This article, by Tony Iltis, originally appeared on Green Left Weekly and will be republished in the April Spark.

For the US military and the pro-war Western corporate media, the March 11 slaughter of 16 civilians, nine of them children, as they slept in their homes in the villages of Alkozai and Najeeban in Panjwai district, Kandahar province, was an aberration.

For Afghans, it was just the latest massacre.

There are differing accounts of what happened. The US maintains the killings were the work of a single “rogue” soldier. Eyewitnesses, however, insist there was more than one attacker.

CNN reported on March 13 that the villagers had previously fled the area due to fighting between US-led occupation forces and the Taliban. But they returned after assurances from commanders at the nearby US base that the district was safe.

Villagers agreed that there had been no Taliban in the district for months.

One of the villagers told CNN: “This base told us to come back to our villages … we will not bother you. This is your land, and this is your own village. But these dogs came and grabbed us.”

She said: “Four girls and four boys [killed]. They are 2-year-olds. Are these Talibs?”

Another eyewitness described the attack’s sadism.

“One guy came in and pulled a boy from his sleep and he shot him in this doorway,” she said. “Then they came back inside the room and put a gun in the mouth of one child and stomped on another child.”

Pajhwok Afghan News reported on March 15 that an Afghan parliamentary investigation found that between 15 and 20 US soldiers were involved in the attack.

The massacre has galvanised Afghan opposition to the occupation. About 2000 university students in Jalalabad on March 13 protested, chanting “Death to America!”, Reuters said the next day.

On March 15, about 2000 protesters took to the streets in Zabul province in the country’s south, the BBC said on March 16.

Unarmed protests against the occupation have increased in recent months.

While the armed opposition of the Taliban and other Islamist militias receives attention in the Western press, unarmed anti-occupation protests have been steadily increasing in recent years.

A focus has been US plans to officially withdraw the US-led forces in 2014 but leave behind a network of US bases.

These protests have been fuelled this year by the appearance of video footage in January of US troops urinating on the corpses of Afghans and the burning of copies of the Koran taken from prisoners at the US-run jail at Bagram Airbase, where detainees are routinely tortured.

In the wake of these incidents, US leaders and their Afghan puppets are in damage control. US President Barack Obama claimed on March 13: “The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered. We’re heartbroken over the loss of innocent life.

“The killing of innocent civilians is outrageous and it’s unacceptable.”

However, he added that the US would not be speeding up its withdrawal of troops.

Afghan politicians have echoed public anger at the US for taking Richard Bales, the soldier charged with the massacre, out of Afghanistan, rather than making him face an Afghan court.

The March 12 British Daily Telegraph reported that a statement by Afghnistan’s parliament said: “We seriously demand and expect that the government of the United States punish the culprits and try them in a public trial before the people of Afghanistan.”

Since the massacre, Afghan politicians have stridently condemned US violence. President Hamid Karzai called for “international security forces … to be taken out of Afghan village outposts and return to [larger] bases”, Reuters reported on March 15.

However, as Afghanistan’s politicians from Karzai down are beholden to the US-led occupiers who installed them in power, Afghans are sceptical of this rhetoric.

“Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us,” Abdul Samad, who lost 11 relatives in the massacre ― the youngest aged just two ― told the March 12 New York Times.

On March 11, at the scene of the atrocity, an elderly woman told AFP: “May God kill the only son of Karzai, so he feels what we feel.”

Hamid Karzai beholden to occupation forces

Afghans have more reasons than their association with the occupiers to hate their US-installed politicians.

When the US invaded in 2001, despite rhetoric about a new era of democracy and human rights, the warlords it allies with shared the Taliban’s misogynist and violent religious fundamentalist ideology. These warlords differed from the Taliban only in being more corrupt and less united.

For example, in a statement protesting against the March 16-17 visit to Italy of Afghan politician Mohammed Mohaqiq, Italian feminist Afghan solidarity group CISDA pointed out: “The men of Mohaqiq are known and feared especially for the abduction of girls, attacking female students on their way to school, who are raped and then their families are forced to pay a ransom.”

Mohaqiq’s work in the Afghan parliament includes sponsoring a law “legally authorising the rape and violence within marriage” the CISDA statement says.

