December, 01 2009, 03:13pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Diana Duarte, Media Coordinator,Phone: +1 212 627 0444,Email:,media@madre.org
Six Alternatives to a Troop Surge in Afghanistan
NEW YORK
Tonight, President Obama will tell us that he must
expand the war on Afghanistan in order to end it. He will say that
another troop surge is necessary to prevent al-Qaeda from using
Afghanistan as a base. What he won't say is that al-Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. He probably won't point out that international forces already outnumber the Taliban twelve to one.
And he's not likely to remind us that throughout history, from the
American Revolution to the Vietnam War, home-grown insurgencies like
the Taliban's ultimately ended when foreign troops withdrew.
More than 80 percent of Afghans don't want more US troops in their country.
One reason is that the US presence is strengthening the Taliban, which
most Afghans oppose. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
has found, "The mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in
Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban."
Afghanistan's crisis is in part the result of 30 years of US intervention in the region, including the covert CIA campaign that created the Taliban (and al-Qaeda).
Having unleashed this violence, the US has a legal and ethical
obligation to the people of Afghanistan. That obligation will not be
met by putting more boots on the ground. Instead, we need policies that
address the grinding poverty, mass violence against women, predatory
government and ongoing warfare that plague Afghanistan.
Here are six things the Obama Administration must do to further the prospects for peace in Afghanistan:
1. Protect civilians from attacks
- This will be the third US troop surge in Afghanistan; the first two killed record numbers of civilians.
- In
2007, US/NATO troops were expanded by 45 percent and more civilians
were killed than in the previous four years combined. In the first 10
months of Obama's 2009 surge, more than 2000 civilians were killed-at a faster rate than any time since the war began. - The Taliban is known to attack villages where US soldiers have been. More US troops will make more civilians vulnerable to reprisal attacks.
- President Obama's expansion of the war into Pakistan has further endangered civilian lives. He has authorized as many drone strikes in less than ten months as George Bush did in his last three years in office.
The US should stop constructing military bases and waging air
strikes in or near civilian areas. President Obama must put a stop to
drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
2. Uphold Afghan women's rights
- George Bush's lie-that the US is in Afghanistan to defend
women's rights-is now driving the idea that more US forces are needed
to protect Afghan women from the Taliban. - The problem with this argument is that the US has never prioritized women's rights-or anyone's rights-in Afghanistan.
- From
2001 to the present, the US has allied itself with warlords and
fanatical fundamentalists whose track record on women's rights is
virtually the same as the Taliban's. In the creation of Afghanistan's
Parliament, constitution and judiciary, the US has consistently traded women's rights for allegiance from warlords and reactionary clerics. - The
choice in Afghanistan is not between "winning the war" or "abandoning
Afghan women." Upholding women's rights in Afghanistan is not some
idealistic mission: the US is legally obligated to protect
internationally recognized human rights, including women's rights, in
every policy, foreign and domestic. Military force is about the least
suited instrument for securing human rights in any context. - Rampant abuses of Afghan women's rights cannot be eliminated by force.
Ultimately, an end to the armed conflict is a precondition for Afghan
women to create an environment in which they themselves can
successfully assert their rights.
The US should declare women's rights-and all human
rights-non-negotiable and end the US pattern of trading Afghan women's
rights for cooperation from warlords and armed groups.
US economic and political support to Afghanistan should be tied
to human rights improvements, including women's rights to healthcare,
education, employment, political participation and freedom from
violence.
3. Prioritize development and meet humanitarian needs
- Proponents of a troop surge argue that development cannot
be pursued without security; but the inverse is equally true. In a
country with the world's highest infant mortality rate, there can be no security without development. - The US is undermining development by militarizing humanitarian aid. The army's "Provincial Reconstruction Teams" blur the line between combat operations and aid delivery.
They use humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip to extort information
from civilians. The practice turns urgently-needed aid into a weapon of
war and endangers recipients by associating them with the US military.
The US should demilitarize aid operations and fund
community-based, Afghan-led reconstruction efforts to enable access to
food, clean water, health care and primary education. Aid should be
channeled through Afghan organizations to ensure that funds reach those
most in need instead of reverting back to private US-based contractors.
