Afghanistan - hidden reasons for hidden resources?

The US spends $100 million a day on the war effort in Afghanistan and a further $7 million a day goes into reconstruction. It has committed to spend $2.4 trillion over the next ten years. Big, expensive buildings have been constructed in Kabul, now “owned by the war lords”. Illegal drugs going from Afghanistan into the US and Europe generate about $500 million a year.

These figures are quoted by Afghan activist Malalai Joya as she deplores the extreme poverty in Afghanistan afflicting its 18 million people, most surviving on less than $2 a day. Both men and women in Afghanistan are in need of help, she says. They do not support the Taliban, nor the war lords.

Malalai Joya, 30, was in Australia to launch her book, Raising My Voice, published by Pan Macmillan Australia. In the past few years she has raised her voice so effectively that five assassination attempts have been made against her. In Afghanistan, she has to travel with body guards. Often she can stay only one night in one location and then she moves on. She says she risks her life so those who have committed crimes can be brought before the International Criminal Court as a step towards democracy for her country. Internationally, she has a significant following.

She is calling on all foreign forces to leave Afghanistan, including the US and NATO. She says, “We are caught between two enemies - the Taliban on one side and the US/NATO forces and their war lord friends on the other”.

“We are between two powerful enemies. From the ground, the Taliban and the northern allies are continuing to commit crimes and fascism against women and men in our country.

“From the sky these occupational forces are bombing and killing the civilians.”

She asks people to stand up to their governments against the “wrong policy” of military intervention in Afghanistan.

She said 400 civilians were killed and phosphorous had been dropped during US bombing. She views President Barack Obama’s policy as no better than that of President George W. Bush. “We want (action) against war crimes,” she said, not only against the Afghan war lords, but also against the US and Britain.

“These countries are wasting their money and blood in Afghanistan and I, on behalf on my people, pay my condolences to those people who lost their sons, their loves, their husbands in Afghanistan and have been killed," she says.

The United Nations must act to ensure that countries like China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Russia and others cease their influence and practice of peddling arms and weapons to war lords.

But both Russia and China were competing with the United States for control of the energy resources of the whole region, she says.

Estimates from the 2006 US Geological Survey and the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Industry show that the north of Afghanistan may possess more reserves of oil and gas than previously believed.

The Afghan Deputy Minister of the Mines and Industry, Engineer Mohammad Akram Gheyasi, told the Bakhtar News Agency (September 22, 2006): According to previous findings, the northern provinces of Balkh, Jozjan, Faryab and Sare-e-Pol had six oil fields and 120 billion cubic metres of oil reserves have been identified. There are 45 million tones of geological reserves and 14.5 million tones of potential oil, which can be extracted. Undiscovered resources of gas and oil in north Afghanistan could be greater. Findings show that on average, Northern Afghanistan has 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil and 15.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Malalai Joya writes in her book that NATO wants to stay in Afghanistan to ensure the West has better access to her country’s natural resources, which include massive deposits of copper and other metals, iron and natural gas. “Recently, China successfully bid billions of dollars for the right to exploit our copper deposits, which are estimated to be worth 88 billion dollars. With the current government we have in place - the most corrupt in the history of Afghanistan - these resources will be looted while the money will go to only a few people.

“If we could establish a real democratic government without foreign interference, these mining and energy resources could be developed for the benefit of all Afghans,” she says.

At the launch of her book at Avid Books, Brisbane, she spoke passionately about Afghan despair, saying how one man committed suicide because he could not earn enough money to feed his young family and that some women had become so desperate they sold their babies or toddlers for $10. Huge numbers of Afghans remain unemployed.

The Taliban, she says, are terrorists. She is disappointed that although she describes some of the dreadful things that happen to Afghan women, the western press does not report them. How, for instance, mothers are raped in front of their children by fundamentalist leaders who also pee into the children’s mouths.

Her website records how a 7-year-old ethnic Hazara girl, named Shiquiba, was raped last year by unknown assailants; a 12-year-old Anisa from Sari Pul province, was kidnapped and gang-raped by five men; 14-year-old Shuqufa’s ravaged body was found in a garbage heap on the outskirts of Kabul; and how Bashira, also 14, was raped by three men, one of whom is the son of a member of parliament. According to rights groups, he was never punished because Afghan officials were bribed.

Two years ago in an interview (On Line Opinion, 2007) Malalai Joya said, “We have a drugs mafia in Afghanistan and the so-called government is deeply implicated in drugs and the war lords”. Currently she alleges four government ministers are involved. Western people are taken in by men with shaved faces in “suits and ties”.

In her book she writes, ‘It is bad enough that war criminals wear the mask of democracy and sit in our Parliament where they are free to pass an amnesty bill to ensure that they will never be brought to justice for their past crimes. But what perhaps is more disgusting is that, due to the silence of almost all Western governments, these criminals have won immunity at the international level, as well. They should have been taken to The Hague to stand trial at the World Court long ago.”

Her journey to unenviable prominence began when, as an elected delegate in December 2003 to the Constitutional Loya Jirga for tribal and regional leaders, she first spoke out publicly against the domination of the war lords. Elected to the Afghan parliament in September 2005, fellow parliamentarians suspended her in 2007 because of her forthright views.

She has yet to decide whether to stand for parliament again at the forthcoming August elections, though many supporters have urged her to do so. Women tell her they back her but cannot tell their husbands because they would be divorced. Likewise, non-government organisations have also indicated that they support her but do not dare to declare so openly. She does not indicate what her decision will be; only that she is convinced the election will not be fair.

Of the future, she said, “Everyone is always talking about what would happen if these troops leave us - a civil war will happen in Afghanistan - but nobody is talking about the civil war of today”. Unfortunately Australia has followed the wrong policy of the US, “which is a mockery of democracy and mockery of the war on terror, and it is quite a war crime that they are doing there”.

Accepting that the danger of a civil war exists, she writes in her book, “it is important that other measures be taken along with the withdrawal of troops. In addition to the much needed disarmament of war lords and their militias, the international community must support and empower the democratically minded individuals and parties who are able to fight the influence of extremism and bring real democracy to our country.”

Afghanistan has always been on the path of conquerors because of its strategic location at the crossroads of Central Asia, between India and Russia, Persia (Iran) and China, but, “You cannot bring peace by war,” she said. “No nation can donate liberation to another nation. They can only grow and flourish when they are planted by the people in their own soil and watered by their blood and tears.”

In her province of Farah recently, there have been huge demonstrations. She sees in Afghanistan a similar fascist government to the one in Iran. As the Iranians recently have risen up, she believes so too one day, like a mushroom, underground forces in Afghanistan will rise up. In the meantime, she risks her life to say so.