For its part, the Taliban has broken off talks with the US. Intensely unpopular before the US invasion, the Taliban has regained some support on the basis of killing occupation soldiers.

The US has been trying to draw them into the puppet regime. But as the Taliban’s new credibility is tied to its armed opposition to Western forces, its involvement in a US-imposed settlement is dependent on being able to claim credit for forcing the occupation forces to leave.

The March 11 Panjwai massacre was not exceptional. The previous day, at least four civilians were killed in an occupation force air strike in the Kapisa province in north eastern Afghanistan, Press TV said.

Along with air strikes and night-raids by the occupation forces, Afghan civilians are also at risk of being killed by Taliban attacks or fighting between warlords.

The biggest threats, however, are malnutrition, disease and freezing to death ― making a mockery of the occupiers’ claims to be bringing development and raising questions as to where the billions of dollars sent for that purpose have gone.

In the midst of this, unarmed protests by Afghans continue against the occupiers and the warlords.

Last month saw two New Zealand soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and the
first New Zealand soldier killed.

Led by Prime minister John Key, who ordered an unprecedented lowering
of national flags across the country, politicians and news media
launched a lengthy storm of militaristic propaganda.

As Unite union secretary Matt McCarten wrote in his NZ Herald
column, “Predictably our politicians fell over themselves in
Parliament to express their condolences to the soldiers’ families and
praised their bravery. Phil Goff echoed all the party leaders when he
intoned that he wouldn’t be invoking politics into the tragedy.

What bunk. It was politics that has sent hundreds of our youth to
death’s door.”

McCarten concluded:

“…to all those MPs who voted to send Tim O’Donnell to his death, I
want you to know you have his blood dripping from your hands.

One of the few MPs voting against New Zealand troop deployment to
Afghanistan was Green Party Defence Spokesman  Keith Locke.
Keith now claims to be: “proud of the good peacekeeping and
reconstruction work that our Provincial Reconstruction Team has done
in Bamian Province, and we mourn the loss of one of its members.”

In an unanswered open letter email to Keith Locke I wrote:

“ People die every day in the course of their calling. The NZ army
officer killed by Afghanistan people trying to evict invaders from
their land is the first invading New Zealand trooper to die there
since 2003. How many industrial deaths have there been in New Zealand
since that time? How many flags were lowered, how many media voices
theatrically quavered and how many Prime ministers broke routine for
those working class victims of the class war?”

(According to the official website http://www.whss.govt.nz/statistics.shtml
there are about 100 fatal work related injuries each year, which
would put that number at around 700. That figure does not include
premature death from workplace related disease, which is estimated at
being 700-1000 deaths a year.)

Keith Locke’s claims about ‘good reconstruction work’ don’t wash.

As Matt McCarten pointed out:

“Having our non-SAS contingent there to rebuild infrastructure at the
same time we are destroying other parts of the country is merely a
propaganda stunt and makes our politicians feel better about our
involvement.

Of course, elements of the Taleban are brutal and monstrous to their
own people. But that’s not the reason we are there. Our presence isn’t
needed for military purposes, it’s to build good will with our US ally
in the hope of a free trade deal and other associated considerations.”

The death of any person is a tragedy to their family and friends.
Lieutennant Tim O’Donnel was treated as a “national tragedy” to
justify ongoing New Zealand involvement in a murderous imperialist war
that workers  should be actively opposing.

I read this in the Herald, attributed to you:

“We are proud of the good peacekeeping and reconstruction work that our Provincial Reconstruction Team has done in Bamian Province, and we mourn the loss of one of its members.”

If those words are not misquoted, then I’m really angry at your misrepresentation.

What’s going on here?

You’ve read all the books and been constantly active in the anti imperialist movement for literally half a century. You must be much more acutely aware than most people that the so called Provincial Reconstruction Team that the New Zealand state sent to Afghanistan is not about peacekeeping, or reconstruction , or is, in any way, “ours”.

You must similarly know that unless someone belongs to or chooses to identify with the New Zealand ruling classes, or is a bought hack journalist, or has not had access to the most rudimentary understanding of class politics, that: “our Provincial Reconstruction Team” is not based in Afghanistan for peacekeeping, good or otherwise.