4. Address the underlying reasons for the resurgence of the Taliban
- Grinding poverty and a 40 percent unemployment rate are root causes of the insurgency. Most Taliban recruits join because they are paid a daily wage.
- The
Taliban is also strengthened by popular outrage and fear of US attacks,
the illegitimacy of the Karzai government and the support of Pakistan. - These
problems will not be solved with more troops. They are social and
political problems that must be addressed with development and
diplomacy.
The US should allocate funding for job training and creation
programs for Afghans. Currently, only 10 percent of US funding in
Afghanistan is earmarked for development; the rest is for military
purposes. Allocating more funds to combating poverty in Afghanistan
will weaken the Taliban without endangering civilians and help build
long-term security.
5. Support Afghan civil society
- Civil society, including the Afghan women's movement, is
the country's most moderating force and a vital resource for rebuilding
Afghanistan, advancing human rights and fostering peace in the region. - The
political spaces where civil society can flourish-including a free
press, progressive civic institutions, non-governmental organizations,
and schools and universities-are debilitated by an atmosphere of war
and militarism.
The US should hold consultations with Afghan civil society,
particularly women's organizations, to determine policies that can
support civil society as a critical counter-force to warlords, armed
groups and corrupt officials.
6. Advance diplomacy and peace building
- Ultimately, this war, like other armed conflicts, will end
through negotiations. Yet, compared to the resources poured into the
fighting, the US has barely begun to lay the groundwork for peace talks. - Negotiations
need to include local processes of reconciliation and peace building
and address key grievances of the Taliban without legitimizing their
cause. - A regional process should include Afghanistan's
neighbors and address disputes between India and Pakistan, which are
fueling violence in Afghanistan.
The US should support and facilitate diplomacy and peace
building while recognizing that ultimately, decisions about what
happens in Afghanistan must be made in Afghanistan and not in
Washington.
This resource is also available on MADRE's website: https://www.madre.org/index.php?s=4&news=247
MADRE is an international women's human rights organization that partners with community-based women's groups to advance women's human rights, challenge injustice and create social change in contexts of war, conflict, disaster and their aftermath. MADRE advocates for a world in which all people enjoy individual and collective human rights; natural resources are shared equitably and sustainably; women participate effectively in all aspects of society; and all people have a meaningful say in policies that affect their lives. For more information about MADRE, visit www.madre.org.
LATEST NEWS
Nancy Pelosi 'Making Calls' to Undermine AOC's Bid for Top Oversight Role
"It is so infantilizing to the House leadership to have a B team of octagenarians scheming behind their backs and aiming directly at their most promising young talent," said one progressive journalist.
Dec 13, 2024
Progressives on Thursday were frustrated by reports that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using her considerable influence on Capitol Hill to undermine Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's bid to become the top Democrat on the powerful committee that could launch investigations into the Trump White House in the coming years.
As Common Dreamsreported last week, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has publicly indicated that she is supporting Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) to succeed Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) as ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability when the 119th Congress begins in January.
But Punchbowl Newsreported that Pelosi—well-known for her relentless and often successful efforts to whip votes within the Democratic caucus—is also "making calls" to other Democratic lawmakers on behalf of Connolly.
The outlet reported that the former House speaker is "actively working to tank" the candidacy of Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), with whom she has had a rocky relationship at times as the progressive Democrat has pushed the party to embrace far-reaching reforms on climate, immigration, and other issues.
Both Connolly and Ocasio-Cortez believe they have the votes to win the ranking member position. Ocasio-Cortez is a close ally of Raskin, who named her vice ranking member in the current Congress, but the Maryland lawmaker, who is expected to succeed Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has not publicly endorsed either candidate.
The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which has close ties to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), is expected to make a recommendation for the ranking member role, after which the entire Democratic caucus will vote.
The centrist New Democrat Coalition endorsed Connolly on Friday, while a House Democrat told Axios that Ocasio-Cortez "has pretty much the entire [Oversight] Committee with her."
