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<h1><font size=4><b>Memo to America: Stop Murdering My
People</b></font></h1><font size=3>By
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/malalaijoya">Malalai
Joya</a><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/memo-to-america-stop-murdering-my-people-by-malalai-joya" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/memo-to-america-stop-murdering-my-people-by-malalai-joya<br>
<br>
</a>Source:
<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-19/memo-to-america-stop-murdering-my-people/">
The Daily Beast</a><br>
Wednesday, April 21, 2010<br><br>
<b>Amid increasing civilian deaths and resurgent warlordism, Afghan
women's leader Malalai Joya writes that Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are
losing credibility in Afghanistan day by day.<br><br>
</b>Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to
kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to
claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover
up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only
thing that brings some of these atrocities to light.<br><br>
For instance, it was only after the reporting of Jerome Starkey of the
Times of London that officials admitted to the brutal Feb. 12 murder of
two pregnant women, a teenage girl, and several young men in a night raid
at a home where a family was celebrating the birth of a child.<br><br>
Night raids, air raid “mistakes,” firing on civilian buses and cars at
checkpointsthe occupation finds many ways of killing the people of
Afghanistan. The excuses and lies for these deaths are like salt in our
wounds, and it is no wonder that protests against the U.S. military are
growing. The Afghan people have had enough.<br><br>
In recent weeks, there has been much talk about Hamid Karzai’s threats to
join the Taliban and about his supposed differences with the American
government. But for Afghans, Karzai long ago lost all credibility. The
joke among our people is that Karzai doesn’t do or say anything without
consulting the White House first. No amount of nationalistic rhetoric or
demagoguery on his part will change this perception.<br><br>
Everyone in Afghanistan knows that Karzai was placed into power with the
backing of the United States and its allies, and to this day he relies on
their support. His regime would not last a day without it. And Afghans
know too well the reality of his corrupt government: It has delivered
nothing to the country’s poor other than sorrow and destitution, while
filling the pockets of drug traffickers, warlords, and its own corrupt
officials.<br><br>
Afghanistan has had puppet leaders before, rulers who served only the
interests of foreign occupiers, whether British or Soviet. But Karzai may
be the most hated puppet in our history; he has empowered some of the
most brutal internal enemies of ordinary Afghans, warlords of the
Northern Alliance like Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Rabbani, Mohaqiq, Ismael
Kahn, Dostum and many others. Even his two vice presidents, Fahim Qasim
and Karim Khalili, are notorious fundamentalist warlords. The president’s
brother in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is another thug in power whose
links to the drug trade and the CIA have been widely reported.<br><br>
Karzai made headlines by threatening to “join the Taliban,” but the
reality is that for more than eight years he has had no problem working
with fundamentalists who are the ideological brothers of the anti-women
Taliban. In fact, Karzai himself used to support the Taliban when he was
a minor tribal leader in Kandahar in the 1990s, and for years he has been
negotiating to bring Taliban leaders into his puppet regime. Some of them
are already serving in his regime, and the U.S. government has been
encouraging these negotiations by creating the false categories of
"moderate" and "extremist" Taliban.<br><br>
He has also been reaching out to that most brutal warlord and criminal,
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader known for killing civilians and
currently designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. Karzai recently
appointed Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, an infamous leader of Hekmatyar’s
party, as his minister in charge of the economy. These negotiations and
flexible alliances by Karzai and the U.S. government are nothing new. For
three decades, the U.S. has backed these criminals: Hekmatyar, al Qaeda
and other fundamentalists in the 1980s, the Taliban in the 1990s, and now
Karzai and his warlord allies.<br><br>
Progressive-minded Afghans want to break out of this circle of warlordism
once and for all. It is ironic that Karzai talks about the possibility
that a “national resistance” could develop in Afghanistan. He should know
that the prime target of such a movement will be his own regime and its
foreign supporters.<br><br>
Our people are deeply fed up. They have organized many anti-U.S. protests
in the past months and if the occupation continues, the resistance will
only grow. More than eight years of occupation have made life bleak, and
we are tired of being pawns in the U.S. and NATO’s game for control of
Central Asia.<br><br>
We can no longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of
our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and
women. We can no longer bear these “accidents” and these “apologies” for
the deaths of the innocent.<br><br>
<br><br>
We salute the anti-war movements in the NATO countries. Here, we will
struggle to our last breath to stop this war that is tearing apart our
beloved Afghanistan.<br><br>
<br><br>
<i>Malalai Joya, now 31, was the youngest member of the Afghan
parliament, elected in 2005. In 2007 she was suspended from parliament
because of her consistent criticism of the warlords and other
human-rights abusers in the Karzai regime. Joya has survived five
assassination attempts to date, and has written her life story in the
book
</i></font>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/143910946X/thedaibea-20/">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">A Woman Among
Warlords</a></font><font size=3><i> (with Derrick O’Keefe, Scribner,
2009). She writes from Kabul, Afghanistan.<br><br>
</i> <br><br>
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