrocities that the mujahideen wars against the occupying Soviet forces during 1979-1988 or so. There were many reasons I signed up. One was the fact that I was working with the African Development Bank, and 'the DNA' that such human-development-centered work can, without your noticing, chisel into your system, tends to automatically see the women's empowerment side of the argument, while blinding you to the more obvious reality. I was, already then, an avid reader of the International Herald Tribune and other rather informed publications, besides having read Jan Goodwin's book "The Price of Honour" as well John K. Cooley's book "Unholy Wars". In addition, I had lived in the flesh the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and I sympathised with the Revolution from the start. So, I was no naive idealist. I guess I was emotionally bulldozed into signing because the petition came through the African Development Bank, and somehow, you have to convince yourself that you really believe in the stated principles of the mission statement of your institution. Soon after I had signed up, I realised that UNHRC Head Mary Robinson had been strongly resisting that campaign (initiated by Republican members of Congress probably under Big Oil influence), and I had, unwittingly signed up to a devilish scheme to invade Afghanistan, as an important and least-resistance strategic pathway to the ultimate aim of seizing control of Caspian Sea oil. I also learned that Jan Goodwin herself had become an activist against using guns to 'free' Afghan women. I felt like I should jump into the nearest rat-hole to hide in shame. Then, I saw 9/11 coming. It would be too long a story to tell, here, how I did. But I DID -- not the specific atrocity, but a vague notion of an imminent vastly spectacular act of protest. The rest, of course, is, as they say, history --- a history that daily eats at the entrails of those of us who still have a conscience. The fact that a few economic development professionals like myself, at the World Bank, vociferously decried (likely at the risk of their professional advancement) the push by their management and the WB Board of Directors to approve loans to Pakistan, following the invasion of Afghanistan, that would be aimed partly at 'reinforcementof law and order and governance', only added to my shame. In economic development work, the acceptance of such 'development aid' is referred to as the most despicable surrender to the IBGT (I'll be gone by then -- when repayment falls due) mentality.

Anyway, as Malalai Joya says, the atrocity, a thousand times worse than the 9/11 atrocity, has been committed now, with our complicity, and innocents wil have to live with the sequels for decades to come. It does not help me when I try to calm my rage by telling myself "Who ever said that life is just?"