The Congressional Progressive Caucus announced its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez on Friday, with Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Chair-elect Greg Casar (D-Texas) arguing the congresswoman's "fearless advocacy leading the Oversight Committee will help ensure Democrats retake the House in 2026."
"Throughout her tenure on Oversight, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has been a powerful voice for working people," said Jayapal and Casar. "She has wielded her seat on this committee to hold CEOs, Wall Street, and mega-corporations accountable to the American people. Her investigations that pressured Big Pharma to bring down the price of PrEP and other critical medications are just one example of her influential leadership and commitment to everyday people."
As Axios reported, several older longtime members are facing challenges for leadership roles from the party's younger generation. Ocasio-Cortez, 35, was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress when she won her election in 2018, and is an outspoken member of the progressive "Squad" which advocates for policies such as Medicare for All and has reportedly angered Pelosi in the past with its embrace of calls to "abolish" Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"Many members are concerned about [the] precedent these races are setting," a senior House Democrat told Axios regarding the progressive contests with members like Connolly, who is 74.
Ryan Grim of Drop Site News said Pelosi's lobbying against Ocasio-Cortez "reeks of pettiness."
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, said the new reporting shows Pelosi attempting to act as a "puppet master."
"It is so infantilizing to the House leadership to have a B team of octagenarians scheming behind their backs and aiming directly at their most promising young talent," said Dayen.
Ocasio-Cortez wrote to colleagues last week to announce her bid for the ranking member position, highlighting her involvement in derailing Republican efforts to "weaponize the committee's investigatory power for partisan purposes" and pledging to balance the Oversight Committee's focus on President-elect Donald Trump's actions with fighting to better the lives of working Americans.
If Democrats win back control of the House in 2026, the committee would be empowered to launch investigations into the incoming Trump administration and would have subpoena power.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Warning of 'Unprecedented Risks,' Scientists Say Mirror Bacteria 'Should Not Be Created'
"Our analysis suggests that mirror bacteria could broadly evade many immune defenses of humans, animals, and plants," according to a group of 38 scientists, including multiple Nobel Prize winners.
Dec 13, 2024
Dozens of scientists are calling in no uncertain terms for a halt on research to create "mirror life," particularly "mirror bacteria" that could "pose ecological risks" and possibly cause "pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of the plant and animal species, including humans."
The group of 38 scientists, who include Nobel laureates and other experts, addressed research into "mirror life"—mirror-image biological molecules—in a piece of commentary published in the journal Science published Friday, which accompanied a technical report that was released earlier in December.
One of the scientists, synthetic biologist Kate Adamala at the University of Minnesota, was working on creating a mirror cell but "changed track last year" after studying the risks, according to the Guardian.
"We should not be making mirror life," she told the outlet. "We have time for the conversation. And that's what we were trying to do with this paper, to start a global conversation."
To that end, the authors of the commentary plan to convene discussions on the risks of mirror life and related topics in 2025, with the hope that "society at large will take a responsible approach to managing a technology that might pose unprecedented risks."
The ability to create mirror life is likely over a decade away and would require sizable investment and technical progress, meaning the world has the opportunity to "preempt risks before they are realized," according to the scientists.
When broken down into simple terms, mirror life sounds like something out of science fiction. All the biomolecules that constitute life have a "handedness" to them—"right-handed" nucleotides make up DNA and RNA, and proteins are formed from "left-handed" amino acids.
"So when we're talking about mirror-image life, it's kind of like a 'what if' experiment: What if we constructed life with right-handed proteins instead of left-handed proteins? Something that would be very, very similar to natural life, but doesn't exist in nature. We call this mirror-image life or mirror life," explained to Michael Kay, a professor of biochemistry at University of Utah's medical school.
Some scientists like Kay are interested in the medical possibilities of mirror-image therapeutics—which Kay says holds potential for treating chronic illness in a more cost-effective way—but both he and the authors of the recently published commentary are concerned about the potential threats posed by mirror bacteria.