Death in war is an understandable trigger for human emotions. So lets get the whole picture here. How many Afghanistan people have been killed by New Zealand invaders of their country?  When do we mourn and how do we begin to try and make amends?

People die every day in the course of their calling. The NZ army officer killed by Afghanistan people trying to evict invaders from their land is the first invading New Zealand trooper to die there since 2003. How many industrial deaths have there been in New Zealand since that time? How many flags were lowered, how many media voices theatrically quavered and how many Prime ministers broke routine for those working class victims of the class war?

Let the ruling classes do their barbarous inhuman dirty work alone and unaided.

Our little time on this earth has more urgent and honorable calls on it; to revive the antimperialist antiwar movement in this country.

Don Franks

The Situation so far

On 10 August 2009, Prime Minister John Key announced that the SAS (Special Air Service) would return to Afghanistan. This announcement had been predicted for some time so came as no surprise. The troops are being deployed in three rotations over 18 months and the full deployment involves 70 soldiers over that time period. At the same time, over that 18 months the NZ Army’s Provincial Reconstruction Team – NZ’s major commitment to the war – are being gradually reduced and eventually withdrawn, their work to be replaced by civilian work on agriculture, health and education. But the SAS deployment may in fact last much longer. The war in Afghanistan is going badly for the US -led coalition and few military people or civilian analysts are prepared to go public with an estimate of how much longer it could go on. A time frame as short as 18 months seems unlikely and if the war continues for years, there will be further requests for extensions to the troop commitment. With the Obama administration massively expanding the war effort, not just through increased troop numbers in Afghanistan, but an increasing involvement in Pakistan also, the war could well drag on for years.  read more

Activists gathered in Auckland today outside the US consulate to protest the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marking the anniversary of the Iraq invasion 7 years ago the protesters demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops, including and especially the NZ SAS and other military in Afghanistan.

The Workers Party had a PFLP banner, as part of a solidarity campaign with the Palestinian liberation movement

Workers Party with the PFLP banner

The protested ended on a fitting note, with old shoes being hurled at the Consulate.

Spark: It’s been 8 years since New Zealand troops were sent to Afghanistan – why did the Labour-Alliance government send them in the first place?

It needs to be understood in the context of New Zealand’s involvement with US and British imperialism. New Zealand is a partner in this bloc, and Labour enthusiastically signed up to the so-called War on Terror. When it comes to involvement in military adventures Labour governments have been just as warmongering as National.

Daphna Whitmore (left)at May Day march 2009

The Alliance Party split over the issue of support for the invasion of Afghanistan, with the majority of its members rejecting the war. It highlighted the problem of being in government with an outright capitalist party like Labour.

Spark: New Zealand companies aren’t trying to make major sales in Afghanistan – why all the risk and expense over such a long period of time?

 In its last term the Labour government did scale back the involvement, recalling the SAS and sending instead “reconstruction” forces. This tended to obscure the reality – that these are military forces, participating in an occupation. It dressed it up to look like it was simply a humanitarian mission.

Now Obama, facing a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, is sending in more troops. His call has been heeded by the National government. As you point out, there are no major sales in Afghanistan; it is much more a case of being on board with the strategic goal of subjugating the region. It’s tricky for the NZ ruling class, because while they are aligned with US interests, there are also interests they have with European powers. Having a foot in both imperialist camps was something that Helen Clark was a master at.

Spark: why have successive governments kept up involvement in the war?

To withdraw and accept the Taliban’s resumption of power would be a major climb down for the US, Britain and its allies. They invaded for strategic reasons, and to show who was boss in the world, and to demonstrate the US had gotten over the Vietnam complex. It was important for them to beat the guerrilla forces on the ground. Of course, they have shown again how the world’s most powerful army can be tied up for years by a determined guerrilla resistance. That the Western powers are being beaten by the Taliban and other local forces in Afghanistan is humiliating for them.

Spark: What about the argument that these troop deployments are helping make the world a safer place by slowing down the terrorists?

The Taliban were never a force outside of Afghanistan, just as there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All wars of aggression have their pretexts.

When you see pictures of villages bombed, and whole families killed by the occupying forces in Afghanistan it’s clear who are the terrorists.

Spark : New Zealand has a name for being anti nuclear warships – how does that sit with your description of it as “imperialist”?

There was a mass movement in New Zealand, which was part of an international movement, for disarmament. The movement succeeded in New Zealand in banning nuclear warships; and it is such a popular position that no government has dared to revoke it since. However, it proved to be a concession that the ruling class (in NZ and the US) could live with. There was no blockade, no US led coup or any response that you’d typically see when an oppressed nation stands up to the US. And the reason was that New Zealand was an imperialist partner – not an oppressed country.

The same government that banned the visit of nuclear warships carried out a harsh neo-liberal programme, selling off state assets, privatizing services and slashing the living standard of working people. That Labour government was one that Margaret Thatcher would have felt at home in.

Spark: Labour is saying that it was right to send NZ troops 8 years ago, but its not appropriate today – has something changed?

They are in opposition, and words are cheap. If they wanted to get out of Afghanistan they had 9 years to do so.

Spark: If it’s so wrong for NZ troops to be in Afghanistan why aren’t more people protesting about it?

It seems a world away to most people. The Taliban and the various war lords in Afghanistan do not inspire people in the West, understandably. While the Taliban and the Afghan resistance are playing a positive role resisting the invasion, they are not a socially progressive movement. Also, the way the invasion has been dressed up as a humanitarian effort, and one that claimed to be about modernizing society and liberating women, concealed the true character of the war. In New Zealand the minimal troop involvement has meant that most people are barely conscious of this country’s involvement.

Spark: What does the Workers Party think should be done about NZ overseas troop commitments? What about the deployments of peace keeping troops?

Imperialism uses both the carrot and the stick. In the seventies and eighties Washington wielded power by backing military dictatorships throughout Asia and Latin America. When these became thoroughly discredited it adopted a humanitarian face and conducted invasions under the banner of “democratization”.

New Zealand has no business invading and occupying other countries, even under the guise of peace keeping. We need to consistently oppose all these military adventures, whether they are “legal” or “illegal”; sanctioned by the UN or not. They are unjust wars and are not liberating.

Spark: You’ve been agitating against NZ imperialism for two decades. That’s a long time and some would say not a lot has changed. What keeps you motivated and what changes do you expect to see in the future?

Vietnam showed that the US – the biggest power in the world – could be beaten. The resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan have again shown that military might is not invincible.

The decline in of the secular, progressive and Marxist movements in the world is a challenge facing us today, but there are some promising signs. In Nepal, and in Venezuela there is something like dual power where the old rulers are being overthrown. In the Philippines, and in parts of India communist movements have held their own and are growing.

The resistance of oppressed people is a constant source of inspiration.

Come along and hear what has really been happening in Afghanistan since the invasion at the end of 2001 and why NZ armed forces, along with all other Western armed forces, should be withdrawn.

Monday August 31 7:30pm
WEA, 59 Gloucester St
(map)

Around 50 people protested outside Auckland’s Papakura army base, against the deployment of SAS troops to Afghanistan.

The protest was organised by Global Peace and Justice Auckland

The picket coincides with the Court of Appeal hearing for an anti-war protester convicted of burning the NZ flag at anti-war protest in 2007. It also coincides with the government’s announcement of the return of the SAS to combat in Afghanistan. All welcome…and please pass it on…

Organised by Peace Action Wellington

Why burn the New Zealand flag?

The New Zealand flag is a symbol of imperialism. This is most obvious in its design, a tribute to the British Empire. This design was adopted after the Second Boer War, which devastated South Africa but resulted in a surge of Kiwi patriotism.

Lest we forget

A simple re-design, while reflecting our emergence from the shadow of the British Empire, would not change the imperialist nature of the flag. It’s a tool of the ruling class, inseparably linked with militarism. From the Boer War through WWI and II, right through to armed involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the flag has marked New Zealand’s presence. Flags mark military conquest, the subjugation of nations.

Flags and borders divide the working majority. ANZAC soldiers had more in common with their Turkish counterparts than with the bureaucrats who sent them to Gallipoli. The working majority has interests in common worldwide, including an end to imperial war. Ruling class nationalism is a barrier to recognising this.

What purpose does ANZAC day serve?

Kevin Rudd used ANZAC Day to facilitate a new ANZAC Task Force.

Many argue that ANZAC Day is not a glorification of war, but a commemoration of those who’ve lost their lives. However, the rhetoric of ANZAC Day does not simply honour the soldiers who lost their lives, it justifies those who sent them to die. This facilitates moves such as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to form a new ANZAC Task Force.

Every year we are told that the young men whose lives were snuffed out at Gallipoli died gloriously for our freedom. We are told that the liberties we enjoy in New Zealand today exist only because of the sacrifice of these soldiers. The message is that the soldiers’ deaths were worth it, and that the cause they died for was just.

Gallipoli was not about defending democracy or free speech. The Ottoman Empire did not pose a threat New Zealand. The Allied High Command ordered the invasion of Gallipoli for strategic reasons, primarily opening a supply route to arm their then ally, the Tsar of Russia. This battle served ruling class British interests.

If we truly wished to avoid a repetition of these horrors, we would use Anzac Day to teach this basic truth: Do not believe what you’re told. Imperialist war is never glorious, and the soldiers who bled to death in the Belgian mud and at Galipolli died for nothing.

To honour the men who lost their lives, we must condemn imperialist war. Only when ANZAC Day facilitates disarmament and solidarity with those resisting imperialism, only when the War Memorial is showered with white poppies, when speeches are made about a generation of men slaughtered to serve imperialist interests, only then will the Workers Party support it.

Afghanis burning NZ flag.

New Zealand: an imperialist nation

While New Zealand has eked out a degree of independence from the US, it remains a junior imperialist nation. Contrary to popular myth, New Zealand was a member of the coalition of the willing which legitimised the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, sending troops to both countries.

Afghanistan is in the mess it is today because of Western involvement. Since the nineteenth century, Britain and the United States have deliberately stirred up communal divisions in the Middle East in a bid to prevent the formation of any united resistance to their plans for plundering the economic wealth of the region. During the Cold War, the CIA funded and recruited an army of Islamic mujahideen fighters based in northwest Pakistan to fight the Russians and their Afghan allies. Sectarian violence was exacerbated by this and by the subsequent occupation. The pro-Western government that replaced the Taliban has shown its stripes by legalizing rape within marriage. Yet the US and its NATO allies continue to peddle the line that the only solution to the worsening violence is greater Western military intervention.

Imperialism in the Pacific

More locally, we have treated Pacific neighbours as sources of cheap labour and trade, often interfering in governance.

While capital may flow freely across borders, workers only move when it suits the ruling class. When the post-war boom ended in the 1970s, the NZ ruling class turned to shutting off working class immigration, especially from the Pacific. 100,000 Samoans were stripped of citizenship rights, in a piece of legislation that has been maintained ever since. The Workers Party calls for open borders and full rights for migrant workers.

Despite the line of “democracy promotion” in the Pacific, the ruling class is primarily interested in having stable elites to trade with. In 2006, New Zealand and Australian troops were deployed to quell pro-democracy riots in Tonga. Only 9 of the 34 seats in the Tongan parliament are elected, and Tongans have voted for pro-democracy candidates in all 9 of those seats. However, New Zealand backs the monarchy, a major source of trade.

Yet paradoxically, New Zealand has isolated Fiji since the coup carried out by Bainamarama; why advocate democracy in Fiji and not Tonga? We did not isolate those who carried out the Fijian coups in 1987 and 2004. In fact, Fiji has never been a full democracy, with a voting system that entrenches a tribal elite, at the expense of Indo-Fijians. The current interim government however, is pledging to hold elections once there has been electoral reform, disestablishing the racially segregated voting system and instituting one person one vote. This may yet be shown to be empty rhetoric, indeed some of the actions of the interim government seem rather undemocratic and should be of concern, but New Zealand’s stance is clearly not based on democracy. There are powerful New Zealand interests in Fiji, which is New Zealand’s largest export market amongst the Pacific Islands. New Zealand’s attitude to Fiji is not based on humanitarian interests, but on the interests of capital.

*      *      *      *      *

Accompanying every justification of New Zealand militarism and imperialism is the national flag. It stands for unthinking obedience to orders and the false god of nationalism – the idea that working class New Zealanders share common interests with their bosses against the rest of the world.

Workers and all oppressed people of all countries , unite to resist imperialism.