"Our analysis suggests that mirror bacteria could broadly evade many immune defenses of humans, animals, and plants. Chiral interactions, which are central to immune recognition and activation in multicellular organisms, would be impaired with mirror bacteria," according to the scientists.
Essentially, as Kay puts it, it’s unlikely that mirror bacteria would be subject to the same constraints as regular bacteria, such as the human immune system or antibiotics.
The scientists warn that further developing this research could open a Pandora's box: "Unless compelling evidence emerges that mirror life would not pose extraordinary dangers, we believe that mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms, even those with engineered biocontainment measures, should not be created."
The authors argue that scientific research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria should not be allowed, and that potential funders should not support work related to mirror bacteria.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In Wake of Killing, UnitedHealth CEO Admits 'No One Would Design a System Like the One We Have'
One critic said UnitedHealth Group chief executive Andrew Witty should "resign and then dedicate every dollar he has to dismantling the current system brick by brick and building one based on public health in its stead."
Dec 13, 2024
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty wrote in a New York Times op-ed Friday that the for-profit U.S. healthcare system "does not work as well as it should" and that "no one would design a system like the one we have," admissions that came as his industry faced a torrent of public anger following the murder of UnitedHealthcare's chief executive.
Witty declared that his firm, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare and the nation's largest private insurer, is "willing to partner with anyone, as we always have—healthcare providers, employers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, governments, and others—to find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs."
But critics didn't buy Witty's expressed commitment to reforming an industry that his company has helped shape and profited from massively. Witty was the highest-paid healthcare executive in the U.S. last year, and 40% of the private insurance industry's total profit since the passage of the Affordable Care Act has flowed to UnitedHealth Group.
"It is (barely) true that UnitedHealth didn't design the U.S. system of corporate insurance, which kills tens of thousands of people a year through denial of care," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams. "But they certainly have perfected it and turned it into a medical murder apparatus at industrial scale. They not only block all attempts to change the system in the direction of public health, they bribe and bully with their billions in blood money to make it even crueler."
"Andrew Witty is the high priest of the temple to Moloch and Mammon, murder and money," Lawson added. "And there is no way for him to wash his hands of it, except perhaps to resign and then dedicate every dollar he has to dismantling the current system brick by brick and building one based on public health in its stead."
"Medicare for All is the only proposal on the table capable of delivering universal, continuous coverage for everyone, while also securing the efficiency and savings only possible through the elimination of private insurance."
While publicly pledging to cooperate with reform efforts, Witty has defended his company's care denials in private and urged his employees not to engage with media outlets in the aftermath of Thompson's murder.
Contrary to Witty's depiction of his company in his Times op-ed, UnitedHealth has historically been an aggressive opponent of reform efforts aimed at mitigating the harms of for-profit insurance and building public alternatives. The Leverreported in 2021 that UnitedHealth Group "held a webinar to pressure its rank-and-file employees to mobilize against efforts in Connecticut to create a state-level public health insurance option."
At the national level, UnitedHealth has spent over $5.8 million this year lobbying the federal government, according to OpenSecrets.
Witty, who was born in a country with a public healthcare system, did not detail the kinds of reforms he would support in his op-ed Friday, but it's clear he would oppose a transition to a single-payer system such as Medicare for All, which would effectively abolish private health insurance and provide coverage to all Americans for free at the point of service—and at a lower total cost than the status quo.
In a column for The Nation on Friday, writer Natalie Shure argued that "the appalling amount of resources and energy we put into maintaining the existence of health insurance is wasted on an industry with no social value whatsoever."
"You could eliminate every one of these corporations tomorrow and build a system without them that works better, for less money, and with less hassle," Shure wrote. "Other countries already have systems like this. Medicare for All is the only proposal on the table capable of delivering universal, continuous coverage for everyone, while also securing the efficiency and savings only possible through the elimination of private insurance."
"None of that means that murder is justified or useful," Shure added. "But anger can be. Some politicians, from Bernie Sanders, to Elizabeth Warren, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have begun to make public statements ascribing the reaction to Brian Thompson's murder to widespread fury over the health insurance industry. The next step is to harness it, and to build something new."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular